Wednesday, January 25, 2012

the wait is over!

Well, almost. Today I can share with you all the link to the blog post with most of our engagement shots! Sandra, our photographer, popped up a blog post for us today. At the very bottom of the post, there is a link to the album we are actually purchasing - you can have a thumb through (if you are THAT interested in someone else's engagement shots - I don't blame you if you're not!) and see many more images that aren't included in the blog post, including a few of our favs (like the future hubby's baseball shots!)

As I already mentioned, I am so in love with all of our photos, we both are, and it was so very hard to select images to print (even though we are getting almost all of them inside the album we're purchasing). But the order has officially been placed, and now we just have to wait to hear they are ready! We are going to pick them up ourselves, so that we can meet with Sandra and finalise some of the finer details of the wedding - timelines, specific photo requirements, etc. I can't wait!

But now, here's the direct link to Sandra's blog post. Definitely have a look around while you are there at her gorgeous work (particularly this newborn shoot - naw), there are a few weddings on there and another gorgeous engagement shoot, as well as her Modern Wedding Magazine shoot!

Friday, January 20, 2012

diy handkerchiefs!

Having a medical condition that results in you having time off work is frustrating... But it does give you time to work on wedding projects! (at least I still feel productive when I can't work) Yesterday I managed to make one load of our wedding handkerchiefs for our ceremony. I'm quite happy with how they are turning out!!


Quite an easy DIY project, I'm hoping those who choose to take one on our wedding day (even if they don't need to use it) will have a little something to keep and remember our day by...Oh, and I've kept a blue one for myself ;)

Starting off with some blank, vintage-style handkerchiefs, the future hubby and I decided on this monogram from The Wedding Chicks to use throughout our wedding projects.


I used Paint to flip the image back to front, then printed them on some iron-on transfer paper. For this particular project, I found printing them 9 to a page was the perfect size.

I then spent the day ironing the handkerchiefs out, ironing on the transfers and ironing over the top of the transfers with baking paper (a little tip to take away the shine and make the image seem more matte). Here's just a couple of examples of handkerchiefs, the monogram is in a different spot on each handkerchief.


After applying all the monograms, I set about folding up the handkerchiefs , tying them up with brown twine and adding some cute little tags.


I think the end result has turned out quite well!


Now I'm on the hunt for a cute little basket to sit them in on wedding day... (and to make another 40 or so...waiting for a delivery!) Can't wait to see if everyone likes them on the day!

[source]

More DIY projects to come, but in the meantime - what little projects did you/are you working on in the lead up to your big day??

Thursday, January 19, 2012

I officially have a wedding dress!

Yep, that's right! Yesterday I put down a deposit (which was half the retail price - eep, wasn't expecting that!) and ordered my lady in what is hopefully the perfect size (same size as the sample...lady recommended this rather then a size down as the sample was likely to have been stretched out and it's better to be safe then sorry anyway - if it's a little big it's easier to take in then try and lose weight to fit into a smaller one that's too small!)


Scary stuff, and my savings is looking a little sad...particularly since we're expecting to be able to order our engagement shots sometime really soon! I got a message from our photographer on Monday, to say that she had been editing all day, our online viewing should be ready soon AND she had put up another little sneak peek for us:



What an eventful week! A wedding dress AND our engagement photos soon! I cannot WAIT to see them all and share some with you!

Oh, and our invites are now well on the way to having a gorgeous look. I am working on the design of the inside so we can do a mock up invite, to make sure we are 100% happy with what we have chosen, then we will be ordering all the pocket folds, paper and accessories soon! Yay!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

the groomsmen project...

My weekend has so far consisted of a lot of "Hart of Dixie" (yep, I'm now addicted), cleaning up and making some little gifts for the future hubby to finally ask his boys to be in his bridal party!!

It was a fairly simple process really...

Take some mini boy-related alcoholic beverages...



...and some grey cardstock...



...Add some text and twine...
...and you've got yourself some appropriately male Groomsmen requests!



Whaddya think?!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

sneak peek

Wow! This little blog has hit 30 followers! Welcome everyone and thanks for reading, I hope I don't bore you too much! I think maybe I should start thinking of a fun giveaway for hitting 50 (if I get there!) :)

Anyway, back to the purpose of today's post - as promised, I have a little sneak peek of our engagement shoot!

Let me tell you, the future hubby and I had a BLAST shooting these pictures and were both very excited to see how they all turn out. Now that we have seen a teeny tiny sample of what they are like, we cannot WAIT to see our full gallery and are even more excited for our wedding photos in September now (eep, we're almost down to 8 months! I wrote out a LONG to-do list yesterday!)

First up, I'll give you a little peek into the venue. We took a 2 1/2 hour trip to the gorgeous Undercliff Winery and Gallery at Wollombi, which boasts a gorgeous cottage from 1847. The drive into Wollombi was just gorgeous and showed off a lot of the gorgeous Aussie flora/fauna that many Australians (like ourselves!) miss out on in the suburbs! We even had to dodge frogs and keep our eyes out for kangaroos and wombats darting onto the road on our way home! Once we reached the Winery, we got to have a chat with the lovely owner, who let us sample a few of the wines that are made on site using traditional methods. I even picked up a couple of bottles of desert one - one for me, one for my mum :)




We then headed up to the cottage to get ready. I don't have a lot of shots of the venue, since once we started shooting we were rather distracted, but here's a few I did get:


A couple of shots of the outside of the cottage...we ended up using a corner on the far left that was just gorgeous. It had a big vintage suitcase, a big wine barrel, gorgeous little steps and a little bench between the wooden rails. You'll definitely see that in some of the pictures later on!


One bedroom, which has the original stove, etc. from the original house. I felt a little like I was Anne of Green Gables!


My pretty dress choices...I ended up with the white one, since the future hubby choose a blue shirt. The one below was a very close second though, I couldn't choose between them (and neither could Sandra!) and I'm glad the decision ended up being made by the shirt the future Mr choose!


After a bunch of snuggly shots and detail pictures at the cottage (amongst a LOT of wind - let me tell you, I have no idea what my hair is going to look like in a lot of those pictures!) we headed down to a little old barn that was on the way between the cottage and the vineyards. On the way down, the future hubby surprised me with a rose he had snuck out of the posy we had been using as a prop. Cheeky boy! (as you can see, we used some smaller roses similar to the ones I want to use in my bouquet!)

The sneak peak that the lovely Sandra provided us with on Thursday (yes, only one day after the shoot!) was taken at the barn. I am so in love with it and cannot wait to see more. She shared this with us via her Facebook page, so we got to share it with family and friends, who all loved it :) And now I share it with you!!

Isn't it gorgeous?! (Ok, I may be a little biased!)

After a little bit of time here, in the somewhat sheltered area of the barn (that wind was still howling!), we headed down to the vineyard at the end of the shoot to catch the gorgeous sunlight that was left. We got to play some Rummikub (a fav. of ours!) down amongst the vines, eat some yummy strawberries and play some baseball. Our gorgeous sign from Miss Laina got put to use down here as well :) The whole theme of our shoot was "Grown Old With Me" so we got to spend the day doing a lot of things we hope to be doing in 50 years! Snuggling, looking at old pictures, eating strawberries, drinking tea and playing Rummikub. We had such an amazing time and I look forward to sharing our pictures with you!

I hope you enjoyed having a peek! If anyone would like further information on Sandra and her amazing work, please see her blog at www.sandrahenriphotography.com.au and please note that all professional photos are courtesy of Sandra and are not to be reproduced anywhere.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

a picture says a thousand words...

Tonight's post will be short and sweet, as we're currently running around collecting various items for our photoshoot with the wonderful Sandra Henri tomorrow! I'm excited...nervous...and excited again! I can't wait to see how all the photos turn out but at the same time, I fear that we will not know what to do and end up looking silly (although I'm sure if anyone could make us look fantastic while looking silly, it would be Sandra!)

So far we've collected some books, a Rummikub set, some chalkboards, an old wooden album, numerous old family photographs, some sign props, some "A" and "G" letters, our gorgeous "Grow Old Along With Me" sign from Miss Laina and a few other knick knacks. Oh, and my mum just pulled out this GORGEOUS old wooden trunk that was her uncle's and made it through the war in one piece...I'm so excited to include this and to show it to Sandra! If you can't tell, we're going for a vintage feel. I can't wait to see it all come together at the vineyard and old 1800's cottage tomorrow!

I would love to share with you some of the photos that we used as inspiration for our outfits and the feel for our shoot tomorrow but since I'm not sure where they have come from I don't feel right posting them (as they are of other people's engagement shoots). But hopefully I will have some sneak peak shots to share with you after the shoot!

For now, I'm off to bed for some beauty sleep...and also to keep myself from eating the chocolate coated strawberries we made for tomorrow! Yum, yum!

Friday, January 06, 2012

giveaway!

Check out Romance In A Glance's latest giveaway here! You could win a gorgeous wrist clutch by SweetPeaTotes. I'm personally hoping to win the gorgeous one below. I just love me some yellow and grey these days! Good luck!

[source]

Thursday, January 05, 2012

ordering samples!

Today's post is all about our wedding invites!! We finally sat down and started talking about them today and it seems that while the future hubby is happy to make decisions like "the sideways pocketfold or the length way pocketfold?" or "dark grey or silver?", I'm pretty much being given a lot of space to make our invites with whatever vision I have in mind. Which is cool! Because I've totally fallen in love with invites that look like pretty little bundles of love letters...

Exhibit A:


[source 1, 2, 3, 4]

I also really love the colour scheme of this invite suite and have had this saved for inspiration for some time. I like that the grey gives it a masculine base, while the peachy colour gives it a girliness. We would work in either blush and/or lavender as our invite colours, with a grey or silver base.

[source]
(apparently I really like the work of ruby and willow!)

So with this kind of look in mind today, we (well actually I) started thinking about how to put this look together. The future hubby has always liked the idea of an invite that had to be opened, and this was one of the original ideas he liked:

[source]

Today we decided against the sleeve (since we didn't think all the additional info would really fit well in there!) and try some pocketfolds. We ordered some samples from Cards and Pockets so that we can decide whether we prefer the dark grey colour or the silver, the longer pocketfold or the shorter. I think right now we are leaning towards the shorter in the dark grey, but it will all depend on when we see them!

[source]

[source]

I also found these lovelies on Etsyto use when the invite is all folded up:

[source]


And to keep in with the rustic look that the future hubby liked for our centrepiece style, I love the idea of tying everything in place with some brown twine and some of these beauties:

[source]


So that's the ideas we have so far, for the outer look and feel of our invites. The inside we plan to design and print ourselves, I might even be adventurous enough to try out the Letter Press machine I found a while back! But we'll come to that bridge soon enough! Today it was exciting enough to order some samples and get an idea of what we want our invites to look like. I feel like the 'theme' of our wedding is becoming clearer and clearer with every decision we make! I hope it all works out beautifully!

What do you guys think so far? I would love some feedback! And how did you guys go about/are you going about your invitation decisions? Was your future hubby as hands on as you or a little more laid back but happy to help with decisions?

Sunday, January 01, 2012

happy new year!

Welcome to 2012!!! I can't even begin to express how excited I am to start this year... We have so many friends expecting their first babies, as well as a few adding to their families (and I mean REALLY adding - we have a friend expecting triplets!!!) and we have many friends establishing new families (yep, lots of weddings this year!!)

And of course, we get to start our own family unit this year - I simply cannot wait! This year I start the year as a Miss and end it a Mrs. I celebrated my last Christmas and New Years as a Miss surrounded by family and friends and loved every minute.

As we're one of the first to hit midnight, New Years Day is starting to come to a close for us here in Australia and evening is starting to settle in. Before it does though, I think one last trip to the beach is in order!

Look forward to sharing more of our journey with you in 2012!!! Xxx


I'm going to marry this boy this year!!!
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