Hello!

Welcome to 'One year to go...'! This is my story of our trip up the aisle starting with all the planning and a year to go!

Sunday 27 February 2011

Saints v Tigers...marriage made in heaven?!

Now all the 'big' stuff is sorted for our special day I've turned my attention to the detail and have started to think about what else we can do or include that our guests will look at and go "that is so those two!"

For the last couple of weeks I've been scouring the wedding blogs and magazines for something that is "so us". And I've found it!
 (Photo from rockmywedding.com)

I fell in love with this idea as soon as I saw it! Now, our theme is black & white & silver stars so I was umming and ahhing about whether to stick to those colours or do something completely different. For a few days I've been thinking, "What colours mean something to us?"

And then it came to me, in a lightbulb moment, at 3:45am today!

H2B and I are both mad about rugby, him - Leicester Tigers, me - Northampton Saints which often leads to a bit of banter at weekends so...
The 'LOVE' letters on my side are going to be green & gold, alternated with black organza bows and a 'Saints' badge in the centre and on his side they're going to be red & green alternated with white organza bows and a 'Tigers' badge in the centre!

And the best bit of all...H2B loves the idea! : )

I love this photo too...
 (Photo from rockmywedding.com)

I have visions of us holding the green & gold - me smiling & him pulling a face and then vice versa lol! I love that we get to include our love of rugby in our big day, we're not ridiculously serious people so I want an element of fun to our day, and I'm hoping this will amuse our guests too. Mother-in-law thinks we should support the same team once we're married but I'm more than happy for the banter to continue! ; )

Saints v Tigers? Might not be a marriage made in heaven but it'll be one full of laughs and that suits me great! 

xx

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Save the Date - Tutorial

I'm not going to lie, we are on a very tight budget for our wedding day of £5000. But I wanted to show you that you can make and have really special and exclusive things for your big day without them having to cost the earth! From the moment we got engaged the idea of designing and creating all of our wedding stationary was a very exciting one...almost as exciting as the hunt for THE dress!
We're very lucky in that this is one of my hobbies and something I absolutely love doing. From as far back as I can remember I've always been 'arty farty' and spent a lot of my spare time making things from paper or card.

After featuring on a blog by fellow bride to be Terri at http://www.mysticalmagicalweddings.com I thought I'd share with you just how I created our 'Save the date' cards...

We chose to send out 'Save the date's' because of getting married in December. We both knew that a lot of our friends & relatives would have family commitments or work parties around that time so we wanted to make sure they all knew well in advance and would then hopefully be able to share in our special day with us.

To make you will need:
  •  White A4 card (I used linen effect)
  •  A photo of your choice
  •  Black A4 card for mounting
  •  Black 'Stickles' glitter glue 
  •  Silver star stickers
  •  Black 'Save the Date' word peel offs
  •  Black 5mm organza ribbon
  •  Silver star charms
  •  Pink heart lollipops
Firstly, you need to cut the white card into quarters...

 I marked it out with a ruler and then used a guillotine for a really straight & smooth edge. You then need to shape the corners so you end up with a giant luggage tag shape and punch a hole in the middle of the shaped edge about 12mm in from the edge so you end up with something looking like this...
Next you will need to take your photo and stick it onto some black card to mount it and give the photo a bit of a border. We chose a black & white photo as it fitted in with our black & white theme, and a car as my other half is a bit of a petrolhead! We then photo shopped our names onto the picture...
 These photos appear on our wedding invitations, orders of service and also our menus to carry the theme right through our wedding stationary. You then need to stick this onto your large luggage tag. I stuck ours on at a jaunty angle as I felt they looked better like this and would sit better with the stars we added later.
 I then added the 'save the date' wording peel offs, these are from www.craftcreations.co.uk and come in a range of fonts and colours. I then added the silver stars (also from craft creations) and finally the little dots of black 'Stickles' glitter glue to create a cascading effect across the tag.
Following this I then took a 10 inch length of ribbon and added a small silver star charm (these came from ebay - £2.99 for 400!!)...
 I then threaded this through the hole in the luggage tag and looped it back through on itself to secure it and leave the star charm on the front of the card...
 We then decided to add heart shaped lollipops to them by simply tying them on, for a bit of fun and also to tie in with our theme for the reception where we're giving our guests haribo hearts & rings (only right given that other half is a member of the haribo fan club!) and the evening reception where we're having a candy store full of retro sweets (again these came from a sweet shop on ebay and cost us £3.99 for 50!)...
 And finally, using a silver pen, I wrote the basic details for our guests on the reverse...
 We also added a smaller black tag to ours which gave our guests the link to our wedding website along with the password they would need to access it. I've shown you how to make them the same as ours but it's entirely up to you and your choice of colours, themes etc.

In total these have cost us £12 to make 40. We also sat and made them together which was a really nice thing to do! 
I hope this can be of some help to some of you who are also getting married on a budget.
xx



Tuesday 15 February 2011

Time for an update...

It's been a couple of weeks since I updated you all with wedding things so thought it about time I did so...

We've actually sorted out quite a lot of things over the last couple of weeks and I really feel like all of our hard work is starting to pay off and come together!

We went to our marriage preparation session on Saturday 12th Feb at the church where we will be getting married. I wasn't quite sure what to expect and how much use it would be to us but it was nice to meet all of the other couples that are getting married this year too.
It involved a few 'workshop' sessions around what we expect from marriage, how well we know each other and how we would deal with difficult situations that might arise in the future. A lot of these were quite timely for me and hubbytobe as he's coming up to the end of his final year at uni and starting to apply for jobs so things are going to be changing quite dramatically in a few months time so it was good to talk about those bits.
We also got to meet the lady that organises the flower displays and discussed some of our ideas with her. They also played a cd of some of the music we might like to choose for my entrance etc...the traditional bridal march made me cry so I think I'm sold already!
I feel we're closer than ever as a couple at the moment and soppy as it sounds, I really can't wait to become his wife.


I've also finalised the details and placed the order for my flowergirl Daisy's dress. I'm not sure who's more excited about it...me or Daisy?! ; )
Kate bought her into work to see me the other day and the conversation went...
Daisy: "Kirsty...when are you getting married?"
Me: "Not for a while yet Dais, we've got to wait until December! Would you like to see a picture of your dress, wings & wand?"
Daisy: (very excitedly nods)
so I show her all of the photos on my iphone of her fairy dress and accessories
Daisy: "Would I be able to keep my wand?"
at this point I melt as she's asked so politely and when I tell her she can keep all of it after the wedding she grins, puts her arms by her sides and shakes while going "ooohhh" lol hilarious! We have one VERY excited little flowergirl...she even told her mum the other night she was almost as excited about going to Disneyland as she was about our wedding!


We've also booked an appointment for the boys to try on their suits and order those...I can't wait for this I'm so looking forward to seeing them all dressed up...more tears from me I expect - I'm turning into a sentimental blubbing mess lately, there'll be no hope for me on the actual day!

We've started to think about hymns & readings and what we want in our wedding ceremony...both being rugby fans we're hoping the organist can play the 'World in Union' rugby world cup theme as we sign the register, I love this piece of music it always gives me goosebumps and brings a tear to my eye. The first dance song still evades us though : ( I think we have an official shortlist now it's just making the final decision and sticking with it!


It's been a long time coming but I'm properly enjoying the planning of it all now...roll on December! : )
xx

Thursday 10 February 2011

Thursday 3 February 2011

Nobody puts Baby in the corner...

The hen weekend is booked! How excited am I?!





We're all off to London on 12th November for a Dirty Dancing lesson where they'll teach us a routine to go with a medley of songs from the film! : )

And depending on how well we master it I'm suggesting we 'perform' after the first dance hehe!!

xx