… as both mothers now have found their outfits.
We went to the Solent Hotel again for Valentines day and saw another wedding going on. The bride looked really pretty and really made me feel like it won’t be long now, which I suppose it won’t be.
Graham
We’ve got some save the date magnets that we’ll be posting out soon. Hopefully you’ll all like them.
With the magnet will be a password to the ‘more information’ page we’ve added to the site. We’ll make sure this has all the important information about the day that we won’t publicly place on the site.
On a side note we had decided we might use Debenhams for our wedding list as it is the only place we like in all the cities people are coming from. Anyway, when we went to get more we found a wedding day event going on. So we got a free bottle of bubbly for giving them our details.
Finally, I hope you like the new website theme.
On the shoes-front, I tried on a pair of shoes while I was trying on dresses sometime ago but they seemed really low heeled – too low!!! I have a boyfriend at 6 foot and a sister at 5 ft 9. Heels are in order me thinks. They were Else Metropolitan (by Rainbow), but I’d spotted another pair much earlier that I really fancied which were much higher, by Rainbow which were more expensive but I decided to leave the shoe buying until I went back for my dress fitting. Anyway, in the Christmas sales in John Lewis, I was having a wander around for a feather duster of all things…and as I walked past the shoe section spotted all the wedding shoes on sale, row after row of Rainbow shoes. I got the higher heeled shoes I was after for half price @ £32.50. Bargain and they’re utterly fabulous!!!!
On the bargain front me and Graham are rackin’ em up. Dress, shoes, at the hotel, and the photographer too, but even after all that weddings still cost a lot so we are doing our best to get best value for money.
The next on the to-do. Bridesmaids 
Well I thought it was time to update the blog. I blogged about dress shopping and didn’t get around to making live so here it is!!! This post is real late it’s from December time!
Dress shopping had me seriously worried. I don’t wear dresses. I always wear jeans lol. I had been checking out the magazines at the various styles for a long while, since we got engaged , and reading ANY article I can get my mitts on about dress styles, so had ideas about what I wanted. Kind of! After looking at the dresses at the Birmingham Wedding fair, I thought I’d need to spend at least 600 quid to have a really nice dress, which I was definitely wrong about. I also found I had to bear in mind any required alterations, which for me are a necessary evil, because I am so short. In my discussions with various dress people at fairs, I found I had to bear in mind how complex the train on the dress was patterned. Having nice beads and intricate cloth is very well and nice, but when you have to chop 3 inches off it, you lose the effect on most of these dresses, though I heard some of these dresses came in different lengths sometimes.
So, cue all this worrying I was doing leading up to dress shopping. I tried 2 dresses on at the Birmingham NEC wedding fair and the first one was lovely, but I couldn’t decide if the excitement I felt was ‘first dress’ type of excitement or ‘the dress’ excitement. I tried on another dress that I didn’t like so much, which then made me worry about the excitement of the first. Anyway, the first dress I tried on was £600, so out of my budget really. I left that dress at the wedding show. I couldn’t buy the first dress I tried on.
Then we visited the Southampton Civic Centre wedding fair in October and I got all this ‘so you will have tried on loads of dresses by now then?’. Errrr No. Apparently you should look for your dress from the 12 month mark for time to order it in and alter it. oooooooookk………. And if the alterations and dress is complex then it can be longer! So I knew I had to hop on it. Logistically, a bit tricky, with my mum and both sisters being in Hull and me being in Southampton. But then Graham came home the Friday after the Civic Centre Wedding and said the wedding dress shop near us had their sale later on that week. I asked my girlfriends in southampton if they fancied dress shopping and cue wedding dress shopping. I tried on quite a lot of dresses in 2 shops in Southampton and in the second shop found this dress I loved the moment I put it on and it was on sale!!!! £100 quid off-my jammy luck. When I put it on and walked out the fitting room, I immediately had a mini-gush about it with my friend Natalie and then compared every other dress I tried on, to this dress. I went away having a good think of whether I should look in any other shops but to be honest this dress really did seem the real thing so I went back next day and bought it. Oooooooh it’s prettttttyyyyy.
I’m sure Amy will update you all in some more detail soon but in the past week we have managed to book the
We’re nearly at the ‘turning up’ stage now*. What we are still missing is a colour scheme
*Well we are in my eyes
I spotted ages ago in one of my very early wedding magazines the exact flowers I wanted, and never cut out the picture and have never found the picture since. Anyway, after attending the Southampton Civic Centre wedding fair, we met a florist there who had some example flowers with her that I loved. I looked at her website and she makes lovely stuff. So I think we will be visiting her soon to get her booked. I’m really pleased we found a florist we connected with, who does the styles I like. I had been looking at websites for local florists and just couldn’t find anything I liked and gave up looking for a time because I was quite dis-heartened by it all. I’m useless with flowers so I was checking out websites for inspiration and just couldn’t find anything, until we met this florist at the wedding fair. Hoorah for us!
A tip for any other bride: you see flower pictures anywhere that you like – take a picture (if you can) or cut it out. Even if it 2 weeks after you got engaged (that’s what happened to me). If like me, you’re useless at describing flowers then this is VERY useful.
Choosing a photographer is REALLY hard. The hardest thing so far! We have a list of various ones we’ve found, with a really good idea of what we want out of it, but when we choose one, even with all the examples on websites, it still feels like it’s going to be a gamble as to whether we will get what we want out of the end of it.
I really feel we have to get the photographer bang-on right, out of everything, the wedding shots will be there for a heck of a lot longer than a lot of other things in a wedding, such as the cake (that definitely doesn’t last long), and food (gone by the end of the day) and the list goes on.
I am thinking that I might write a little comparison chart of the various photographers and grade them on what we want out of the day. Maybe that will help.
Thought it was time to blog as I haven’t done in a little while. Progress hasn’t really been made on new wedding stuff until very recent weeks. I went to the Birmingham NEC wedding fair with my mum and both my sisters. It was really busy and every bride for herself pretty much. I was also taken aback with how many brides had brought with them an army of people (some had 5 or 6!!) which would then fill a stall up and no one could get in properly to look which wasn’t ideal and really quite selfish.
It was a fab weekend (drank faaaar too much wine lol). I tried on 2 dresses while I was at the fair, the very first I tried on was loooooooovely and on sale (from 1700 to 600). When I left the wedding fair I was really concerned I’d let it slip through my fingers, but recent events have removed that feeling (thankfully!).
There were a lot of local suppliers at the Birmingham fair for things like photography and flowers, but I have been aiming to get those more local to Southampton, so I didn’t find those stalls so useful.
The most useful thing I found out of the fair was looking at dresses. I’d seen plenty in magazines but none ‘on the hangers’. Something that strikes me is just how awful some dresses look hung up, then on a person really nice. To be frank I saw more dresses I didn’t like than what I did which was a little disconcerting in one way, but at least it made me more clearer on what I wanted.
We had a brilliant weekend, ate at some wonderful places and went through I fair bit of alcohol and had such a laugh. The hotel was a nice place my sister picked, close to the station and the shops too. Susan managed to get a bargain on a 4 star hotel, so it was quite posh.
On Sunday before we all went home we went shopping in the city centre too, Birmingham is a brilliant place to shop.
I’ll post a bit more later on but I thought I’d post these photos from Flickr of the venue done up nicely (for a wedding exhibition)
Angle 1 (Click for more)
Angle 2
