engagement party decor recaps

WARNING: This post will be picture happy! I know everyone is probably sick of it, but it's been a week since our engagement party (whoa! I can't believe it's already been a week) and I wanted to share some of the awesome photos that were taken of the decor at the party. Followed by another blog post with some fun piccies taken on the night (they are slowly trickling from various people - neither Graham and I had a camera on the night and were relying on everyone else...felt weird!)

I managed to get a couple of shots pre-party on my iPhone, then my little brother and MoH managed to catch some of the decor during the night. I loved how everything came together, we all had a great night and EVERYONE seemed to love the ice-cream parlour (even though the ice-cream melted...apparently the industrial fridge out the back wasn't cold enough to keep the ice-cream frozen!!!)

Without further ado - some piccies. Leave the post now if you are over hearing about it. Hehe.

Ok first up, our guest book table. This changed slightly from my pre-party iPhone pic (below) because the cupcakes were added to the table, and the table was also used as our cake table when we cut our cake!



Thankfully the cupcakes didn't look as bad once they were on the cake stand...and as predicted, the kids loved them anyway!



Our gorgeous cake was made by my sister-in-law, Justyna (also one of my bridesmaids!), and let me tell you - it was yuuuuuummy!!! It also incorporated some Guylian chocolates, since it was Guylian Cafe where we got engaged!!!

Next up, our card cage/gift table. I didn't get to take a picture of the table with everything on it - but there is a picture below of all our pressies when we got home...we were totally spoiled! We felt so loved and are so grateful for everything we received - particularly the generous start to our honeymoon fund! Again, the display changed slightly from my pre-party iPhone pic, as I bought some of our elements from our home (our "A&G" letters that are usually on display in our living room) and added them to the table.





A few of the other details...


...the slushie machine/drink table





...our table decor (These gorgeous flowers are now all throughout our house and still looking beautiful!!)




...the ice-cream parlour! (big hit! yay!)

And lastly, some odds and ends...the signs I bought from Type (not a good shot of them, but everyone stood between them for speeches, etc.), the sign I made (we popped it over the food table!), the signs explaining my brother's awesome music system (guests were able to log in and vote for songs to play!) and one of the many ways we used my decorated jars during the night (they were also the vases for the flowers and the pen holder at the cup table).





And that's it for the decor! If you read this far, you deserve a medal, or at least some of our ice-cream (and trust me, we still have LOADS of toppings left!) Thanks for taking the time to check it all out, would love to hear what you guys think!!!

last minute decoration purchases and an exciting piece of news!

Well, the name pretty much says it all, these are some last minute purchases for our engagement party on Saturday. I have moved everything into our dining room now (and have my study back, YAY!) in prep for Saturday morning, and I'm getting rather excited now! Some family I haven't seen in ages, as well as some friends we haven't seen in a good while are coming, so we are very excited to see everyone!

I promise this will be my last decorating post, they are probably boring you all by now, but I love having a record of every minute of our engagement and our wedding planning. And also, I'm worried I won't get photos of everything at the party, because I'll be too busy having fun :)

So without anymore ranting, here are some pics of last minute things I found at the wonderful store, Typo. For those who don't live in Aus (I don't think Typo is an international store), Typo is an AWESOME little stationary store that is just full of quirky little buys - it's very dangerous to walk into! I originally went in the other day to pick up some scrabble letter canvases to spell out "LOVE" for our cake table, but sadly they were out of stock of L and E! I did however find these AWESOME banners, which were hidden away on a little shelf and I only saw because I dropped something and had to pick it up. SO glad I did because I think these are my new favourite decoration. We plan on hanging this across the front of the stage in the hall!!!



I also found this cute little gold heart, which I have decorated with pictures of the future hubby and I throughout our relationship - from 2005 until the present! We didn't want to bombard people with pictures of us around the room, so this is fairly small and will sit on our guest book table. I'm sure I"ll find a way to use this at a later date as well!



And lastly, our guest book and a little side book (for any crazy comments from crazy friends!) that I picked up at Typo on sale, because it was so damn cute! The guest book I ended up finding in a wedding store and let me tell you - it is DIFFICULT to find one that isn't too "wedding-y" (ie. lots of white and diamontes and flowers!). I wanted something sleek and elegant, and with enough pages for all the guests we have coming! This fit the bill. You can't see too well in the picture, but the plastic protective sleeve comes off and underneath the black cover has a gorgeous silky pattern to it.



Now, for the exciting piece of news!!! My newest little godson, and the first godson for the future hubby and I as a couple, finally entered the world last night (after giving his mummy a LOT of false starts!) on the 29th of June, at 9:34pm. He weighs 3.77kg and is 51cm long! We haven't met him yet, but he and Mummy are safe at home now and we hope to be able to visit them tomorrow if Mummy is not too tired! See, he wanted to make it in time to celebrate with us :) (Mind you, his due date was the 26th - Mummy really wished he had come early!) Master Logan, welcome to the world!!! We can't wait to show you around :) xx

ice cream parlour bits and pieces

I've been a busy little party planner this week, hunting down items for our ice-cream parlour and giving them some sprucing up for the party! I've also finished all of the printing for this project and let me tell you - those little signs are a PAIN to cut out! It's been fun though, and I think it is all starting to come together...hopefully it looks good on the night, all those jars filled with yummy lollies and toppings!!!

My mum and I actually went shopping last weekend to get all of the cutlery, cups, plates, bowls and table cloths for the party, and almost all of the ordered decorations (my Chinese lanterns!) have arrived. We've had to go with more of a pink colour, rather then a peach, for most of the decorations, which is a bit of a bummer...but it's very difficult to get anything in the peachy/blush colour I like! Well, for the engagement party anyway! But I think it will be ok and hopefully the grey and white balances out the pink for a pretty ok balance of masculine/feminine. I just don't want the place to feel *too* girlie!

Without further ado, some piccies of my decoration work this week:


There are 3 of these guys, one for chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup and caramel syrup


These jars will have jelly beans, mini marshmallows, choc chips and m&m's in them...


...with these little guys inside to scoop them out!


And lastly, these little signs will be sitting inside icfe-cream bowls (yes, bowls that actually look like ice-cream...I haven't taken a picture of them, bad blogger!) with little spoons to dish out sherbert (my mum's request), 100's & 1000's, coconut and peanuts.

Mum and I also bought two big metal pots with lids (12L ones!) that we will store all of the ice-cream in. These will also have signs and ribbon. Unfortunately, they are at my parents house, so no photos for the moment.

Oh and I printed out and stung up the awesome banner from my previous post, which I love! :) Everything is now basically done, we just need to buy all the yummy treats to go inside!

I can't wait to see it all set up at the party, I hope everyone has a good time making their own sundaes!!

signs

I've decided that work takes away too much time from blogging. It's just rude really! I feel like I have all of these things to blog about, and not enough time to do it! *sheesh* :)

Meanwhile, rant now over, I would like to show you some things I've been working on today!

First up, a little sign for beside our guestbook (all going well, the guestbook will have an entire blog post to itself!). I plan on reusing this little frame at the wedding for instructions for the thumb guestbook.



Second, the sign from an earlier post:



Now this is the one I would love some feed back on. The frame for this one will also be reused at the wedding on the cake table, with this little beauty inside:


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(come on, it's almost mandatory to have this phrase somewhere in your wedding these days, isn't it??)

My question however, is whether you think the sign I have made is readable...for the guests who DON'T stare at fun typography signs all day (like the rest of us!). I tried to make each line of the poem a different colour (grey/black/grey/black) to try and make it a little easier to read. Did it work, or do I need to hit the drawing board again? Thoughts?

cute little sign!

This evening I thought I would show you guys a little something that I've been working on.

During my wedding blog stalking, I came across this awesome little poem in a Ruffled blog post. I thought it would be a great addition to our engagement party, in particular so that those who are drinking alcoholic beverages don't get their cups mixed with the non-alcoholics!



I love the idea of filling one of the jars I've decorated with some black textas and popping a print with this poem on it next to it!

I'm trying to create a print on Photoshop. This is the look I'm going for:


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However, I'm not terribly good at working out which fonts to use and where to place them. Hopefully I get it sorted and can create something half decent!

Do you guys think this is a good idea?

layout

Ok I just made a quick layout concept for our party, and thought I'd share! It's very dodgy and in no way accurate in terms of sizing, etc. but it's a general idea. I'm working from memory here - our family used this hall for both my brother's engagement party and my SIL's 21st, so I already know it's a great space and therefore didn't go down and check it out. Only bad thing is that it means I am trying to remember everything from...oh a while ago! I will organise a visit before the day of the party, but for now, memory it is!



The pink dots are the floating candle pieces, and the white ones represent the flower jars...apologies for the dodgy-ness!

I also have purchased these lovelies from various eBay stores to hopefully decorate the room with. I'm thinking about using them in groups along the edge of the stage, the kitchen window bench (the shutter will be closed to not see in the kitchen) and also on the cake/card cage tables. What do you think?


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What do you think?

On a side note, I've spent a very productive afternoon reorganising all of the wedding stuff I have collected so far (my folder is full of pretty things now!) and also organising everything I've collected and bought for the engagement party...and I've discovered the engagement party is going to need a folder all of it's own! Did anyone else find that? Or am I just an overly-organised freak? :)