Wedding Flowers and BroochBouquets,

So it is Sunday afternoon and i have come in from the heatwave in fear of coming down with sun stroke. I am not sure where all of you are today but i hope the weather is as glorious there as it is here. I have been super super busy over the past week, not as much with wedding stuff but just general gallivanting. I went to see Glee on Thursday night with one of my bridesmaids and they were fantastic. I am aware that not everyone out there loves Glee as much as me, so i will leave the Glee review there. So i had Glee on Thursday, Manchester shopping Friday, Work on Saturday and have had a lovely Sunday in the sun with the odd bit of shopping here and there with the hubby to be.

Since i got engaged in September last year, i have lost 3 an a half stone, and finally bought a pair of linen pants in a size 14. I genuinely do not think i was even born a size 14, so i am over the moon with my new purchase. Wouldn't mind getting down to a 12 for the wedding. I have another 9 months, so do not think that will be much of a problem. I am feeling so good about myself, i wish i had dieted sooner.

Back to the matter at hand, my wedding flowers. The fiance and i went to some consultations a few weeks back and priced up the bridesmaids flowers. We need 4 bouquets and 15 buttonholes. The button holes came as bit of a surprise as i thought we only need to supply button holes to the direct bridal party, as in grooms men and my brother who will be walking me down the isle. My mother dropped the bombshell that in fact all the parents and grandparents needs buttonholes to, and since Craig has both sets of grandparents alive and two sets of parents, it slowly kreeped up on us.

We thought it would be cheaper to get silk artificial flowers and since Craig and all of his family have hay fever, i assumed, artificial would be the logical alternative. Craig has a serious thing about having real flowers at the wedding and since this is the one thing he seems quite interested in, we decided to price up both. As it turns out, the fresh flowers were cheaper so the Groom to be, got his own way. There are some lovely designs around and we have priced a few different suppliers but they all came in at similar prices. How am i to decide a) which bouquets to choose and b) which florists to create them. Take a look at the fabulous designs below and let me know your thoughts:

In case you are wondering why i haven't discussed my own bouquet, that is because i have decided to make my own in the form of a brooch bouquet. I first came across a brooch bouquet in a bridal magazine when we first got engaged in September. I researched them for months and they all come in between £250 and £800. The most reasonable are about £400 which is way out of our budget. I talked myself out of the idea with a lot of help from my fiance until i came across some DIY Brooch bouquet websites which explain in detail how to make your own. At first i thought, this is going to be easy and my mother and i began collecting lots of second hand brooches from ebay and charity shops. I got some beautiful pieces and decided to have a go at putting it together. I believe it is trial and error, and I'm not going to lie, the first three attempts have been terrible and they do not look near as good as i had hoped. It has made me realize that i need continue with my brooch collections and find some much bigger pieces as i had bought lots of smaller ones. I think i have got the structure down to a tee, i just need to keep collecting the brooches to fill it out. Lets see how things go in the next couple of months. Iv put some of my favorite brooch bouquets which i am trying to use as inspiration below for you all. Have any of you guys made your own bouquet? Have you come across the issues i have or did it go smoothly from day one? I'd love to hear your thoughts, maybe i should give up and order a proper bouquet :)

It didn't take me as long to write this blog as it had the previous one last week. Possibly because the hubby to be has the F1 one and has been doing the house work on my behalf. Iv got a got a good one here :) Since he has just done the brews and plonked a Krispy Creme donut in front of me, i better call it a day, it would be rude to leave it to melt in the sun.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

Save the Date!!!!

Its Friday night, i have just got home from the gym (wedding diet, i'm sure you future brides know all about it)and my hubby to be is at a poker party. So what better way to spend a Friday night, than sitting in front of the tele watching Coronation Street, with my two doggy's making decisions on wedding invitations.

I am absolutely in love with the peacock theme that we have chosen. There are so many different ideas and styles it is hard to make decisions and ensure that everything ties in together.

I must stress that there are some amazing wedding bloggers and forums out there and they play a huge part in giving me ideas for different aspects of the wedding. I am sure all future brides feel the same. Wedding Ideas magazine is my bible at the moment. So as we are on quite a tight budget, i have been entering every competition going and i would recommend that all brides do the same. I urge all brides that's stumble across my blog to check out www.bridesupnorth.com and www.lovemydress.net. They are both based in the North East of England which is where i am from but they both have some fantastic wedding competitions. A lot of them are photography based, but if you are local, it is an excellent chance to win free photography, and when you are on a budget every little helps, especially something like that which can cost £500 at a minimum up to £2000. Other competitions have been dress related, favor related, cake related and stationary related, which brings me onto the topic of conversation for today..... stationary.

We have been very lucky as we have managed to use a lot of our friends and family to help us with bit and bobs which is saving us substantial amounts of money. Having been to obscene amounts of wedding fairs and checking out different styles, shapes and sizes of invitation, any peacock related seems to be at least £3.50 or more, some stretch up to £8 per invite. I mean, honestly, who can afford that? I have 70 people coming to my reception, them types of prices, for invites, alone would cost me anything from £250 up to £600. Fortunately for me.... the fiances best man works for a printing company who do wedding invitations as a side earner. As our wedding present, he is going to do all my save the dates, reception invites, evening invites, table numbers, table plan and name cards. He has literally saved us £1000 plus. I would strongly recommend future brides, to take advantage of skills that any friends and family can contribute. It might not seem like much at first but it will all add up. Look at me referring to me instead of we. Do any other brides do this? I suppose its the Bridezilla coming through :)

You wouldn't think that i started this blog at half 7, watched Coronation Street, Eastenders and now the second session of Coronation Street is on. Its funny that it can take someone so long to write something yet it will only take the reader three to five minutes to scan through it.

Im getting very side tracked tonight and probably keep going backwards and forwards so sorry if you lose track of where i am. I wanted to show everyone the ideas i have had for the invitations and stationary. We sent the save the day cards out this week which Mark (best man) did several weeks ago, quite basic, simple ivory card with a green trim and green and ivory ribbon as i knew i wanted some type of green in the color scheme. We based them on this design below. I will try to get an original up at some point but i do not have a scanner as present. Hopefully can purchase one at some point though.

So now we need to decide on the actual invitations as they need to be ready to go out in October at the latest. So please see the ideas i have come across below;

Paper Olive • Peacock Wedding Invitations • Feathered Peacock... (clipped to polyvore.com)

I think they are all absolutely stunning, and have no idea which ones we are going to go for. I will of course keep you all up to date. Next on the agenda is going to be making decisions on flowers. We had some consultations last week on my birthday so we need to make a decision on them. That will be the next blog title :)

So, Lady Gaga is now on Paul Ogrady, it is 9pm. It has taken me two hours to write this blog. It is a good job i do not do this for a living.

Night All.

Dream Interpretations

I am not normally one for blogging several times in a week let a lone in a weekend but i am tired, hungover, bored and had a rather sleepless few nights. This brings me to today's blog. I love interpreting dreams and have several dream books, when i have strange dreams i can find out more or less straight away what they mean. I have however been having re occurring dreams lately which i would love to get peoples interpretations on. Heres the story......

So, i lost a lot of my family when i was younger. From when i was 12 to 16 i lost a cousin, two grandmothers, a grandfather and my own father. When my father past away i was pushed out from my fathers family as my parents were divorced and i lived with my mother. I was 12 at the time..... i am not sure what they expected me to do, but that's a different story. I literally only have my mother and my brother left of my family....... keeps the cost of the wedding down i suppose.

Anyway my grandmother on my mums side died in the May of 2001 and then my grandfather, her husband died in the September the same year. I believe he died from a broken heart, they say that's what happens when you have spent your whole life with someone. I have always missed all my family members that have passed away but for the past year i have had the same dream about my grandfather and it has got alot more recent, especially since we started planning the wedding.

When my grandfather was alive he lived in a little village fifteen minutes drive from my home now. We saw him several times a week and were very close. I am very spiritual and have been to see mediums and physics but nothing comes through. So in my dream i am in the little village my granda used to live in, sometimes with my fiance, other times with my mum or my best friend. I always make a comment that i have not seen my grandfather in several months and that we should go and see him. So i go to his house, knock on the door and then the door opens and i wake up before i see his face. I always wake up feeling distressed. I feel like he is still alive but i have not made any effort to see him since my grandmother died which is stupid because i was always so close to him. I would like to add that my grandfather had two pigeons, not owned by him, but they would sit on the chimney of his house and coo for hours. Not all the time but every now and again. It might be me being more aware of my surroundings but i have noticed two pigeons on our back wall occasionally as well and they always appear in my dreams.

Does anyone know what the significance is with this and if there is something in my subconscious that i need to change and put something to rest?

Thanks for reading and i will keep this up to date with any dream progress.

Birthdays and Weddings

It has been a while since my first post and people must wonder how active i am with my wedding planning. Well since the last post i have chosen my bridesmaid dresses, which then gave me my color scheme and have been looking for cakes, stationary and flowers. It was my birthday yesterday, the big 24 :) and i spent the day looking at peacock feathers and shabby chic decorations. It was bound to happen, but i had a lovely day all the same and i feel like everything is coming together nicely. It seems so close.


So, the colour scheme is teal, but not an ordinary teal though, oh no, it is a teal that apparently does not match any other color of teal. Hears the story...... I went shopping with my four bridesmaid at Christmas. We tried on different styles of dresses so i could decide whether each bridesmaid would have the same one or they all had their own style. I didnt want the traditional bridesmaid dresses, which often cost double than what you can find on the high street. I wanted something they could wear again. So 4 hours later, we were back in monsoon which was the first shop we entered trying on the sames dresses again. I had fell in love with beautiful greeny colored maxi dress/ball gown which was the first dress the girls tried on when we arrived. I did not want to be hasty, so i took some photos and carried on looking. Sooooooo i wandered into the monsoon sale this week and guess what dresses were half price? You guessed it, my greeny maxi dress/ball gown. Down from £180 to £60. Well.... that was it, straight to the till, bout 8 dresses for 4 bridesmaids in different sizes to make sure they fit still and will return the other 4 next week.

Once i brought the dresses home, my mother loved them but made several points that the color will be difficult to match. I agree but they are so gorgeous i don't care.

Due to the fact i have purchased the bridesmaids dresses i went to visit a lovely lady who supplies chair sashes for the venue. Dress in tow, we were right about matching the colors. It is going to be very difficult. Anyway when i went to see this lady, she pointed out that peacock feathers would look lovely with my dresses, and boy do they. So guess what..... peacocks are now my theme and i have been searching for fabulous ideas, especially for cakes and stationary. I have seen these moodboard which are amazing for bringing things together, im going to create my own when i find the time.....

I adore the peacock name place holders and the peacock feathers down the backs of the chair sashes. Now..... i love the lady who suggested this and she was such a great help in getting ideas and seeing how we can put them together, but she is sooo expensive. The chair sashes are not too bad at £1.25 per chair, which i think is pretty reasonable, most others i looked at were £1.50 and although it is only 25p different, it all adds up. So she priced the peacock feathers at £1.50 per feather, and i will need 140, as i am going to have them on each chair and in the napkins. So i jumped on ebay.... on my birthday and managed to get 180 for £30, that's less than 20p a feather!!!!!! Dont get me wrong, i feel bad that she gave us the idea and we have sourced it ourselves, but i am sure she gets that a lot. At the end of the day weddings are expensive and if you can save money, then do it, i am sure she will understand.

Right, i need to get of, my fiance is taking me for a lovely meal in my favorite restaurant tonight so i need to go get my glad rags on. I shall leave you with some beautiful cakes i have come across this week. I must say, they are stunning, but i think might look a bit ott with everything else we are planning. Would be a nice idea but might need some a bit more simple.... its good viewing though.

Please let me know your thoughts on them and if anyone knows what the prices are likely to be. Ill be looking into cake costs end of next week, might soften the blow a bit :)

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend....