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!

bits and pieces, here and there

Ok. So while I haven't been blogging much about wedding stuff, that's not to say that I haven't been working on some! Over the last 2 weeks I've ordered 1 of what I hope will be part of my bridesmaids gifts (I REALLY wish I could post about it, I'm dying for it to come in the mail but alas, MoH reads this and I don't want to spoil the surprise!). I ordered 1 before I order 5, to check out whether it is going to work or not. Hopefully so, then I will place an order soon for the 5!!! (Plus two *sorta* similar for the flower girls) I also inquired about ANOTHER part of the bridemaids gifts (which I know are going to be beautiful) to see if I can get them in the colours I want, then I shall be ordering THOSE.

So many things I can't talk about on here yet! But one thing I CAN show you is the personalised stamp I ordered to use on our thank you envelopes. I ordered it a couple of weeks ago, and I'm hoping it arrives by the time I've finished printing off and writing on our Thank You's for our engagement party. Here's the stock picture from the Etsy site:


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I think it's funky and interesting. I love it :)

What else have I been doing that's wedding-related? Well talking. A lot actually. The future hubby and I have been having some good old chats lately, about a lot of things - wedding related, marriage related, baby related, finance related. It's been really, really great and it's good to know that we are on the same page with most things, at this time in our life. And it's good to know that our visions of what we want from our lives seem to be threading together very nicely :) Can't wait to start our "official" lives together...

We also stopped in at a men's store the other day, while out shopping, and had a look at a few suits...I have a better idea of what the future hubby has in mind for his groomsmen now! Although he is still tossing around with a few ideas - whether to have everyone matching, alternating lighter/darker grey or having himself in one tone of grey and his men in another. It will be so much fun to put all of that together, with the girls colours as well! Can't wait!!

It seems like the next item on our agenda, to tick off our list, is finding a minister to perform our ceremony. Luckily for us, one of my lovely bridesmaids was married by a retired priest, who married them outside. She's going to see if she can find his details, and hopefully we can have a chat with him about our marriage in our little chapel!!!

I'm currently working on our Thank You's tonight, and will post up a picture once the future hubby has given his approval of the design...for now, I'll leave you with a picture of some of the kitchen bits and bobs we picked up on our spending spree today, with some of the gift cards we were given for our party! Thanks to some wonderful friends, we have been able to replace a few things that needed replacing but we just hadn't gotten around to, as well as to pick up some new things...and we have much more in mind to grab!!!



Til next time! xx

Invites and Save the Dates Pt. 2!

The story continues yesterday, with the delivery of a wonderful early engagement gift from my parents! They bought us an AWESOME printer/scanner/fax/photocopier (ie. everything but the kitchen sink!) with a second lot of cartridges - and gave it to us now so that I can do all of our engagement invites! We loves our new toy :) The future hubby got stuck into it as soon as they left and we had it up and running last night:



I love that our printer was nice enough to congratulation us on our first wireless print off!



So it's all set up and shiny now, I picked up some paper today and have just started printing off our engagement invites! I'll give you guys a preview in the not too distant future. My FMIL and FSIL stopped in this evening for various reasons, and got to be the first to see the invites :) So far so good, they thought they looked good!

On that note, I leave this post with a picture of the awesome book my FMIL bought for me and dropped in tonight! I'm so excited to look through it, and already know that it has a template for the wedding invite I was looking at making! Quite excited! What cool things have other people bought you, related to your wedding planning??

some more bits and pieces

So. Yesterday we got our first engagement gift! It was from my lovely Aunt :) She just couldn't wait for our party hehe. We were going to wait to open it, but there was a possibility that it was something that someone else said they were going to get us...so we decided to open it. And it was that. (Sorry Laina!)

But here are pics of our first official engagement gift! (Yes, I was a naughty blogger, we opened it before I took a picture! lol)


Whoo hoo, a slow cooker :) Can't wait to try it now that the weather is getting colder - yummy warm dinners that will be ready when I get home from work...Awesome!

On a side note, I've been making up a CD of lovey dovey songs to listen to in my car...partially because I'm in the mood for it, partially to get some ideas for music. Yes, it is rather early to be organising music but anyone who knows me will know that music is a big part of the feel of the wedding day for me. Certain songs have already been picked (and have pretty much been picked for years!) and are locked in! Bride's entrance, signing of the certificate, reception entrance and first dance music are already set. However for all the other music slots, I have too many options of songs I love...I need to limit the number and then make some suggestions to the boy :)

Oh, and thanks to my gorgeous SIL Juzzie, my Father/Daughter dance was discovered at the beginning of the year :) Originally I had always planned to dance to "Horses" by Darryl Braithwaite with my dad...Memories of car rides with my dad as a little girl...BUT no longer the case! (I'm leaving it for you Laina!) Juzzie found the best song for me...But I don't really want to post it 'cause I want it to be a surprise... Same with my entrance song... maybe...LOL

Now I'm sneaking off to bed after a TIRING day at work, but I thought I would leave you with some more little tidbits that I like and am considering for the wedding:

This was one of the FIRST things I found and wanted to use at our wedding, and my mum was quite excited by them too :) I know they are rather popular in America now, but here in Oz we've never seen them at a wedding before. The good ol' ribbon wand:


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I am considering some more manly "flags" for the gentlemen...But I love the idea of our nieces and nephews who can't be in the bridal party getting to hand these out before the ceremony from a cute little bucket, then as we walk down the aisle as husband and wife for the first time (*squee*) everyone waving them - I would love the photographer to get an awesome shot of it from the end of the aisle.

I also love the idea of this little chair addition - it's so cute! Obviously we would need to work it in our colours but I love the idea of it...


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This was the banner I was talking about in an earlier post, when discussing the idea of incorporating it onto our table -


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original Martha Stewart Wedding post here

Annnnd lastly, the seating chart I'm considering making. The frames that I would use on this chart would be replicated in the picture I want to have beside the cake, the frames for the family wedding photos I want to display and the instructions for our thumbprint tree! Below is also a gorgeous picture that lead me to want to incorporate our family wedding pictures...I'm thinking of doing the display of pictures on the island in the middle of the room (see what I'm talking about here) so long as they won't block the view for the people behind the island.


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[source] - Editor's note: I can't seem to find the link for this tonight, will post if I locate it!