Manicures and pedicures

I will be booking myself in for both a manicure and pedicure in the days running up to our wedding, to ensure my nails are oh-so-pretty for the big day!

Mr M absolutely despises fake nails, so it’ll be a simple paint job for me! (I do keep teasing him though by saying I’m going to have really long nails put on hehe). But, the question is, do I ‘go nude’ or ‘go colour’?!

Nude nails on ‘normal’ nails is a bit of a waste I think personally as it doesn’t look any different to normal. So I was thinking I might wear a nail colour that is a similar shade to the Bridesmaid dresses; a beautiful rich plum colour, or go all out and have gold glitter to tie in with the other accent colour of our colour scheme!

Our wedding will be a festive winter wedding, so I think I can afford to be a bit more extravagant with my nails as it is all part of the glitzy-ness of the event! Strong colours will work amongst all the fairy lights and decorations, and will finish off my look perfectly!

It’ll also look good in the close-up photos we’ll have taken of our wedding rings!

Here’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of having…

Pretty!!!

Why a winter wedding?

People keep saying to me “Why on earth do you want to get married in winter? It’ll either rain or snow?!”. Well, erm, hello? When does it NOT rain in the UK?!

We chose to hold our wedding in December for a few reasons. Firstly, its a lot cheaper because it is ‘low season’ in the wedding world. Secondly, winter is a very romantic time, I think! And thirdly, you know you’ll probably either have rain or snow, so at least you can prepare for it, rather than be disappointed when all your optimism doesn’t work its magic and it pours mid-June.

PLUS, my job revolves around being outside in all weathers, and wearing wellies for 9 months of the year! So a wedding without wellies just wouldn’t be me!

I think the photos taken in winter are particularly beautiful; its all moody looking clouds and sparking frost on everything.. totally picturesque!!

I am also excited to wear my gorgeously fluffy ivory faux-fur cropped jacket! It was an absolute steal from Primark at £23, but will keep me toasty and warm for all those outside photos we plan to have! I just hope Mr M has considered wearing thermals under his suit…!

So, our preperation list goes as follows:

Weather watch constantly.

Give guests LOTS of notice on weather updates via wedding website.

Buy appropriate clothing to wear whilst outside; wellies, jackets, thermals, umbrellas etc.

Provide warming food and drinks.. and venue, for the guests!

Check possible supplier’ contracts for what happens if weather stops them providing their service.

Take as much to the venue prior to the wedding day, so that important items are there ready and waiting.

Snow proof cars belonging to the wedding party; get metal wheel tracks for tyres and non-slip ramps.

Provide a list of nearby accommodation establishments for guests who may not make it home due to heavy snow.

…

There is a lot to consider when holding your wedding in the winter, but I’m hoping it’ll be more than worth it! As long as Mr M and the registrar makes it to the venue, we’ll have a wonderful day!!!

Blonde haired babes

Some gorgeous hairstyles modelled by some equally lovely looking blonde ladies..

Brown haired beauties

Here’s a few hairstyles modelled on brown haired ladies for inspiration..

Red haired lovelies

Take some inspiration from the hairstyles of these gorgeous red haired ladies..

Skirt love. Part one.

So I mentioned in one of my last posts that I am on the hunt for the PERFECT wedding dress skirt for my own wedding dress.

I know I want ‘puffy and fluffy’ (at my age you can get away with it!), but there’s a lot of different types of ‘puff and fluff’ to choose from. Yes, its a bit over the top and princessy, but I couldn’t imagine wearing anything else!!

Here are a few of my inspiration photos (don’t forget to ignore the bodices)..

I don’t know whether to go for a straight but fluffy skirt (like the last two photos), or to have a ruffly fluffy skirt (like the first two). Decisions…

I love my wedding planning scrapbook!!

I have to say, I LOVE my wedding planning scrapbook! Well, its not so much a scrapbook anymore, but a full on ring binder!

I keep everything in there, and I constantly add cuttings from magazines into it. I’ve found it really helpful when trying to ‘put together’ the theme for our wedding; with my folder I can keep all my millions of ideas in one place and refer to them instantly without having to trawl through hundreds of magazines looking for something.

I know its quite geeky, but I’ve divided everything into sections to keep it tidy. This also helps when speaking to the wedding party, your wedding coordinator at the venue and other suppliers.

Its also a great keepsake. I’m sure once Mr M and I are happily settled down into married life I’ll look back through it and laugh at my crazy ideas or scoff at how fashions have changed over the years. But most of all, it’ll be a fab reminder of the love and effort that has gone into planning our special day.

Here are just a few photos of my wedding planning scrapbook…

One of the things I’m really glad I’ve done through the wedding process, is creating a ‘wedding style brainstorm’ (see 4 photos above). I sat down and really thought about all the different elements I imagined would be included in our wedding day, and put them onto paper. That way, I could gather ideas really easy as I always had something to remind me of the foundations of our theme.

However, what you see above isn’t the final stage of completing my wedding planning scrapbook. Oh no – this is only the beginning. We have another 569 days to go until we get married..this is just the start!

Custom-made wedding dress

My wedding dress decision has been a bit of a backwards and forwards battle.

When I first got engaged (and when I was completely naive about our wedding budget), I thought I’d be spending upwards of £1000 on my dress. I’d still love to spend that much on a dress, but it is NOT going to be possible.

Soon after that initial naivety, I came across a wedding dress listed on a wedding forum that I really liked. After some consideration, I bought it for the bargainous price of £100! Then I made the mistake of going into a wedding dress shop with my Mum and found two different dresses that I REALLY liked.

I knew I couldn’t afford the prices they were asking, so contacted local dressmakers to see what they’d charge. The result? Approximately 60% less than the price the dress shop was asking for!! Brilliant, I thought! Much more affordable!

But now, we’ve just bought a house and all my wedding savings (including the dress fund) has gone on paying for that, which means I probably don’t have any other choice than to wear my £100 dress. The problem? I really don’t like the skirt – its not my dream dress and I’m not happy or comfortable wearing it how it is at present. So, I’ve been back in contact with the local seamstress and asked her if changing the skirt is possible. AND IT IS!!!! For the grand cost of around £100!!! So I CAN have my dream dress for around £200!!!

Changing the dress won’t be happening till next year, when the wedding is nearer and the alterations can be done at the same time.

Just got to choose the perfect skirt now….

Wedding decoration shopping - thinking outside the box

Mr Mr and I popped into our local garden centre today because we didn’t have anything else to do (that’s a sign of getting old by the way!), and we found some FAB wedding decorations!

Okay, so they weren’t labeled as ‘wedding decorations’, but I could totally imagine then being part of someone’s special day! They were selling wicker hearts in all different sizes and colours, vases, martini glasses, pottery, gel beads, silk flowers, candles, bunting and all kinds of other lovely stuff!

It is definitely worth checking out what your local garden centre has to offer- especially as the price isn’t automatically bumped up with the mention of the W word there…

Budget woes

Errrggg. Budgets are horrible things!

Mr M and I were pretty much on top of our budget; we’d been saving money from our wages and it was adding up nicely. That was up until recently. Some of you may know that Mr M and I are in the process of buying our very first house. That in itself is AMAZING, but it has meant that I’ve had to use 99% of the wedding fund savings to pay the extra bits needed to get the house-buying process going.

We now have around £600 of the wedding fund left – with about another £9000 to pay. O.M.G.

Luckily, it would seem that having to postpone our wedding at the start of the year for an extra 12 months has been a bit of a godsend. Although we were really upset about having to re-arrange our wedding date for a whole year after our original date, it’d now seem it was fate. We now have 18 months to re-save the money, which theorectically is do-able, rather than 6 months if we had have kept our original date.

I’ve paid around £1500 to various different companies, and bought things for the wedding already, so that is definitely a help, but now being £5000 down, we’ve got to go back to really scrimping and saving to avoid putting the wedding on credit cards.

Inevitably, something will end up going on the credit card, which isn’t what we wanted to do. But hopefully it’ll just be something small, rather than a large chunk.

However, I am now even more determined to cut down on what we originally anticipated we’d spend by finding even more bargains and deals!

Earlier today, I made a list of areas we could possibly save on. They were:

Confetti

Groomsmen suits

Bridesmaid shoes

Bride’s underwear

Bride’s accessories

Hair and make-up

Wedding rings

Hotel for wedding night

This altogether, comes to over £1700, so realistically, I’d like to get it down by a few hundred pounds. The Groomsmen’s suits come to £600 on their own though!! Saving money on confetti should be easier; I could either make this myself using tissue paper, or buy pre-made paper confetti. Originally I was going to buy real petals which would have cost around £50-60, but I could cut this down to around £20 by buying paper confetti. And we don’t have to have a hotel room for our wedding night, we could just go home! That would save us another £100. I don’t really want to scrimp on the wedding rings though. Well, I don’t want to scrimp on mine! Mr M will only be wearing his when he’s not at work (he has a very manual job), so he’s already said he only wants a cheap one! I however, will wear mine everyday so I want something special.

I have a feeling that the calculator is going to be my best friend over the next few months…

Debenhams Bride and Bridesmaid knickers

Debenhams are now selling sequinned Bride and Bridesmaid knickers!

The Bride knickers are ivory, and the Bridesmais ones are pink!

They are £6 each, and if I remember correctly, they are part of the 3 for 2 deal! They’d make nice little extra presents if you were creating goodie bags for your girls as thank you gifts!

Heres the links for you….

Bride: http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prod_10001_10001_158010605285_-1?breadcrumb=Home%7EtxtBride+knickers

Bridesmaid: http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prod_10001_10001_158010605305_-1?breadcrumb=Home%7EtxtBridesmaid+knickers