Flower-spiration...

I realised something a few days ago: I want bright bouquets. For all us girls, including me. Don't get me wrong, white bridal bouquets are gorgeous. But sometimes they tend to get lost in the dress, and are just so... mainstream. And I want to be holding something bright and bold and amazing. So I've been looking for pics of bouquets that suit the colour theme, and make a vivid statement. It seems that red roses and yellow calla lilies are a popular combination, as well as yellow and red freesias, tulips, and a splash of orange here and there. Orange isn't a part of my proposed colour scheme, but I think the bouquets that include orange look pretty incredible, so they might find their way into my wedding flowers.

The following piccies are inspiration and guidance for whichever florist/s I end up meeting with. I have no idea what flowers are readily available in April, but hopefully she'll (he'll??) be able to whip up something fabulous for us. The five bouquets combined will also be bridal table decorations.

After being told by my uni friend that she'd already received a save-the-date card from another friend for our date, I thought I should get my arse in gear and order some from vistaprint.com.au . Here is a thumbnail of the one I ordered last night. They have invitations in the same design; I'm thinking of getting some to put in with the Harry Potter letters just so people have an easy reference and something to stick on their fridge. Vistaprint are so cheap, I love it. I got 40 of these cards, plus plain envelopes, for $39 including postage.



Cake toppers

I mentioned before how we were looking at a lovely porcelain statue of Aragorn and Arwen from Lord of the Rings as our cake topper (or "cake next-to-er", as it'd probably be too big or heavy at nine inches to balance on top of a cake). There is a picture of it here, but at $280 including postage for something that we can't even put on top of the cake, we can't decide if it's worth it or not. It'd be a nice collectable to keep afterwards, however.

But there are two other cake toppers that we like which are made by the same manufacturer as the computer one I posted in a previous blog. If it's not overkill (which it probably is, but anyway) I'd like to put this one on top of the cake to reflect the fact we'd be about to jet off on our first proper holiday together, and then arrange this one below the cake to add the humour/personality flavour. They're still $100 each though, not including postage, so it wouldn't be much difference from getting the LOTR one if we did get both.

Or we could just not have one at all! Lol. It's these little decisions which are potentially expensive and you can't work out how much you or your guests would appreciate them that are the real killers.

Centrepiece inspiration

So I mentioned before that I was thinking of each table having floating candles in IKEA vases. But what I really want to capture in the decoration is my favourite colour, the red glow you get when holding wine up to light. The tealight holder for the bridal table are made of red glass and are perfect. I want to try and replicate this on each table, but using different decorations on each table so it's less boring. The following are links to pieces that have inspried me. In the case of smaller pieces I would either use more than one, or place smaller candles around to complete the look. I still want to use gold acrylic table scatters to create a hint of uniformity among the tables, and to ensure the gold part of the colour theme is incorporated.

http://soymagic.com.au/category/products/decorative-candle-holder
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/180680963594?hlp=false
http://kandlesbykc.com.au/products/Capiz_Tea_Light_Holder_Red-169-24.html
http://kandlesbykc.com.au/products/Kareem_Lantern_Assorted_Colours-239-24.html
http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/catalog/products/70159567
http://www.thecandlenut.com.au/view_product.php?products_id=1851&cPath=0_2_69
http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/catalog/products/40182772

The search continues.....

Geekdom

The following is a list of all the little geeky things we've talked about including in our wedding:

- Harry Potter: invitations - Originally we talked about making our entire invitations replicas of Harry's invitation to Hogwarts, down to the presentation and wording. However, I know that my parents would prefer us to have traditional invitations, and I wanted to put magnets on the back so people can put them on the fridge, which you can really do with a folded parchment letter. So then I had the idea of just doing up Hogwarts envelopes to put our invites into (as described in my previous post).

- Star Wars: Imperial March - This was actually my idea; I've been considering it since well before we got engaged. I think it's awesome when couples have fun with the song or music that they choose to walk into their reception to. The Imperial March I think is hilarious; it's geeky and completely "inappropriate". I'm sure it's been done before, but not at any wedding I've seen.

- World of Warcraft: table names - Alan has been playing WoW for six years, and I started playing just after Christmas. We both spend at the very least a couple of hours a week running, flying and questing around the lands of Azeroth, so we thought it would be awesome to name our tables after some of the cities of this fantasy world, rather than just having boring table numbers. The shortlist of cities we've chosen are: Silvermoon, Orgrimmar, Darnassus, Lordaeron, Gilneas, Thunder Bluff, Ironforge and Exodar.

- Lord of the Rings: cake topper - We both love LOTR (me the movies, Alan the movies and books), and we thought it would be nice if we could find an Aragorn and Arwen cake topper that wasn't too tacky. We found a beautiful porcelain limited edition statue showing Arwen giving Aragorn her Evenstar pendant, but the cheapest price we saw it for was a couple of hundred Euro, so we may not be able to do this one. Failing that, we totally love this cake topper, however despite its appropriateness I don't know how Mum would feel about it! Hehe.

- Earth Angel: first dance - I commented to Alan the other night that we don't actually have "a song" that has any special meaning for us, especially not one that can be used for a first dance. We were in the car at the time, and just a few minutes later Earth Angel came on via Alan's playlist on his iPhone. "We could use this," one of us suggested, then we realised that it would tie into our geek theme beautifully, as it is the song that plays in Back to the Future when Marty's parents share that all-important kiss at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance.

While talking about this song, we then drifted off into the concept of having a card at each table place that asks the guest if they can answer a question about each of the geeky things included in our reception, and to have a guess even if they don't know the answers, because it'll be funny for us. :D We want to keep them as mementos, so we'll put a space down the bottom where people can write a message for us too if they want.

Anyway, that's our ideas so far, and to be honest I can't see us including much more as we don't want to go nuts with this sort of thing. Well, Alan does I think, but I don't, lol.

Noice

We had a brief meeting today with our functions manager Melissa. We didn't talk about anything amazingly important, just about the set up and so forth. The main reason we were there today is because there was a wedding reception set up for tonight, so we got to see things in action so to speak. Wow, it looks sooo much better, not to mention bigger, when it's decked out. Very different from the appearance generated by the conference layout a couple of weeks ago. Also this couple had a red theme, so it was nice to get an idea of what it will look like (although they had floral bouquets in tall vases as centrepieces; not something we can justify spending so much on!).

We really like the very large semi-outdoor terrace where the ceremony will be, because it gives our guests a massive area where they can mingle and chat and get a bit of freah air, or in some peoples' case, escape the noise of the band. Which is something my parents are concerned about as they hate loudness intruding in social situations.

Melissa has invited me back in two Saturdays time to see another layout, which is more appropriate for us to see as it sounds like they are doing what we want to do, i.e. have all our guests on one side of the room and use the other side for the buffet and band, and have the bridal table on the far wall rather than near the dance floor. Also, that couple in a fortnight are having their ceremony on the terrace like us, so I'll get to see that too which will be marvellous. The traffic noise out there was noticeable this afternoon, but Melissa said it's never really proven to be a problem in previous ceremonies, and that any celebrant worth their salt will come early and test microphone and music volumes and so forth.

I got my engagement ring back from Solid Gold after resizing, and it fits so much better now; I don't have to stress about it flicking off every two seconds. But now it seems to have a tiny scratch on one side in the gold which I'm pretty sure wasn't there before. Al says it's a "character mark" now, so I guess I'll have to deal. Like it's not going to get horribly scratched throughout the rest of my life! Hehe.

Tomorrow I'm experimenting with some red and gold paper for invites/stationery. I want to keep it all very simple, since only a couple of people will actually bother keeping them so it's not like they have to be amazing. However the envelopes may be a different story... just quietly (shh!), we want to personalise our wedding a little by having some references to some of the geeky things we both like. One of the things we were thinking about doing is to put the invites in envelopes that look like the Hogwarts invitation letters, i.e. parchment-y paper, wax sealed with the Hogwarts logo, name and address calligraphised in green ink by yours truly. Stamps with owls on them if possible! Lol.

The other few geeky things we're thinking of I'll let you know in the course of the planning. But we want to keep them on the low down in case my mum or someone doesn't approve. They won't be anything tacky, just a hint of fun; subtle references to things. Or not so subtle in the case of our "walking into reception" music: the Imperial March from Star Wars. I totally can't wait for that. :D

The Dress

Okay, so, the dress that I have had my eyes set on for years is a discontinued Alfred Angelo design, which is fortunately still made on the cheap by www.catchthebouquet.com.au, and several of those Chinese manufacturers. The dress is currently not listed on the Australian site however; the business owner has insisted that she can still make it for me, but due can't post it on the site as the price will not always be accurate (something about the price fluctuating on the new lace she's using).

Anyway, here's the addy for the dress on one of the Chinese websites:
http://www.beautifulweddinggowndress.com/alfred-angelo-bridal-dress-1755-96.html

I love it because it is pretty timeless, it's very different from the myriad of strapless, seen-one-seen-them-all "princess" gowns that so many girls choose, it's very "me", and it covers up my skin enough so I won't need to worry about back and shoulder pimples, etc. that I'm prone to getting.

However, I am completely open to the fact that if I do go out trying on gowns, I may fall in love with something twice the size and four times the price.

Oh, and catchthebouquet.com.au have hoop petticoats for around $40, and veils starting at $20. Bargain or what?

Here we go...

Well, I've started this blog to initially share my wedding planning with my awesome bridesmaids if they care to read it. If any other randoms choose to follow (which I doubt), hello, nice to see you and all that. :) Once the wedding is over I may use this as a blog to vent about the trials of IVF, as my wonderful FH and I will be wanting to start a family as soon as we can, and due to MFI we're going to have to take the hard road.

Anyway, that's all in the future. Right now I've got a wedding to plan, which is happening in ten months and four days on April 14th 2012. I like this date because when I was at high school, in a rather boring human biology class, my friend and I were doing silly predictions for each other, and she predicted I would get married on April 14th 2002. I wasn't even 21 by that date, and hadn't even had a serious boyfriend. But a few years down the track I did some research and discovered that the same date ten years later fell on a Saturday. So even though I was single, I earmarked it as the day of my "hypothetical wedding".

Hypothetical no longer. :)

I also like it because it's one hundred years since the night Titanic sank. A weird thing to like, I suppose, and it could set up for some lame anniversary jokes in the future. But I've always been fascinated with Titanic, and the whole poshness and manners of the people at the time I find oddly romantic.

Anyway, that was a much longer spiel about the date-choosing than I anticipated, sorry.

So onto the plans so far...

We have paid a deposit last night, courtesy of Daddy's credit card, to secure our date for a ceremony and reception at The Rydges hotel in the heart of Perth. One may ask why we chose such a generic and uninspiring place for the most significant day of our relationship so far. Well, my fiance actually suggested it as a venue because we got engaged there, in room 711, so it means more to us than some pretty-as-a-picture garden wedding in the Swan Valley or whatever. We went and viewed the reception rooms and the weatherproof terrace where our ceremony will be last week. I was a little disappointed after the pictures I'd seen online, but the function rooms were set up for a conference so it was hardly the best presentation. However, I still liked it well enough, I am just crossing my fingers that Hay St below will stay quiet during our ceremony, and I can come up with an inexpensive and simple way to decorate the area where we'll be standing... does anyone know someone who owns a couple of free-standing, wrought-iron candleabras??

I've been set on a dark, hunter green and gold colour theme for a few years now, but in the space of one night I've changed my mind, and I'm going to go with deep red/blood/wine/burgundy and gold. It's my favourite colour and probably easier to find candles etc. to match. Plus I was too concerned with my green and gold theme ending up looking like a posh Australia Day function.

So, what's been organised so far:

- Ceremony/reception: Rydges Hotel, deposit paid and date secured.
- Bridal party: FH's brother and his best friend are groomsmen, my two older female cousins are bridesmaids, and my two younger female cousins are junior bridesmaids. I haven't actually spoken to the juniors myself yet, but their dad says they'll be delighted, so I'll take that as a yes for now!
- Photographer: My wonderful uncle (the above dad of the JBMs) has very kindly agreed to snap some piccys for us.
- Band: The wonderful boys of the Wesley Goodlet Jamboree Scouts have my date pencilled in.
- Centrepiece idea (yes, let's do the important stuff first, lol): round mirrors with three different sized vases from IKEA, with two red floating candles and one gold, and some gold acrylic crystal table scatters. Simple, small, understated, and probably dwarfed by the huge ten-seater round tables, but meh. My fiance reckons decorations aren't important anyway. Plus there'll be more splashes of colour on the table with the bonbonniere bags. Which reminds me...
- Bonbonniere idea: a red paper or organza or satin bag, containing five lollies which represent each of the blessings traditionally associated with the old "five sugared almonds" thing: health (banana lolly?), wealth (choc coin), fertility (jelly baby), happiness (chuppa-chup, skittles?), and long life (gobstopper). We've also talked about getting some personalised dice made uo so that people also have a non-edible keepsake.

Anyway, I've crapped on for far too long for someone who has ten months of this stuff ahead, so if you read this far, thanks!