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?

flower girl bags!

Finally, one of the promised DIY projects I've been working on! I told you they were coming...unfortunately a lot of the projects I've been working on I can't unveil until AFTER our wedding, but this little one I definitely can!

For the littlest members of our bridal party, I have been putting together some goody bags as their thank you presents! You have already seen the colouring books I made to go inside these little beauties, but along the way I have been picking up other little trinkets for the kiddies as well. But before we get there, let's show off the bags.

I purchased some canvas bags from our local Spotlight store and got to work designing a little flower girl pattern with the girls' names to print on my trusty iron-on transfer paper (this stuff has become my best friend throughout DIY wedding projects!). After flipping the image and printing it out, the project was obviously a simple one. Cut as close to the transfer design as possible and iron on! Unfortunately, my old, trusty iron-on transfer brand is discontinued and it took me a while to find a half-decent one...but this one isn't too bad.

This is how the bags turned out! One for each girl, with their name on the front.

And these are the goodies I've collected for the insides so far:

Each of the girls so far have their colouring in book, a pack of coloured pencils, a packet of fairy stickers, a lip gloss and (tying in with the mini-theme that seems to be an undercurrent of our wedding) little Cinderella and Prince Charming Wedding dolls!

Waiting to be added to to each of these bags is one of these little bracelets - each little miss will have one to match the backs of their colouring in books and lipglosses, as they have either pink or purple sets in their bags and one will have a flower and one will have a butterly...each with their initial on it.

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I hope they will like their little collection of goodies. I'm debating whether to give them to them before the ceremony, while we are all getting ready, or to have them waiting for them on their chairs in the reception. Currently I'm leaning towards having them waiting for them on their chairs, so that they can have something to do during the reception!

Coming up soon is the ring bearer version ... what do you guys think so far? Such an easy DIY! What did you do for your little bridal party member thank you gifts?

our first RSVP

WOW! Guests only started receiving their invitations on MONDAY (02/07/12) and the same day (!!) we already received our first electronic RSVP.

The future hubby's friend from school, Kayla, & her
partner, Nathan, are officially coming to our
wedding!

I only realised today when I checked my email (I've been a bit slack over the last few days thanks to a cold and being a bit lazy!)

This was great news for me, because it let me know that the RSVP tool on our wedding website actually works! I decided to include this to allow for another route for RSVPing - to try and eliminate unnecessary chasing later on. While I would love for everyone to reply traditionally, I recognise that for some people it will be easier for them to RSVP electronically...particularly if they are already on our wedding site for other information. And now that I know it works, all the better!!

I'm so excited to have our first official guests RSVP. Now I can't wait to receive our first official mail RSVP!

We have real, live guests coming to our wedding! Eeep!

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.

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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!

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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!

into double digits!

Today we are officially under the 100 day mark! 99 days until our wedding and we have been busy little wedding bees this week!

All our wedding invites are finally finished and stuffed into their pretty little addressed envelopes - all that is left to do is seal them with the gorgeous little wax seal I bought today and send them on their merry way. I visited the local post office today to check that they could be hand-cancelled (they can) and check the postage that needed to be on them, only to discover we don't actually have to put stamps on them if we don't want - we can do what is called a "cash bulk payment", pay for all the postage together and send them off without stamps. They will still be hand stamped by the post office to say they have been paid, but they don't require an actual stamp. It would save me trying to chase down pretty stamps, which would mean we could get our invites out quicker...It's food for thought!

We met with our wedding coordinator on Wednesday! It was a great meeting - I had a million questions about how things would be working, all of which she happily answered and I can now sleep a little easier knowing how things will run, who will be doing what and which things we can/can't do (pretty much everything we wanted to do, we can). We also got to sit down and have a first look at the colours for our seat ribbons and the linen squares for our tables...the choosing of these may be quite a process!! Luckily for us, there is a Bridal Expo at our venue in a couple of weeks, so we are going to head down and see things set up so we can get a better idea. Mum and I went last year but the future hubs hasn't really seen the room set up so will get a chance to have a better idea of what we're trying to visualize. A couple of the colours we are considering are highly likely to be used as well, so it will be good to see them in person!

We also got a chance to show our coordinator (the lovely Rebecca) some of the final inspiration pictures we'd chosen for our centrepieces. We were a little worried that the rustic vibe we were going for was going to be something the venue wasn't able to do, given that much of what they show in the Expos/packages lean towards more of a glass/floral look and these are what we had taken in to show her:

The one the future hubs originally voted for
...with some alterations on the flowers

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The one I recently fell in love with...

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The one we've decided together that we love!!!!!

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Luckily for us, Rebecca said that she has about 3 florists that she works with and she thinks that she has one in mind that should be able to do something for us that will work! We're quite excited to see what we come up with now! Of course, the flowers within would reflect the style of my bouquet.

We also received a call from our DJ/MC company yesterday, who confirmed our details and stated they would be sending through all the paperwork for us to get started on. Looking forward to picking out all our music (which has already begun) and officially jotting it all down!

Other projects have been coming along as well...items for some bridesmaids gifts arrived this week for me to work on (sorry, those will be post-wedding posts!) and I purchased some items for the flowergirls bags (a post on these will be coming VERY soon!). Our table numbers will be officially finished in the next week or so and a post will be up on those very soon also. Everything finally feels like it is starting to come together! The future hubs and Best Man are heading out to look at suits again tomorrow while Mum and I hit up Winter Magic (remember WM from last year?) Oh, and MoH Annie and I also hit up the shops on Sunday to start looking for Bridesmaid shoes and also did some wedding night lingerie shopping - that was loads of fun and probably deserves a post to itself!!!

But remember those little triplets we were all waiting on? Well they came into the world last Friday! Groomsmen Mark and proud Mum Kylie welcomed little Evelyn, Connor and April into their family on the 15/06/2012 and the fiance and I went to the hospital to visit them last Sunday. They are teeny and just precious. I can't believe these little people will be at our wedding! Making the two of us all clucky they are...aren't they just precious?

Three sleeping angels...so tiny and precious!

So - this weekend is almost a weekend off from hardcore wedding planning for me. I plan to keep my eye out at Winter Magic for any awesome decor items and I might get a chance to get started on the wax seals on Sunday. But hopefully with the invites almost on their merry way to our guests (I will be sad to see them go!) I'll be posting a little more regularly around here soon. Until then - I hope all is well and I am still reading everyone else's blogs and enjoying them thoroughly! (Particularly all those wedding recaps that are out and about for the newlyweds! Congratulations to all you new Mrs!!! xxxx)

my wedding dress...

I have a number of posts floating around my head and pictures ready to go - finding the time to write them is proving difficult. However I just had to share with you all -

I just got the phone call to say my dress is in store! How exciting! Now is when it all starts to feel real I think! The fittings will begin, alterations...I can't wait!

It does mean I have to make a few decisions before my first fitting though. I'll be making the first date when I drop in to make the final payment on my dress in the next 2 weeks. I need to decide on undergarments and the big one...

My shoes.

Now, I thought I had my shoes set. I had purchased these purple beauties and I won my gorgeous "I Do" stickers from Happily Ever After.

Purple Pretties

Now the problem is, I bought these shoes before I bought my dress. I was hoping for a pretty shot like this you see:

Still an awesome shot!

But ever since I chose my dress, these gorgeous purple pretties haven't been feeling quite right. My dress has quite a vintage feel about it and these babies...well, they feel more modern. I took them with me when I tried on my dress for the second time, the day I ordered it, and I didn't quite feel it.

Since then, my mind has been wandering back to these beautiful little creations that I snapped at Forever New.

Lace Beauty

When Mum and I went shopping for her MoTB dress, I took my Mum into the local Forever New store to get her opinion. She loves them and votes for them hands down. So now I put the question to you my dear readers! Help a bride-to-be out! I know it's hardly fair, since you haven't seen my gown (and won't til after the wedding!) but I'll leave you with the words - vintage-style, lace and beading. Which shoe would you do? Bold, different, PURPLE? Or traditional, pretty, LACE?

{and of course either will be adorned by my gorgeous "I Do" stickers! That goes without saying!}

dressing my Mumma

Yesterday my Mum and I went shopping to start searching for her Mother of the Bride dress. Prior to that, we'd only had a look at one dress in a local store, that was pretty but wasn't quite *perfect*.

Yesterday we has been tossing up between going to two different shopping centres (or malls for the American readers :) hehe) We *almost* went to the one closer to my workplace and decided against it because it was the bigger centre and we figured we would likely need a full day there - yesterday we only had a half day. As it turns out, it was the best choice we made all day!

When we made it to Penrith Westfields, the first place we headed to was Myer. We didn't find a lot in here for my Mum to try on (it's a smaller Myer, with less choice than the bigger centre closer to my work) BUT I did try on a potential dress for bridal shower/kitchen tea. My mum loved it, I loved it and now I can't stop thinking about it. I think that means I need to go back and get it. I tried searching for it on the Miss Shop website and it's not listed yet (I think it's new stock) and all I have is a really bad iPhone dressing room mirror picture of it... I can't decide whether to share it with you or wait to see if it shows up on the website! But to give you an idea - its vintage-style lace, with a black band waist, fitted, strapless dress. It's elegant, stylish and says "Bride" without screaming it. I think maybe it's perfect....

After not spotting anything in Myer for Mum, we decided to head to the Food Court for lunch, then hit the ground running. Just before the Food Court though, we passed Diana Ferrari and I steered Mum closer - "Wait, duck in here for a second...look at that dress at the front." All the other dresses were darker, winter colours, but this one dress hanging right out front waiting for us had everything we were looking for - fitted, cap sleeves, came with a matching jacket and in a colour that complimented our wedding colours just perfectly.

The woman in store, Kylie, was just LOVELY, and upon finding out what we were shopping for, started helping us out immediately. We got Mum her size dress and jacket to try on, and while she was in the change room Kylie found her the perfect matching shoes and clutch, so when Mum walked out she had everything styled and didn't have to imagine a thing.

She looked stunning!

We knew straight away it was the perfect dress. Mum's first words were, "Ok, I don't need to look anywhere else". The dress was SO flattering and it was everything Mum had been looking for. The fact that she didn't even need to go elsewhere to find the perfect shoes and bag only sweetened the deal! Mum felt fabulous and it shone through. I'm so happy about how great she feels.

Below is the dress, jacket and shoes Mum purchased for our big day! (unfortunately the clutch isn't on the site) For some reason the outfit appears to be more of a white colour on the website but in reality the dress is an Oyster colour. The shoes at the bottom match the band around the middle of the dress, with the rest of the dress being slightly lighter then the shoes, so they can give you a better indication of the colouring. I can't wait to see it against the girls dresses, it should blend in so well with the colour palate, while still being distinctive enough for my Mumma to feel special :)

The dress:

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The jacket: (Mum wanted a little jacket to wear during the ceremony and remove during the reception for par-tay time!)

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The shoes: (Mum LOVES these - they aren't too tall, super comfortable and the perfect colour!)

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I still can't believe we found my Mum's whole outfit within half an hour of being at the shops. We spent the rest of the afternoon just browsing and enjoying an afternoon together. My mum also saw these shoes (remember them from this post?) in person and loved them... But more on that soon!

Shoes from Forever New but not available online. A black version can be found here and a similar white version, minus the lace, here
How did you go finding your Mum her MotB dress? Was it easy or difficult? I've heard some amazing stories! We ran into the mother of an old friend while shopping who shared her MotB dress story with us - she had given up on finding hers, then walked into a store (the store I bought my wedding dress from!) and they had the dress she had been searching for, in the perfect colour, IN HER SIZE out the back, just needing a new zipper. She paid for it and they set about putting in a new zipper for her. That night, her father had a stroke and ended up in hospital. If she hadn't walked into that store and found that dress, she wouldn't have found one because she she spent up until the wedding caring for her father and making the bridesmaid dresses. Talk about meant to be!!

How did your MotB shopping go? Have you started? Are you looking forwarded to getting your Mama all dressed up?

Before the I Do's giveaway!

Looking for a "Here Comes the Bride" sign? Check out this awesome giveaway going on at the moment over at Before the I Do's! Good luck!

garters

I've been looking at beautiful garters for a while, and the time is getting closer to when I should pick one and order it. As usual, the wonderful etsy (and similar sites such as madeit and wedzu) have wonderful selections of handmade pieces.

I've pretty much decided that I'd like my garter to have that lovely feeling of old world charm, and that I'd like a set that has a tossing garter so that I can keep my garter to hand down to one of my children, one day (hopefully!). Although, we do have this little beauty that the future hubby caught at Groomsmen Mark's wedding (remember him, Kylie and their upcoming triplets from the Groomsmen and Babies post?) in the October before we got engaged.

I'm tempted to use this garter as our toss garter - pass on the luck to another couple!
I've also decided that I think I'll end up with a blue garter, to use as my "Something Blue". A little pop of blue as my garter seems like a lot of fun, even if only I know it's there for the most part! These are a few of the garters I've had saved in my etsy favourites for a while...any of them tickle your fancy? What style garter will you be wearing/did you wear for your Big Day? Did you/will use it as your "Something Blue"?

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...wedding planning update...

Hi BlogLand!

Wow, I've really disappeared for the last few weeks haven't I? I do apologise! I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth, we've just been busy with those wedding planning things that aren't very exciting to blog about until, well, they are finished! For example, over the past couple of weeks we've been:

- Picking out our menu options, or at least what we would like to try at our upcoming food tasting. Not really fun to blog about UNTIL our tasting, which I promise to recap (it may leave your mouth watering...particularly the desserts!)

- Started organising our ceremony order and talking about our vows. We've still got a way to go, including picking our readings, but once we have those chosen I can start blogging about our choices and start working on our programs (another DIY you'll see on here!)

- Finalising our guest list (well, it's *hopefully* the final list). While it was hard it has by no means been dramatic (thankfully) so hardly blog worthy... BUT it has meant a start on the most exciting and time consuming part...

...drumroll please...

- Making a start on our invites!! Last pay day I picked up all of our card stock and envelopes and we have been waiting patiently for our little wooden hearts to make an appearance on our doorstep. Yesterday was spent printing, cutting, hole punching (my arms are sore today to prove it!) and sticking, and tomorrow will be much more of the same. Today when I left for work I discovered a little parcel sitting on our doorstep containing our hearts (yay!) which means that we can get our main invites completely finished!!

I looooove deliveries!
So that's my plan for this weekend. Next week will be the Reception and RSVP cards, followed by the envelopes. We just need to follow up on confirming addresses for our overseas guests and we should be right on track to post out our invites at the 3 month mark (although we're likely to send our overseas invites a little earlier). Last night was the first time I could really see them starting to come together and I began to relax a little. I've had a bit of a hard time with our invites... I've had a vision for them but I was having a hard time turning it into a reality. I guess I was scared to try for fear it wouldn't live up to my expectations. I'm still a little worried it won't, but the more I see them come together the better I feel. I do still wonder what our guests will make of them. While everyone in BlogLand probably won't bat an eyelid at them (they aren't that flash haha) they are rather different to what everyone around us here in RL usually get for wedding invitations so we might get mixed responses. BUT! I guess that's the point. I mean, that's what we have wanted to do with our wedding - find little things that are different! :) The main invite design is quite simple (despite my love of calligraphy) as the future hubby and I worked together to get something we both loved and the future mr is a big fan of clean and simple. We've definitely tried to keep the 'bundle of love letters' feel to the overall look, as per the original inspiration, and a rustic element to it (as the future hubby has been leaning to in most of the inspiration pics he has liked throughout our planning process for much of the wedding). I wish I could show them to you now, but all in good time...

- I also started working on a wedding website for us. I'm still in two minds about whether to use it or not. Because we are planning to use a StoryMix Media smart phone app video account for our wedding in a way it seems to make sense to have one - to explain the app, how to use it and the code and also to have information on the Resort, accommodation, directions, etc. on there... But at the same time I've never received a wedding invite where someone has had a wedding website before so it almost feels kind of...pretentious maybe? I don't know if that's quite the right emotion but regardless I'm not quite sure about it yet... Is anyone else using a wedding website? Have many of you received invites linking to a website before?

Needless to say we still have a lot to do before the wedding but we're getting there. Now that we've made a start on the invites I'm feeling better about the list! It feels like one of the biggest things is being crossed off so it's real progress, instead of just little DIYs. It does make for boring blogging though!

But fear not! I purchased a number of items for more DIYs to make a start on over the next few days (after the invites or whenever I need a break from them!) so there will be posts coming your way soon. In the mean time I'd love to hear from some more 2012 Blogging Brodes below - how are you all going with your plans and To-Do Lists?!

[wedding planning image source]