Polka Dots & Sunshine

Polka Dot Bride!

2011-02-11T16:17:00.000+08:00

I just felt the need to pop back here and do one final post to say 'we're on Polka Dot Bride!'. Pure awesomeness :)

You can check it out here.

Farewell!

2011-01-02T16:53:00.000+08:00

I started writing up my first recap post and I just couldn’t do it. It felt like effort, which blogging has never felt like before. I guess it reminds me a bit of English class in high school. I just remember this one moment where my English teacher sat down with me after reading a short story I had written and with disappointment in his voice told me that when he starting reading it he thought it was absolutely brilliant. He was really getting into it and then he turned to what should have been the last half of the story to find only one page remaining. Little Amy had got bored of writing the story halfway through and killed off the main character to end the story.

Not that anyone is getting killed, but I guess I’m kind of doing that here. I just can’t find the enthusiasm to write about our wedding that was. Don’t get me wrong – it was the best day of my freakin’ life. I’m like a little kid at Christmas with our wedding… but in reverse. I think about it all the time and I still get exciting thinking about it. Sometimes I just want to jump up and down (which I may have done when I saw my hubby for the first time on our wedding day… shhhh… don’t tell anyone).

I will leave you with some photos from our brilliant photographer, Angela Higgins. I wish I could post all of her photos here. She captured the day so beautifully. Looking through some of the photos I was think ‘how on earth did she capture that without me noticing’. She’s like a ninja! There are a few more photos up on Angela’s blog here if you are interested.

If you’re planning your own wedding and have anything you want to ask me, feel free to leave comments all over the place and I will answer (I promise)!

Thanks for reading,

Amy

xxx

P.S. I’ve become a little attached to the blogging world and have started up a new blog. You can find me over at From the Bottom of the Teacup.

Married!

2010-11-28T10:16:00.000+08:00

Yesterday we got married. It was awesome! I will probably do some recaps when we get back from our honeymoon, but for now I will leave you with this;

This month in pictures..

2010-11-13T16:47:00.000+08:00

I think that if there was a 'slackest blogger' award, I would win it hands down. I haven't posted since the 5th of October! Naughty me. It's because I've been so busy actually putting this whole wedding thing together. I think that's a pretty good excuse right?
On that note, it's almost time to start getting ready for my hens night so I can't hang around typing away for too long. I hereby present to you, (some of) the last month in pictures;

Justin making the blackboards for our photobooth

Blackboards drying off

Table numbers all made.

A sample of the flowers and hearts for our wedding cake.

Lolly bonboneirre (tags aren't finished), wrapped in the same fabric as my dress :D

Some of the plant bonboneirre ready and waiting to be wrapped up like the lolly bonboneirre at the last minute (so that I can continue to water them).

'Aisle Walking 101' shirt from my two lovely ladies for our rehearsal which was last night.

Hens' Night Invite - Excited!

2010-10-05T19:46:00.000+08:00

Today I got home to a little black envelope in the mail. The lovely calligraphy of my maid of honour and the little 'kiss' sticker on the back could only mean one thing - hens' night invite!

My lovely bridesmaids did such a good job at making the invites. I love the wording too;

Amy L____ R_____

is getting tied up... we mean tied down!

So bring your furry handcuffs and silk ribbons, and help us celebrate Amy's last few days as a single girl with her:

Burlesque Hens' Night

*details of when and where *

Dress: Sexy... think lace, silk, leather, feathers, and fishnets!

*more details*

There is plenty of street parking; please don't come down the driveway or you risk the wrath of Lydia's riding crop...

Lots of room to stay over, just let us know in advance.

Kisses, Demure Dani and Luscious Lydia

I have to say that I am now very excited about my Hens' night. Should be good fun!

Who else is looking forward to their Hens' night? Any ideas what your bridesmaids are arranging?

Pinwheels

2010-09-29T21:11:00.000+08:00

Pinwheels scream fun right?

I think they do, and that is why we are going to line our aisle with them! As we aren't having many chairs, and I'm not into the whole red carpet thing, we were a bit stuck for a while on how to create an aisle. It actually hit me one day while I was searching for cake toppers and came across an Etsy store that had mini pinwheels for the tops of cupcakes (which by the way, is a totally awesome idea and I may have to do next time I make cupcakes).

I've found a whole pile of scrapbooking paper in our wedding colours and got some dowel from Bunnings, so making them should be a super simple task to do. All we have to do it a little bit of assembly and voilà, we have an aisle! Maybe we can even take a few up to the reception for photobooth props!

Only bummer is that I don't think there will be any children at our ceremony :(
Hope the young at heart appreciate them!

Any ideas for any post ceremony uses for the pinwheels, other than photobooth props? Would hate to let them go to waste.

How hot are we?

2010-09-26T10:15:00.001+08:00

On Friday Angela put our engagement photos up on her blog!! I am in love. I think I may have squealed a little when I first saw them. They are just… beautiful…. AND we somehow even look attractive (nothing like a little bit of modesty).

They are a bit hard to see because blogger is a pain and you can't fit big photos on, but if you want, head over to Angela's blog where there a lot more of our awesome photos!

I was going to write a big post on our engagement session and how much fun it was, but I think I can sum it all up by just saying: *sigh* I am in love (with both Justin and Angela).

One final note: I really like my make up a lot better this time around too. My make up lady did my eyes a lot darker. What do you think? Better than before?

P.S. Two months and one day until our wedding! Holy fudge balls!

A little bit of magic

2010-09-20T17:00:00.001+08:00

Our honeymoon is gonna rock! For two nights of it, we get to stay at this romantic little place;

Magic Cottage, Takau River, Kerikeri

Bath on the balcony overlooking the river = serious levels of awesomeness. Cannot wait to get into it!

For the rest of the three weeks we will be staying in either the back of this;

or this;

Much less romantic and classy, but a hell of a lot more fun!

Calm

2010-09-16T16:33:00.000+08:00

This week a massive feeling of calm has washed over me. I think it’s the result of a few things that have happened.

Invites and Ceremony Draft
Firstly, on the weekend we got our round one reception invitations out (Yay!). Best of all, I know that they have got to people, despite us posting them with insufficient postage on them. We also have managed to put together the draft of our ceremony and send it through to our celebrant. It feels so good having that done because, you know, I’ve heard that the ceremony is a fairly important bit of the whole getting married thing.

Holidays!
Flights and leave for our honeymoon have been booked. This makes me so happy. You know when you get to that point where you are just plodding through work and life thinking ‘just put one foot in front of the other and don’t stop’? I’m there. Just having the leave booked has given me the drive to keep on plodding on. I can almost see the finish line. The last holiday we had was in April, and that was only for one week. The last holiday I took that was more than one week was in November 2008! One month off is going to be bliss (even if one week of that is prior to the wedding so I’ll be busy)!

Makeup
Anyone that’s been reading this blog for a while will know how worried I was about make-up. I had my original trial a while back and felt okay about it after that. Recently I’ve started worrying about it again though. If I went back to the start of this whole wedding planning thing, I would make the decision just to not wear makeup I think. It’s causing me so much stress because I never ever ever wear makeup so I look so different with it. Anyhow, the day of our engagement shoot I had another trial. This time my makeup lady went for a bit of a different ‘look’ and did my eyes darker. And you know what? I loved it. There wasn’t even that moment where I needed to get used to it. I just looked damn good, if I may say so myself. So that has left me feeling nice and calm too. I’ll double check I’m happy with it when I see what it looks like in the photos… but I’m guessing I’ll still be happy so I’ll make sure that she does it with the darker eyes on the day!

Engagement Session
Everyone should have an engagement photo shoot. Seriously. Best thing ever. Before it, I was nervous and more than a little apprehensive about having a camera pointed at me while I got cosy with my hubby to be. I’m guessing the first photos that were taken look more like photos of two rabbits caught in headlights rather than of two people being all in love and stuff. As the arvo went on we found that we relaxed a lot more and ended up having a blast. We also found that it was really nice to be able to spend some time together. As in proper time together - no distractions, no to-do lists, nothing… just us (and Angela of course). I kinda feel like I feel in love all over again.
After the arvo we had, I’m really happy that we have chosen to do a first look. If we get that feeling again, you’re not going to be able to wipe the smiles off our faces. The only risk is that if we end up so relaxed that we have a nana nap at the alter.

Here's hoping this beautiful calmness stays around for a while!

Invites!

2010-08-30T19:35:00.000+08:00

Well, the weekend just gone was the weekend that we wanted to get our wedding invites out by. It was also the weekend that we finally got around to doing a mock-up invite. Even though we've completely missed the 'invites go out' date that we set ourselves, I'm counting it as a win.

It took us so long to finally do this mock-up. I spent an entire f-ing day looking at fonts... fonts! Seriously... why has a wedding turned me into an insane 'must find perfect font or the world will end person'? Then there was the time spent trying to find a nice yellow paper for the outer pocket-fold.. which we just ended up making white anyhow. There was even a moment where I considered trying to convince Justin that paying $5-10 per invite to get someone else to do it for us would be worthwhile. But then, like magic, it suddenly worked. I am in love with them. They might not be up to the DIY standards of the DIY goddesses out there, but for two people that quite clearly don't understand the concept of a colour scheme (you'd agree if you saw our house), I am damn impressed.

Ignoring the smudged stamp (whooops), the poor grammar on the 'gifts' card (which my lovely maid of honour thankfully picked up on) and the way too long ribbon, what do you think?

My first Etsy purchase!

2010-08-18T18:04:00.000+08:00

I have finally made my first Etsy purchase!!! Well, kind of. I say kind of because I found the lady through Etsy.. but she’s Australian so uses a different site for Australian transactions. Anyhow, that is all beside the point. The point is that Etsy + Cake Topper was always going to equal brilliance... and it did not disappoint.

Topper made by, and photo taken by, Sarah from Enchanted Belles.

Seriously, see that photo on this post? That is our cake topper. You can’t see very well in this photo, but I even sent her some of the hail spot tulle from my dress and she has made the little cake toppers dress out of it! Pretty neat huh? It’s really good too because now rather than trying to explain to people what we will be wearing etc for our wedding when they ask I can just go ‘if we were turned into wooden pegs on our wedding day, this is exactly what we would look like.’

Can’t wait until I get it in the mail! (The photo was taken by Sarah to show me before she sent it).

Life priorities and the new honeymoon plan…

2010-08-04T20:16:00.000+08:00

I am still super dooper busy, but thought I’d take half an hour out to give my blog some loving. Sorry I’m a such a sucky blogger lately! We're about to enter the no internet period of moving.. but hopefully that will only be for two weeks or so!

When I last posted about our honeymoon we wanted to go for a short and cheap break. One reason for this was because we really want to take unpaid leave and do a 3 month or so trip of Europe sometime next year. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while now and, to be honest, I get a little bit jealous with all my friends buggering off to Europe all the time. I guess that’s where life priorities come in though. I may get jealous, but really, we could quite easily do our holiday if we chose to but we always think things through and make the best decision for us at that particular point in time. I think it really is a case of the grass is always greener on the other side because if we were to set our priorities differently, I know that I would be even more jealous of the people that have what we have now. Anyhow, I digress. Honeymoon….

A few months ago my Grandad called to let me know that he and Nan wouldn’t be able to make it to the wedding. They live in New Zealand and are getting very old so I never expected them to come, but I was quite surprised how much effort it sounded like they had put into looking at ways they might be able to come (Grandad can’t fly that far anymore for various reasons and Nan is blind which makes things hard). I know that my other Nana would like to come too, but is getting too old to handle the flight now.

The last time I went back to New Zealand was in 2002 and it occasionally crosses my mind that I should go back and visit… but I always end up deciding that it would be better to go somewhere else instead. We are 99% decided that for our honeymoon we will head back to NZ for 2-3 weeks and spend some of the time visiting my family (it’s awful to say, but if I don’t go back soon it may be too late) and the rest on a camping adventure.

Unfortunately this will delay Europe by another year or so because we'll use a fair bit of leave doing this because it seems silly to just go for one week. I think it would be a good decision though - we’ll see my family and I can show Justin where I grew up. I go on about how our wedding is all about celebrating with our friends and family, so why not extend that to those that can’t make it and at least let my family meet my new husband! It’s definitely one of those situations where you have to sit down and get your priorities right…. and I think that we’ve managed to get them 100% spot on this time.

Now I just need to pray that none of my family have discovered this blog because we aren’t telling them our plans until it is 100% certain….

*Sings* I'm from the harbour, the Hokianga harbour.

As quite as a mouse

2010-07-11T19:31:00.000+08:00

I just wanted to pop by and apologise for my lack of blogging of late. I am still alive and I will be back and blogging soon. Between planning a wedding, buying land, moving rental houses (finding somewhere, packing, cleaning, moving), keeping up my gym routine, working full time and still having a life I'm finding it a bit hard to fit blogging in at the moment. I'm still trying to keep up to date with reading all your blogs though. I promise I'll be back soon!
Amy
xxx

Handicraft Mania – Lovebirds

2010-07-02T16:00:00.017+08:00

I've been so busy rambling on about other stuff lately that I haven't had time to post any of my Etsy finds.
I love this vase oh so very very much. It's adorable! I hope someone I'm close to gets engaged soon. I think it would make an awesome engagement present.

Lovebirdies Vase from Red Hot Pottery's Etsy store.

The groom has seen the dress gasp…

2010-07-01T16:05:00.000+08:00

I am so fed-up of people saying ‘it’s your wedding, do what you want’ and then giving us looks when they find out what we are doing. Sometimes I just want to yell at them a little. But I don’t. Maybe I’ll just go all passive aggressive with the non-married ones and give them ‘oh, you can’t seriously be doing that looks’ when their turn comes around. Seriously though, there’s only so much judgement I can take before I start thinking that maybe we are doing this all wrong.

In particular, I get sick and tired of the looks people give us when they ask or realise that Justin knows what my wedding dress will look like. He helped me pick out the pattern for it. He went fabric shopping me. He pinned me into the mock-up and took photos for me. He pinned me into the lining when we did a fitting for it. Hell, he even helped pin some of the lining to the interfacing. I’m sure there will be many more times he will be involved in the making of the dress too.

I just don’t understand what is so wrong with all of this. I get why the groom usually wouldn’t see the dress, but at the same time I don’t get why people can’t be open minded enough to at least consider the way we are doing things before passing judgement.

We were talking about it the other night, and we both think it’s more fun that we are both involved. It is fun going over to his Mum’s house and lend a hand where we can. We also feel that it even makes it a bit more special that he has been helping out with it.

Am I the only one that thinks that this whole groom seeing the dress thing isn’t the biggest no-no in the world of weddings?

How to get people involved?

2010-06-29T17:30:00.001+08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we would love to have as many of our friends and family involved in the wedding on the day as we can. We think that way it just makes the day so much more personal and special. We just don’t know how to ask.

I know that if someone asked me if I wanted to help out with their wedding I would be delighted. I don’t want to assume that everyone else would be as delighted as I would to help out though. I know we can say “If you are interested in helping out with our wedding…”, but I think 90% of people would say yes even if they didn’t actually want to help out, and that’s not the idea of getting people involved.

We came straight out and asked our Dad’s if they would drive the cars and asked the best man if he would MC. Our best man thought about it for a few days before giving us a response, which I’m very happy about because I now know he’s not just doing it out of obligation, it’s something he decided he wanted to do. I just don’t think that everyone would do that if we straight out asked them though.

How would you get/have you got people involved?

What we want our wedding day to be…

2010-06-28T17:32:00.000+08:00

Over the weekend we filled in a questionnaire for our photographer. One of the questions was regarding what we wanted out of our wedding day and what we were doing to make our wedding special to us. I thought that I might share with you what we wrote because I have realised that I have got so caught up in the details that I have never shared our overall ‘vision’. (Not that we have much vision.)

"The aim of our wedding, other than to get married of course, is to celebrate our love and our marriage with our family and friends. To us a celebration should be fun and this is what we want for our wedding. We really just want people to come along and have a really good time. If everyone isn’t up and dancing at the reception, whether they know how to or not, we will be very disappointed! It’s going to be a fairly intimate wedding with only about 50 people at the reception -we aren’t the type of people that have 200 close friends.

Our wedding will be a fairly casual affair. The ceremony will take place in a garden, Amy will wear a ¾ length dress (it’s easier to dance in!) and Justin will be going for the suit jacket unbuttoned, no tie look. We haven’t written our ceremony yet, but it will probably be a fairly simple ceremony. We aren’t the most romantic people, least of all in front of a crowd, so we won’t be writing our own vows or anything like that. We have already picked out some our ceremony music. We have picked songs that we love, not traditional weddingy songs. Hopefully this will add to the fun of that day. Either that or it will give the parents and grandparents a heart attack.

We want our family and friends to be involved in our wedding where possible. We think that this makes it so much more personal and special. Justin’s Mum is making Amy’s dress, our Dad’s will be driving our wedding cars (if we can sort out hiring cars) and the best man will be MC at the reception. Hopefully we can get more people involved along the way.

To give you an idea of the way we want to make our wedding special to us, we’ve decided that the traditional guest book just doesn’t suit our style. Amy reads a lot of blogs and has found a lot about photo booths. We have decided we’d like to set one up, with our camera on a tripod, a simple backdrop and lots of props and blackboards so that people can have fun posing and at the same time leave their own personalised message to us. This will be our guest book. We’ve also got a digital photo frame so throughout the night we can load the photos from the camera onto the frame. That way people can see what others have done and also we can keep the frame afterwards to be our guestbook. We can see the messages people wrote every day, instead of only every 10 years when we think to drag out the guest book.

At the start, we mentioned that we wanted to celebrate with our family and friends. This is also one of the reasons that we have chosen to do a first look. You can’t celebrate with everyone if you are too busy off getting photos taken!"

This also seems like a semi-appropriate time to share a photo of us. I decided that if I was going to post a picture of us on the internet, I may as well make it a terrible one. So here we are, during the making of our save the dates, in all our weird glory (obviously this isn't the photo we used on the save the dates);

A weekend of achievement: florist booked!

2010-06-25T20:17:00.000+08:00

This is my final ‘weekend of achievement’ post. I think we did pretty well getting so much done in two days!

We decided that we were going to take the advice of one commenter on my last florist post and ask the lady that we got a really cheap quote from to do us up a sample bouquet. This was the decision… until I got cold feet. We decided that I could just send an email off to another couple of florists to get a quote. We knew exactly what we wanted so we could just do it via email and thus wouldn’t take any extra time. The first lady was booked out for that day already. The second lady called that afternoon and asked us if we could make an appointment to come and meet with her. Damn. I was in a rush on my way to an appointment so my brain wasn’t working fast enough to come up with an excuse. We locked in a date and time for the appointment. On the way home I called my fiancé to let him know and to apologise for my lack of quick thinking.

So last weekend was our appointment. We rocked up at her studio and I immediately liked her. She was my kind of lady. We showed her what we wanted and she said they were hothouse chrysanthemums – not news to us given how many florists we’ve seen. We discussed how many bouquets we needed. We said that we wanted the groom’s buttonhole to be the same flower. These flowers were huge so that wasn’t going to work. She said she could still do it though. Easy, she’d just pull a flower apart so we’d essentially end up with a ‘man-made’ buttonhole. She could also use the concept to make the groomsmen buttonholes and to do a few flowers for my hair.

The photo we showed her had black ribbon binding it. ‘Don’t worry about that’, I said, ‘white ribbon or something is fine’. Then she asked what colour the bridesmaids’ dresses were. We hadn’t officially picked them at that point but I told her that the ones that were currently a possibility were light pink and navy blue. She went and grabbed some of her ribbons and came back and described how she could wrap them to incorporate the colours. I could begin to see us actually having a colour scheme where everything tied in together. I kept telling myself to not get too excited because we didn’t know how much she was going to quote us.

Once all the details were written down she provided us with a quote - $367. $200 more than our cheap florist... but... this lady had ideas and opinions. Justin and I gave each other the look of ‘hell yes’. This was our florist. Yes, she is more expensive but with this lady doing our flowers I know I won’t worry about the flowers again (and the good news for you guys is that you won’t have to hear about our flowers again)!

A weekend of achievement: the photo guestbook

2010-06-24T16:41:00.000+08:00

Okay, I am back from insanity…. for now. Time to get back to the fun, exciting, yay we have actually achieved something stuff.

There are so many options for guestbooks out there. We eliminated most of the options by being fussy. We didn’t want a traditional guestbook because we knew we would stick it away and it would never get looked at. Given that reason, the next logical option would be a signature tree or a signature photo frame. We didn’t want a signature tree because we want messages, not just signatures. The signature frame was vetoed for similar reasons, plus even if we got one big enough for actual messages, I don’t really like the look of them. I googled heaps of options but none of them were quite right so I came used a few ideas together to come up with my own – which my fiancé loves too!

This is what I incorporated into our guestbook:

My love of photobooths. The budget doesn’t stretch to a professional one though and I’m not sure how a DIY one would work because how small our reception venue is.
My wish to have an ‘interactive’ guestbook that people might actually get excited about.
Our wish to have a guestbook that we will have on display in our home after our wedding.
Our wish to have a guestbook that will also be on display at the reception.

So this is what we will have (logistics of exactly how we’ll work it still need to be sorted);

People will write their message to us on a blackboard (I will make up/buy some of these).
They will take a photo of themselves holding up the message on the blackboard (we might not be able to have a nice backdrop though because of the size of the reception venue. We will see. Also not sure how we are going to go with lighting)
There will be a digital photo frame on display.
At intervals throughout the night we (well, probably someone else) will upload the photos off the camera to the frame.
At the end of the night we will have photos of all our friends and family with their lovely messages in our photo frame that we will display in our house!

I’m pretty keen on the idea of funny props to get people more into it but we’re not sure on this one yet.

Anyhow, this idea we’ve had for a while so what did we achieve on the weekend? We bought a digital photo frame. It was easier said than done because I generally HATE digital photo frames. I hate the plastic, I hate the little sensors on the front. I don’t know why, I just do. We managed to find one (on sale) that has a wooden frame and no little sensor on the front – perfect! It’s nice and big (10.4 inches) so hopefully the messages will be big enough to read.

I’m excited! It should make for lots of fun on the night!

Image from The Nichols Blog

The Wedding Party Bus (aka Amy is going insane)

2010-06-23T16:16:00.000+08:00

There are still 2 things left I need to post about under “A Weekend of Achievement” but I need to pause from that for a second and throw this post in because I AM GOING INSANE! Wedding cars are killing us.

Ages ago we got heap of quotes for wedding cars. We almost died when we saw the cost of them. Because we are doing a first look and also need transport between the ceremony and the reception, in total we need cars for 4.5 hours… which is expensive.

The solution we had was that we were going to book two Audi A4’s from Europcar. The Dad’s were going to drive them and then we were going to use our ‘contacts’ to try and leave them at a house up by the reception so that the Dad’s could drink. We were going to catch a taxi home and go back the next morning and pick them up. Perfect right? I wish.

So today I called up Europcar to ask a few questions before booking. The lady said straight up that she wouldn’t recommend booking through them for a wedding. She said in one instance there was couple that booked an Audi for their wedding and something happened (I think maybe someone crashed it the week before) and they ended up getting downgraded to a yellow Hyundai Getz because that was the only car available. There are also logistical issues. For starters the A4 is a ‘prestige’ vehicle so the driver needs TWO credit cards in their name to book it. I’m not sure about Justin’s parents, but I’m 99% sure that my parents only have one credit card. I asked if ours could be the second credit card and she said no, it had to be the driver. Next I asked about additional drivers. If we were to be additional drivers would be need to be there at the time of rental? The answer was a big fat yes. We can’t do it the day before or anything. That is an issue because I can not be at Europcar and at my house with the hairdresser at the same time. We could hire them for 2 days but that is starting to get expensive.

So with Europcar ruled out I started thinking of other ideas. Basically the only ones that I think are feasible are either;

Use our own cars (we don’t know anyone with awesome cars)
Hire a mini bus. Kinda like a limo… but lamer and cheaper.

So far in my mind the last option is winning. We could crank up some sweet tunes to get in the party mood and call it ‘The Wedding Party Bus’ (get it… it’d be like a party bus, but it would transport the bridal party too).Okay, I have officially gone insane. HELP! Any ideas/thoughts would be appreciated.

A weekend of achievement: groom’s getup

2010-06-22T17:15:00.000+08:00

We were meant to be hiring the groom’s suit. He had one picked out and everything. The plan was that we would pop in on the weekend and book it in. Then on Friday he came home and let me know that he wasn’t sure about hiring his suit anymore. He was thinking he’d rather buy a new one. He’d had a look in David Jones and they had some on sale. I won’t go into the reasons for wanting to buy, but we decided that over the weekend we would go and check out new ones.

There were only two potentials to try on. The first one was a poor fit on him… and then there was the second. Damn! He looked damn fine in it but we didn’t buy it straight away. He was still unsure whether to buy a new one or just hire one.

We went to another David Jones a little later in the day and he tried it on again. Drat, the sleeves were too short. I looked at the tag on it and realised that it was a size 36 short, not regular… but they didn’t have any regulars. We asked the store guy if they had a 36 regular at their other WA stores (we weren’t sure if the one we had seen that morning was a short or a regular) and there was none in WA. Frick!

We wandered off to think about it. Maybe we could just get the sleeves taken down. He called his Mum and she said that if there was enough fabric she could do it. More pondering followed.

We went back to David Jones to ponder further. His sister called while we were there and I mentioned our little issue. She suggested that we could ask if there were any in Sydney and if there was his other sister, who lives in Sydney, could go in and get it. Brilliant idea! Turns out there were none in Sydney in that size – damn, damn, damn. Then the store guy, who hadn’t seen the suit on, asked to see it on. Turns out that you have to look at all these other things for fit because the sleeves are the easiest things to alter and apparently all these other things fit perfectly. So we bought the suit! Yay!

The next day we were back at the shops again on a mission for a shirt and shoes. He was just after a white shirt (with a little bit of pattern, not straight white) but it was proving hard to find one small enough due to him being ~~a skinny little bugger~~ a small build. We found what we thought was the perfect one on a sale rack. It was exactly what he was looking for and fitted perfectly. We took it to the counter and then he realised that there was dirt on it. Bah! We went back to see if we could find another one in that size but it was the only one. Usually we don’t care about a bit of soiling with sale items, but this was the shirt that he would be wearing to our wedding! We went to the counter again to ask if they might have another one somewhere. The lady said she’d knock another 10% off the shirt… taking this $75 shirt down to $45. We were sold. A bit of nappy san or a trip to the dry cleaners should sort it out. Shirt sorted!

Next came the shoes. The ones that he picked out were semi-boots. Now I’ll be honest, my reaction was ‘those things look like boots. You aren’t going to wear boots to our wedding are you?’ Bridezilla much?! I said he should try them on anyhow and they actually looked really good. Under pants they don’t look boot-like anyhow. So we got the shoes.

Groom’s getup is sorted!

A weekend of achievement: groomsmen ties

2010-06-21T21:13:00.000+08:00

After the purchase of the bridesmaids dresses, we went for a look around the menswear section to see if there were any appropriate ties for the groomsmen. Lo and behold, we found some that would work perfectly. They are navy blue with a bit of a check pattern with splotches of pink. The navy blue and the pink tie in with the bridesmaids dresses and the check pattern ties in with the grooms suit (I’ll post about this later… and don’t worry, it’s subtle checks on the suit, not full on ones) – perfect! Only problem was that they were 30% off and the sale ended that day, leaving no time for the groomsmen to come and look at them. This turned out not to be a problem though when my fiancé called both of the boys and the general response was ‘yeah man, I’ll wear whatever’.

So we have ties for the boys! They will be wearing their own pants, shirt and shoes (we were thinking of going with casual shoes but one of the guys has issues finding shoes that fit so it was decided they will just wear their own black shoes), so all we have left to do for their outfit is to either buy or hire them vests!

My only regret with being able to find ties so easily is it means that I can’t peruse Etsy for them. I thought that ties were finally my chance to make an Etsy purchase! Oh well.

A weekend of achievement - we have bridesmaids dresses!

2010-06-20T19:34:00.000+08:00

What a productive weekend we had. We got so much wedding stuff achieved that I'm actually going to have to post this all spread over the next week or so. I think that this weekends achievements almost puts us back on track with where we should be at according to all of the to-do lists! Big yay!

I'm going to start off with the bridesmaids dresses. On Friday I actually typed up half a post about how hard it was to find bridesmaids dresses.... Well, I can delete that one now and instead show you all our lovely bridesmaids dresses. :)

They are so pretty. They are light pink with a navy blue floral pattern on them. They are a really flattering shape too, which ensures that the girls will look smokin' hot and won't be too horrified to ever look back over the wedding photos again. This also means that we now have a colour scheme - yellow, light pink and navy blue. No idea why we need a colour scheme and what we will do with it but it seems that everyone else has a colour scheme so I want one too dammit!

The only bad point for these dresses is that it was my fiancé that found them. I know there is no way that he is EVER going to let me forget that it was him that found the bridesmaids dresses.

From polka dots and sunshine to hail spots and snow...

2010-06-17T16:17:00.000+08:00

Originally I wanted to have a polka dot wedding dress and yellow wedding shoes. This isn’t going to happen due to difficulties in finding what I want. Rather than a polka dot organza overdress, I will be having a hail spot tulle overdress. Rather than yellow wedding shoes, I will be having white wedding shoes (perhaps with a yellow bow if I decide to do it). I’m not overly disappointed about this, but I would still like to incorporate some beautiful yellow into what I will be wearing.

Now how can I do this? I like bows, I will be wearing a dress, I need to add some colour…. Hmm….. I need to make a sash for my wedding dress – duh! How hard can it be (touch wood)? Wish me luck on my sash making adventure!

What personal touches did you add to your wedding dress?

Picture from Lizzie Jayne's Etsy Store

Rediscovering the Library

2010-06-15T18:53:00.000+08:00

Back in my uni days I wouldn’t have dreamt of buying a book (other than textbooks). If I wanted something to read I went up to my local library and borrowed what I wanted. Once I joined the walks of the employed, I began to buy books rather than borrow them. There’s something nice about reading a nice, crisp clean book - plus I do love the look of a nice full bookshelf. The catch is that buying books, especially non-fiction books, can be quite expensive.

The other day I decided that I wanted a book on bread making. As we are trying to cut costs at the moment, rather than running straight to the bookshop, I thought I might try the local library. My oh my, did I find some treats at the library. I have never noticed before, but not only does the library have books but they have CDs and magazines (amongst other things).

We have pretty much decided that one our wedding invites we will ask guests to choose a song or two that they would like to hear. I have often wondered though what the older people will pick and how much it’s going to cost us to download high quality versions of all of the songs that we don’t have (this is something that we haven’t budgeted for). Now I know that our first port of call will be the local library. They even have an online catalogue so I can search for what I’m after from the comfort of my own home!

I beg of you, before you spend money on wedding books, magazines or CDs, dust of your library card and see what your local library has to offer. Free stuff is the best kind of bargain (plus you give it back once you’re done so it doesn’t end up at the tip or cluttering up your house)!

PS. I only really mentioned CDs in this, but our library has hundreds of books on weddings – more than I imagine that any non-online bookstore would ever have.

Handicraft Mania – Would You Look At That Bow?!

2010-06-04T18:02:00.000+08:00

I have to have one of these bow clutches. And by ‘have to have’ I mean that I will dream about it constantly but never actually get it because it’s too expensive. Can you imagine strutting around with this in your hand on your wedding day, or any day for that matter?! This is one of my Etsy finds that I’m really struggling to let go of.

They are over at an Etsy store called Davie and Chiyo if anyone is lucky enough to have the funds to get one of these puppies.

Heavenly Heels (Or should that be 'Devil Heels'?)

2010-06-01T19:39:00.000+08:00

So it turns out that when you go into wedding shutdown mode and stop caring you make progress.

I had given in to the idea of having to pay a lot for wedding shoes and was going to start hitting all of the bridal shoe shops in another month or so… and then I saw them. They are white, which is not what I wanted, however they are the style that I wanted and have a white bow on the front that I am considering either replacing with a yellow one or dying yellow. Wanna know the best part? They were only $50! (I’m a classy girl, they are from Spendless Shoes).

Now I just have to learn how to walk in heels again. I never used to wear heels very often, but 2 years ago I started having foot problems which resulted in an operation and I haven’t touched a pair of heels since. My feet just aren’t used to them and felt like they were going to snap off.

Heel Breaking in Progress – Day 1:

Walked around like a cowboy and managed to hack it for ten minutes.

Hopefully by the wedding day I’ll be able to strut like a supermodel in them and wear them for 8 hours straight.

Six Months – Eeek!

2010-05-27T16:39:00.001+08:00

Holy fudge balls. I will have a husband in exactly six months!

I’m excited about this…. until I look at the to-do list. According to Easy Weddings, we are 8 to-do items behind where we should be at this point. Doesn’t sound that bad right? Wrong – we have only checked off 23 items apparently and counting quickly how many are left on the list I think we have around 85 more things to do.

Six months out and we still have big things left to do that need doing ASAP like; book a cake lady, book a florist, buy/book grooms outfit, book/buy groomsmen outfits, find and buy bridesmaids dresses, find and buy me shoes, book cars… ARGH!

Then there are all the other bits like deciding on the invitation design, making invitations, putting our ceremony together, making centrepieces, finding a cake topper, finding hair accessories… the list goes on forever.

I’m sure it will all come together but I think we need a big burst of progress soon!

PS. I apologise for my lack of blogging of late, and my lack of reading/commenting on others blogs. I’m having an ‘I don’t want to plan a stupid wedding’ few weeks. I’m sure in another week or so all of my enthusiasm will be back and I’ll be blogging like crazy again.

When Plastic Seats Might Not Be Enough

2010-05-23T17:09:00.000+08:00

I don’t know what we should do in terms of decorating for the ceremony.

With no pictorial influence this is how I feel:

We are getting married at Amanda’s Garden, which in my opinion is already beautiful enough. They have about ten seats that we can use for older guests. I think they are green plastic ones, but this is cool with me. I would prefer it if everyone could have a seat but hiring them isn’t that cheap & is an unnecessary expense. Anyhow, I’m sure that people can suck it up and stand for the ceremony because it should only be a short one.

Above: Amanda's Garden

But then I google and I see all these beautifully decorated ceremonies and I get ceremony envy. I worry that green plastic seats aren’t classy enough. I worry that people will get shitty if they can’t sit down. I think that maybe we should create a beautiful aisle.

If you’re having a garden ceremony, what are you doing for decorations and seating?

Top Picture: From Erin Browne Photography

Insert Picture: From The Knot

Bottom Picture: From Elizabeth Anne Designs

Handicraft Mania - Blue and Yellow Rosette Hair Clip

2010-05-19T17:59:00.000+08:00

I am officially an Etsy whore. I am still yet to make a purchase, but every week I find loads of things I want to buy. I thought that it was about time that I start sharing some of my finds rather than being selfish and keeping them all to myself. I'll do it one at a time every week or so I don't overload the page with pictures! Maybe you can buy some of them and I can live vicariously through you.

First cab off the rank is this amazing blue and yellow hair clip. I want it so bad but it just wouldn't look too good next to my gold & diamond earrings. The yellow makes it happy and the blue could be your something blue! It's on RaynaJaye's etsy store (Sweeeet - I just clicked on her shop homepage to get the link and she has 20% off until May 26th... damn, now I want it more!).

A Wise Man Once Said

2010-05-18T17:00:00.000+08:00

There is something wrong with me. Whenever I try and think of love quotes/poems that could be incorporated into our wedding I think of the most ridiculous sources... today it's Dr. Seuss:

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

And because one Dr. Seuss quote just isn't enough:

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you.”

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to great places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself Any direction you choose."

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Not that I'm a writer, but on that note, I shall finish here.

Give it up for Dr. Seuss!

Super Groovin’ Boys

2010-05-17T18:03:00.000+08:00

The groomsmen attire has finally been decided upon! After ~~some nagging~~ a few gentle reminders from me, my dear fiancé has weighted up all the options and decided what he would like his groomsmen to wear. He asked the boys and they like it too, so it’s a winner!

It’s gonna be similar to the picture below but they probably won’t have the casual shoes (shame, I know) because if they wear casual shoes, the groom should wear casual shoes too and it's possibly not going to go with what he is wearing. Regardless, they are gonna look super groovy!

Groomsmen Getup Inspiration:

Meanwhile, the groom will be rocking it Obama style - tie free and unbuttoned:

The other great thing about the groomsmen outfit is that we can incorporate colour via the tie… and ties come in every colour. This means that we can pick the bridesmaids dresses without worrying too much about colour and then just get ties to match!

Gumboots!

2010-05-14T18:52:00.000+08:00

I know it's sad to be blogging on a Friday night but I just had to share this quickly.

It's a bride in gumboots over at Polka Dot Bride! Oh how I love gumboots and rain.

Right, now back to the non-sad world of not being on the internet on a Friday night.

My fiancé: The pseudo-personal trainer.

2010-05-13T21:22:00.000+08:00

I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while now and have been reasonably successful. I’m down 7.5kgs since July last year. I’ve probably lost a bit more than that overall though because I wouldn’t go near a set of scales for the first month or two of weight loss.

From the start of November until the end of March I got stuck on a stupid weight plateau. No matter what I did, my weight would no longer budge. I seem to be off the plateau but I haven’t really seen any real results the last month because we have been super busy and haven’t been exercising all that much.

Anyhow, my lovely husband-to-be cut me a deal. The deal started on Monday and goes for the next two weeks - I have to do whatever exercise he says, but so I’m not exhausted (sometimes it seems like all I do is go to work, run errands, go to the gym, cook dinner, eat dinner and then go to bed), he’s going to do all the cooking for that time. I think this is so sweet because he does all this exercise with me so he has the same lack of free time situation as me. Luckiest girl alive!

Fingers crossed it pays off and some more of that awful fat falls off over the next few weeks!

Bubbles!

2010-05-11T21:21:00.000+08:00

I want bubbles at our ceremony. I think they are completely awesome… but maybe that’s just my inner child talking.

"And if you were a kiss, I know I'd be a hug"

2010-05-09T12:48:00.000+08:00

Pretty much the first thing wedding related that we did was start picking ceremony music because we love music and it was so damn fun picking it!

Here is what we came up with – I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste but I for one am going to have to try extremely hard not to dance/sing my way through the ceremony. I’m sure more songs will get added along the way and some of these might not end up fitting in anywhere…. But if they don’t we can make sure we put them on the reception play list.

Barry Louis Polisar – All I Want Is You
Bright Eyes – First Day of My Life
Cat Power - Sea of Love
The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You
My Friend the Chocolate Cake – Television Theme #47
Old Man River - The Wedding Song

Half of the songs are actually off the Juno soundtrack. It’s such a great movie and has an epic soundtrack!

“In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you; the right person will still think the sun shines out your arse. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.” .

Etiquette Shmetiquette

2010-05-06T19:45:00.000+08:00

How many people these days still follow ‘proper’ wedding etiquette? I know we’ve given it the finger in terms of inviting people. I believe how it’s meant to go is that you invite the same people to the engagement party, ceremony and reception.

Throwing etiquette out the window started when we were writing up the engagement party invite list. We made a list of everyone we wanted to invite, which was more people than we knew we’d be able to afford to have at the reception. The ‘correct’ thing to do would have been to cull the list down to those who would be invited to the reception, but that seemed a bit stupid to us. We had written those people on the list for a reason – because we wanted to celebrate with them. We decided to have a BBQ for our engagement party so that it meant that we could invite everyone we wanted.

Naturally, we also want all of these people to celebrate our wedding with us - so they will all be getting an invite to the ceremony. We are going to have to limit our reception to about 50-60 people because we can’t afford to have one of these receptions with heaps of people, so not everyone is going to get an invite.

We have been invited to the ceremony only of a wedding before. I think it was great that they were able to have as many people as they wanted celebrate with them without breaking the bank. I never expected to be invited to the wedding so I was really excited that I actually still got to witness their marriage and celebrate it with them a little.

I’m still a little worried though that someone might get offended. I just hope that people think about it for a minute and realise that, if for instance they receive an invite to the ceremony only, it’s not that we don’t like them, it’s because it was the option that we took to ensure that we could celebrate with as many of those that we love as possible!

Shoe Options: Dyeing or Adding Embellishments

2010-05-04T19:03:00.000+08:00

I am having a very hard time finding wedding shoes. I saw at least 30 pairs of yellow heels in Kuala Lumpur that would have been perfect… if they went any bigger than a size 9.

There is a place in Perth that custom make wedding shoes. I have only talked to them briefly because when I went there the guy found it necessary to, after measuring my feet, dribble on about the fact that one of my feet is a size 9.5 and the other is a size 10.5 – something I’m rather insecure about. The problem with this place as well is that I’m going to pay over $200 for a pair of shoes (which they will apparently have to assemble on my feet due to my ‘unusual’ sizing) which are white and then go and get them dyed yellow.

Now, if I’m going to pay $200+ for a pair of shoes (even non custom made white dyeable wedding shoes I’ll have to pay around $150 for by the looks of things), I want to be damn sure that getting them dyed isn’t going to destroy them. I’m guessing it’s a ‘do it at your own risk’ deal so the person dyeing them wouldn’t take any responsibility if they stuffed it. Has anyone had shoes dyed before? Did it work? If you haven’t, would you risk dyeing a pair of expensive shoes (I’m not a shoe girl. $150 is expensive to me)?

The only other option I can really think of is to get a pair of plain white shoes and add my own bling - maybe a yellow bow or something along those lines. I’m not really sure if this would look any good though. I’ve found some pictures on the internet of shoes done similarly but I’m really not 100% sold. What do you think?

Meh, if all else fails maybe I can just be the barefoot bride.

Honeymooning on a Budget

2010-05-03T17:00:00.000+08:00

We have just returned from a one week mini holiday in Kuala Lumpur. Such a cheap holiday - when you can get flights for two people return for $400 including all taxes and everything, it’s cheaper to go overseas than to holiday in your own country.

We are probably going to do our honeymoon on a tight budget too. With our wedding being at the end of November, it’s not really an ideal time for a honeymoon because everything will be getting more and more expensive as the holiday season draws nearer. There is also the fact that mister fiancé isn’t going to have much leave available… oh, and the fact that we really want to go to Europe for a few months, but the end of this year is not going to be a great time for us to take unpaid leave. Plus we will no doubt be broke from the wedding and broke because we will hopefully have a mortgage by then.

We also don’t want to not have a honeymoon. Given that we already live together and everything we don’t want us to just go back to our house the day after our wedding and slip back into the daily grind of life.

Solution: Cheap one week honeymoon.
Additional benefit: A short honeymoon means that we can go somewhere relaxing and not get too bored. I’m not really a sit by a pool and relax kinda girl but my fiancé thinks we should just relax on our honeymoon. One week of chilling out I think I can manage to enjoy without going crazy.

Here are some options that I can think of:

Fiji – I really want to go to Fiji. It’d be a bit of a trek from Perth – I think we’d have to take two flights. But a trek also means that we are unlikely to bump into people we know (on our flight back from KL on Sunday there were three people I knew on the plane). Apparently it’s hot and humid in December though which would suck.

Philippines – Oh Philippines how I long to visit you. I think I would be quite happy with this option but you never really see any cheap flights from Perth... I guess it’s a two plane trip destination. My other concern is that I’m not sure I’d be satisfied with only being here for a week and spending it relaxing. I want one or two months and I want to explore.

Phuket, Thailand – So many advantages - it’s cheap, December is one of the best times of year to visit, it’s not to far from Perth, and it’s in the same time zone (which I think is a huge benefit when you are only going for one week). There is a lot of potential to bump into people we know though… and that I do not want on our honeymoon.

Langkawi, Malaysia – Same deal as Phuket really I think… just a different country.

Islands off Queensland – This would be a great honeymoon destination. My issue is the whole budget bit though. I think this could actually be a really expensive option.

Broome, Esperance, Exmouth, Western Australia – There are many places in WA that are so far away (and relatively expensive to get to if you don’t drive) that we will probably never bother going otherwise. A local honeymoon would be great in terms of time constraints but maybe not so good for the budget - accommodation, food and activities in Australia will cost a bomb. The main disadvantage here is that for places like Broome and Exmouth it’s going to be damn hot in December.

Where would you go for a cheap and relaxing honeymoon or holiday?

Top row: Fiji, Philippines
Middle row: Phuket, Broome
Bottom row: Langkawi, Brampton Island

Ceremony Elements

2010-04-23T16:01:00.001+08:00

I was flicking through my emails earlier and saw the email from our celebrant from a while ago which has a huge word document of ceremony examples attached to help us in creating our own.
Prior to meeting with our celebrant I always figured the ceremony bit of the wedding would be flat out standard, unless of course we wrote our own vows, which just isn’t going to happen. I’ve realised now that even without being good with words it is possible to create a unique ceremony by ‘borrowing’ pieces of others ceremonies that do it for you.

Here are a few elements that I love the idea of:

Rose giving ceremony.

Basically goes a little something like this:

"Your gift to each other for your wedding today has been your wedding rings. This shall always be an outward demonstration of your vows of love, and respect, and a public showing of your commitment to each other. You now have what remains the most honourable title which may exist between a man and a woman - the title of “husband” and “wife“.

For your first gift as husband and wife, that gift will be a single rose.

In the past, the rose was considered a symbol of love and a single rose always meant only one thing - it meant the words “I love you”. So it is appropriate that for your first gift - as husband and wife - that the gift would be a single rose.

Please exchange your first gift as husband and wife.

In some ways it seems like you have not done anything at all. Just a moment ago you were holding one small rose, just as you are now. In some ways, a marriage ceremony is like this. In some ways, tomorrow is going to seem no different than yesterday. But in fact today just now, you both have given and received one of the most valuable and precious gifts of life - one I hope you always remember - the gift of true and abiding love within the devotion of marriage."

I like the last bit where it talks about how in some ways it seems that you have done nothing at all… I think this is a great way to acknowledge that even though a couple may already essentially live like a married couple, the actual act of marriage is still special.

Non-standard vows.

As I mentioned, we aren’t good enough with words to write our own. I personally feel that it can be just as special if you incorporate non-standard vows that have been written by others – as long as it touches a cord with you. Here’s an example of one I like:

"I call upon the persons here present to witness that I, John Smith, take you Jane Doe to be my lawful wedded wife.
I, John choose you Jane, as my best friend for life. Together, we can accomplish anything. Through the good and bad, I want you to always know that I will be by your side. When you need someone to encourage you, I want it to be me. When you need a helping hand, I want it to be mine. When you long for someone to smile at, turn to me. I will always love you and this is my promise to you."

Involving your guests by inviting them to recommit to a loved one.

I saw this on Offbeat Bride the other day and think it’s a beautiful idea.

"When we got ready to do our vows Victor, our officiant, surprised us by asking our family and friends to also take the opportunity, should they choose, to quietly recommit to a loved one by holding their hand and joining in on the vows with us. It was a sweet way to share our day with the people we love and so many of them told us how much they appreciated being able to participate in that way."

Florist Bamboozlement

2010-04-19T17:07:00.000+08:00

I would love some opinions on this one. We are a bit unsure which florist to pick or whether we should just pick none and I’ll do them myself.

I like to work on a three quote rule, so with flowers we approached three florists to get quotes. We went to the florists armed with his photo:

We aren’t really too fussy about flowers though so, as advised by one of the florists, we made a list of other in-season (hopefully) flowers that we would also be happy with. These were carnations, peonies (have written them off though because we have been told by florists they are expensive), dahlias (apparently not a good wedding flower – too fragile), daisies and chrysanthemums (that picture is a certain type of chrysanthemum but we’d be cool with a different type).

Oh, and our quotes are based on 1 x brides bouquet of straight yellow flowers, 2 x bridesmaids bouquets which are just smaller versions of the brides bouquet, 1 x buttonhole which will just be a single flower.

Now, here are the results….

Florist A:

Were extremely rude, unhelpful and obviously didn’t want our business so after one visit and three phone calls from me they are out of the running without even having got to the quote stage. I could write an entire post about these mofos… but I won’t.

Florist B:

My fiancé has been dealing with these guys as they are under his work. From what I’ve heard from him they are extremely helpful and polite. They also came recommended to me by someone else so I know they do a good job at wedding flowers. They are unsure if at that time of year they will be able to get the flowers we have pictured but can definitely do one of our other options. We are still waiting for a firm quote from them but they have given us an indicative price of $160 for my bouquet, $130 for each of the bridesmaids and $15 for the buttonhole.

Grand total: $435 (this seems fairly standard based on what I’ve read on forums… possibly a little bit on the high side).

Florist C:

This is our local florist. She seems lovely … but she smokes inside her shop (or at least it STINKS of cigarettes and she has an ashtray inside). Isn’t this illegal? Anyhow, she seems a little too overconfident that she can get the pictured flowers in. I don’t have faith she can, but my fiancé and I discussed it later and I don’t think we’d care if she declared a few days before that we’d have to have one of our other options. My other issue with her is that we have no idea of her skill level. Then again, I don’t think what we want really requires much skill. Even she said that it was a really easy job because all she would have to do pretty much is wire the flowers and bring them into a bouquet.

Her price: My bouquet she quoted as $60, $50 for each of the bridesmaids bouquets and $10 for the buttonhole.

Grand total: $170 (less than half the price of florist B).

DIY:

We have one final option which is that I will do the flowers myself. We went up to Northwood St, Leederville (heaps of wholesale flower shops are here and some sell to the public) on Saturday to get an idea of how much would this cost. Doing it this way we would probably have to have roses because they have good solid stems so will be easier for me to work with.

My rough guestimate: $45 for my bouquet, $30 for each of the bridemaids bouquets, and then say another $15 for the buttonhole and some extra flowers. I would also need to do a practice run so I reckon another $30 for that.

Grand total: $150 (almost the same price as Florist C. I think this is probably because this is roses versus a much cheaper flower).

My concern is that Florist C just seems too good to be true. Any ideas why she might be so much cheaper?

Wet and Wonderful Winter!

2010-04-15T17:26:00.001+08:00

The rain is here! I love winter so much. We actually did consider having a winter wedding, but that idea got pushed aside pretty quickly when we realised that we want to get married outdoors and I want to wear a dress without having to wear a little coat over it.
After my last few wordy posts I'm going to let the pictures do the talking with this one. I know this has nothing to do with my wedding planning but sometimes I feel like I need to defend poor ol' winter because everyone hates it so much.

Natures Bonbonniere

2010-04-12T17:39:00.004+08:00

I used to love gardening but I find that I never have time these days and the worse the garden looks the less I am inspired to go out there and make it beautiful. Occasionally we are forced into action by big, bad, ugly rent inspections. This weekend just gone we found ourselves once more forced into action and pruned, de-weeded and swept our little patch of nature. Seeing the garden looking nice-ish (apart from all the barren spots) has got me wanting to pop down to Waldecks and once more take on the gardening world.

Now, as much as I’m sure you’d all love to hear me drone on about my not-so-green thumb some more, I’ll get to the actual wedding part of this - bonbonniere. I hate bonbonniere in general. They are usual stupid little things that you put money and/or effort into that no-one really appreciates, or they say they do and then just shove them in a drawer for all eternity. Having said that, I would like our guests to take home something from our wedding (other than good memories of course...lol). So what can we do? I like the idea of lolly buffets… people will eat them, if they don’t I will. My fiancé isn’t really keen on this though and that is totally fair enough. When I take off my giddy bride-to-be hat on put on my sensible Engineer hat I completely agree with him, the cost to benefit ratio is crap.

So how about bonbonniere that also double as something else? Ages ago when we booked our reception venue we talked about having live plants as our centrepieces (This thought is back in my head now after all the gardening on the weekend). We aren’t extravagant people so simple decorations are right up our alley, plus our reception venue doesn’t need too much decoration. We were also thinking of maybe rather than one plant at each table, have little seedlings and these can double as bonbonniere. I really love this idea because it has a dual purpose and they won’t go to waste because if people leave them behind we’ll plant them out ourselves.

My only issues with this idea are;

The centrepieces wouldn’t be the flowering kind.
Some people wouldn’t want them.
Some guests will be from out of town and a seedling would just be a pain in the bum.

My current thought to resolve these few issues is to do the centrepieces/bonbonniere like so (I haven’t discussed this one with my fiancé but he reads this… so let me know what you think of this Justin!);

Have a potted flowering plant in the centre of the table. Yellow daylilies I think would work well - and they are hardy and easy to grow (plus I want more in my garden so I’ll be planting out those afterwards).
Have little seedlings of different varieties around the main plant. For a table of ten, we would have five seedling pots.
Have either in seedling pots (clean ones obviously), or in other little containers/boxes lollies. So for a table of ten we would have five of these also.

This way people get to pick their bonbonniere and because they are doubling as centrepieces the cost to benefit ratio makes it completely justifiable (well, other than the lollies)!

As a guest what would you think of this?

Yellow Daylily

Pre Ceremony Photos, 'First Looks' and Why They Rock!

2010-04-09T16:11:00.000+08:00

Over at Getting Hitched there is talk about photographers at the moment as they have just booked theirs! In the post, it mentions that they will be having photos before the ceremony so that they can spend more time with their guests. This has me excited because it is what we are doing also! I couldn’t express my excitement enough in one little comment so I thought I would do an entire post about pre-ceremony photos… this also allows me to digress and share my excitement about what they call a ‘first look’.

Before meeting with photographers my fiancé and I had talked about the idea of doing pre-ceremony photos to allow us to spend more time with our guests. In our opinion our wedding day is really a celebration with our family and friends and well, you can’t celebrate with them while you’re off elsewhere having photos taken. We weren’t too sure about it though because we didn’t really want to see each other before the wedding. We decided that we’d at least discuss it with our photographer and see what her opinion was on the matter. Once we’d talked to her, I was sold (and my fiancé was too after a day to think about it)!

She explained to us the concept of a ‘first look’. It goes a little something like this:

The groom meets the photographer at the location at an agreed time (his groomsmen can hang out in the car drinking or something until it’s bridal party photos time).
The bride rocks up a little bit later and meets up with the photographer around the corner (the bridesmaids can sit around sipping champagne).
The photographer makes sure the groom has his back turned and gets the bride to walk up behind the groom.
The photographer tells the groom to turn around… and there you have it, the first look.

I am so very excited about this for many reasons:

As previously mentioned, the guests don’t have to hang around or start the party without us after the ceremony.
The first time we see each other will be a much more intimate moment. It’ll just be me, him and the photographer.
We can take our time to enjoy the moment because I won’t be walking down the aisle trying not to trip over.
We can express how we feel with words because we will be close, not at opposite ends of the aisle.
We will have time to really let it all sink in!
It provides the opportunity for some amazing photos with raw emotion showing through.

I think it’s something that every bride and groom should at least consider. I know some people wouldn’t want to do it this way, but there’s so many benefits that it’s at least worth a thought!

Yummy Scrummy Cake

2010-04-07T20:53:00.001+08:00

We were originally going to do our own wedding cake because we both love baking and decorating cakes. How awesome would it be to say 'yeah, that's our work' when someone commented on your kick arse wedding cake?!?

Sadly we have decided that it could be a bit too much stress to do our own though. We could easily pre-bake the actual cakes and freeze them (they keep well), but we'd have to do the decorating the couple of days or the day before (and cake decorating is no easy task... it takes aggges if you're not doing a rough job) and then deliver it to the reception venue on the day ourselves.There's just too much room for it all to go wrong in my opinion... even if we didn't stuff the decorating, I'm sure whichever one of us delivered it would either take a corner too fast (resulting in people having to take their spoon out to the car if they wanted dessert), or we would drop it on the way in... because we are like that.. we are clumsy people.

So now here we are getting cake quotes... I actually don't mind letting someone do it that much. They will (in theory) do a much better job... and it's their problem if it lands on the ground during delivery!
After a bit of googling we found what we wanted. I'm so glad we agreed on something so easily! Ours will be a bit different to the picture below. Ours will have yellow instead of red and will be only 2-3 tiers. We will also obviously have a different cake topper.

Do you love it? I do! :p

Too Cute!

2010-04-04T08:46:00.002+08:00

"Too cute". I never thought I would say that about a cake topper but hell, this wedding planning has had me getting excited about things I never would have cared about in the past - fabric, flowers... make-up.
We haven't actually even got cake quotes yet so a cake topper is miles down on the to-do list but started looking at them after me lovely fiancé asked me the other day how much a cake topper that we saw at an expo cost. I love that he has something in mind that he wants and so we'll probably just go with that... but I still had to have a bit of a google and a look on Etsy to see what was out there.
Here are four of my favourites (including the one from the expo - bottom left hand corner).

Top left: Made by Etsy seller, maderasytrapos.
Top right: Every cake topper store seems to sell this one. I just like it because my fiancé rides a motorbike.
Bottom left: From minikinmania. You send them a photo and they put your faces on the cake topper.
Bottom right: Made by qtiff, another Etsy seller. This one is way too expensive for us but still adorable and worth sharing.

Budget Section Added

2010-04-02T13:42:00.000+08:00

They say that sharing is caring so I have added a page to this blog where I have added our budget and actual costs. I did this on the basis that it could be a really useful tool for others. I’ve tried to give as much description as possible for each item of what that price gets us and who our suppliers are but feel free to ask any questions you may have. I realise that this has left us completely open to judgement from people that think we’re spending too much or too little, but a) those people seem to judge without seeing the actual $ figure anyhow, and b) they can go get stuffed. As I’ve mentioned on the page, my only request is that after we have committed to paying for something you don’t tell us how much cheaper we could have got it for – sometimes it’s better just not to know! I am more than happy to hear any tips or advice for items that are not yet finalised though!

Buying Shoes Online = Fail

2010-03-31T16:02:00.003+08:00

My shoes arrived on Monday. They would be great… if they weren’t lime green (a very pale one but still green)! I’m not really fazed by it - I knew that it was a risk buying online and there was a good chance they wouldn’t work out, but at the same time I didn’t expect them to be green. I went back through my emails and in my exchange with the lady I definitely stated yellow several times and the picture that I attached could not be mistaken for green. In her defence, in certain light (including in these photos) they do look kind of yellow so maybe where she works just has very poor light.

Lessons from the World of Amy-zilla #1

2010-03-29T09:50:00.003+08:00

Planning your wedding should be a fun time. However, I do sometimes find myself getting a bit stressed out over things, which really isn’t how I want it to be. I wanted to share my first ‘lesson learnt’ for two reasons. Firstly, I figure if I share it someone out there might read it and not make the same mistake, and secondly I’m hoping that putting it in writing will mean that I won’t make the same mistake myself again!
This lesson starts with Michelle Roth’s ‘Maya’ dress, the most fantastic wedding dress in the world. My future mother in law is making my wedding dress so lately (lately being the last couple of months) I have been searching for white on white polka dot organza with coin sized dots so I can have my dream dress. It started off with me popping into a few fabric stores with no luck. Next I scoured the internet with no luck. At this point I think it became a bit of an obsession and I either looked in or called any fabric shop I could think of in Perth. When this failed, I started looking at ways of making my own (screen printing, transfers, embroidery e.t.c). Meanwhile my future sister in law, who lives in Sydney, was looking for me over there. She sent me a few samples, one of which was exactly what I wanted…. but in yellow. I called up where she had got it from to try and get it in white. They called the manufacturer and sadly the answer was ‘we’ve stopped manufacturing that and white and ivory were the first colours to sell out’. I think this made me even more obsessed because I knew that it kind of existed somewhere out there. I scoured the internet some more and called around some fabric shops in Melbourne, once more with no luck. I was getting so frustrated that I couldn’t find it.
This Saturday I went shopping with my future mother in law to get the rest of the material for the dress. I took my sample with me (even though I’d already been to this particular shop twice and asked them about it), just in case. The lady in the shop suggested a tulle they had with tincey wincey dots on it. At first I declared that tulle was too stiff, the dots weren’t right etc. As I talked to her, I realised that the tulle probably wouldn’t be too stiff given the structure of my dress and when she held it up to me with the white satin underneath I realised that while it wasn’t the funky dress that I had been dreaming of, it was still going to be an awesome funky dress. I bought the tulle and I just feel like such a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m back to being excited now and am ready to start looking at other aspects of the wedding (which also will hopefully mean it won’t be another week before I update this blog again). I still would love to find my polka dot organza and I will keep an eye out because I still have time as that will be one of the last parts of the dress to get made. I know now though that I will be much happier if I just casually look but keep in mind that my dress will look great with or without that polka dot organza.
Moral of the story: It’s great to have an idea in your mind of what you would like, but having very specific things in mind will take over your life and not make you happy! It seems so obvious now I’m writing it down but it can be very easy to get caught up in details and forget the bigger picture. With that in mind, from now on I will try to make sure that my ‘inspirations’ are stepping stones pointing me in the direction of what I want for my own wedding, not must haves. After all, our wedding day is meant to be fun and a celebration with our friends and family and I really don’t think that the wrong kind of polka dots have the power to ruin that!

The tulle that I got.

What I wanted (but in white).

Hair & Make-up Trial!

2010-03-21T15:27:00.006+08:00

I loved my hair trial! I ended up getting one of the styles that I previously posted as a possibility for bridesmaids hair. Because of the length of my hair, the side 'bun' wasn't as full as what I wanted but the hair dresser reckons I'll gain another few inches length by November and this will make it nice and full. Kudos to Alana Vassallo for her wonderful work!

I also had a make up trial on the same day. At first I was horrified but as I got used to looking at myself with make up on I started to warm to it. I'm still not 100% sure. I have some night photos where I think it looks really good but all our pro photos and the ceremony will be done during daylight. I also felt my eyes looked a little flat but she showed me with some fake eyelashes (not on in the pictures) and I think it made it look a lot better.
All of the below photos are taken in natural night. I would really love some honest opinions on the make up!

Blooms of Sunshine

2010-03-10T20:30:00.006+08:00

Well, now I have my hair and make-up trial booked in I've decided it's time to turn my attention to flowers.
At first this seemed like a simple task. Find a picture of flowers I liked, get quotes off some florists, book a florist and it's all done. The more I think about it the more I realise how wrong I was. I've found many lovely pictures but then come the questions - what type of flower is that? Will it be in season in November? Are they expensive? Should we get corsages for the Mum's? Do the groomsmen need 'buttonholes' (they are just wearing shirt so would it look stupid just attached to a shirt?).

Here are my fave flowers thus far:

I believe these are daisies and calla lilies. I think they both should be in season and I think they might not be too expensive:

I think these are calla lilies again. I think I'd prefer a mix of white and yellow though. And maybe just straight white for the bridesmaids:

This little baby is the best bouquet in the whole wide world. I have no idea what type of flower it is though. Any ideas?

Why does makeup stress me out so much?

2010-03-09T16:20:00.004+08:00

I think I have been to the website of every makeup artist in Perth at least twice. I check their portfolio, I google the death out of them in the hope of finding a comment on a forum about them, I pick one of them and contact them only to find that they are booked for my day and then I start the entire process over again. This has been going on for months. About two weeks ago I told myself to stop being stupid, emailed a couple, found them to be free, picked one and added 'book trial with makeup lady' to my to-do list.

Today I get home, take a deep breath, dial the first couple of digits of her phone number... then hang up and start googling again.
What on earth is wrong with me?!?!
I finally forced myself to dial the number and have booked a trial in for the 20th of this month. I don't know why, but I am still freaking out and nervous. It's just a trial for crying out loud!

Has anyone else had this sort of indecisiveness about something so stupid?

I will leave you now with the 'cover picture' off the website of the lady who I will be having my trial with (Elsie Makeup Artistry). I really like the picture (even though it's probably been photoshopped like crazy) and looking at it is helping to calm me down a little.

Wish me luck!

If I Had $8,700...

2010-03-04T21:50:00.006+08:00

... I would buy this wonderful dress.

I was flicking through Marie Claire tonight and this amazing Alex Perry number caught my attention (you'll probably have to click on the picture to make it big enough to see)... if only it wasn't so expensive :(

I would LOVE to wear this to my wedding..and to balls... and to other peoples weddings. Basically, I think if I owned this dress I would wear it until it disintegrated.

If nothing else, I hope this post will inspire someone out there.... be it someone that can afford the dress or someone that is or knows an amazing sewer.

For now I'll go back to dreaming... and maybe pick up a lotto ticket on the way home tomorrow.

Hair Inspiration

2010-03-01T16:04:00.005+08:00

Why is it that all the hair pictures I like are for long hair? My hair is currently at shoulder length but I need it to hurry up and grow in the next 8 months.... wonder if pouring fertiliser on my head would work.

Anyhow, assuming that my hair does get its act together and grow, this is the hair style I want:

If that's not possible maybe something like this:

For the bridesmaids I've also found a few pics that have caught my eye. Obviously they get to pretty much pick their hairstyle.. but I still get a kick out of looking up hairstyles :p

Shoes - glorious shoes!

2010-02-28T10:42:00.006+08:00

I think Duosheng could be my new best friend. Sure the shoes are made in China which means that buying from them isn't doing our economy any favours... but hey, it's only one pair of shoes - and they are cheap!

I have ordered this style of shoe, with a 2 inch heel:

But have asked for them to be made in a yellow.. which will hopefully be similar to this:

They will be custom made to my size AND they are only cost AU$90 including postage.

They may come out terrible or fluoro yellow or something but hell, it's worth giving them a shot!

My Terrible Realisation

2010-02-28T08:58:00.004+08:00

I have just come to a dreadful realisation – I don’t think I can wear a veil for the wedding :’(

My dress is being made by my soon to be mother in law and is inspired by the very beautiful ‘Maya’ wedding dress pictured below. I’m hoping also to team this with a yellow bow around my waist and yellow shoes.

The thing is I just don’t know if I could pull off a veil with this dress which has me a little heart-broken because since we started planning I’ve always just assumed I’d have a lovely flowing veil.

I guess on the upside though I’ll get to wear a funky polka dot dress – I think that wins over a veil any day!