featured!

I know I've been MIA and I promise to get back to regularly scheduled blogging soon, but I just had to share the fact that some of our engagement shots have been featured on the wonderful "Love and Lavender" blog today! How exciting!

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!

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!

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.

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!

Harry Potter engagement session!

Ok, as a Harry Potter nerd (come on, I know there's more of you out there!) I had to share this awesome engagement session I stumbled up on weddinggawker! It's so cool. If the fiance didn't hate HP I would totally try to talk him into this - particularly since we have our own "Hogwarts Express" not far from us at the Zig Zag Railway!



Oh yeah. We totally did that. Costumes and all. Gotta admit, would be a pretty cute photo session!

...anyway...

Back to my original point! THIS awesome engagement shoot! Enjoy!

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check it out guys!

Our mini engagement shoot, engagement story and the paper dollies for my bridesmaids have been featured on This Charming Wedding! So exciting! A big thank you to Danielle from This Charming Wedding for featuring our story!!! xx

our mini shoot Pt. 2

Ok so we've discovered that my computer did in fact eat some of our pictures! For some reason, whenever I rotate a photo using Window's Photo Viewer - it disappears! Like, vanishes. It's not sent to the recycling bin it's just...gone. But my brother still had a copy of all our pictures on his laptop (but had deleted them from the camera!) so I've managed to get them all back. I KNEW there should have been more colour options with the "He asked" and "She said yes!". Now maybe I can play around and make a second STD and maybe have two different options sent out...that could be fun!

Anyway, just a couple more pictures that were missed in the last round up then...ok yes, they are still pretty similar but I like them. LOL. I think the first two are new favourites as well:



It's nice to get nice photos of you and your partner, isn't it? I rarely get photos of the two of us unless they are self-taken, so they always end up looking the same! (two heads squished into the picture...you know the ones!) It's really nice to have these in general, but in particular to celebrate our engagement. I can't wait to get a proper shoot done! Just have to try not to "pretty" the boy too much... *smiles innocently* Who me? Never!

our mini shoot

Ok, as promised, here are some pics from our mini shoot with my brother. There's only a few different shots because we were really only doing it purely to get some photos for our invites and Save The Dates...that and I didn't want to scare my future hubby with a big stylized shoot! (Although I'm sure my brother would have loved it!) In FH's words, he requested that I not try to "pretty him" with too much lovey dovey stuff. :) He did agree to use the signs though, and one of my favourite shots actually came about because he decided to use one of the signs of his own accord!

With no further ado - some piccies!









And finally, my favourites as mentioned earlier:



These are all unedited...some need cropping and things, but we've only really touched the ones that we've used so far (for invites, etc.) and cropped those to the size we need. None of these have been touched I believe!

I also think that I'm actually missing a few...I seem to remember there being more...I mentioned to my brother after the shoot that we could probably only use the landscape shots, not the long shots, so I think that's all he transferred to my computer. I'm going to find out and if there's any more good ones I'll pop them up.

What do you guys think?

another peek...

So we've decided to re-shoot our photos, for a number of reasons, but there are still a few that we can use...like this one below. I love it hehe. What do you think? I can't wait to finish off our invites now...



I've been running around today, picking up envelopes, backing card, cutters and some paper to try through my printer for the STD/Wishing Well cards. Quite excited to get started, but can't until we agree on an image for our invite, after the next shoot. But I think I like this one^ a lot...maybe for the STDs...(my brother pointed out yesterday how horrible that abbreviation is...)

sneaky peek at our mini shoot...

More pictures later! We're doing a "mini" engagement shoot today with a few different shots...this is just a teaser hehe...Hopefully they turn out great! *fingers crossed*

engagement news

Ok well I promised Save The Dates next buuuuuut I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I've been a busy little engagement bumble bee today and thought I would take a minute to write up a quick note about it!

So, as promised, I started focusing more on our engagement party today. I'm off work today thanks to my crazy head (long story - could probably have a whole blog to itself!), as I was yesterday (hence the reason there were a few posts!). When I got up this morning, first thing I did was add the future hubby's now completed guest list for the engagement party to the guest list I'd already started typing. And BOY is it long! We are doing some "sending an invite to let you know we're thinking of you even though we know you can't come" invites though, so the list will be a little smaller. But still. It's going to be a big party! Luckily, the hall we are having it in is lovely and spacious!

Second, I started contacting people to get their addresses - there are a lot of people we don't actually have addresses for! I plan on keeping this list for my siblings so that when their turn comes around, all they have to do is update the family addresses! Phew. At least we will have all the addresses for the wedding invites ready this way.

I also emailed a friend from school's wife, to see if she is still available to do our engagement cake for the party, and downloaded a bunch of templates for the dessert table at our party...but more on that later!!!

The most exciting thing about today is that we are hoping to get some shots done for our engagement invites, so I can start printing them off and getting them organised to be sent!!! I figured that our weekends are so busy lately, and we are running out of time, that this afternoon would be a great time to get some shots taken. It's sunny for once (it's been raining here a lot lately!), I have the afternoon off, as does future hubby, and my little brother will finish school with a couple of hours of sunlight left! So I've been looking up ideas for our photos (other then our sign props) and have got some that should be fun. I went and bought some sidewalk chalk today, so that should give you some ideas!

If it all goes through this afternoon, I'll post up some sneak peeks in the next couple of days...after we decide which ones we will use for our invites and STDs. Hopefully they turn out well!!! xx

a few cute things

Going through all the bazillion saved wedding-related book marks on my computer (deleting those I've already posted or no longer interested in) and found these. How cute!


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Second, I LOVE this engagement shoot. It's stunning. Everything about it is gorgeous.

I hope we get to have an engagement shoot, but really the reason we need one would be to include on our engagement invites, etc. and we won't be able to get one done in time to make the invites. Besides, my lovely brother is doing the shots for that for us. But it would still be nice...we'll see how we go!