CreativelyWedding

Hen and Stag Party Organisation

2010-07-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

James' brother (and best man) organised his stag party in its entirety with a little help from one of James' mates in San Francisco to coordinate those on the American side of the Atlantic. Since I wasn't involved in the organisation nor the event I can't really comment on it much but I know that they spent just under a week in Las Vegas and had a fantastic time.

Being the control freak that I am, I was going to organise my own Hen Party, despite protestations from my bridesmaids that I wasn't allowed. Then being in a foreign country and a very different time zone got in the way so I gave in and handed over to Polly (the organisation queen). I decided to keep it very small and only invited my 4 bridesmaids but even so they didn't all know each other very well and somehow also managed to be impossible to contact! So I found a date we were all free and then Polly researched where we could go and booked us (the best bargain deal of course!) the Girl's Night In package at The Aztec Hotel in Bristol.

The hotel itself is lovely, decorated in country manor style, and the weather was amazing as well - so warm we were sat outside in just bikinis, in April! They have a beautiful pool and spa and the deal was cheap enough that those of us who wanted could get treatments on top. I got a facial and a pedicure and my pedicure lasted the 2 weeks until the wedding :)

The package was great, we got an extra suite to gather for dinner and DVDs and they brought us champagne and tapas style food to our room and then chocolate fondue and icecream with a wide variety of dipping items. My bridesmaids also brought a massive selection of snacks and drinks from a list of my favourites.

Needless to say we didn't manage to finish them all (though we tried until we felt sick!) but we did keep most for the wedding day and got through most of the rest while we were getting ready!

The Wedding Ring

2010-07-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is the beautiful and interesting solitaire ring my husband proposed to me with.Whilst it wasn't what I had imagined when dreaming up engagement rings, it was far nicer than what I had thought I wanted :)

Unfortunately, when I started looking for a wedding band to go with it, I began to question my love of the ring. Next to a straight, traditional wedding band it sits completely wonky so I started the hunt for a shaped band that would fit next to it.

Pretty soon it became clear that stores simply don't have rings the right shape, despite many of them selling engagement rings a similar shape to mine. I found curved rings designed to fit around other shapes that worked pretty well..

...and I found the exact right shape in H. Samuel in Shrewsbury in England, only to be told that the ring was only for sale alongside their matching engagement ring. I asked to try it on anyway and found that the ring was actually the mirror image of the shape I needed anyway.

I started searching on the internet and found several candidates but the problem was I couldn't try them on to see how well they fitted against my ring so I was reluctant to go for it and continued my search in shops.

Eventually, after hearing from jeweler after jeweler that I would have to get one made, we decided it was probably worth the money to get one that would be a perfect match. So, after getting some recommendations, we went to Union Street Goldsmith in San Francisco and got them to make a custom ring.

James, on the other hand, has always been self-conscious about his hands and has never worn any jewelry in his life so he decided he didn't want a wedding ring at all. I wasn't particularly bothered by his decision but it turned out to be quite a controversial one. The vast majority of our friends and many family members were shocked by his decision and we both ended up having to explain his choice on many occasions.

Wedding Accessories

2010-07-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

The jewelry was the first part of the wedding that I thought of making myself. I had a clear idea in my head of what kind of headdress I wanted and I couldn't find one anywhere, thus decided to have a go at making one. From there it spiralled into me making all the jewelry for myself, my bridesmaids and my mum and eventually into me setting up a jewelry business! Buoyed by the success of my jewelry I gained the confidence to have a go at making many of the other things for the wedding, some of which are already described in previous posts.
I showed my bridesmaids pictures of the types of jewelry I could make and asked them to choose styles of pieces they wanted. I also gave them the choice of pearl, silver or blue, or combinations of the three, and hoped that the result would be fairly different styles which, nonetheless, clearly all went together.

These earrings and necklace were made for Laura along with a matching hair comb similar to the one I made for Lizzie. The necklace is on tigertail wire with silver and glass pearl beads spaced out along it. The earrings are made with the same beads and some delicate wire wrapping on the bottom pearl.

This 3-strand necklace and bracelet set were made for Joey and follow the same silver and pearl theme as Laura's. The slightly smaller glass pearls are set either side with silver beads and spaced apart with silver foil-centred seed beads.

The hair clip is much more decorated than the others, using pearl and silver seed beads to create flowers.

This very simple design was for Polly. The earrings and pendant are made with glass beads and blue and pearl seed beads. The bracelet is made with the same beads but simply arranged in a circle.

And this charm-style bracelet and necklace were made for Lizzie with blue glass beads in two shades and small glass pearls on a silver chain.

These hair pins and comb were made to match with the same blue and white glass crackle beads

After much deliberation over if I wanted pearls in my jewelry or not I eventually decided to stick to materials which would match my ring. Even with this decision made I still got through quite a few designs before finally choosing.

Finally I went for these earrings which are a cluster of swarovski bicone beads attached to a large jumpring, each with a round-ended head pin. The bracelet is very similar - a silver chain with a combination of different sizes of round and bicone faceted swarovski crystals attached along the length.
After testing out different tiaras and hair bands I eventually decided on a simple hair comb encrusted with more swarovski crystals to match the other pieces.

Once my mum had chosen her outfit (brown and cream with a hint of pink) she had a very clear idea of what she wanted in the way of accessories.

All the fascinators in the shops were far too large for mum's taste so I made her this, much smaller and very simple design from 2 different patterns of pheasant feathers.

Mum also described to me a necklace she had seen in a shop which was perfect but too long. Freshwater, uneven pearls coloured with brown and pink simply strung into a single strand necklace and bracelet to match. The clasp and findings are brass so as to blend in better with the overall effect.

It took a long time and a lot of thought but I'm happy with the jewelry I made and it looked perfect on the day. Our photographer was very impressed with it all and took several pictures...

My wedding shoes were not handmade but they were a bargain. I spotted them in Next many months before the wedding for only 20 and decided to buy them even though there was plenty of time for me to find nicer ones (and regret my decision) before the wedding. In the end I didn't find any nicer ones, even in far more expensive shops, and I didn't stop looking at shoes either!

I'm not sure what to do with them now, though. They could be suitable for wearing to other people's weddings depending on my outfit. One of my friends suggested using them to display my jewelry on at craft fairs so I think I will look into that further!

The Cake

2010-05-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

There were 2 main reasons why I did not want to buy a wedding cake from a cake shop: the difficulty I would have had in fitting in a consultation when I wasn't even in the country, let alone the area and my extreme reluctance to spend £300+ on a cake. I know, its an amazing, tiered and highly decorated cake but its still just a cake.

Of course I had another reason as well - the desire to decorate my own. Ever since I was a child and my mum discovered an amazing cake making and decorating shop in Reading cake decorating has been a hobby of mine. Every year I would decorate mine and my mum's birthday cakes and I did quite a few Christmas cakes and birthday cakes for my friends as well. However, decorating the cake was one thing, I didn't feel capable of making it as well which left me with a problem.

Marks and Spencer was my saviour. Whilst I briefly considered buying one of their pre-decorated cakes I still didn't want to spend £200 if I could help it.
So I bought several of their "Traditional Wedding Cakes" which can be bought tier by tier in different flavours. I bought a medium fruit cake and a large sponge cake to provide 2 tiers. Sadly they don't do a round chocolate cake so I bought 2 rectangular chocolate cutting cakes to be kept in the kitchen and served later.

The decoration was obvious to me as soon as I had my butterfly theme in mind. I wanted it to look as if several butterflies had landed on the cake.
I bought some butterfly cutters which also imprint veins onto the wings along with some flower paste (very fine icing paste). The paste sets hard so all I had to do was roll it out, cut out the butterfly and then prop the butterflies up so that they set with the wings at an angle.
Finally I used dusting powder to brush the wings and give them a bit of colour.

Since I only had 2 tiers for the cake stand I used the same decoration as for the tables on the bottom instead. I had also made lots of extra butterflies in case any got broken in transit and these were placed around the bottom for extra decoration.

The cakes themselves totalled £72 and I spent roughly £15 extra on the decorations, though I still have loads of paste and powder left if I ever want to make more decorations.

Flowers

2010-05-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how it started but somehow weddings just have to have flowers and from what I've heard from some sources, flowers usually makes up a large chunk of your overall budget. Don't get me wrong, I wanted my wedding to look pretty but there was no way I was spending £1000 or more on flowers.

Not only that but my colour scheme was blue and there aren't many blue flowers to choose from. In fact, it turns out that in early May the only blue flowers (worth mentioning) in season are hydrangeas. I had issues with that because I wanted cornflowers. I also wanted (white) tulips but was told they weren't in season either. Maybe it was the especially long and cold winter we had but there were definitely tulips for sale the day before my wedding!

I got around the cornflower issue by buying some artificial cornflowers from Hobbycraft. I wasn't too keen on the idea of using artificial flowers for the whole wedding though so I started looking into florists. A quick google search brought me to the conclusion that wedding florists all charge pretty much the same. You can't do a true price comparison without having a consultation with each because the prices they quote on their websites are a guide only. The final cost depends on the types of flowers you want and the complexity and sizes of the arrangements.

As I had minimum time in the UK in which to have consultations I decided to just choose a florist recommended by the venue and go with it. So I went down to Bristol to meet this florist and have a chat about what I wanted. Since the only aspects I had in mind were the colours, this turned out to be a rather awkward conversation. I think I was expecting far more from her in the way of suggestions and ideas, rather than me reel off a list of what I wanted and for her to put together some numbers. We got along better once I had a look at her portfolio and suggested some styles I liked. I chose a small square vase arrangement for the windowsills which she announced at the end was quite expensive as it took a lot of flowers to fill. Why she couldn't have told me at the time so I could possibly have chosen an almost-exactly-the-same-but-cheaper (same size but round perhaps) style I don't know!

Anyway the result was a quotation for 4 bridesmaids bouquets, 1 brides' bouquet, 6 table decorations and a floor-standing pedestal arrangement for £600. It was a reasonable price and my mum thought I should go with it but my fiance thought it was too much to spend on flowers. I would have ignored him had it not been for the nagging control freak inside me suggesting that I could use artificial flowers for a lot cheaper and, most importantly, I could make the arrangements myself. Not only that but I have terrible hayfever and felt that artificial flowers were preferable to sneezing all day...

...So I provided Hobbycraft with a lot more business. Not just Hobbycraft either, I also bought flowers from Dunelm Mill, vases and glass nuggets from Tesco Extra and tin buckets from Homebase.

My venue was a country watermill so I wanted the flowers to be simple and reminiscent of an English country garden

I used 2 shades of cornflowers along with a single white hydrangea flower in the tin buckets to put on each windowsill. I also added a single white butterfly, made from feathers, to each.

The cornflowers were 99p for a stem with 5 flower heads on (3 stems in each bucket) and the hydrangea was £3 per flower, both from Hobbycraft. Buckets were 99p each and the butterflies were around £4 for a pack of about 12.

I wanted the table centres to be a little more elegant but still very simple. I was also very careful about which artificial flowers to use as some look much more realistic than others.

The table centres consisted of fairly large goldfish bowl vases with a handful of colourless, shimmery glass nuggets and a single artificial dahlia head in the bottom. I also used 3 strands of artificial grass around the edges of the bowl.

The bowls were £8.50 and nuggets around £3 a pack, only half a pack is in each bowl. Dahlias were £1.50 each from Dunelm Mill.

I wanted the bridesmaids' bouquets to fit in with the simple, country theme and, although gerbera don't really, these spider gerbera had just enough of a tousled look to be similar to cornflowers. Anyway I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them in Dunelm Mill, its the black centres that does it for me!

Each bouquet is made with 5 gerbera held together with florist's tape and then wrapped with a piece of cream ribbon, held on with 3 pins.

I did quite a bit of research into buying premade, artificial bouquets and discovered that the cost is the same as for fresh flowers. I wouldn't have minded if those companies had access to amazing quality, real-looking flowers but it turned out the flowers were no better than the ones I bought from Hobbycraft and Dunelm Mill.

Each gerbera cost me just £2, making each bouquet just over £10, a saving of £30 on the cheapest price I saw for real or artificial bouquets.

I also used some of my cornflowers with a single artificial leaf to make buttonholes for the groom, best man, ushers and dads. I simply tied the 2 together using florist's tape. One cornflower also made it onto a hairclip for one bridesmaid's hair.

My bouquet contained the only real flowers on display at the wedding. I was conscious that it would be in a lot of photos and possibly very close-up photos so I felt I should use real flowers. I would have done the same for the bridesmaids had I not seen those gerberas and fallen in love with them!

The day before the wedding I set off to Anemone a large florist in Bath to buy the flowers for my bouquet. However, I had got up very early and knew it wouldn't be open yet so I stopped off in Homebase on the way to buy a bucket to fill with water to keep the flowers fresh. In homebase I passed some beautiful blue hydrangeas and, knowing how hard blue flowers were to find, I bought the (fully rooted and growing) potted plant. I then stopped in Sainsbury's and spotted some bunches of white roses for £4 so I bought them and headed back without every making it to Anemone. (Though Anemone did later provide us with some lovely bouquets to give as thanks to people)

I had a minor crisis with my bouquet because the hydrangea head I cut off to make the bouquet the day before the wedding had died by the morning of the wedding. However I just chopped another one off the plant and remade the bouquet on the morning, with some extra roses for added support.

The great thing about using artificial flowers for all these (apart from the fact I had full control over what they looked like) (and the fact that we saved several hundred pounds) was that we were able to give them away to our guests at the end of the night as keepsakes.

Photography

2010-05-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Photography was one of the most difficult aspects of the wedding to organise. I felt that it was one of the most important parts; as the only lasting reminder of the day and the only way to share it with people who couldn't be there. At the same time I didn't want to spend a fortune on it.

I started by googling for photographers in the area and emailing a few who seemed decent and/or cheap. I managed to contact several morons! One site advertised a completely custom photography package with precisely the elements the customer wanted. The reply I got to my email, listing the elements I wanted, was something along the lines of "its this much money for these hours and this, this and this". Sadly "this, this and this" were not what I asked for...

I started again with the list of photographers recommended by my venue as being good quality and good value for money. What I found was that wedding photography usually starts at around £1000 and you could easily spend up to £2000 without getting anything out of the ordinary. At this point I put my fiance on the case who has an even higher aversion to spending money than I do and unfathomable skills with google. Even he could not find anyone with wedding photography experience for cheaper. The other issue we both had with the vast majority of wedding photographers was that they did not provide you with rights to or digital copies of your photos. This meant that, if we wanted any extra prints making for ourselves or friends and relatives, we would have to buy them each time from the photographer.

I had a minor brainwave and advertised on Deviantart for a photographer. My thinking was that this is a website devoted to showcasing people's artwork (including photography, both professional and amateur) and that maybe I could find someone who does wedding photography as a hobby on the side or someone just starting out in the business. The idea was a mutually beneficial agreement where I would get good quality, cheap photos and the rights to copy them and they would get experience and a start on their portfolio. Sadly I didn't manage to find anyone suitable.

In the end I went back to the list of recommended photographers and chose the cheapest one - Graham Morgan - who also provided full resolution, digital copies of all the pictures. I managed to negotiate a further discount for not getting a wedding album as I preferred to make my own.

Check out my future blog post "Reviews" to see what I thought of Graham Morgan and all the other services/suppliers we used for our wedding.

Pictures!!

2010-05-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

Now the wedding is over (in the end it went perfectly and everything came together) I decided to quickly put a couple of pictures up so you can some of the things I mentioned in a previous post.

My dress which is made by Romantica of Devon and bought from Altered Image in Shrewsbury. (This isn't me)

The Groom and ushers' outfits; suits, shirts and cream waistcoats hired from Moss Bros. blue waistcoat (groom) and cravats (ushers) hired from Young's Hire

(Rest assured I will continue to update this blog until I've covered everything before I let it rest, even though the wedding has now been)

Of themes and stationery

2010-05-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

Colour schemes were easy, I had decided at least a year ago that I wanted a purple and cream colour scheme for a simple but dramatic effect. That was derailed rather quickly when someone suggested it was rather winterey but it didn't take much to switch to blue, a nice bright blue, a colour that James (with his blue eyes) looks particularly good in.

Themes took a little longer, mainly because I was adamant that I did not want a theme because I decided themes were just too cheesy. On the other hand a theme makes it so much easier to build up a big picture in your mind. It was when I was designing the invitations (I wanted to make them by hand) that a theme finally emerged. I started by going to Hobbycraft and buying up a selection of items that I thought might come in useful to make the invitations out of:

A couple of heart-shaped punches in different sizes. I wasn't sure if I would use them to punch hearts out of the invite card itself or to make hearts in different colours/patterns to stick onto the invitation.

Some sheets of coloured paper and card, some patterned and some plain, as well as some wedding-ey premade card toppers.

Plain, blank cream cards with envelopes, as well as some extras to practise on.

Rubber stamps with wedding messages on and ink stamp pads in an assortment of colours.

After several ideas and attempts I had made several sample invites that I liked but nothing that was really special. I started googling for images of invitations for inspirations but there was one design that stuck in my head that I had rejected for being far too cheesy. Needless to say that is the design I ended up with and that was the start of my overall theme!

I have rather an obsession with things that are simple yet striking and I think this fits that category.

I started with a stamp saying "Wedding Invitation" using silver ink at the top. Then I used a butterfly stamp which I inked with silver in the centre, blue for the middle of the wings and purple on the edge.

Once stamped I used a craft knife to cut out the butterfly wing shape, following the contours of the stamp outline.

Finally I printed the insert with all the details on onto blue paper so it would show through where the wings had been cut out. I added a few printed butterflies to the insert as well and handwrote the guests' names inside with silver pen.

In the end I followed this theme right the way through, using the same butterflies, from the insert, on the wedding website I made and the same butterfly outline, as on the front of the invites, for the place settings.

I wanted a darker shade for the tables to make them more striking so I chose this indigo shade and tied it in with some purple hints on other decorations. I used the same colour card to write the place settings, also with silver pen and tied very-nearly-the-same-shade ribbon around cream favour boxes. The favour boxes came from Tesco Extra and cost 3.99 for a pack of ten - the cheapest I managed to find once you took into account delivery.

The seating plan was a little more tricky for several reasons. I wanted to be able to print it out which meant I couldn't use silver writing which in turn meant I couldn't use dark paper. In the end I found the perfect solution - a large piece of flower-patterned tracing paper in exactly the right colours which I glued to some cream mountboard. I then printed the numbers in the same shade of blue on a circle and the names onto a ring which I cut out and stuck around the number.

I also used butterflies to decorate the cake, the flowers and for my earrings. I even managed to find some beautiful butterfly thank you cards for my bridesmaids. Check out future blog posts to see more!

The official stuff

2010-04-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

We knew from the start we didn't want to have a religious ceremony so that made our decisions a lot easier. My dreams of an outdoor wedding were dashed (as if an outdoor wedding would have been practical in the UK anyway!) when I found out that weddings can only be conducted in an approved venue in England and Wales (in Scotland, however, you can get married wherever you want!). Beware if you are thinking of a civil ceremony as a compromise between one religious partner and one atheist because you are not allowed anything that could be considered a religious reference anywhere in a civil ceremony.

Once we had chosen a venue we made a provisional booking there and immediately contacted the local registry office to check their availability on that date. Once we had made our booking with the registrar and chosen a time for the ceremony we then confirmed our booking with the venue.

The registrar sent out a provisional booking form to us and then we had to book an appointment to "give notice of intention to marry" at the registry office nearest to where we lived (had we lived separately we would have had to give notice in two different places). Both bride and groom have to have been in the country for a certain time period before they can give notice, even if they are British. Giving notice was simple enough, we had to give the registrar personal information about one another (apparently sometimes they make you do it separately to double check its not a fake marriage) which was inputted into a computer and then printed for us to sign. This document was then placed on display in the registry office for a time to allow anyone to come and object if they wanted to.

We then had to collect the documents from our local registry office and make sure they got to the office nearest our venue. I had some questions I wanted to ask and some passport forms to fill out so I booked an appointment with the registry office and delivered the documents myself. The registry office sent us two booklets with different ceremony options in which we had to choose from and then let them know so I delivered these at the same time and paid the final fee as well.

The deputy superintendant registrar I spoke to when I went to the office was almost too helpful! She described the ceremony procedure in great detail to me and even offered me the chance to practise walking up the aisle to get the speed right. She also explained to me that they require a brief (five minutes even though the information says half an hour) meeting with both bride and groom just before the wedding ceremony takes place to confirm all the details but that this can easily be done separately.

I decided to apply for my passport in my new name before the wedding so as to speed up my visa application process after the wedding. I made sure to get the registrar to fill out her part of the form when I had my appointment in January so I'd have everything I needed when I got back in April. Since I only came back from San Francisco four weeks before the wedding I couldn't post my passport application and still guarantee to get it back before the wedding so I booked an appointment so I could get it back within a week. Its a good job I did as nowhere on the guidance did it mention the need to fill out the form using your new name and signature! I had to fill out a new form when I was there but it wasn't a problem and I have my new passport back already.

Wedding Magazines

2010-04-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

The easiest way to start making progress with my planning was to start with small, easy steps that were not so daunting. My first step was to buy and read wedding magazines which have a wealth of information and ideas. Sadly not one of them contained a guide quite as explicit as I was hoping for but they were a good starting point and a entertaining way to pass a few minutes.

All wedding magazines follow the same format with sections on dresses, accessories, makeup, decorations, ceremony choices, venues and honeymoon destinations. Interestingly I found that the cheaper, half-size magazines were better (in my opinion) because they had far more ideas in and fewer stunning pictures of brides in lovely dresses. One of the most helpful features is usually a checklist of what you need to organise and when, though many things don't need to be done quite as far in advance as the magazines make out. Similarly their sample budgets are very generous in certain areas, don't feel the need to spend as much as they suggest on things!

I also found it great to re-read the magazines many times at different planning stages. The articles you skim over when you are in the early stages are the ones you go back and read thoroughly when you are looking for finishing touches so keep hold of those you have already read!

Venue hunting

2010-04-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Finding a venue was high on my priority list as I'd heard that they often get booked up up to a year in advance.
We quickly decided that Bath was a good place to get married as its a lovely area and the place where we met and went to university together. Unfortunately the fact that we no longer lived there and neither of our parents live there made it much harder to organise everything. Fortunately we do have some friends who still live there and let us stay whenever we needed to but it was still more hassle than it needed to be.

I started with a google search (no surprises there!) of wedding venues in the area and a rough idea of the number of guests we wanted. This allowed me to discount many venues straight away if they did not have the capacity we needed (73 in the end). I also rejected venues which were priced much higher than the average or weren't in the style I was looking for. We wanted a civil ceremony so we wanted to keep the ceremony and reception all in one place to make things easier. Civil ceremonies can only be held in licensed venues so we were able to knock off yet more venues from our list. I also found that almost all hotels would only host the reception until around 5:30 pm unless you paid to hire out the entire hotel for the night, pushing the cost up significantly. We did consider hiring out a hotel and recovering the cost from our guests who would book rooms off us for the night but in the end it would still have worked out much more expensive, not to mention that many hotels added a several thousand pound surcharge on top of the cost of all the rooms for the night.

Whilst I would have liked to stay overnight in the same venue as the wedding I wasn't prepared to pay the extra for it so I stopped looking at hotels apart from a very small number that didn't apply this extra cost. Luckily there are plenty of other venues dedicated purely to weddings and functions, often historic buildings, beautiful gardens or watermills. After making appointments to look round a few of these I was very disappointed to find none of them quite nice enough and began to wonder if the perfect venue was out there for the right price.

Finally I found Priston Mill which was absolutely perfect and booked it almost straight away! The demand was very high at Priston Mill and the weekends were almost fully booked for a year in advance but we were lucky enough to get a slot on a Sunday before a bank holiday Monday. They deal with all the catering in-house as well so no hassle with sorting that out either.

Finding "The Dress"

2010-04-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

Dress hunting, for me, was the most exciting part and therefore the part I started with. I did a google search for wedding dress shops on or near Oxford Street in London and headed down with one of my bridesmaids. Unfortunately I encountered yet another barrier - all the dress shops require you to make an appointment. Being the kind of person who hates it when shop assistants ask if I need any help I wanted to wander in, look at the dresses and then try some on. The thought of having to make an appointment and then have the undivided attention of the sales assistant severely put me off.

So I started in Debenhams and Monsoon where you can look at and try on wedding dresses just like any other clothes. Sadly though, the dresses there, whilst beautiful, were all of a simple design and not really what I was after. Fortunately at this point my bridesmaid stepped in and booked some appointments for me.

I had an appointment later the same day at Berketex bride. Here we hit another snag, the lady wanted to know what kind of dress I wanted and I had no clue. Of course I had looked through all the magazines at the pretty dresses but what I had found was that I really liked them all. When I had a stab at describing what I thought I liked best she told me those features were never all found in one dress. I clearly wasn't expressing myself properly because I had seen all those features in one dress, in several dresses in fact, in her shop and I told her so. In the end we settled for me looking through their racks of dresses and choosing the ones I wanted to try on. She then ushered me into a (huge) changing room with the dresses, drew the curtains and left to get me some shoes. When she came back she seemed slightly cross and said she had expected me to get ready while she was gone. Clearly she had been hoping for a psychic customer, or one who happily strips down to their underwear the minute they are left alone in a changing room. Anyway, based on what I said I liked she then brought me some more dresses of her suggestion and we started to develop a picture of what I definitely didn't want. Eventually I found a dress which I thought was perfect and she wrote down all the details for me, including the price (£1000).

The responses I got when I told people the price of the dress I had found were very varied and interesting. My fiance thought it was a bit expensive, his mother thought it was a lot but could be justified on such a special dress. My mother nearly fainted, some of my friends thought it was absolutely fine and the price you have to pay to get a decent wedding dress these days. (Indeed, I could have easily spent far more than that!)

Anyway I decided I should probably shop around a bit more so I (a little more prepared this time) booked several appointments at other bridal shops in the same area and arranged to go back to London in a few weeks time. Most of my bridesmaids had never met each other so I thought this would be a great opportunity for them to me, us to have a fun day out and also hopefully find a dress for me and a dress for them.
I quickly discovered that no two dress shops are exactly the same and they all had quite different approaches. Some would ask me what I wanted and then bring out a selection of dresses, others would let me browse the racks and choose, one didn't bother to ask what I wanted but merely brought out several very different styles and narrowed it down from there. Some stores limited the number of dresses and others were happy to keep bringing out more, some gave me shoes to wear, others had a box to stand on. Generally they stocked all their dresses in a size 12 or 14 and would hold them tight at the back or pin them. One shop had a sign up indicating the cost of trying on 5 dresses and the surcharge for trying on subsequent ones!! Fortunately they did not ask me to pay! Most shops did not let me take photos of the dresses (which would have been really helpful for comparing later and showing people who weren't there) in case I took the photo to a dressmaker and asked them to copy it. However one very friendly shop were happy for me to take as many pictures as I wanted.

At the end of the day I had an even better idea of what I wanted, a perfect idea of what I didn't want (every shop said to me "its always good to try on something completely different in case it takes you by surprise" I hadn't the heart to tell them I'd already done that) and I had found a new perfect dress for only £600 (left). I was all set to buy it there and then, especially since I had really liked the friendly, helpful staff, but the shop assistant told me I should go away and think about it, so I did.

Shortly afterwards I went to stay with my parents and decided I should check out the dress shops near them. Here I found my true perfect dress and I knew when I did. It caught my eye on the hanger and once I had it on I kept it on far longer than any of the others while checking my reflection from all angles. Again I was told to go away and think about it, so I did, but I didn't need to think about it and came back later the same day to try it on again and buy it. Not only was it perfect, it was also only £425!

Almost all wedding dresses are ordered from the supplier except in a few shops (usually cheaper ones) where you can buy off-the-peg dresses and take them away with you. My dress took 4 months to arrive and then I had to go for a fitting 1 month before the wedding (to minimise the risk of weight change after the dress had been altered). The alterations on my dress are being done at the moment and I am to go back on Friday for a final fitting to check that the alterations are ok.

Obviously I can't put photos of my dress up just yet but rest assured I will add some after the wedding! :)

Choosing Bridesmaids and Ushers and Outfits

2010-04-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

For me, choosing bridesmaids was very easy. I have moved around quite a bit during my life so there were four people who stood out very clearly as those who had been good enough friends to remain in contact with me after I had moved on. Two were friends from school and sixth form, one of whom also went to university with me. The other two were colleagues from two different jobs I had had since graduating. I felt that four was a reasonable number and had no reason to try and choose between them.

Choosing ushers was another matter altogether. James had always known that his best man would be his brother but beyond that he had no idea. What made things worse was that he refused to think about it until November (six months after we got engaged!). When he finally started to consider the issue he realised that there were five people he really felt deserved the role and no amount of pondering was going to make him choose between them, even though we both felt that six groomsmen was a little over the top.

We had an added problem that two ushers now live in San Francisco (along with James), one lives in Finland and the best man lives in Holland. Even the remaining two don't live in the same part of England so suit fittings were potentially going to be a problem. In the end we decided on hiring suits for James, both our Dads, the best man and one chief usher and agreeing on an outfit the rest could provide themselves. The suits we hired (from Moss Bros) were grey so we decided that the ushers could wear their own grey suit (of any shade) along with black shoes and a white shirt and then we would provide a cravat to match the others. Sadly Moss didn't have any waistcoats or cravats in a blue to fit the colour scheme so we had to hire those separately from Young's which did cost us slightly more.

The bridesmaids dresses were less of a problem. Once I had the blue colour scheme in mind I had my eye out for blue dresses everywhere I went. I liked the look of many dresses from online companies who will provide them in any colour but all the ones I liked best turned out to be the more expensive ones. Eventually I found exactly what I was looking for in the Monsoon sale (reduced to 45 from 150!). I bought four in sizes I guessed at after checking I could return them if they turned out to be the wrong size. Getting the bridesmaids to try them on was tricky as even they live in different parts of England but a few weeks later and a couple of phonecalls and trips to several monsoon stores and I was in possession of four correctly-sized dresses. Unfortunately I also had two incorrectly-sized dresses and was told I could only exchange them. Its never that hard to find pretty things to buy in Monsoon though so that wasn't a problem for long.

Start of the wedding journey

2010-04-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

My wedding journey started on May 16th 2009 when my boyfriend, James, proposed to me after 5 1/2 years together. Having dreamed of getting married and planning it over and over again since I was a child, I was suddenly horrified to find myself extremely daunted at the prospect of planning a wedding. I became aware that all those plans I had made in my head focused almost exclusively around the colour scheme and my dress and even those I was no longer so sure about now it was all real.

11 months on from that point and with less than 2 weeks to go until my wedding I have started to look back at the journey I have had and decided to share it with you in the hopes that it will help future brides on their epic planning journey