Invite are finalised,

Well all my bridal ladies, apologies for the lack of blogging.

Ill let you into a secret, i did right a huge blog two weeks ago, spent hours on it, as i do while i watch the tele and keep my dogs apart. I forgot to save it, and my battery died. I was sooo tired i gave up and couldn't be bothered to re write it lol. Its a shame, i think it was one of my best :)

So there has been a lot going on in my life at the moment. We have a new manager at work, he is Gay, so funny, flamboyant and just generally fun to be around. He has certainly brightened up the office. This is refreshing considering all the other things that have happened leading up to his employment.

Anyway, he is getting married end of October and has invited me to this wedding. I cannot wait, it is going to be amazing, he is having a drag queen DJ. I will most certainly report on this when it has finished.

Right so, i have gone from having my own wedding to attend and my best mans wedding, to my best friends sisters wedding, my bosses wedding, the chairman's wedding and another friends wedding all within the next year. I do not know how other Brides have felt about this but it is making me extremely competitive. I feel under a lot of pressure to ensure everything is perfect as i know all the weddings i am attending, the bride and groom will be judging mine as well. Is this normal? Have other brides to be felt like this?

I am trying to keep this brief as i am extremely tired and intend on writing a huge block next week as i am spending a lot of time on wedding planning this week, but i wanted to show you all my invites. These are roughly put together and we will be adjusting the color of the feathers, but you can see roughly what it will look like:

What do you think?

I love it!

So iv tried to keep it short and sweet, speak to you next week brides.

The dissapearance of Humanity - The UK riots.

Hello Readers,

Firstly let me apologize for lack of blogging over the past few weeks. I haven't made any progress with the wedding as i have been snowed under at work

so this post is nothing to do with that.... or babies for that matter. A quick note on the baby blues vs career progression. Things at work haven't been to great since that post. I am safe, but my boss lady handed in her notice so i do not think i needed to worry about moving abroad and putting of having a baby.

So here i am, sitting at home while my husband to be plays with his new iphone watching the Celtic game while i think about how to jot down my words about the Riots that are taking place in the UK. I find the whole thing disgusting..... it seems that thugs and low lifes are using this as an excuse to steal, commit arson and to bully and ignore our police force. What has the world come to.

I am lucky as i live in Newcastle and we have not been victim to these riots......yet, and fingers crossed it stays that way. It makes me worry about the families of these dispicable people and how they have been brought up. Have they come from a horrific back ground and they are trying to be noticed? or have they been brought up in a 2.4 family scenario and are trying to fit in. It terrifies me to think that my children could end up like this one day, just by getting in with the wrong crowd or wanting to make a name for themselves. How can you bring your children up to know better, to respect their elders and abide by the law?

I saw a very disturbing image of an old man who was caught up in the violence, covered in blood. The thugs picked him up, as if trying to help him, then took his belonging out of his bag........ then threw them away because they were not worth anyhing? A family run business, which began in the 1800s survived two world wars, and was burned to the ground by a group of thugs trying to prove a point? What point? That this is all they are good for? Living up to a stereotype that others have tried so hard to erradicate?

This is a troubling time for all the UK and i hope that you all take some comfort in the greater population who are pulling together and cleaning up the streets and helping in which ever way they can. Hopefully, the police can regain control tonight or worst case scenario, the army re-introduces Marshal Law and sets a curfew. I hope that the youth of today learn from this so it never happens again in the future.

May our thought be with the Police and public services that are trying to regain our country back.

Baby Blues VS Career Progression?

Hello Everyone,

So it is a Thursday night, my hubby to be is at cricket and i am home alone feeling, well, lonely lol. Iv had a rather strange week at work, it has been a roller coaster of emotions, lots of meetings, then meetings about them meetings, and further meetings about the other meetings we had about the first meeting. To cut a long story short, i have been told that our company is expanding massively, which in this economic climate, is a breath of fresh air. At the beginning of the week, i was convinced the opposite and that i wouldst have a job in three months..... I'm full of paranoia as you will learn. I was told by my manager that within the next two years, if i play my cards right, i could be living in Australia Dubai or South Africa as that is where the plan, will hopefully be taking us. We have just set offices up in Malaysia and Pakistan but there isn't a need for us to be over there as we have other staff memberships dealing with that. The prospect is amazing and Craig and i have always dreamed of moving abroad, but for some reason, this makes me sad.

Craig and I have always talked about moving overseas at some point in the future, but if i am honest i always thought it would be based around Craig's job and not mine. We had a sit down, serious conversation last night about our future and agreed to hold off on the breeding front for a few years as my career seems to be taking off and a baby now could change things completely. Don't get me wrong,i do not want people thinking Craig is pushing this and forcing this decision on me, we both discussed it, pros and cons and came to the decision that if i had a baby shortly after the wedding, then have to turn down the change to move abroad or, i get overlooked because i have been off on maternity leave, that would mean my progression would be seriously hampered. I know deep down, that this is the best thing to do, but i am very broody and although i am 24 and have another 6 years to be able to have a baby (as i want one before im 30) i do worry that if we put everything on hold then things don't turn out the away we are envisaging and i do not end up moving over sea;s at all, then all of this is in vain and i could have had my baby earlier.

We have two dogs, a black Labrador and jack Russel. The black Labrador is 4 and the Jack Russell is 18 months. We discussed having to leave them here, maybe with my mother, or friends, and the thought of that kills me as well. My dogs are my babies un till a little human comes along, but it would cost close to £5k to get them abroad when the time comes and i doubt very much the company will cover this, and we certainly will not be able to afford it.

I really do not know why i am letting it get to me so much, surely, when your told you have the potential to climb the career ladder and move abroad, you should be jumping for joy? I have at least 18 months before anything would even be seriously discussed and i am acting like it is a decision that needs to be made now. Maybe i am just thinking that i do not want to live my life around potentially moving abroad in case something happens and it doesn't take place but shouldn't i be thinking of my career now and taking advantage of this opportunity?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and whether anybody else has had this dilemma before. I think i am just being emotional and over reacting. It is good to vent though. Thanks for listening.

Second thoughts and Wedding Day Doubts.

Before i begin, i think the title of this blog may be slightly misleading but i was not entirely sure what else i could call it that would summarize my feelings of late.

I am not having second thoughts on getting married, i am 100% that Craig is my soul mate and that i will be spending the rest of my life with him. When i say seconds thoughts, i mean it more in terms of the structure of the weddings, decorations, choices e t c. I have put deposits down on a lot of things, including my dress and as i was lieing in bed, alone, on Friday night as Craig has been at Silverstone for the F1 all weekend, a million thoughts regarding the biggest day of my life began to run through my head.

I have three major doubts and the first one is the dress. Let me try to explain where this has all come from. As i have written in previous blogs, Craig and I are paying for our wedding ourselves on a £10,000 budget. Craigs family is very religious, Craig not so much and although i am not religious, i always imagine myself getting married in our local church, with a lovely lace dress and huge wedding cars. Unfortunately, our budget does not allow this luxery as our local church and surrounding churches charge over £700 to get married plus an additional £350 minimum would be required for wedding cars. So we decided to keep the costs down and to have a civil ceremony. That way, as Craigs family are from Liverpool, it means they do not have to do any unnecessary traveling as everything is in one place, and we do not need wedding cars.

We fell in love with Lumley Castle as soon as we viewed it, but it was well out of our budget, So we viewed several other venues that offered civil ceremonies. Anyway to cut along story short, we managed to get Lumley Castle within our budget so we put the deposit down and began organizing.

Going back to the dress part. I originally wanted something lacey, quite simple not very voluptuous, a bit like this.

I have booked in next week to get measured for my dress which i fell in love with as soon as i tried it on, and let me add, i did try on 30+ dresses before and after and it has stayed my favorite. It is nothing like the above dress, in fact i was dead against going for any kind of princess style dress but it is so beautiful, i new it was the one. Please see dress below:

So this really is my dream dress, but as i was lieing in bed on Friday night, all i could think was, it this dress suitable for a civil ceremony? Is this not a dress for a Church Wedding? Will it look too much? Should i not be going for something a bit less dramatic and more conservative? As i have been viewing wedding blogs on a daily basis, i have noticed a lot of women choosing, these slimline, vintage style dresses.

My favorite blogs are www.lovemydress.net and www.bridesupnorth.com they have daily real weddings and i have not seen anything like the dress i have chosen. Does this matter? Is it each to their own? Or will people be thinking that i have not chosen the right dress for the venue? Also, why have i suddenly started thinking like this?

My second major doubt is the time of the ceremony. We have chosen to have the ceremony at half 1 in the afternoon, so it gives people a chance to get ready, have a few drinks and not feel rushed. Mainly for Craig, me and the Bridal Party. I worked out, on Friday night, as i was attempting to count sheeo, that that would mean the wedding breakfast would be 3pm at the earliest, possibly 4. Then it dawned on me, we are going to be paying £2000 for people to eat a buffet at 8pm, when 50% of them people will have eaten 4 hours earlier. Now i am worried that we should be moving the ceremony forward, but i know i cannot do this as the registra is booked on the morning of the wedding. Has anybody else had this problem? Did people eat on the evening as well? Does it really matter what time the ceremony takes and what time people eat?........ WHY AM I BEING SO PEDANTIC?

So finally my other issue is research. I am starting to feel that i am not researching things properly and making rash decisions, even though i make sure it is exactly what i want.... at the time of booking :( This particular issue has come from a wedding fair that i went to at Sunderland Glass Museum. I got free bridal magazine, which is pretty standard at these things, but this one is aimed toward North East Brides. In the magazines is had a small article on a place called Lambton Castle www.lambtoncastle.co.uk, which apparently is just 1 mile from my house....... this is news to me. As it turns out, it is a bit of a hidden gem, set back into countryside, not a lot of people know that is exists as it is actually still lived in. So the owners have decided to start allowing people to have their wedding at their home. Clearly they couldn't have made this decision 9 months ago when we booked our venue. I do not want people thinking i want the best of both worlds, the castle is beautiful, but not as beautiful as Lumley castle, see below for comparisons:

Anyway, the main difference with Lambton Castle and Lumley Castle is that Lambton Castle has a separate Chapel inside its ground, so we could have had the religious ceremony, with the castle receptions. I do not know how much it costs, and i am trying, with great difficulty, to not order a brochure with price lists. If i do, and it is cheaper than Lumley Castle i might cry. Maybe i am just looking for something to complain about right? I have a beautiful venue, a beautiful dress, we are keeping within our budget and i am very happy with the decisions i have made. So far...... Perhaps i just need to remember that i cannot have everything....... i cannot have my cake and eat it. Or maybe i need stop getting so worked up about things and remind myself that i am marrying the love of my life, and whether i am in a £10 primark dress saying our vows in the middle of the street, it shouldn't matter what decisions i have made, because to get to this point, i made the most important decision that ever needed to be made and that is to devote my life, to the man that makes me happy.

Have any other brides had this experience? I cannot be the first? Can i?

Id love to hear your thoughts on this. Am i just a number one case of BrideZilla?

Being married, 40 years on.....

Hi All,

Apologies for the not blogging for a couple of weeks, i have been super busy with one thing or another, business trips to London, client meeting here there and everywhere, hyperactive dogs that chew my house to pieces..... im sure you;v e all been there. Anyway i was browsing my wedding blogs this evening and came across this lovely post that i wanted to share with you all.....

REFLECTIONS ON 40 YEARS OF WEDDED BLISS (?) - http://granspeak.blogspot.com/2011/07/reflections-on-40-years-of-wedded-bliss.html#comment-form

Today, July 3, 2011, this 65-year old granny and her nearly 70-year old hubby celebrate 40 years of wedded ... er ... bliss? Is that the right word? It'd be lovely to say it's all been bliss, but come on. Let's get real: sometimes it's been a damn nightmare and sometimes it's been hilarious. But bliss? Save that for greeting cards!

Speaking of cards, this morning we shared one of those hilarious moments: now they say when you've been married for ages, you start looking like each other, a bit like we supposedly also pick pets that look like us (I don't look at all like Duffy ... !)

But back to this morning. I'm sitting on the puter (as usual). Hubby comes downstairs, doesn't look at me but heads straight into his office. I see his reflection in the glass doors and I know what he's doing: getting my card. So before he comes out with it tucked behind his back, I grab mine and tuck it behind my back. Grinning at each other, we meet in the foyer, do our usual perfunctory kiss and hand each other the cards we both knew we had. Uh-oh! His envelope is the same color and size as mine! Don't tell me ... ! Yes, we got each other the exact same card from the same shop. We open them up and burst out laughing again: though we didn't use the same words, we both said the same thing ie. will we live long enough to make 50 years of wedded "bliss". Talk about being alike. We may not look alike but we sure think alike ... well sometimes.

Had we thought alike over all those years, maybe it would have been wedded bliss ie. no arguments, fights, wondering why we were still together when all our friends had called it quits years before. But then, there's another word that starts with "B" that would have described that scenario: BORING! Could you just imagine a marriage where you both always agreed on everything?

40 years is a long time for anything: jewelry breaks; cars rust out; houses fall into disrepair; teeth decay; knees and backs ache; hearing grows dim; patience wears thin. The only thing that's grown over those years is, in my case, my waistline! That reasonably slim bride (me) in the video above has gained 25 - 30 pounds over those 40 years; annoyingly, hubby's weight is much the same give or take 10 pounds. (How's that work. No fair!) And even today, when we see folks we haven't seen in years, they always say to him "Gees John, except for the gray hairs, you haven't changed at all!" To me, they usually don't say anything at all about my current looks. They wouldn't dare! I'm a woman and they know they'll be damned if they do and damned if they don't say the right thing.

But thick or thin, good and bad, we've stuck it out. We've survived two trans-continent moves: Canada to Australia and back to Canada again (If you need something to really test your marriage, try that!) We've survived giving birth to our own kids when I was past my prime for child-bearing (mid-30's) and becoming almost full-time parents to our grand-daughter in our mid 60's (when we are now both well past our prime)! Like everyone, the rest would fill a book but I doubt I'll live long enough to write it.

Health-wise, will we last another 10 years? Will we get to celebrate 50 years of marriage as today we celebrate 40? And if we do, we will still see each other clearly, hear what each other is saying, remember what we told each other 2 seconds ago and still be able to laugh when we burp, fart or spring a leak as we run for the toilet? Let's hope so. And let's hope, as the saying goes, "The best is yet to come."

I found this so lovely and i hope that I am writing blogs like this about Craig and I in 40 years time.

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.