my big idea

well yesterday i wrote about my big idea for a fingerprint tree thinking wow thats an awesome idea until i came across these on google and there are so many people doing them, i was thinking it was a really original thing, lol, well its not but its still a great idea so i still may do it as it is inexpensive and i will frame it and put it in the house.


me and my mom went to the hotel this morning to have another look at the room again for me and first time for my mom and realised just how big the tables are, my little centerpieces will look a little bit small so we decided we are going to have the little metal buckets that some people use for the favours and fill them with different sweeties as i have a very sweet tooth so at least i will be happy, lol, so atleast that will take up some more of the tables and im going to scatter petals to its not going to be too bare.




mmmmm i really want some sweeties now lol.........can you get purple bon bons?????????

bridesmaid dress decision part 2

well as i said before i have been designing my bridesmaid dresses on the net and here is a few of my ideas, they all go on the same sort of design with the ivory sash and purple silk but all a bit different. still have to ask amy and emma what they think and maybe change some bits.

NOT HAPPY

I AM NOT HAPPY!!!!!!!
Me and my mom originally decided to make the cake ourselves as it would cost alot less than buying one from a cake maker, well this isnt a great idea, for the past few weeks since deciding to do this we have been making some cake to work out how we are going to do it, which recipies to use, how big we are going to make it. well that really was a bad idea as i have put on weight!!!!! i cant believe it, i went into boots yesterday and weighed myself and the scales say i have put on around 9lbs in about 3 weeks, i feel so ashamed. both my mom and H2B have said it dosnt matter as my clothes still fit and i dont look that bad, and the fact the weight has gone to my already large boobs lol so my H2B is happy, i just cant believe i lost control, i couldnt resist temptation. granted the cakes were very nice but i shouldnt be eating all the cake like everyweek.

so my plan of action is......i am working till wednesday then i am off for 5 days for easter, my mom and dad are leaving on friday for a trip to warwick castle so i will be left to my own devices, so i am thinking if i dont want to be eating all the food in the house i am going to ride my bike to himley hall which is about 3 miles away and take a pasta or salad with me and go for a run and read my book and jot down some more of my plans in my wedding book.

right rant over, me and dave went to the church on sunday to pay the deposit so we have definatly got the day. we have had some ideas for different things, i originally wanted the traditional wedding cars but then i realised how much they cost so i asked my dad about the business car at work but he said they dont have it no more......aaaarrrrrgggggg. why me, so i decided to gve up and have a bath, when i went shopping with my mom she said that when my dad saw that i was a little upset the i couldnt really afford wedding cars and the business car was gone he went searching for wedding cars and showed my mom so she thinks he will pay for them, i really hate asking for money or for them to pay for things as they have helped me out while i was in college and when i was having money troubles.

well tomorrow me and my mom are going down to the hotel so that i can take the bowl for my centerpiece so that i can see how they look on the table and to see if i am going to need to fill it out a little and that sort of thing, i am going to need to size up the tables to see how much organza im going to need to make table runners as i am not going to pay for someone to rent me some when i found a site where i can get rolls of organza and i will just have to seam the cut edge, which shouldnt be a problem as i can sew. then i have to ask if they have a contact for the DJ so i can see if he uses CDs or a laptop so that i can see about linking the laptop to the projector for our first dance with the video on the wall. i also need to know if they have a contact for chair covers and sashes to see how much they will charge, then i need to go throught what we are having and what we are changing so that i have a total before i hand over our deposit.

i had an amazing idea last night that i may have a large piece of card with a drawn tree on it (it will be bare just the branches and trunk) then i want every guest to dip their finger into paint and make the trees leaves from their fingreprints then sign their names, so its a little bit like a guest book but it can be framed and place in our house. its just another one of of my cheap but cute little ideas.

i was looking in wilko's today and found these cute little boxes that would be soo cool for the order of services, i decided i am going to do one but its going to be on a single piece of thick paper with out monogram on the top then rolled and wrapped with a ribbon which will also be tied up with the bubbles i want instead of confettii.

our monogram

These were the monograms me and the H2B did this morning, i had tried to do one on my computer but couldnt get it right so we tried on photoshop and they came out great i thought the first one was ok but we may not have had the purple background as it would look a little bit odd having a square on the top of eveything, so we tried another one and then made it oval and i love it, im glad im marrying a computer geek, lol, so the second one is what is going to be out official monogram, it will be on the top of the invites, the R.S.V.P cards, the order of service, a big one on the seating board, on the place cards and maybe on the save the dates, the thing with the save the dates is i was going to send the save the dates in e-mail, but my mom said what about the people who dont have conputers, well the people who dont have conputers are the people who will definatly be coming anyway like my grandad on my moms side and my nan on my dads side so i think the e-mails will work, and it saves a lit of my time and/or money as i would have to either send all of them via post which can be quite expensive even if there was only like 60 or 70 invites, or i would have to get my mom to drive me around to deliver them and as alot of my friends moved away to go to uni that could cost me so much in petrol that it wouldnt be worth it.

bridesmaid dress decision

On tuesday i went shopping with my MOH Amy and decided to try and find dresses for her and my other bridesmaid, we went to debenhams where they had some beautiful dresses but the ones that they had in purple were over £100 each, which was more than what i wanted to spend just on the dress, or the beautiful dress that was under £100 didnt come in purple it only came in red or a dark blue, aarrrgggg, it was so frustrating, we went along to a bridal store to look and there were some really pretty dresses but their dresses start at like £130 which was very expensive, i didnt know what to do, yesterday i was looking online to see howmuch it would cost to have some dresses made and found a really cool site where you can design the dresses and add on things like sashes and things like that, so i designed some and the good part is it gives you the price of what your dress will cost before you order them, so i did a few designs that i really liked but i would have to go through them with amy and emma to work out what they would feel comfortable in but i think that is where i would get them from, and the ones i desined were like £75 each so that would still leave £25 per girl for shoes etc, you can also sent off for colour swatches so i will be doing that soon to see if the silk or the cotton would be better and a few colours to see what they are like.

On a plus point we went to one bridal shop and i found my dress for £725, this first place i found was £899 then the second place i found was around £799 but to make it even better the lady gave me a voucher for another 15% of which would make it £110 off so that will make it like £615 how amazing is that, but there is a down side, the voucher only lasts till november this year so i have to decided if i am willing to buy my dress this year and have to store it at my grandads for like 2 years which is a long time. i will have to speak with my mom to see what she says as she said she was going to get the dress on her credit card so that it is covered, should anything go wrong. i just need to work out what im going to do.

my ring

i know i have uploaded a photo of my ring before but it wasnt very good so i thought i would take some more to share

I officially have a wedding date

well it is true i officially have my wedding date, 21st september 2012, last week me and dave went to a church near me, st james, but i wasnt really feeling it so dave said we should have a look at his parish church, st marks, so today we went along and as soon as we walked in we knew that was the one, they had the alter decorations in, you guessed it, purple and they had alot of work done to the church, even underfloor heating, how awesome is that.... so we went to see about booking it and they have to date and it will be at 12 noon, it will cost quite alot of money but dave has just got a new job so he will be paying for the church which will include the main wedding bits and the organ, choir, bells, flowers and a recording licence so we are going all out for the ceremony but as we only plan on doing it once we dont mind.

a few weeks ago we went to look at the quality hotel which was really nice, they do a package deal for a weekday, at £1500 that includes a wedding night in the bridal suite, rental of the reception room, use of the conservatory for the arrival drinks and between the wedding breakfast and the evening reception as they dress the room for us, then it includes wedding breakfast for 40 guests (which is ok for us as we are not having too many people coming anyway) and evening buffet for 80 guests, we can add more people to this obvously at a cost but that will all be sorted later, we also get the hire of a toast master, but my only problem with a toast master is the ones i have seen all wear red and to me that looks more like a ring master at the circus, so we will see if there is anyway of them wearing black or something.

I also had some thoughts today about how i could decorate the room without it beeing too over the top so i thought as i said previously i was going to decorate my centerpieces with die-cut butterflies well i could do some of these in a tissue paper and attatch to the string of the balloons and snaking up the wall if i am aloud.

all we have to do now is go back to church next sunday to pay our deposit for that and i will be ringing vicky at the hotel tomorow to set a day in the week to go down with my mom and dave to see one of the tables set up to how they would set it, take some measurements of tables and a few other things, then me and dave will have a talk with vicky to see what we will actually be getting food wise and see what we can add or take away then makesure we have the contract and pay the deposit there too, they said that if we booked it now and were signing a contract even if the price goes up, (which it probably will as there is like 2 and a half years to go) then they will still honor the price as of now.

my wedding party

Right i think i should first introduce the main person in the wedding party and that is my H2B david, who if he wasnt in the wedding party i wouldnt be getting married lol.












Next we have my dad, mark, who is walking me down the aisle, i keep winding him up saying he has to pay for it all and yea says yea he will if we can get it all for £10 lol i know he is just joking though.








Now we have my MOH the beautiful Amy, i dint know how i was going to ask her to become my MOH as we dont see each other that often but i knew i could count on her to tell me the truth about if my dress makes me look bad or my make-up isnt right, so i waited till she agreed to come with me on our first look for a dress to ask her if she would do it and she was so pleased. we also have her partner Chris, i wanted my MOH and bridesmaid walking down the aisle with an usher but without them looking too uncomfortable so who better than the person she is most comfortable with and he was so happy to be asked to help out which was nice.




And finally we have my little brother and his girlfriend Thomas and Emma as before i wanted them to be comfortable so to walk down together makes it all more calm and natural.










There are a few more people who are included in the party but i dont have photos of because they dont like their photos taken but when the wedding comes around they will have to.lol.

First is the best man, Chris or 'random' as he is known, he has been daves bestfriend since the beginning of time lol well a long time.

The other is my mom who without he i wouldnt be able to do alot of the DIY projects as she is helping me with most of the wedding, she bought the glass bowls yesterday and she will be buying the card and ribbon stock for the stationary and she came with me to the national wedding show so not only is she mother of the bride she is also my best friend it also helps that we also work together so if i have an awesome idea i can quickly run to her and run it by her before i forget when i get home.lol.

As you may notice i dont have any younger bridesmaids and there is a reason for this, i do have 5 nieces aged between 2 and 11 but due to family problems they are not written into the wedding, the one niece wont be coming at all and as for the other 4 i will let my older brother know that if he wants the girls involved then he can buy the outfits as i know that if i were to spend around £40 on each girl their mother would pull them out at last minute so it will be a waste so i will invite my brother and the girls but not their mother, if they do not like this arrangement then they can just not come as planning a wedding is stressful enough without having to worry about more drama. It does bother me a little that they wont be in it for sure but i suppose thats life.

my centerpieces

well where do i start well i had no idea what i wanted for my centerpieces so i decided to google it..lol. i seem to google everything these days... well i saw some really nice ideas like tall flowers but i dont really want alot of flowers as with my luck they will probably all die...lol so i thought about other thigs i could have... me and the H2B thought about fish bowls with purple fish but then there were problems with that too, like we would need more than one fish in each bowl then times that by like 10 tables that is alot of fish and what would we do with them when we are done i dont think we want like 50 fish round the house lol so we decided that wasnt really a good idea. so i decided i wanted some sort of candles and i found these amazing smelly candles at asda for £3 for 50 and they smell of winter berrys i think and they are purple!!!!! so we went on the search for different vases, i thought i wanted like either square vases or rectangle but they seem a little bit expensive, on a trip to asda i found these 6 little purple tealight holders at a steal of...are you ready....50p each, how great is that so then i had to work out what i was going to do with them so i thought i could get some mirror plates and put the six on the plate and put water in them then float a candle in it, so last night me and my mom went to the 24 hour asda to pick up some more of the tealight holders and yes my luck was not there as they only had black, red and clear ones which was quite dissapointing, but, yes there is a but, right next to them were these bowls at £1 each which would mean we only needed one per table unlike like 50 of the tealight holders. so now i am going to place one of the tealight holders in the bowl then fill the bowl with water with purple food colouring, then attatch 3 balloon stings in the tea light holder then top that up with either purple water or some kind of sand or beads i dont know yet but below is a photo of what it will look like without the balloons and the water will be more purple.

Also my mom just had an idea of using die-cut butterflies to decorate round the edge of the bowls.

my engagement party, the budget and the dress

well first i am gonna just pop on a few pictures of our engagement party, it really was an amazing night..

now the bit about the dress well when i first went looking for my dress i took along my MOH we went to a few shops and found the types of dress that worked for my (i was 2/3 dress sizes bigger then than i am now) and i found a dress that i thought i fell in love with but most of the ladies in the dress stores say that if there is a but then its not the dress for you and the one i thought i fell in love with did have a but the material round the waist was quite thin and i didnt feel comfortable in it so i would have had to wear some sort of body suit underneath and i didnt want to do that...i gave up looking for a while until i saw this huge dress so when me and my mom were finished at the gym we went along to try on the dress, omg i would have needed a truck to help me carry it down the aisle it was so heavy so that was a no, but the lady in the shop tried to get me to try on a princess dress (which i had tried before but i was bigger and it didnt work) but as soon as i put it on i knew it was the one and have a guess what.....there was no but......mission accomplished.. after going to that shop i decided i wasnt going to look for any other dresses because i knew i needed that one...me and my mom went to the national wedding show on the 5th march and i saw my dress their and tried it on again and that just made me more certain that this is my dress and it made my waist so small and one great point is it was from a different store and was cheaper too....yay

now to the part i really dont want to talk about.... the dreaded budget...

well first we did a rough list of what was the nessesary, church, reception venue, dress, suits and stationary and i still dont think we actually have a budget but what we do know is its going to be less than £10,000, preferably it will be closer to £5,000 but with help from my mom and dad and other gifts we will make it as low as possible. There is a great cost that will be down that is the stationary because me and my mom will be doing that ourselves. We are going to make the invitations, the favour boxes, the seating plan, and maybe even an order of service (we are not sure about the order of service yet) So far we have made a samply of the favour box and probably about 7 different invitations lol this is because we first worked out what shape we wanted, then did we want the R.S.V.P car in the back? then did we want contrasting card on the front and back to give it character?? this is why we have so many samples...i will put photos on soon i just havnt taken any yet.

next time i will writing about who is going to be in my wedding party

My engagement up until now

Well this is my first post so i think it is just right to say a little bit about me and my fiance dave, so here goes.

The first thing i should really say is that i did meet dave on faceparty, he had messaged me a few times but i wasnt really looking for a relationship, you see i had a car accident while i was in college which ment i had to leave my job at the local cinema, it made me really down and lost some of my friends that i worked with, so i started talking to people on faceparty, one day some of my friends asked me to meet up with them so i decided i would go but they canceled at the last minute, so i logged on to my computer and found a message from dave asking why i sounded so upset, so i told him and he said he would be my knight in shining armour (i know this sounds a little bit tacky and a come-on but i was just pleased that someone was paying my attention, so we aranged to meet at the bar near me, (i dont drink so he didnt either) and as soon as i met him i knew i was going to marry him someday, (again i know it sounds like the obvious that everyone says but i really did). we met at around 7 and very soon i came to closing time, it didnt feel like it had been that long, we talked about everything, until it was time to leave, i said i had college the next day and he said he also had college, it turns out we go to the same college but never knew lol. so we decided maybe meeting up in out free period.

That was april 2006, not long after we met we talked about the future as we both wanted the same thing, marriage, kids it was so natural to talk about. At the end of 2007 i realised it was a leap year so i set my plan into motion, i was going to ask dave to marry me on valentines day, that day he was working in the morning so we were meeting up to have dinner so i went to h samuels and asked the lady what she thought, she said it was a great idea so i got the ring and went along to our date. I was so nervous we were eating and i didnt know what do or how, i just dropped it into conversation, and you know what, he laughed at me......he actually laughed at me. He thought i was joking until i showed him the ring, thats when i realised i was serious and he said of course he would marry me but he had planned to do it when we were on holiday in florida but i had spoiled that now.....but we went out to find my perfect ring which i had already found in the same shop that i got his ring from, everyone knows that i love the colour pink and purple so i went for a white gold band with 10 diamonds leading up to a pink sapphire in the centre, i was in love..lol.

We decided to have our engagement party on june 14th 2008 and i was awesome.

next will be about looking for my dress and our budget talk