Tuesday 28 February 2017

A Wedding Planning Update

Well, the invitations are out and the RSVPs are (slowly) starting to arrive, and it's beginning to feel like this is actually happening. Our invitations are probably my favourite thing about the entire wedding planning process so far. The portrait was painted by Laura (she has an Etsy shop as well as her blog) and the invitations were designed by my brilliant cousin Jaye as our wedding gift. The wording, meanwhile, was done in the most Janet way possible - by crowd-sourcing opinions on Twitter!

We've narrowed down our readings and asked the family and friends whom we want to be involved to speak (well, I have, I think Thomas has yet to ask his friends. So Mathijis, Tim & Bart, if you happen to be reading this - Thomas has something to ask you!).

I've bought a Ms Brown necklace from Sugar & Vice to wear on the day, just in case anyone was in any doubt that I won't be changing my name.

We've chosen an amazing menu of vegan and veggie food for the party, booked a venue for a family brunch the morning of the wedding, and started putting deposits down.

Most importantly, we're continuing to talk and hone our ideas of what we want our celebration to be*, shaping it into something unique and special to us rather than blindly following tradition and ending up with an identikit day. For example, we were both really uncomfortable with the idea of arriving at the ceremony venue once everyone was seated and walking into a silent room, even if it was going to be together (*falls off chair laughing remembering when someone I used to work with asked me, "who's giving you away?"*). So instead we'll be there at the venue to greet everyone, to chat and say hello and enjoy the music our friends will be playing.

After the big day I will no doubt write in more detail about how we planned a budget wedding, but what I will say here is how bloody lucky we are to have so many talented friends. There's no way we could have managed to spend so little without having people like Laura, Jaye, Elle (who'll be making our cakes), Abby (one of my best friends, and a musician who'll be performing before the ceremony), and James (our photographer, and brother of Abby). I appreciate that most people don't have such expertise on hand - I mean, who just happens to know a wedding invitation designer, a bespoke cake maker, a wedding band, and a wedding photographer?!

* You can read here about why we've chosen a non-legal ceremony for our wedding celebration.

18 comments:

  1. I remember this time last year getting the final few RSVPs in for our wedding, it's such lovely exciting feeling. We had friends help with cakes and little bits too, it's so nice to have generous talented people to help out amidst the wedding planning chaos!

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    1. Isn't it? Having people we know involved makes it so much more special, too.

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  2. Exciting times! I am so looking forward to seeing how you guys make it about you x

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    1. Obviously I would say this, but I think it's going to be awesome!

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  3. Can't wait to read more about this and hope you'll be sharing some photos. We got married at The Guildhall so it'll be lovely to see someone else's interpretation of their special day.

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  4. I love your wedding invitations, they're so pretty! I love hearing about your wedding too, it sounds like it's going to be soo good :)

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    1. I'm really looking forward to it, I think it's going to be such a fun day!

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  5. LOVE the wording on the invites! Special request to publish your playlist later!

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    1. I'm so in love with the wording, it's just so 'us'!

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  6. Your invites look awesome! I think it's so important to really think about what's important to you, especially with the ceremony. I can wait to see the photos and post-wedding blog posts!

    Liz x
    Distract Me Now Please

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    1. I'm especially glad that we've had time to properly think about what we want and the freedom to include anything in our ceremony, it's made the whole process a lot more comfortable for us both.

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  7. The invitations look really funny!!! Love them!

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    1. I really want to frame them, I love them so much, but it feels a bit cheesy!

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  8. As soon as I sent out invitations I wanted people to rsvp immediately, I was so impatient :)
    Love that you're doing it your own way. We had kept some traditions but omitted a lot of them, we had the day that we wanted - afterall of all the people there we're the ones that will look back on it most often. We weren't concerned with anyone getting upset (if anyone was we didn't know about it and it was done intentionally), it was our day and it does nothing but make me smile when I look back on it.
    I love your invites. I designed ours and luckily knew a cake designer and a photographer, Andy's aunt arranged our flowers. It make a huge difference in cost. I can't believe the price of things when they're for a wedding, it's crazy!
    I'm really looking forward to hearing more in the coming months and seeing the photos of the day itself! It's obviously going to be really unique.

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  9. Always interested to hear about the wedding. Love how you're going about it and doing the love party thing without needing to bound by expectations and traditions. On the flip side, I was also wondering how you've managed anxiety/stress when organising? Perhaps it hasn't been a problem for you, but that would be one of my fears in arranging this big event where I have to be centre of attention as well as make all the decisions.

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    1. I had to laugh at "perhaps it hasn't been a problem for you" because it very much has! Or perhaps better to say it would be if we hadn't made the decisions we have. I especially could easily have become a stressed nightmare about craft and DIY elements and a hundred different things - instead, we decided to do away with basically every element of a traditional wedding (favours, table settings, table plans, etc) so that we wouldn't get stressed. It's made it all so so so much easier and happier and we can concentrate our time and money on the things that ARE important (food, music, friends and family). Which is not to say I won't be a nervous wreck in the days before, I am sure I will be, but it's made it tons better.

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