Things we can tick off this week...

• Paperwork for the registrar taken hot-foot from Milton Keynes register office up to the Loughborough office.


• I met the woman who's going to marry us! She's called Alison, and just happened to be the person around when I dropped off the paperwork.


• Pre-wedding photo shoot with brilliant photographer - can't wait to see the results!


• Met with the wedding planner at Beaumanor and went through all of our choices for meals and the time plan for the day. Now I can see what we're paying for, they really do know their stuff.


• Did a trial walk down the big staircase - I'm definitely NOT having high heels now!


• Took away their two types of champagne to try - we'd never get through two bottles in a night, so we'll give them a go next time we're up with my parents in a couple of weeks


• I have a really nice idea for wedding favours - not telling, so it can be a surprise for those of you who are coming!


• I've found a UK supplier for the mokume gane rings that we both love, and we'll be going to visit them at a trade show in October


• Visited the hotel that we're going to be staying at and had a lovely lunch there. Sadly, the room we'll be using was in use, so we couldn't have a peep, but I really liked the place.

Things to think about next:

• Putting together the list of hotels, directions and menu choices to send out with the wedding invitations


• Find a florist and decide on bouquet and buttonholes


• Jef and my Dad both have speeches to write!


• Decide on vows and - I've ordered a couple of sample books from Amazon as we're both completely stumped at the moment!


• Make appointment to go and see registrar in November to agree the vows and music above

Knackered now.

I know it's been a while since I last wrote, but we've actually sorted quite a lot out :)

• We both have designs for our outfits from Sophie Jonas and they are utterly stunning! I'd love to scan in the sketches and show some of you, but I'm not sure about the copyright issues of that. I must find out.


• We've booked the hotel for our wedding night - just a few minutes from Beaumanor.


• Our musicians for the daytime are booked, a fabulous early music group.


• We've booked a photographer, and arranged that he's going to do us a pre-wedding photo shoot as well as the pictures on the day. (We're going to have a reminiscent play at gothing-up a bit, and mooching around some ruins nearby. Not till September though, I'm still too fat!)


• I'm down to two companies to choose from for wedding invitations. This one is modern, clean and I really like this idea of having the directions and details printed on the invitation rather than including an extra sheet we prepare.
  However, these are also really nice in a more traditional style. You can't really tell from the photo, but I've got some samples, and the card has a pearly sheen too it, very pretty.
  Anyway, tomorrow we're going to finalise the wedding list, and hopefully decide on the invitation style, so I won't be pondering for too much longer!


• We're booked in at our local register office to give our notice to get married on July 2nd. This will be the third time we've booked this - the first time the car broke down, the second time I couldn't get out of work, so third time lucky!

However, there is still to think about:

• Evening entertainment - Jef's quite keen to get a Celtic or folky band for the evening, but I've had no joy finding leads online. I need to write to Beaumanor anyway to ask a couple of things, so might see if their event planner can recommend anything.


• Rings - Well, we know what we want, but getting it in the UK is proving to be a huge pain. We're after mokume gane - probably easiest if I just show you...
  or
  They're complex to make and therefore very expensive, but quite beautiful.


• Vows and music for the ceremony - not even started thinking about these seriously. I have some ideas but they're pretty unformed.


• Jewellery - Given the type of dress I'm going for, I can certainly go for a nice striking necklace - however I've not even started thinking about this yet!


• Cake - Not fruit cake, we've decided - everyone will be too fed up of Christmas cake to enjoy that... This is something I really don't want to spend a fortune on, it's only cake. Ponder, ponder.


• Agreeing the menu with Beaumanor We get to do that in November which seems ages away


• Table decoration - apart from the slightly unorthodox table decoration we've got planned for our table ;) I'm wondering what to do for everyone else! In keeping with the rest of my theme, I'm thinking Christmas-y, but what that will work out to exactly, I'm not sure.


• Pressie list - that's going to be held at John Lewis, and that's all set up, but at some point we need to go in and choose what to add to it. Now that is going to be fun!


• Flowers - I had been thinking about going for a crystal bouquet rather than cut flowers - after all, it's going to be December, there won't be a huge variety in season unless they're hothoused, and I'm not sure I want to pay a lot for something that dies after a couple of days. But they're terribly expensive, and I'm not sure that there will be enough light on the day to make them sparkle as they should. At the risk of repearing myself, ponder ponder.


• Christmas shopping - I've decided I'm going to try and buy all my Christmas presents, wrap 'em and write my cards over the summer. I don't think that I'll be able to face doing it in November/December when all of this is looming very close.

So, that's where I'm up to! It's actually very scary that next week it will be only six months until my wedding day. I'm a bit stressed at the amount still left to do and arrange. But mainly I'm just really excited and looking forward to this - and that's the most important thing :)

...or at least, where I might like to have my dress made.

Sorry that this is somewhat image heavy. Oh, no I'm not. These are stunning.

I was flicking through the giant tome of 'You and your wedding' just now, and getting frustrated and bored by the dozens and dozens of perfect 'brides' modeling slinky white satin numbers, when I turned to the small adverts at the back of the magazine and there was a company advertising this dress...



Oh boy. There was just a link in the advert, no address, so I was hoping and hoping that they weren't up in the wilds of the Hebrides or somewhere - they're based just outside Hatfield! Not far away at all!

They have a whole section on dresses for winter weddings!

The prices are ok - about £1,000 for the red dress above, but they do look very 'me'. What's more, they'll make waistcoats or shirts to complement my dress.

---

It must be my day for finding thing as I'm also very taken with the jewellery here.
This would go beautifully with the red dress above...


And I just love this shade of green...


(Thank you to maewitch for the link!)

It's one year today we'll be tying the knot. It's our minus-one'th anniversary - our UN-niversary. We've a busy year ahead - a terrifying but exciting time.

I wonder how we'll look back on this year on future ANniversaries?

I'm very happy and proud to announce that we've finally set a date and venue for our wedding!



Here are a few pictures we took of the Hall last week - you can see all of them here.



We hadn't planned on a winter wedding, but the first place we looked at only had that weekend available, which got us thinking that it might actually be a lovely idea... it's far enough in advance that people probably haven't made big plans to go away, it makes ideas for colours and themes really, really easy, and the Hall will already be decorated with boughs and lights and there will be an 18ft Christmas tree next to the staircase there. Plus, I love Christmas, and for me and family it's a really happy time of the year. I love the idea of combining that happiness with our day, and hope that it works that way for my friends too.

I like the idea of a late afternoon ceremony too, and have ideas about using lots of candles and a general lovely cosy atmosphere. Mulled wine for people as they arrive, that sort of thing.

I've spoken to my sister who is a fantastic flute player and she's already learned Concerning Hobbits as one of the pieces we'd like to have - I love that :) Lots of other pieces to choose yet though, not to mention readings and vows to write. Wow.

I'm definitely going to go for a dark jewel coloured wedding dress now - either dark green or burgandy. I like this very very much :)

So exciting!

And I'd like to to say how the idea of marrying this wonderful man of mine fills me with such amazing happiness and joy. Jef, I love you.

A cliché, I know but today I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

We're off work next week, so plan to look at three wedding venues around Leicester. The three up for consideration at this point are under the cut-tag (some of the pics are rather large!) ( ... )

There's a wedding fair in MK from October 6-8th which we'll certainly be wandering around. Need to start thinking dresses in earnest... Having read that the average wedding costs £11,000 (!!) we're looking at ways to economise and still find a venue with some presence. One way may be to go for a weekday ceremony rather than Saturday or Sunday.

Thoughts? How likely would you be to go to a weekday wedding if your relatives/friends set one up?

We're going to go and have a look at this as a possible venue next weekend...



It's in Leicestershire, and from the information pack that I've had through, it looks like the sort of thing we'd like. It's a lot of money, but having looked around other sites, it's about par for the course. I think I'm just realising that those sums are pretty normal.

I love this picture...

Will certainly feedback on what we think :)

I'm starting to have a serious look at venues: The Elvetham looks so very stunning and I'm sorely tempted!

I'm not sure I can picture myself somewhere that very grand though. I want the same kind of 'feeling' of a place, just on a slightly smaller scale.

I shall keep looking.