a catch up post

Well! Things are really flying by now, although I have to admit it may make for boring blogging - posts listing what we are accomplishing aren't as interesting as projects with pretty pictures! I'll try to keep them to a minimum or at least try to make them interesting, but as this blog was originally created to document the process of planning, I really feel I should jot these things down :) And this post may be a long one...but I think it may be one of my favourites!!

The future mister and I have continued our streak and have been plowing along, knocking things off our list this week! After last week's ring buying, suit purchasing and invitation sending frenzy, we have jumped into a week of suit alterations, wedding dress alterations (well, the appointment booking anyway!), florist appointments and trial dinner arrangements!

Oh! And we've received our first official mail RSVP! That was on Monday (09/07/12) and since then we've slowly had a few more trickling in. I think we're up to 11 official RSVP guests now!

Yep, that's a sneak peek at our invites for you!
Post coming soon!

The future mister's suit now fits him perfectly and now he can move onto getting his groomsmen all suited up. In a lovely moment of serendipity (and networking!) the future hubs went to the football with my Dad last night, in the corporate box, thanks to my Dad's work (my Dad works for a football store, owned by an ex-football player). While there, they were sitting with none other then the owner (or co-owner...something along those lines? I'm not clear on the details...someone important anyway) of men's suit store Ron Bennett. One thing led to another, the subject of our wedding must of come up, presumably because my Dad introduced my man as his future son-in-law, and low and behold - the future hubs has now been told to head on into a Ron Bennett store, pick our some suits and contact said important man and he will arrange for a very significant discount. *gobsmacked*. Needlessly to say, we are very grateful and still can't believe that someone who barely knows us would be so generous!

I also had a florist appointment this week with the lovely ladies at Kingswood Florists. This Florist is owned by family friends - Jo and her daughter Tiffany. Tiffany and I grew up dancing together (we're talking a good 13 years or so of our lives!), and I'm over the moon that she is doing my wedding flowers for me! We had a wonderful meeting earlier in the week - I took along my photo of my inspiration bouquet and of my girls dresses and we sorted everything out. I trust Tiffany completely and like I said to her, I'm less concerned about having specific flowers in my bouquet and more about it being the "look" of the bouquet I was going for. The lovely white fluffiness, the dusty miller and the sprigs of lavender. Not fussed on what flowers make the white fluffiness though! Same with the girls bouquets - we discussed the look we were going for and discussed which roses and flowers would be best, but again - if substitutions are necessary on the day to get the colours we are after, as opposed to the specific *flowers*, I would prefer to have similar colours then specific flowers and I trust that Tiff will make something beautiful. I can't wait to share everything with you guys after the wedding! We chatted about so many little details for the bouquets but I won't share them all now...I'll let the pictures do the talking after the big day!

Earlier in the week, Mum and I had headed to A Bride's Blessing to pay off the rest of my wedding dress and book in my first alterations appointment following which we picked up the mister and headed over to The Sebel to catch the end of their Wedding Expo so we could see the rooms all set up and get an idea of the table colours. The colours were something we've been struggling with as we didn't want to have the room overwhelmed with colour, yet thought the idea of mixing colours would look strange. As such, we were leaning towards the idea of perhaps having a neutral, like ivory or cream, for our chair ties and center squares. We had tossed with the idea of silver/grey but thought that with our centrepieces being wood/earth tones, it might clash.

However, when we arrived at the Sebel, we were pleasantly surprised to discovered one of the rooms set up with a variety of purple and grey options - perfect for us to look at! One table was purely purple - purple organza table squares and purple chair ties. We quickly vetoed that as too much purple for what we have in mind. I very much prefer purple as a highlight colour, as opposed to a central colour.

While this mightn't look like too much here, I've seen
a picture of our reception room done in all purple...
It seemed like too much!

They also had a few chairs done up with silver satin doubled up with purple organza chair ties, with purple organza table squares...which we also vetoed. However, when we saw the tables with the silver satin chair backs and the purple organza table squares, we were surprised to find we liked them! I didn't think that a) mixing mediums (organza and satin) would be a good idea or b) mixing colours would be a good idea. I thought it would be best to stay uniform - one medium, satin or organza (I thought it would look messy to mix!) and our coordinator tended to veer us away from mixing colours. But I guess in this case you are mixing more of a neutral and a colour, which is probably why it works better. And it ends up being just a little pop of purple in the middle of the table (and the organza being somewhat transparent also helps!) instead of the whole room seeming purple!

Please ignore a) the bad photography and b) the bad styling of this table. What actually swayed us was a differently styled table, in the same colour scheme which was better dressed. Of course, I didn't take a photo of that table. Typical. Also, this room wasn't styled by our coordinator. We visited her rooms, which were styled in deep blues and another in black and white. They were perfect - ever bow was perfect, everything was lined up beautifully...I was reassured to see how beautifully dressed the tables she did were. Unlike these droopy bows...*awkward*

That still left us with the concern that the look we wanted for our centrepieces might clash with the grey...but when we held up this picture:

[source] ...to the middle of the table (keeping in mind it would have similar flowers to my bouquet, including sprigs of lavender) we were surprised to find it worked perfectly fine! When I thought about our favours and their packaging (more on this later!) and how they would also tie all these elements together, I was pretty sold on the colour scheme. Thankfully, the future mister was happy with it as well, so the process we were both dreading seems to be a lot easier then we could have hoped! Given that the mister has now settled on a grey suit, we are less inclined to go with ivory tables...we feel like that would clash a bit more then a bit of wood in our centrepieces with silver/grey chair ties!

We took some time to have a look at our reception room and talk about where we would like to display things, have things set up and talk a bit about how we would like to decorate the dance area (still debating on this!). Mum and I showed the future hubby the block of 4 rooms we had booked for us all to stay the night before, with the two end rooms being the rooms we will be getting ready in on the big day. They are nothing fancy, just nice, standard rooms (the gorgeous, big, Bilpin suite was booked by another wedding :( ... ) but they have their own balcony and us girls are looking forward to taking that over once the boys head over to the Chapel ahead of us! We are also going to enjoy spending some time together the night before, before heading our separate ways.

We got to have a look at the Deluxe Suite we will be spending our wedding night in (or one of the similar rooms I should say since there are a few). We are hoping to break our "Spa Curse" on our wedding night - every single time we stay in a hotel room with a spa bath, or even just book into a hotel with a spa in *general*...it doesn't work. Or it's broken. Or out of order. For whatever reason! We are yet to stay in one that actually works! We have a lovely spa bath in our Deluxe Suite and all I can say is - the damn thing better work!!

We also managed to sneak some quiet time in our little Chapel and get some photos of the grounds.

I have to say, this was my favourite part of the day. We managed to get to the Expo right at the end of the day, when most people were gone, so it was lovely and quiet. When we visited our Chapel, there was no one there. A big change from the first time we visited, when it was bustling with people.




This time, it was just us, and Mum. And it felt so right. So real. Everything just suddenly seemed like it clicked into place and everything we have been doing was really going towards something real - a real day that was really going to happen, and soon! It was lovingly overwhelming...we were standing at the front of the Chapel and the future mister turned to me and said, "This is where we are going to be standing, when we get married. You're going to be standing there, I'm going to be standing here"...

Then we had a bit of confusion over left and right sides...but he was right. Haha.

I had no idea my Mum was taking this photo...
She's not the best with her iPhone camera but it's so cute!

We left the Sebel that day very excited and despite the fact that we haven't yet picked our music or our readings, and we haven't done our programs or place settings or a billion other little things...I could have had our wedding the next day...We suddenly felt just how ready we were to be married!!!

Did anyone else have a moment like that?

rings, invites and suits, oh my!!

I've got so many half-written posts saved at the moment... But I feel that this post should jump the queue. It's a little hodge podge of a post, but it's a fun one!

We've continued on with our wedding planning roll in the last week or so, knocking things off our lists left, right and centre! We've paid our first installment on our photography package, I no longer have a naked groom and we have ordered our wedding bands! On top of all that - we sent out our wedding invites! Ahhhh!!

First up - lets talk about the future Mr's suit. For a while now, this has been the inspiration picture we've been working with. We love the look of the groomsmen in vests, and the contrast of colours. Although, the future hubby's is a darker grey then this picture, and the groomsmen will be in more of a charcoal colour.

[source]
The future hubs found an awesome suit that he hasn't been able to get his mind off, so we went back on Thursday to check it out. He decided it was the one. It's from a store called "YD" and the suit is called the "Hada". It's a grey suit with dark charcoal highlights along the pockets/collar (tying in with the idea of the groomsmen's suits). He also picked up a matching vest and, after trying on a couple of colours, decided on a black shirt! A bold move but I have to say, it looks fantastic. When he takes off his jacket, he still looks very smart and sophisticated with a black shirt and his grey vest. It's a great look. Now we just need to get the men suited up and the ties sorted!

[source]
Friday I nervously took a box of sealed envelopes to work with me, bought stamps (I was 4 invites off getting a cash bulk order so had to stand in the post office and stamp them all!) and then sent off my babies with the hope that they would safely reach their recipients. I can't even begin to describe how nervous I was to send these - it seems irrational actually but I was so nervous that there was some mistake that I had overlooked or there was someone I had missed or mistakenly addressed the invites to...

I was on my own on my lunchbreak...best picture I could get!

Yes, I had to stand in the post office and stamp 46 of these.
If the people in there didn't think I was strange already,
They probably did when they saw me taking pictures...

I decided to have a wedding free weekend after sending out the invites but it really didn't quite end up that way! I did go with my family to visit my Nan at her nursing home for her birthday but afterwards we decided to go down to the jewellery store where my engagement ring was purchased as they had a big sale on that was ending this weekend! We had gotten a previous quote for our wedding bands there and when we purchased our rings this weekend, we ended up getting my wedding band, the future hubs wedding band AND my eternity ring for the same price we had been originally quoted for just the two bands!! Since my rings have to be custom ordered to fit my engagement ring, it seemed crazy not to get them both at such a good deal... The future hubby will just sit on my eternity ring until he seems it's appropriate to give it to me I guess!

Our rings are due to come in on the 10th of August and I'm very excited to see my band with my engagement ring (unfortunately there wasn't one in store to try with my ring...but it's the exact matching band to my ring so it was sorta a no-brainer for me).

Monday and Tuesday were spent nervously anticipating everyone receiving their invitations (and their responses!). I didn't have to wait long to start receiving messages from my girlfriends :) The first was from my lovely MOH (who even went so far as to admit she photographed the opening of the invitation...no doubt I will share those photos!) and my bridesmaids and close friends soon followed. Everyone seems to love them, which has been a relief! I was worried about how they would travel in the mail but they seem to have done well. Once I have a better idea that most people have received their invites, I will happily share with you all. In the meantime, I have some DIY posts coming up, as well as some decor posts.

Blurring really kills the prettiness...damn privacy!

Did anyone else get SUPER nervous sending out their invitations? I feel like I was irrationally so!

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:


[source]
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