Friday 22 July 2011

What an awesome and productive day!

I am in a very good mood tonight. I had appointments today for both bridesmaids' dresses and flowers, and both were incredibly fruitful; they are now both ordered and have the deposits paid.

I'm like some sort of organised easy-going super-bride from the future.

But seriously. I can't believe how simple all this has been so far. I'm sort of living with this constant feeling of "when is this going to get harder?...." Everyone keeps going on about how stressful it is organising a wedding, but I really don't get it.

Yet. I've probably jinxed myself a million times over for writing that!
Anyway, my beautiful bridesmaids have been fitted out and their dresses have been ordered. I'm more excited about seeing them all looking amazing than I am about myself. I keep imagining I'll just look like everyday-me wearing a big pouffy white dress!

Links to the girls' gowns:
Junior bridesmaid
Junior bridesmaid and Maid of Honour - The junior bridesmaid will have straps similar to the above style
Matron of Honour

The lady from the bridal shop gave me a swatch of the colour, "Claret". Just out of interest I compared it to the colour of the centrepieces, the only other red things I have purchased for the wedding. I thought they wouldn't match as all the candle holders are a deep red-red, whereas the fabric is a burgundy-red, but they actually match pretty well. It's a highly unimportant detail that no one in their right mind would notice, but I'm pleased nonetheless.

I was able to take that swatch to the florist I had an appointment with today. Stacey from Beans and Bunches has a very quaint little "hole in the wall" kind of a shop in an arcade in Northbridge. She took us into her back room where we sat down at an adorable tiny wooden table with matching chairs, and I showed her the bridal party colour and my floral inspiration pics (in a previous post). She scribbled down all the flowers she could spot in my favourite examples and put together a list of the flowers she could include in our bouquets, and how many of each. I was my typical self and agreed with pretty much everything she suggested. And I am so excited now, they're going to be beautiful! The red roses incorporated into each bouquet will match the Claret so nicely as they are a lovely dark red. She had some there just by coincidence, and when I held the swatch up to them they were EXACTLY the same colour.

My bouquet will have: 3 x yellow roses, 4 x red roses, 3 x orange roses, 6 x orange/yellow calla lillies, 6 x red/orange freesias, 2 x orange/red carnations, 3 x orange gerberas, will be edged with camellia leaf and bound with creamy gold satin.

My Maid and Matron of Honour will have: 3 x yellow roses, 3 x red roses, 3 x orange roses, 4 x orange/yellow calla lillies, 4 x red/orange freesias, 2 x orange/red carnations, 3 x orange gerberas, edged with camellia leaf and bound with burgundy satin. The junior bridesmaids will be the same only without the carnations and gerberas.

I think the delivery of the flowers will be one of my "girly bride-y" highlights of the day. Can't wait. :)


Tuesday 12 July 2011

Dice!

Chessex got back to me today with two pics of a sample dice they made up from my enquiry. How awesome are these?!

Hopefully our guests find them as cool as I do. Or at least somewhat unique.

Also, we have booked and paid a deposit for the celebrant we met on Saturday. She's fairly young and very nice; I could have chatted weddings all day with her. :)

Friday 8 July 2011

Where I'm at

It's so easy to get confused with what has and hasn't been done, what needs to be done soon, and what can be done later. I thought I'd sort my jumbled thoughts by blogging about it. Rather boring, but bear with me.

One of the problems I'm having is that every different planning guide I look at tells you to book certain things at different times. For example, one may tell you to book a hairdresser six or more months in advance, while another says to do it just two or three months beforehand. Very confusing!

Anyway, here's what's done according to the "9-12 months prior" checklist on my iPhone wedding app:
- Choose date: 14/04/12
- Choose venue: Rydges Hotel
- Choose wedding party: Maid and Matron of honour, two bridesmaids, best man and groomsman all chosen and informed (and agreed!)
- Start guest list: guest list completed (three or four extras may be added) -- save-the-dates sent
- Choose wedding dress: wedding dress purchased, alterations to be scheduled later
- Reserve photographer: done, my marvellous uncle. :)
- Choose honeymoon: UK honeymoon booked and regular payments being made
- Reserve entertainment: music for ceremony and reception both organised, deposit paid for classical trio
- Choose invitations: invitations matching the save the date cards to be ordered from Vistaprint
- Choose favours: favour boxes have been purchased and contents pretty much decided upon (see below for more info on our secondary favour)

Here's what the app says I should have done by now, but I haven't:
- Book officiant: we're meeting a celebrant tomorrow morning, hopefully if we like her I can tick off this box very soon
- Choose rings: WTF?? Why do we have to choose rings 9-12 months beforehand? This one won't be happening for a while; speaking for myself all I want is a plain gold band, so this can be sorted in the last three months as far as I'm concerned!
- Choose men's attire: once again, this doesn't need to be done for a bit, but anyway, we know that the boys are probably just going to go and check out the range at Ferrari when the season catalogue is released
- Choose florist: I've emailed a florist in Subi that I've seen a few good testimonials for, so hopefully I can schedule an appointment with them soon
- Choose cake: really, again so soon? But I've started researching it a little bit. Will be ducking into the Cheesecake Shop soon to see what sort of thing they have on offer.
- Choose bridesmaids' dresses: this is a work in progress, but we have an appointment in two weeks' time at least.

That's it for now, although I have ticked off a couple of things in the "6-9 months prior" section, which is somewhat encouraging!

Now, as for these secondary bonbonniere I mentioned before, there's an American company called Chessex who make custom dice. Since my fiance is a roleplaying geek, we thought it would be cool to have a six-sided dice with our names and wedding date on the one-side. An example of their work:
Very very cool, and I'm awaiting an email reply from them regarding a quote. They're not very expensive at all, which is awesome. Oh, and ours will hopefully be in the same colours as the one above, since it matches our red and gold theme. :)

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Photos-a-hoy-hoy

All my centrepieces have arrived as of Monday, the only thing I need to do now is order a huge smegging bunch of beeswax tealights and pillars to put in them! But because I'm excited that I've finally got all the holders, I'm going to post pics of them anyway. I'll also put the World of Warcraft table name that applies to each one, and why I've made these associations (some of them are a stretch!).


Orgrimmar
These hurricane vases are the sturdiest of all my table decs, and that can be associated with both the solid stone architecture of Orgimmar itself, and the character of the native Orcs, whose motto is "Strength and Honour".


Darnassus:
This city is the home of the Night Elves, who are in very in touch with nature and all things pure and good. The city is situated in a green, lush foresty locale. So the Darnassus table will have these lovely flower holders.



Ironforge:
Well, this one is obvious. I've simply played on the name of this Dwarven city by literally using a wrought iron lantern holder.

Silvermoon:
The beautiful city of the Blood Elves features a lot of domed, Mosque-like roofing and red crystal features, and building interiors are reminiscent of romantic Arabian decoration; red velvet lounges, gauze-y opaque drapes, and so forth. So this lantern fits perfectly with such a theme.

Exodar:
Exodar is actually a crashed spaceship that the Draenei species (who crashed it) have converted into their capital city. This large holder from IKEA is kind of modern compared to the other holders I've chosen, and the most "space-y" in style, so I thought it suited best.

Thunder Bluff:
This city sits very high above its surrounds, atop a huge pillar of rock. It is also made up of several different levels. So three guesses why these tealight holders fit so well!

These six cracked glass holders are the first thing I bought for the wedding, and will be spaced along the bridal table in front of each attendant, with the bouquets forming a central floral arrangement.

A gold and red pair of the flower holders for the cake table, just cause I liked them so much I wanted to use them elsewhere as well.

Finally, here's a mock-up of a bonbonniere box/placecard combo, although the finished product will most likely look just like this anyway.


I've got my dress sorted; it was 50 million times easier than I ever thought possible... obviously as much as I want to I can't post a pic on the off-chance someone happened upon this page, like my fiance for instance! But needless to say I'm excited about dressing like a princess for the day, although I'm sure by the end of the night I'll probably be screaming to get out of it and get into some trackies. :)

Saturday 2 July 2011

Now things are really happening...

My parents are finally back from their two month jaunt overseas, and today we were able to sit down with them and discuss things. I cannot believe how generous they're being with footing the bill for pretty much all of the main expenses, but I suppose I'm their only daughter and this is the only wedding they will host, so I guess it must be a big deal to them.

One of the things I'm delighted that they agreed to was my rather emphatic desire to have Tres Classique play for our ceremony. I discovered the website for these guys years ago, and have wanted them to play at my wedding ever since. So the other day I sent them an email to ask for a quote, absolutely expecting them to be way too expensive for our humble little wedding. I was pleasantly suprised by their quote, and Mum and Dad must have agreed it was worth it, so I am so excited to say that we will be booking them, provided they are still available on our date (as they were six days ago).

Mum likes my inspiration pics for flowers that I posted below. When I told her I didn't want white ones she completely agreed with me. She also likes one of the dresses I have my eye on from Legends Bridal, so hopefully I will be able to try it on on Monday when we go there.

I can't believe I will be legitimately able to go into a bridal store and have the staff fuss over me, even if they are completely fake and unconvincing.

It's all going to start happening now, it's so exciting.

I should have all of my table centrepieces sometime this week; just waiting for a couple of things I ordered from eBay to arrive. I will post photos of all of these once I have them. Sans candles, since I am planning on ordering them in one hit once I work out how many I need and what sizes. I am planning on getting beeswax candles as they are more environmentallty friendly and less carcinogenic.

Oh, and I regret to say that like our geeky cake topper, the Harry Potter invite letters are going by the wayside. My reason being that for the effort I would need to put into them to be satisfied, I was unconvinced that enough people would get a kick out of it, plus I ran the risk of people thinking to themselves "hm, that's a little bit tacky". I know I shouldn't care what other people think, but really, the last thing you want is for people to be thinking any ill thoughts towards your wedding before they even send a reply card. So instead I'm going to be boring and will be ordering the invitations and RSVP cards that are in the matching design to my save-the-date cards. Which I will be sending out this week since I've got some time to get things done. Yay for annual leave!