We popped our Save the Date magnets in the nearest PostBox on Tuesday evening, and our prospective guests are already starting to get them!
Royal Mail is being super speedy delivering our little envelopes all across the South of England to our friends and family, and they are already being stuck on people’s fridges as a daily reminder to our upcoming nuptials!
Its really, really REALLY exciting!!!!!!!!!
Thursday 22 March 2012
Wedding stationery sale at M&S!
I popped into my local M&S today, only to find that there was quite a few wedding related stationery pieces in the sale!
I picked up some ‘congratulations on your wedding day’ cards for half price, some cute little wedding keepsakes to give as presents and some more of the evening invitations we’ve got for our own wedding!
But what was even better, was that I found a Mr & Mrs set of passport covers that we can slip over our passports on our honeymoon!
In total, I saved just over £15 from the original asking price (3/4 of what I actually paid)!!
Definitely a bargain!
I picked up some ‘congratulations on your wedding day’ cards for half price, some cute little wedding keepsakes to give as presents and some more of the evening invitations we’ve got for our own wedding!
But what was even better, was that I found a Mr & Mrs set of passport covers that we can slip over our passports on our honeymoon!
In total, I saved just over £15 from the original asking price (3/4 of what I actually paid)!!
Definitely a bargain!
Wedding party all accounted for!!!
In the last 4 days, we’ve asked and had big fat YES’s from a mere 7 wedding party members! It’s been a very busy and emotional 96 hours!
So, I thought I’d introduce the people you will be hearing a lot about over the next 652 days (and beyond!)….
The Girls
Chief Bridesmaid – Samantha. My best friend from school.
Bridesmaid no.1 – Gemma. My younger Sister.
Bridesmaid no.2 – Bec. Mr M’s younger Sister.
The Boys
Best Man – Adam. Mr M’s bestfriend from school.
Usher no.1 – Tom. My younger Brother.
Usher no.2 – James. Mr M’s younger Brother.
Usher no.3 – Sam. Mr M’s other younger Brother.
..
I’m so happy to have them all onboard, and excited to have them play a part in our special day! Now I’ve just got to introduce them to each other which in itself will be interesting!
But now things are official… Bring on the wedding planning!!
So, I thought I’d introduce the people you will be hearing a lot about over the next 652 days (and beyond!)….
The Girls
Chief Bridesmaid – Samantha. My best friend from school.
Bridesmaid no.1 – Gemma. My younger Sister.
Bridesmaid no.2 – Bec. Mr M’s younger Sister.
The Boys
Best Man – Adam. Mr M’s bestfriend from school.
Usher no.1 – Tom. My younger Brother.
Usher no.2 – James. Mr M’s younger Brother.
Usher no.3 – Sam. Mr M’s other younger Brother.
..
I’m so happy to have them all onboard, and excited to have them play a part in our special day! Now I’ve just got to introduce them to each other which in itself will be interesting!
But now things are official… Bring on the wedding planning!!
Save the date excitement
Yesterday was Mr M and I’s anniversary and we decided it’d be a nice day to finally post our ‘Save the Date’ magnets to our guests!!
We’ve had them sitting in one of my wedding storage boxes since the beginning of the year (since the 3rd of Jan to be precise), but we were worried that it’d be too early to send them out. But yesterday was the day we finally relented and gave in! So with 1 year, 9 months and 8 days to go, our Save the Dates are winging their way across the South of England, ready to excite its recipients (hopefully!)!!!
The ‘Save the Date’ magnets…
..And the magnets in their envelopes, all ready to be posted!!
I got the magnets from Vistaprint (about £8 for 50 including delivery), and the little envelopes and clear labels (just seen in the photo) from WH Smith*. The labels weren’t cheap (about £12 for 210 labels), but they are neater than handwriting each and every label for 50+ guests, and multiple copies can be easily printed off when you need to send the formal invitation and thank you cards out later on!
The blue envelope in the photo is a handwritten letter to my late Grandad’s wife, asking her if she’s do a reading for us during the ceremony. I would have loved my Grandad to have done a reading himself, but sadly he passed away in May 2010, and his wife is my last remaining ‘Grandparent’. She is away from home quite a lot now, so sometimes it’s easier to catch her by post rather than phoning her! And it’s also a nice keepsake I think!
I know you don’t tend to RSVP with the Save the Dates, but I am looking forward to the first person acknowledging that they’ve received one.. hopefully by the end of the week!!
* If anyone buys the 6.35cm x 3.81cm labels from WH Smiths and wants to print on them, email me at perfect-wedding-planning@hotmail.co.uk as I have an editable layout for Microsoft Word you can use!
We’ve had them sitting in one of my wedding storage boxes since the beginning of the year (since the 3rd of Jan to be precise), but we were worried that it’d be too early to send them out. But yesterday was the day we finally relented and gave in! So with 1 year, 9 months and 8 days to go, our Save the Dates are winging their way across the South of England, ready to excite its recipients (hopefully!)!!!
The ‘Save the Date’ magnets…
..And the magnets in their envelopes, all ready to be posted!!
I got the magnets from Vistaprint (about £8 for 50 including delivery), and the little envelopes and clear labels (just seen in the photo) from WH Smith*. The labels weren’t cheap (about £12 for 210 labels), but they are neater than handwriting each and every label for 50+ guests, and multiple copies can be easily printed off when you need to send the formal invitation and thank you cards out later on!
The blue envelope in the photo is a handwritten letter to my late Grandad’s wife, asking her if she’s do a reading for us during the ceremony. I would have loved my Grandad to have done a reading himself, but sadly he passed away in May 2010, and his wife is my last remaining ‘Grandparent’. She is away from home quite a lot now, so sometimes it’s easier to catch her by post rather than phoning her! And it’s also a nice keepsake I think!
I know you don’t tend to RSVP with the Save the Dates, but I am looking forward to the first person acknowledging that they’ve received one.. hopefully by the end of the week!!
* If anyone buys the 6.35cm x 3.81cm labels from WH Smiths and wants to print on them, email me at perfect-wedding-planning@hotmail.co.uk as I have an editable layout for Microsoft Word you can use!
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Oh my goodness! I went dress shopping!
OMG.. I went dress shopping at the weekend for the first time with my Mum, and I’ve ‘fallen’ for two completely different dresses!
I went to the shop to try on a particular dress (I’d previously seen it on their website and loved it), and came out thinking about two different dresses, neither of which were the dress I went in to see, and both of which were ones I’d dismissed online!
I quite liked the whole experience of trying on different wedding dresses; I tried on a few styles I didn’t think I’d like (some of which I didn’t, but others I did), and it was quite nice pretending to be a bit of a princess for a couple of hours!
When I first walked into the room I was a bit takenaback with all the dresses; there were just so many! It wasn’t a large shop, but it certainly packed in a lot of different styles and sizes. I’ve never seen so much ivory and sparkle in my life!!!!
The only downside to dress shopping was that the two dresses I fell for weren’t in my size. Its generally quite well known that wedding dress sizes don’t bear any relation to ‘high street’ sizes, so you couldn’t just walk into a shop and pick up a size 12 wedding dress thinking it’d fit your high street size 12 body, as it most likely wouldn’t. And that was most definitely the case for me. I was being squeezed into size 8-10 dresses, which didn’t really help to show what a correctly fitting dress would look like on my size 14 body.
But nether the less, I did find two dresses that I loved, and I could see that they would look lovely when fitted to me, despite the samples being so ill-fitting. They were both within the same remit as the dress I went into the shop to look at, but at the same time quite different from each other.
However, both were VERY expensive. The dress I went into look at was £450 in the sale (for a sample gown), or £850 brand new. £850 being my upper most limit of what I’d spend on a dress. And both of these dresses exceeded this upper limit by at least £300! Ooops!
So I’m now looking into getting my dress made for me instead as its not within our budget to spend that much on my dress. Whichever dress I choose won’t be exactly the same as the two I tried on in the shop; copying a dress exactly is actually illegal (an infringement of copyright), so changes will have to be made to deem it ‘not a copy’, but this isn’t a problem as there would be some changes I’d like made to both dresses anyway.
I did love dress shopping though; before I left I felt nervous and quite self-concious of a stranger seeing me half naked, but once I was in there, I really liked the experience and could have stayed hours trying dresses on!
My next problem will be deciding WHICH dress to have…!!!!
I went to the shop to try on a particular dress (I’d previously seen it on their website and loved it), and came out thinking about two different dresses, neither of which were the dress I went in to see, and both of which were ones I’d dismissed online!
I quite liked the whole experience of trying on different wedding dresses; I tried on a few styles I didn’t think I’d like (some of which I didn’t, but others I did), and it was quite nice pretending to be a bit of a princess for a couple of hours!
When I first walked into the room I was a bit takenaback with all the dresses; there were just so many! It wasn’t a large shop, but it certainly packed in a lot of different styles and sizes. I’ve never seen so much ivory and sparkle in my life!!!!
The only downside to dress shopping was that the two dresses I fell for weren’t in my size. Its generally quite well known that wedding dress sizes don’t bear any relation to ‘high street’ sizes, so you couldn’t just walk into a shop and pick up a size 12 wedding dress thinking it’d fit your high street size 12 body, as it most likely wouldn’t. And that was most definitely the case for me. I was being squeezed into size 8-10 dresses, which didn’t really help to show what a correctly fitting dress would look like on my size 14 body.
But nether the less, I did find two dresses that I loved, and I could see that they would look lovely when fitted to me, despite the samples being so ill-fitting. They were both within the same remit as the dress I went into the shop to look at, but at the same time quite different from each other.
However, both were VERY expensive. The dress I went into look at was £450 in the sale (for a sample gown), or £850 brand new. £850 being my upper most limit of what I’d spend on a dress. And both of these dresses exceeded this upper limit by at least £300! Ooops!
So I’m now looking into getting my dress made for me instead as its not within our budget to spend that much on my dress. Whichever dress I choose won’t be exactly the same as the two I tried on in the shop; copying a dress exactly is actually illegal (an infringement of copyright), so changes will have to be made to deem it ‘not a copy’, but this isn’t a problem as there would be some changes I’d like made to both dresses anyway.
I did love dress shopping though; before I left I felt nervous and quite self-concious of a stranger seeing me half naked, but once I was in there, I really liked the experience and could have stayed hours trying dresses on!
My next problem will be deciding WHICH dress to have…!!!!
Decoration decisions
I’ve now started to think about the decorations for our wedding venue. The inside of the building is quite plain (a good thing, as there’s no dodgy art or colours to contend with), but the plainness does mean that all the decorations have to be arranged by me!
Our colour scheme is gold, brown and plum – all rustic, natural colours, which will go well with the cream walls and exposed beams inside the venue.
So far, we have bought some lovely gold candle sticks, which have sparkly berries wound round the neck of the candlestick as our table centrepieces, lots of gold, fragranced potpourri to scatter across the tables, and we’ve started collecting jam jars for tea lights.
But this on its own won’t decorate our entire venue. We need more.
I love bunting, but in the depths of winter it doesn’t really ‘go’. If we could have had an outdoors wedding (perhaps not in December!!), we most definitely would have. But unfortunately, marriage laws in England don’t stretch as far as woodland weddings! So if we can’t get married outside, I want to bring the outside in!!
I’d like everything to tie in well together; as most things in our wedding are nature based and our wishes were to have an outdoors wedding, I need to incorporate this into the venue decoration. I want to use wood and natural materials where possible (obviously no cutting down of trees purposely for this!), and make the venue look like a nature filled wonderland. If Kate Middleton can have trees in her wedding venue, so can I!!
I’m collecting hundreds of pinecones to decorate the venue. I’d like to string them together with ribbon and make them into a garland to decorate the fireplace,a round the windows, and drape across the top table. Teamed with lengths of fairy lights, I think this would give a really magical look to the venue!
I’ve also found a company online who sells gold twig trees with little fairy lights in; I think this’d be perfect for placing either side of the doorway at the entrance of the venue, so I’m going to look into buying a couple of these!
As part of the venue decoration, I’m currently making a ‘welcome sign’ to be displayed in the entrance to the venue; I found an unused pinboard in my room, and converted it into a chalkboard by spraying it with special chalkboard paint. It took a few coats to cover the whole thing, but it does look good. For the welcome message, I’ve written in gold ink “welcome to Lauren and Dan’s wedding. 28.12.2013″. I’ve also decorated it with a few hearts, just to emphasise the romance of the occasion!! Its nothing spectacular or arty, but I thought it’d just give a nice welcoming feel to the guests who are joining us to celebrate our wedding day!
Then there’s outdoors.
Our venue has beautiful grounds; acres of land, with trees, wishing wells, a pond, swinging seats.. beautiful. So despite it being winter and it being quite unlikely people will want to spend time outside when its freezing cold, I want to give our evening guests a taste of whats to come by decorating outside a bit too.
I’d really love to put hanging tealight holders in the trees outside to make the trees look sparkly, and line the footpath with candles in jam jars. All of which I plan to DIY myself if I get the go-ahead from the venue owners! I’m hoping for a LIGHT dusting of snow in the hours leading up to the wedding, as this would just top the magical feel off! Okay, so I can’t control the weather, but I can still dream..!
Our colour scheme is gold, brown and plum – all rustic, natural colours, which will go well with the cream walls and exposed beams inside the venue.
So far, we have bought some lovely gold candle sticks, which have sparkly berries wound round the neck of the candlestick as our table centrepieces, lots of gold, fragranced potpourri to scatter across the tables, and we’ve started collecting jam jars for tea lights.
But this on its own won’t decorate our entire venue. We need more.
I love bunting, but in the depths of winter it doesn’t really ‘go’. If we could have had an outdoors wedding (perhaps not in December!!), we most definitely would have. But unfortunately, marriage laws in England don’t stretch as far as woodland weddings! So if we can’t get married outside, I want to bring the outside in!!
I’d like everything to tie in well together; as most things in our wedding are nature based and our wishes were to have an outdoors wedding, I need to incorporate this into the venue decoration. I want to use wood and natural materials where possible (obviously no cutting down of trees purposely for this!), and make the venue look like a nature filled wonderland. If Kate Middleton can have trees in her wedding venue, so can I!!
I’m collecting hundreds of pinecones to decorate the venue. I’d like to string them together with ribbon and make them into a garland to decorate the fireplace,a round the windows, and drape across the top table. Teamed with lengths of fairy lights, I think this would give a really magical look to the venue!
I’ve also found a company online who sells gold twig trees with little fairy lights in; I think this’d be perfect for placing either side of the doorway at the entrance of the venue, so I’m going to look into buying a couple of these!
As part of the venue decoration, I’m currently making a ‘welcome sign’ to be displayed in the entrance to the venue; I found an unused pinboard in my room, and converted it into a chalkboard by spraying it with special chalkboard paint. It took a few coats to cover the whole thing, but it does look good. For the welcome message, I’ve written in gold ink “welcome to Lauren and Dan’s wedding. 28.12.2013″. I’ve also decorated it with a few hearts, just to emphasise the romance of the occasion!! Its nothing spectacular or arty, but I thought it’d just give a nice welcoming feel to the guests who are joining us to celebrate our wedding day!
Then there’s outdoors.
Our venue has beautiful grounds; acres of land, with trees, wishing wells, a pond, swinging seats.. beautiful. So despite it being winter and it being quite unlikely people will want to spend time outside when its freezing cold, I want to give our evening guests a taste of whats to come by decorating outside a bit too.
I’d really love to put hanging tealight holders in the trees outside to make the trees look sparkly, and line the footpath with candles in jam jars. All of which I plan to DIY myself if I get the go-ahead from the venue owners! I’m hoping for a LIGHT dusting of snow in the hours leading up to the wedding, as this would just top the magical feel off! Okay, so I can’t control the weather, but I can still dream..!
Hen do... What to do!
I’ve recently started thinking about what I’d like to do for my hen do; well to be honest I’ve focused more on what I DON’T want to do!
I really don’t like the idea of the typical hen do that involves drinking loads, clubbing, ‘L plates’ and all the rest of that stuff you see and hear about on TV. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that; perhaps if I was the person I was 6 years ago then that’d be right up my street, but since being with Mr M, I’ve changed, and I now couldn’t think of anything worse!
For my hen do I’d really love to go on a spa day; being pampered and having loads of treatments, followed up with a nice meal out somewhere, and then an evening of girly films and wine and cakes at home!
Alternatively I’d also love to have a craft filled day; learning something new like pottery, or spend a day on a farm learning how to milk cows – totally different to the spa day, but something I would like to do and something that would be fun to do for a hen do I think!
I wouldn’t mind going abroad for my hen do, but I would want it to be revolved around sightseeing, with perhaps some wine tasting courses, or cookery classes.
I will be getting involved with the planning of my hen do; I know my Chief Bridesmaid will want to organise it herself, but I am going to give her some hints, and make sure she knows what I really don’t want. I want everyone who is invited to have fun, so I’d prefer it was a ‘safe’ activity, rather than something that revolves around lots of drinking.
Whatever we end up doing, I’m sure it’ll be fun!!
I really don’t like the idea of the typical hen do that involves drinking loads, clubbing, ‘L plates’ and all the rest of that stuff you see and hear about on TV. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that; perhaps if I was the person I was 6 years ago then that’d be right up my street, but since being with Mr M, I’ve changed, and I now couldn’t think of anything worse!
For my hen do I’d really love to go on a spa day; being pampered and having loads of treatments, followed up with a nice meal out somewhere, and then an evening of girly films and wine and cakes at home!
Alternatively I’d also love to have a craft filled day; learning something new like pottery, or spend a day on a farm learning how to milk cows – totally different to the spa day, but something I would like to do and something that would be fun to do for a hen do I think!
I wouldn’t mind going abroad for my hen do, but I would want it to be revolved around sightseeing, with perhaps some wine tasting courses, or cookery classes.
I will be getting involved with the planning of my hen do; I know my Chief Bridesmaid will want to organise it herself, but I am going to give her some hints, and make sure she knows what I really don’t want. I want everyone who is invited to have fun, so I’d prefer it was a ‘safe’ activity, rather than something that revolves around lots of drinking.
Whatever we end up doing, I’m sure it’ll be fun!!
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