#WeddingWednesday - Invitation Only

And so to our wedding invites. Ever since Rich proposed I had my heart set on ordering our wedding invites from Becky Lord Design. I've been following her on Instagram for ages, impressed by her visual aesthetic, use of colour and all round friendly tone. Her Fetti wedding stationary was one of the first pictures to make it on to my secret Wedding Pinterest board.

We ordered her stationary pack from Etsy so we could see the samples of her House Collection wedding stationary before we made a final decision. When it arrived I felt like I had been sent a gift: beautifully presented, the wedding stationary samples were wrapped in tissue paper and a free pencil with heart soaring inspirational wording was included to boot. How's that for business branding?!

With some wedding related decisions it's been instant: the church for instance, having fish & chips at our wedding breakfast was another swift choice. But other decisions have felt really hard to make - even though Fetti had been my original choice, we deliberated over Writer and Bodoni for 3 hours one Sunday morning. The hardest thing about organising our wedding has been keeping a fixed idea about what our wedding means to us - everyone has an opinion, is quick to tell you what they did, and in the nicest possible way tell you what you shouldn't do. So that's why I dithered from my original wedding invite decision: were we more of a Writer wedding? What would the Bodoni set say about our nuptials? Then at the bottom of the wedding stationary pack we uncovered The Huxley: a simple, rustic, come as you are kind of invite. Was that 'us'?

To clear my head I sat down one morning and did a moodboard for our wedding - pictures of what the venue will look like, swatches of material from Rich's suit and my dress, a picture of the wedding car I'll be transported to the service in. Nope - Fetti it was but with a change of colour palette. After what seemed like a gazillion emails from me starting in February and running into May, Becky, with endless patience, mocked up a Fetti invite and BOOM - it matched the feeling of our wedding:

chic and elegant yet informal and friendly

There is now less than 4 months until I become 'Mrs Brown' and I cannot wait to send out our invites when they arrive this Friday!! 

#WeddingWednesday - If your names not down, you're not coming in

Apologies for the lack of wedding related updates; I have been down to Telford, Bath, Bristol and Essex visiting new clients and sorting out many a wardrobe. Then there's the not so small matter of a TV show pilot in the pipeline. Wedding plans have been bubbling away in the background like a hearty stew on the stove nonetheless, and Rich & I sat down last weekend to write the final jobs "to do" list. The fact it is 5 sides of A4 has given me sweaty palms to say the least!

So what have we been doing? Our invites have been designed, ordered and printed. Penny, my sister and Maid of Honour, has her dress. I finally had a breakthrough with my flowers after what seemed like months of self-diagnosed "flower blindness" and our table centres have been crossed off the list with a huge sigh of relief. Searching for 10 vintage teapots in the land of Yorkshire where tea runs thicker than blood has been a tall task. We've managed it (albeit with a few broken lids and various expeltives along the way).

If you see any teapots like this on your travels let me know - better have too many than not enough.

Bar Christmas, I think we picked the worst time ever to register our Gift List with John Lewis: The Trafford Centre on Spring Bank Holiday weekend. Even the overflow car park was full as we queued to find a space amongst the off-roaded vehicles (or abandoned? Hard to tell) and the throng of shoppers. John Lewis know how to treat you right - they gave us a voucher for free tea and cake, set us up with a scanner and let us loose on their shopfloor. We scanned away amongst the throng of bank holiday shoppers. Dear God what a day! So. Many. People.

Wedding schizzle just got pretty real pretty quickly!!

When we moved in together it seemed like over the subsequent months we made endless trips to the charity shop to donate bedding, kitchenware, stuff. We are 2 adults in their 30's who have both set up homes and we have the material possessions to prove it so writing our wedding Gift List proved interesting: lots of things that would be lovely if we receive them but equally happy if we don't. Shopping for them was quite romantic, even though we shared it with what seemed like a gazillion other shoppers. It was also our 2 year anniversary that day so I was feeling the love as we picked out our matching toaster and kettle and some epic Cath Kidston mugs.

Finding my shoes has taken another huge weight off my mind and making some decisions about my make-up has set my mind at rest. There's less than 4 months to go and I alternate between "AAAAARGH!!!" and "I've got this."

Til next time...x