belated gifts and minister meetings!

Well today was the first meeting with our minister, a lovely man by the name of Ron. As it happens, Ron married my bridesmaid, Romana, and her hubby, and my OTHER bridesmaid, Kylie, was in her wedding party. He was quite excited to hear this, and decided that my wedding was going to be a "mini reunion" hehe.

I'm so glad we asked Romana for a recommendation for a minister - he was LOVELY, he has a good sense of humour and specifically went into celebrant work after retiring as a minister specifically because he saw such a gap for young couples who wished to have a religious ceremony but weren't allowed to have their ceremonies where they wanted them (ie. if they wanted a location outside of a church). He was absolutely wonderful to talk with today, but us both as ease and helped us through all the beginning stages of our Intention to Marry paperwork, etc. Now all we're waiting from is a little package in the mail with all the details for the costs of the ceremony, as well as our little ceremony workbook package and we can start planning our day! Very excited. I particularly loved that he made a point of speaking with the future hubby and letting him know that he expected him to be completely involved in the creation of the ceremony - he wasn't allowed to just go with whatever I want! He has been told that he has to make sure that what he is saying and doing at the ceremony is as much what he wants as what I want.

I love this because as much as I want the future hubby to be involved in every step of the planning, he is very happy to just go with the flow - not because he is lazy but I think because he has no specific expectations of what he wants from our wedding day other then for everyone to have a good time and to have a wonderful, love filled day (oh, and the boys in grey suits! hehe). So while that is great when it comes to picking out the table cloths or the bridesmaids colours, I do really want him to have involvement in the creation of our ceremony, the selection of our readings, the decision of what to say for our vows...all those things that are most important to us as a couple, making a promise together. So points to Ron for that!!!

In other news, we got a couple of belated engagement gifts over the weekend - small sections of bigger gifts (they had already spoiled us!) that weren't around in time for our party. One such gift was a lovely Etsy buy (I believe it was Etsy? I love that I got her hooked too!) from Miss Laina and her partner:


Nawww! It's just gorgeous, I love it!!!!!

She knows my taste so well. She even requested colours to match our decor!! Hehe. You can't really see in the pictures but it has a pretty black ribbon to hang it up from but we have no hooks at the moment, so it's living on our DVD shelf. Must remember to buy a hook!!

The second gift was from my gorgeous sister-in-law and my brother - this gorgeous little book of sayings and vows. I love it! I already have a couple of pages marked and this will definitely come in handy when we're creating our ceremony!


Juzzie also wrote a gorgeous note inside the front sleeve for us...

That's likely to be all the wedding news from me this week, until we hit up the bridal boutiques on Sunday! This is because I have taken a task on this week - I have dug out my Nanna's old sewing machine and I am trying to learn to sew! Following the lovely Suzannah over at Adventures in Dress Making and seeing all the gorgeous little dresses she has made (not to mention her wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses!! Seriously, start following, wedding recaps will be starting soon and I can't wait!) has inspired me to try and save some money (Hi, my name's Amanda and I'm a shopaholic) and learn to make myself cute dresses! Particularly since summer is coming and there are so many options for beginners cute summer dresses! In particular, I fell in love with this little number over at The Selfish Seamstress, only to find that the folks over at Grosgrain had created a Frock by Friday tutorial on it!


Image courtesy of Grosgrain

So, my pattern and material is cut, my bobbin is threaded...but my machine is not. My machine is SO OLD that I can't even find a tut on how to thread this particular one online. I got to a certain point using a generalised threading tutorial, and now I'm stuck. Luckily, my lovely Mum will hopefully be coming over to give me a hand. It's killing me not to be able to move forward!

Wish me luck and hey - why not join me and make yourself a fabulous little dress? There are plenty to choose from over in the Grosgrain 'Frock by Friday' series - leave me a comment below if you decide to try your hand at it!