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

Attack of the wedding zombies

Like the after-effects of a zombie bite, wedding planning has a horrible habit of taking over your brain.

There's always something to think about, to research, to decide on, to weigh up the costs of, and to wonder if it goes with the four hundred other things you're pondering.

I imagine this might be a particular feature of the stage of planning we're at right now, which is that the main things are ordered, booked or bought – namely venues, car, dresses and centrepieces.

But all the lovely little details that can occupy the mind – such as stationery, room decorations, jewellery, accessories – have yet to be sorted. And there is so much lovely stuff out there! My Pinterest boards are filling up and I seem to be no closer to deciding on anything.

Sometimes I wish we hadn't given ourselves a full year to plan this thing. I imagine there must be a certain liberation in a short engagement, where (money allowing) you can just make decisions, get stuff bought, and get married.

But, to be honest, I'm glad we didn't do that. Despite the current brain takeover situation, I've enjoyed having the time to really figure out what kind of style I want for the day. I say 'I' again, even though H2B has started to show a bit more interest at last. But that's mainly about practical things – he's really not arsed about the little details, which suits me fine actually!

That said, I did reach an overload point last month. It coincided with falling off the dieting wagon and a bit of relationship crap that needed sorting, and overall it left me feeling decidedly 'Meh...' about the whole planning thing. Hence the gap in blog entries.

Thankfully, H2B and I sorted out our issues, and things are better than ever. I've made a shaky start back on the dieting journey (one stone down, two to go), and yes that wedding zombie mode is back.

But this time around I'm actually glad of it. This is (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I don't want to rush it.

I keep reading, whether in forums or blogs, about the post-wedding blues some brides get after the big day is over. I hope that's not the case for me, and married life is more than enough to put a smile on my face.

But either way I'm going to savour this. I'm planning the biggest and best party I could imagine for me and my mister, and I plan to enjoy every minute leading up to it, during and afterwards.

So bring on the Pinterest boards, the wedding blogs, the bridal forums and the countless Google searches. I only get to do this once, so I may as well make the most of it!

When in doubt...

I'm torn.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I consider myself as having pretty simple tastes. So my* choices for this wedding (now just under nine months away, eek!) have so far steered clear of fussy, frou-frou details.

*By the way, I'm giving up on 'we' unless it's actual reality. It's our wedding, we're getting married etc, but I am most definitely making the vast majority of decisions for the day. I'm realising that this is pretty typical, though I do wish my H2B would occasionally get even a teeny bit enthused about the likes of stationery and favours! But that's another blog post...

Going for the simple option has often also been dictated by our budget, which isn't tiny, but is less than half of the so-called national average.

For example, the first thing we bought for the wedding were some lovely glass pillar candle holders for the table centrepieces (in the Sainsbury's sale at £4 each – and I think they look a lot more expensive than that). From the beginning, I didn't want flowers: as soon as I totted up a realistic wedding budget, I didn't see the point of spending a chunk of it on something that would end up dead and thrown in a bin.

Lotus flower pillar candle holder (Sainsbury's)

So for each table, we will have this glass holder with an Ikea pillar candle (£1.50), popped on a mirror plate (£3.50) along with a few simple Ikea glass tea lights (£1). And I can sell a lot of it on eBay afterwards and make some money back.

That's just one example of many instances where we've opted for something less showy that also keeps costs down. No towering vases stuffed with exotic blooms and succulents for us...

However, as I said before I have become a little obsessed with looking at other wedding pics. And not just the perfect-world ones that appear on ruffledblog and stylemepretty. No, I'm also obsessing about real weddings now.

Last week, an old friend from school whom I've not seen in almost 20 years posted some pics from her wedding on Facebook, and I was immediately scouring them for every last detail: dress, bridesmaids' outfits, men's suits, car, church decorations and so on - purely to see whether our wedding choices are, well, better!

And, even worse, another friend from my home town - who I do actually keep in touch with - is getting married later this month, and there's a rather large part of my brain that is feverishly wondering what she will have as her centerpieces, if they're having favours, whether her dress will look ten times as expensive as mine, and - oh please no - have they booked a photobooth like we have?

But why do I care? All this is doing is making me second-guess all my/our decisions. Like those glass candle holders, which up until this week seemed like the perfect choice. But I'm now starting to fear that they will look small and ineffectual and like we haven't made an effort. I've been fretting over whether I went just a step too far in being practical, and maybe we should have blown a few hundred quid on some gorgeous bouquets in vases after all.

There is still a sane part of my brain, though. And it keeps telling me not to stress about stupid things that probably no one will notice anyway.

Well, apart from the photobooth. I reeeeeally hope they don't have a photobooth. I want ours to be the first wedding among our friends that has a photobooth, dammit! It's myyyyyy photobooooooth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!