Thursday, December 29, 2011

9 month countdown...

I hope everyone has had a wonderful time celebrating the holidays! I've been absent from BlogLand thanks to the holidays but it has been the best - while I work my normal hours through the holiday breaks, I was lucky enough that Christmas Eve and Christmas BOTH fell on the weekend this year, so I got to enjoy both days with family (and still reap the benefits of the public holidays the 3 days after - saving up that leave for our honeymoon!)


In WeddingWorld news, we have hit the 9 month mark today! As my MoH so elegantly put it last night, we will be giving birth to a wedding in 9 months time! Eep! That seems so short! It seems like only yesterday we still had 18 long months ahead of us...

...better get a move on!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

mini theme and a simple DIY

So a mini theme has emerged through our wedding planning, which is really not much of a surprise. It's Cinderella.

Now, if you recall from reading my wedding dress post, Cinderella is my favourite Disney princess (on a side note, Jiminy Cricket is my favourite Disney character and you know what? It's really difficult to find anything Jiminy!!!). Imagine my excitement when my dance school decided to do a Disney finale one year and I got to be Cinderella...we even got to do our performance in local shopping centres, and got to help celebrate Santa's arrival one year!

Yep, that's me - REALLY blonde! (I think I was about 12?)

Now I tried the Alfred Angelo Cinderella dress on for fun - I never planned on wearing it and I'm not interested in a big horse and carriage or glass slippers or anything like that...personally, I'm more of an Ever After kind of Cinderella then a Disney Cinderella (come on, who hasn't fallen in love with Ever After? GREAT movie!)

That doesn't mean I haven't found a way to sneak my favourite fairytale into our wedding day though - I mean, come on...Cinderella IS one of the ultimate wedding fairytales!...

...we're just going the more subtle route!


That leads me to a little DIY project I've been working on the last few days. It's quite simple really -

Take some Kraft paper...

...add the original Grimm's Brother's version of "Cinderella"



Mix in a heart hole punch...

...and add a few hours of Gossip Girl...



And there you have it! A baggy full of cute little DIY goodness to sprinkle where you see fit! I'm thinking cake and/or guestbook table! Cinderella is also there perfect story for this kind of DIY, because there's plenty of "bride", "wedding", "father", "mother", "sister", "beautiful", "dance", etc. to highlight by catching them in the text on the hearts (see a close up of pic 4!), but really you could use any text your heart desires! Maybe the readings from your wedding? Or special song lyrics! What do you guys think?

More Cinderella-sque inclusions for our wedding day in future posts!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

hair inspiration

I've been rather MIA this week and I apologise - busy weekend and 10 hr shifts don't leave much time for blogging! A little insight into my weekend though - we took a friend into the city for a night of dinner, drinks and dancing for her birthday. We're such awesome friends, we even arranged for the Harbour to have fireworks - just for Erin *cough*

Ok so maybe not, but it was pretty cool to get off the train after dinner to see this sight!

MoH and I

Moh, Me and the Birthday Girl!

Back to wedding news though - I'm quite excited to have won this amazing hair clip from Laura over at Saying I Do! Since I've gone my whole life without winning a thing, it seems like all my luck has been saved for wedding planning!


If you checked out the original post by Laura about this giveaway, you'll recall that 2 lucky ladies (Laura and the previous winner, Mrs. Recessionista) have already won this beauty but never ended up wearing it on their wedding day as it didn't work with their chosen hairstyles.

That leads me to a new post discussion - wedding hairstyles! I have a number of hair inspiration pictures saved on my computer, most of them soft, romantic up-dos but a few looser, half-up/half-down pics. However, this pretty style is the main contender at the moment and gives me hope that the pretty little hair clip above will finally get it's chance to shine!!

[source unknown]

In fact, most of the up-do's I have save lend themselves to including a pretty hair adornment -

[source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

[source unknown]

I'm definitely leaning towards the softer up-do look. I have to admit, Taylah Swift in her Romeo and Juliet filmclip was definitely my original inspiration -

[source unknown]

I do like the way this style works with a veil AND the flower, although I think I would be more inclined to put my veil under my hair-do, rather then over.

[source]

BUT just in case I change my mind, I do have some longer hairstyles saved...


[sources unknown]
[source]

How did you guys go about choosing your hairstyle? Was it led by your dress? An accessory? Or just a favourite style?

Friday, December 09, 2011

friday first dance find #6

I was so excited when I first heard this song on the radio...then so disappointed when the announcer said it was from Breaking Dawn! (Sorry Twi-hards, I am not one of you!) Oh well, it really is a beautiful song...even if it is from Twilight! :P (just kidding!)



Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall
Watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow

One step closer

I have died every day waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

Time stands still
Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What's standing in front of me
Every breath
Every hour has come to this

One step closer

I have died every day waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

One step closer
One step closer

I have died every day waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

the holy grail of DIY menu projects...

Yep, today I stumbled upon what seems to be the Holy Grail of the DIY wedding world when it comes to menu projects...this little beauty:


Early on in my venture into Wedding Blog World (hereafter referred to as WBW) I sighted many a pretty menu using this cute little hole punch... Along with many requests from fellow brides about where they could get one of their very own! I thought it looked really classy on the bottom of a wedding menu, as did most of the WBW clearly, since it appeared that for all intents and purposes it was becoming quite hard to get your hands on one! I gave up on the idea of locating one (not that I tried particularly hard!) since it seemed like a lost cause...

... Until today. When there was one itty bitty lonely punch, staring at me from the bottom rung of hole punches in my local Lincraft store. I think it was meant to be. Nevermind that our venue is actually making our menus! I'll find a way to make sure they use this little pretty (and get it back to me!), even if I offer to punch them myself...

I actually went in to buy a heart punch. Oh well. It can come next.

Anyone have some pleasant surprises during your DIY projects??

[source]

table numbers...

Feeding on from my previous post on centrepieces, this quick little post is about our table numbers!

I was quite excited when, during our hunt for centrepieces, I discovered this post on the One Fab Day blog, all about the Ikea Tolsby Frames that we are planning to use for our table numbers! (Com'on, at 2 bucks a pop, I knew someone else had to have had the same idea as us!)

Here are some of the ways they have already been used - don't they look great all done up??

[all pictures are sourced from One Fab Day]

Still debating how we will use ours! I still love these pretty numbers from dearemma (in our colours of course)...


...but I also love the idea of book pages printed behind the numbers, similar to this pic...

[source]
...There's just so many choices! What did you guys use as table numbers? Or what do you plan to use?

Sunday, December 04, 2011

centrepiece size-ups...

The 29th marked the 10 month countdown to the wedding...and a mini freak out for me! As of now our monthly count down is in single digits and that seems to have come up *really* fast. Particularly when I think of the finances...*but* that's a whole 'nother ball game.

Recently the future hubby and I have started thinking about the finer details of our wedding that we need to organise - centrepieces, invitations, cakes... Today I wanted to record some of the things we've talked for our table designs.

We're slightly limited in our knowledge of just how much we can customize our place settings, linens, etc. at this stage, as they are things we need to discuss with our venue. Given that we booked our venue so far in advance, we knew it would be a while before we would have any serious meetings with our coordinator. I plan to contact her soon to start getting some information. BUT until then, we have started discussing our centrepieces and that's something we know we have some freedom around - our venue already told us that they don't have a specific selection of centrepieces included in the package like some places, rather we have an allocated section of the package to spend on whatever type of centrepiece we want (including flowers) and should other pieces of our package end up being cheaper, we can direct that money into other areas (into the centrepieces or vice versa, if centrepieces end up cheaper we can use the left over money in other areas).

Back waaaaay before we were engaged, the future hubby and I saw this personal photo on a friends Facebook page and he encouraged me to save it for future reference.

[personal photo]

With this in mind, when my mum and I went to the Bridal Expo. at our venue (before it was our venue!) and they had this on display, I knew it was something the future hubby would like.

[personal photo]

My only comment was that I felt this display was too big, too tall, that the smallest vase in this display would actually be best as the tallest - so that people can still talk across the table and see each other! When the fiancé saw the pic and other similar ones, he said the same thing.

So...We seemed to be going with the long cylinder vase idea, but not too tall. We hit up Google and discovered a number of pictures, including some of the ones below...


Given that only last year one of the fiance's best friends used a centrepiece very similar to the original pic we saved (single vase with a floating candle and a rose) we knew we wanted to make our centrepieces different and have more then one. Early into the picture hunt, we discovered that the future hubby really liked the idea of 3 vases (thinking that more looked too fussy) and really DIDN'T like mirrors underneath (personally I think the mirrors can look really classy, but agree with his opinion - I don't think they work for the feel of our wedding).

That narrowed down our search a little and started to clarify the look we were going for. Then we found this picture...

[source]


This is the future hubby's favourite so far! I was surprised by how rustic his choice was. I love it, although of course we would have to make a number of adjustments - less brown and more grey/blush/lavender, to give it more of a vintage feel. Pretty simple to do though, by adding a little lace and coloured ribbons and ties instead of brown twine. I like the idea of the wooden base, which gives a bit more interest then just the cylinders however it would depend on our venue if they can source them. Otherwise I'm tempted to hunt them down ourselves if we could find them somewhere cheap.

It seems like we are leaning less towards floral centrepieces and more towards the candle concept, however we have also toyed with the idea of each vase being something different - one with a candle, one maybe with a flower (probably one of Nanna's roses) and a floating candle, and maybe one with some flower in the top, similar to this:

[source pic 1] [source pic 2]


I also like the idea of something in the bottom of the vase with a candle sitting on top. We wouldn't use acorns, but this picture gives you an idea of what I mean:

[source]


Or even with something in the bottom and different sized candles inside...I like the idea of the candelabra inside the vase but the future hubby wasn't such a fan...but really like the table number in this pic!

[source]


We also liked the idea of the cylinder vases, but with perhaps a different top, similar to the top of these candelabras, for interest:

[source]

I had saved very few pictures of centrepieces during all my Pinning because I really had no idea what I wanted...all I knew is that I wanted the future hubby's input! It's strange how they have ended up with similar elements though...

[source pic 2] [source pic 3]


All in all, I think we're starting to get a better idea of what we want to see in the middle of our tables...which is great, because it's helping me envision the reception decor a little better! And of course, we have these great little frames to style up with our table numbers! I can't wait to get started on designing something to go inside them!

How did you guys go deciding on your centrepieces? Was/Is your future hubby involved or is it all too girly for him?
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