My, my, my ... dahlia!

I'm pretty clueless about flowers.

I've killed all but one plant I've ever owned, and that's only because it actually thrives when I forget to water it (most of the time).

But, in the same way I'm building skills in becoming a master wedding planner, ha ha, I'm also getting to know a reasonable amount about wedding flowers.

After lots of reading wedding blogs, and nearly 30 Pinterest pins later, and I think I've worked out what I'd like – namely, a hand-tied bouquet of dahlias, peonies and roses, in beach, blush and coral shades. Something similar to this, but a bit more blush rather than yellow tones (and maybe a bit less greenery):

For someone who, six months ago, wouldn't have known a ranunculus from a radish, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself!  

Edit: Oops, clearly I don't know as much as I thought, since I was sure there were peonies in the above piccie, but I've since been reliably informed that they are in fact ranunculuses (ranunculi?). So perhaps I don't know a ranunculus from a radish after all! (Though thankfully we're paying someone to know all that for us!)

That said, my new appreciation for all things floral has meant we've had to increase our flower spend a little. I've decided on a bouquet for me, smaller ones in ivory/white for the four bridesmaids and our flowergirl, plus buttonholes for H2B and his groomsmen. 

Our original pencilled-in 'how much are flowers anyway?' budget of £100 has now more than doubled – eek! But we've found a fantastic florist who came highly recommended, and hopefully the flowers will be worth every penny, for the amazing piccies if nothing else.

Say 'cheese'!

Speaking of pics, we confirmed our photographer last week, and I'm just as excited about that. She's a very clever young lady who does photography in her spare time alongside her day job of being a talented photo editor. 

We didn't want the usual traditional, dare I say cheesy photos for our wedding (and certainly nothing like these beauties) – rather mainly reportage-style pictures of those magical moments.

Lucky for us, I knew just the girl for the job. She is an amazing photographer, who's photographed oodles of cool musicians, and the odd actor and supermodel. (Wow, just wow.) I can't wait to see how our pictures turn out.

The dreaded D words

Are you there reader? It's me, panicked bride...

It's been a while since my last confession. Christmas happened, of course, so that proved a slight distraction. And January has been flying by. Time for a little update.

The big issues of the moment are Diet and Dress stress. I'd get a cup of tea if I were you. This may take a while....

A bit less jiggle in my wiggle
Like many brides-to-be blessed with some junk in the trunk, my wedding diet has had some ups and downs.

Christmas was a killer, as always. My good intentions abandoned me entirely, and I didn't come back to my senses until seven (seven!!!) pounds later. New year's day, I headed back onto the righteous path of healthy eating and haven't stopped since. Three weeks later, I've just about clawed myself back to the same weight I was pre-Christmas (20 pounds lost in total - woo hoo!) but that hasn't stopped plenty of panicking about the fact that I'm way behind my original goal of losing a total of three to four stone by the end of May.

In fact, up to now I've been too scared to work out what my new weight target should realistically be. Right, time to be brave, so here goes....

Ha! If only... (assuming that's pounds not kilos!)

Okay ... *brings up Calculator and Calendar apps*  ... from today I have just over 18 weeks until I get married. Based on an optimistic-but-not-impossible 1.5 pounds a week, that's 25 pounds. A total of 45 pounds lost would be 3.2 stone.

Actually, that's not as bad as I thought! I know 1.5 pounds a week will be hard going, though. It's been my average weekly weight loss so far while dieting, but I can imagine there'll be times when my body, brain and/or chocolate cravings refuse to co-operate. Still, better to try and fail than not try at all!

The big dress dilemma (part 2)

Ok, so I wrote back in July about my worries about The Dress. My budget is small, and so I quickly ruled out the traditional bridal shop experience. I decided my choices were either ordering from the States to try and get a designer dress for around half the price, or order from a UK eBay seller that I could (hopefully) trust.

Both options had the same risk, more or less: buying a dress I'd never tried on. I showed pics of both dresses to lots of people, and overall the eBay one seemed like the best bet. After checking with previous customers, getting swatches and so on, I put the order in, and two months later my dress arrived.

It looked lovely: exactly what I'd asked for. I tried it on, knowing it wouldn't fit – I'd ordered the thing two dress sizes smaller. However, even with that in mind, I quickly realised that it might not fit me even if I hit my weight loss goals. I have quite a long torso, and the bodice on the dress just didn't sit right around my arms and bust, even allowing for the extra curves at the time! I even got my size 8 sister to try it on and it sat funny on her as well.

That said, I'm sure it's not completely impossible to take the dress to a dressmaker once I'm a bit closer to my slimming goal and get them to work their magic on it. I'm not sure how they can lengthen the straps, but I do have some spare material (from the awful bolero jacket I asked the eBay seller to make, to match the dress – it didn't turn out well).

That's not my main problem, however. Since I bought the dress, our Mad Men/1960s theme has really taken shape. There's the bridesmaid dresses, which I've linked to before:

I've designed our stationery using typefaces used during the period, and I've booked The Vintage Salon in Birmingham to create '60s-inspired styles for me and the bridesmaids. The men will be wearing smart, modern grey suits, and overall it should look pretty darn cool.

By comparison, I fear the dress will look a bit, well, crap. It's light champagne in colour, in beaded lace. And the shape, while definitely classic, couldn't really be called 1960s. It's still a lovely dress. But I'm worried I won't feel as special as all the other details I've spent so much time over.

So what to do? Well, I have a plan. I'm going to keep on my dieting path and try on the dress in March to see how it's fitting and whether I'm happier with it. It not, well then it's onto Plan B.

And what's Plan B? Well, it's to order the exact opposite kind of dress I thought I wanted. Crazy, huh?

You see, being in my mid-30s, one of my first thoughts as an engaged lady was that I didn't want to go too OTT bridal. In fact, I'm sure I rambled on about that in one of my first posts.

Well, since then I've kind of had a rethink: namely, you only do this once (I truly hope!) so why not embrace it? That thought coincided with me spotting this dress:

Okay, so it's not 100% 1960s in style (I don't have the ankles for a proper Audrey Hepburn number). But it's definitely more in keeping with the era, and I think it could look lovely next to my bridesmaids' dresses. Assuming, of course, it looks lovely on me... And – bonus – even with import taxes it'll be under £200.

The bad news is that it's the same old gamble: buying a dress I've never tried on. In fact, I've never worn a dress that looks anything like this. So I've decided to do the bridal shop experience after all, if only to see if I would feel comfortable in such a bridal-y wedding dress – and to make sure I don't look like a toilet roll dolly. Assuming that goes well, I guess I'll take the gamble – again. At least I won't be too much out of pocket, whatever the outcome.

On that note, I think that's enough rambling for one update. I'll try to get back to more regular transmissions from now on. Only 18 weeks to go!!

Random wedding idea #1: table plan

Okay, sensible stuff like guests lists out of the way for a moment...

As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a Pinterest nut, but occasionally there's a lovely, inspirational pic that for whatever reason I can't pin onto my boards. So I've decided to post them here, which will let me pin to my heart's content!

First up, an idea for a vintage-y table plan:

This is from a great blog post of a 'vintage wedding tea party' on littlemisswedding, and I've decided that I'd like to do something like this for our wedding.

We're not going OTT with the vintage details (no Victorian tea cups or birdcages stuffed with roses), but something like this would work really well with the interior style of our venue. Now to hit the charity shops to start collecting old picture frames!

The big guest list dilemma

There comes a point in a bride-to-be's planning whirlwind when the fun details of colour schemes and stationery must take a back seat.

As much as I'd prefer to ignore them, there are also the boring, fiddley details to work out. For us, that includes things like:

• giving notice at the registry office – and since we don't live in the town we're getting married in, that brings along a whole raft of extra faffy bits to figure out;
• participating in our church-organised wedding preparation class – probably best saved for another post, that one!; and
• agreeing on the guest list

Now, when I started on the road to planning this wedding, I didn't think the guest list would be a big deal. I do have a big extended family, but everyone knows we have a tight budget, and it didn't seem like we were under any pressure from either of our parents to make sure that Aunt Sue's cousin's uncle's long-lost brother had an invitation.

Surprisingly, the guest list pressure has come from two different sources:

1. Other family members who expressed surprise and concern when I mentioned that certain cousins weren't invited or certain family friends had been 'relegated' to the evening guest list (to make room for those cousins!); and
2. Symmetry/being fair - in other words, when I realised that I couldn't invite a load of cousins from one side of the family and not invite at least some from the other side (even though I'm barely in touch with them). Or when I realised that it would be tricky to invite one cousin and not invite their siblings (again, even though I hardly see them).

Of course, the sensible, pre-bride-to-be person that I was would say "Pfft!" to both points. Just invite who you want. And it's sensible advice.

But in reality I don't want this wedding to create any family discord – in fact, I'd love to be able to reconnect with parts of the family that I've lost touch with. And what better way to do that than a joyful occasion such as a wedding?

But guests cost money, as anyone planning a wedding knows. For every extra person we invite beyond our original budget, it costs us at least £55. Multiply that by all my cousins and, well, the budget starts looking more like wishful thinking than sensible projection.

Ignorance is bliss (while it lasts)

When we first got engaged, me and my H2B had quite different ideas on what it would cost. He thought around £5,000 would do it; I thought it would be more like £7,000. Then we started pricing up venues and realised that we'd be lucky to do it for less than £8,000 all in. That was based on around 70-80 day guests and maybe 10-20 evening guests.

We were lucky with our venue, however: it's just the kind of place I was hoping for (an elegant hotel) but somehow doesn't cost the earth. It was one of only two places that I found in our budget in the local area, and the other one has a reputation for keeping its guests awake with loud discos in the downstairs bar until 3am. Not so great for my 70-year-old dad!

But even with getting a reasonable rate on a lovely venue, with the guest list creeping up and up, our budget has crept up too, so now we're looking at around £9,000. That's almost guaranteed to put us in a small amount of debt, which we were both hoping to avoid.

That all said, however, I do keep reminding myself that we'll only do this once. It really will be worth it if we can pull off a brilliant day and night, and in the process generate a stack of fantastic memories as well as become a bit closer to both our families.

I will still need to run yet another rule over the guest list before the invitations go out, just in case there are any other 'savings' I can make. (And that's after having done so several times already!) Hopefully I can avoid putting too many noses out of joint in the process...

Stationery / stationary

Okay, so the last post I wrote was well over a month ago. And what have I been up to during that time? Why did I neglect this blog yet again? *slaps wrist and looks dolefully at the floor*

Well, work got in the way as ever (and still is, grrr), so when I get a spare moment at home it's difficult to feel like writing when you just want to curl up on the sofa and watch episodes of Fringe. Plus the evil imp of indecision has been plaguing my mind yet again, and as a result it feels like progress has ground to a halt.

The wedding stationery is the best example I can give. Thanks to the job I do, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to design our invitations. I'm not a designer as such, though, so it doesn't come effortlessly to me. But I think I have a decent eye for good design, and I know my way around InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

That said, I rushed the first draft of our invites, more focused on the excitement of seeing the words in print than actually trying to craft a particular style. After that, the idea of our 1960s/Mad Men theme really took shape, and I realised that the invites didn't really reflect that very well.

(Not that anyone who gets these invitations will actually notice or care, of course! I'm realistic about that. At best, my closest family and friends may appreciate what I'm trying to do, which is good enough for me.)

So, after the nice-but-unimaginative first attempt, version two took the vaguely 1960s-style fonts I'd selected in v1 and added some proper styling and structure. They were a lot better, and were very nearly the final version. I took some inspiration, structure-wise, from this elegant design:

That was until, Googling for inspiration, I saw some gorgeous 1950s/1960s wedding stationery that played around with curvy frames and polka dots, really hammering home the era. (Though I preferred my fonts and layout.)

So version 3 began, in which I took the layout and typfaces of v2 but added a cute frame that I made and, yep, polka dots.

You'd think that would be enough. But noooooo.... Pesky interweb. You see, I'd been looking online for some inspiration for RSVP wording (something more quirky than 'Accepts with pleasure / Declines with regret') and came across a beautifully designed example. The rest of the invite wasn't right for us, but this one part seemed quite 1960s, but in a really cool, Mod style.

And so version 4 was born, sort of. I got as far as designing our RSVP in a similar-ish style before I realised that it totally clashed with what I'd done for v3 - so bad that there's no point even trying to merge the styles into a brand new version 5. They're just too different.

So now I'm stuck. Do I:

1. revert back to the stylish-but-kinda-plain version 2;
2. go for Kath-Kidson-cutsey version 3; or 
3. try to make all our stationery in the cool/Mod-style of version 4? 

Of course, it might help if I could decide which one I actually like best, but that imp of indecision keeps making me change my mind! And as long as that goes on, it feels like I'm getting nowhere.

I'll round this off with a saying (that I don't really agree with): "Good designers borrow. Great designers steal." In my situation, I'd add: "Pseudo designers should probably pay someone else to do it..."

P.S. The examples above are all from proper wedding stationery designers, so to give them their due credit, here are links to their websites: square, elegant invite • polka dot design • cool RSVP