A little bit of magic

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

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!

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!

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…

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

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

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.