Cheap Centrepiece Idea #2

Following on from our decision to have non floral centrpieces, I have been trawling the internet for inspiration.
I think it can be difficult to find centrpieces that look elegant without spending a fortune, so the plan is to make them ourselves. This means that we're looking for something cheap and simple that will still make an impact.

Here's a few of my favourite ideas so far:

Candle bags from Martha Stewart

I quite like the idea of using herbs as centrepieces. I think give a fress and natural look to the table, and we could make it a bit more colourful by putting them in bright containers. Plus they would smell amazing!

I've mentioned using limes before, and this lemon centrepiece looks quite striking. However, when Martha Stewart does it, it looks classy and unique. When I do it, it looks like a bunch of fruit dumped in a bowl...

I love this idea, from Martha Stewart (again!). It's family photos printed on really thin paper and framed. You stick 3 frames together to make a triangle, then put a candle in the middle. Simple, but very cool.

Fabric flags (in purple and lime for us, obviously) stuck in a jar. So simple, but I actually quite like the look of this.

I think I saw goldfish bowls somewhere - maybe at a wedding fayre? At first, I thought it was a very unique idea, but when I actually think about it, I'm not sure I like it...
What happens to the fish afterwards? Is it cruel? What if a fish dies during the day? Can you imagine - a dead fish floating in the middle of the table?? Eurgh!

Wheatgrass! I've never thought of grass as a centrepiece before but I love this photo so much! I know it has flowers in it, but only the head and I could buy a bunch from Sainsburys on the day, lol.

So far, wheatgrass is definitely my favourite idea. I'm off to find some more pictures!

Cheap Centrepiece Idea #1

I am gobsmakced at the cost of flowers for weddings! If we have real flowers for our boquets and centrepieces, I will be speding more on flowers than on my dress! I love flowers, but I'm not sure I love them that much.

So my solution is to either use artifical flowers, or not use flowers at all.

At the moment, I'm leaning towards non floral centrepieces. My first thought is Candles:

I absolutely love the look of candle centrepieces. They are so simple, but the effect is very elegant. My only fear is that it would still be daylight during our meal, so it might look a bit odd to have a table full of candles and no need for them to be lit...

Also, I think i'd like a bit more colour in our centrepieces. Of course, we could always use coloured candles - I love this picture:

From Martha Stewart

Wedding Pride!

To celebtrate the fact that this weekend was Manchester Gay Pride, I'd like to share this photo of an amazing rainbow cake -

Intimate Weddings

How amazing is that cake? I honestly don't think I would be able to eat it - and that is saying something since I really really like cake!

Now celebrate your Gay Pride with these rainbow wedding pics:

Wedding Paper Divas

Cakehead.com

 

The Knot

Garters.com

realweddings.ie

inthedetailsblog

 

cccakes.co.uk

 

 

While a rainbow colour theme might not be to everyones taste, I love how bright and fun these pictures look. And it's certainly a very pretty way to show that you support marriage eqality

The Dress...maybe?

So I was just looking through pictures of wedding dresses, trying to find the perfect one for me, when I came across this picture:

 

I absolutely love this dress! I think it has quite a classic shape, but it's also a bit different. It is nice and simple, but also has some beading and detail to add interest. And aren't vertical stripes supposed to be slimming?

The more I look at it, the more I want it. There are just a couple of problems -

1. It's a zip up, not a lace up; Now this is not a major problem, but I'd always assumed that I would have a lace up dress for extra support/shape etc. I suppose I will just have to re-think underwear though...
2. I can't find anywhere to try it on; I can find the dress on the Bonny USA site, but not on the Bonny UK site. This makes me think that maybe it's not available in the UK, which means I can't try it on. But then it is from the new collection. Maybe if I wait a few weeks, it will be stocked. 

I have found this dress on a website that ships from China, and it costs £228. I know that's not a lot in wedding dress terms, but do I really want to spend that much on a dress that I have never tried on, or even seen in person??

It's a dilemma. But I love the dress so much...if I don't find another one that I love more in the next few weeks, I might just go for it!

To see the dress in all it's beautiful detail, go to The Bonny Website and scroll across the bottom to style 1021. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger and see more detail.

Shoes Shoes Shoes!

OK, so I might not have decided on a dress yet, but I have chosen my wedding day shoes! Surely they are more important anyway?

I love shoes - especially really pretty, really high heels. Unfortunately, I can't actually walk in them. I can stand still, looking fabulous, but if I actually need to move I'm buggered.

I knew I wanted purple shoes for my wedding day, and also knew that I would be in extreme pain if I went for the gorgeous 6 inch heels I was lusting after.

So i thought about going in the opposite direction and getting purple converse. What could be more comfotable than converse?

And then I got really excited because I found the converse website, where you can design your own shoes! I spent literally hours choosing the perfect colour combinations - purple converse with lime green stitching and "Mrs W" written down the heel. Amazing - until I realised that they don't ship them outside of America. Bugger.

The more I looked at flat wedding shoes, the more I realised that I wanted to wear heels - they would just have to be small heels. I did find some really lovely flat shoes though -

polyvore

Glitzy n Glamorous

Madaboutshoes.com

But still, my heart skipped a beat when I saw the skyscraper heels - even if my feet did hurt just from looking at them!

DKNY

Style Hive

iOffer

Very.co.uk

eBay

Irregular choice

And I know those last ones are not purple, but how amazing are they???

Anyway, I knew I wouldn't be able to even walk down the aisle in any of those, nevermind stand for photos and walk around all day. So I started looking for a smaller heel and thats when I found "the pair".

Remember the angels singing moment I talked about in the dress post? Well I definitely had that moment with these shoes -

Very.co.uk

Gorgeous, right? The heel is only 2 inches, which I think I'll be able to manage- and I love the T-bar, Mary-Jane style.

very.co.uk

These beauties are from very.co.uk for the bargain price of £39. And, I found a code that gives me £25 off your first order, providing its over £40. So I added the shoes and another cheap pair of trainers to my basket and entered the code to check that it worked. I didn't order them, because they didn't have my size shoe in stock - but the code worked and I got very excited about getting my wedding shoes for only £14.

The next day, my size was back in stock so I went to check out and....the code wouldnt work! Apparently this wasnt my first order! WTF? I'm not sure what happened, since I have never ordered anything from very.co.uk. Maybe just putting something in your basket counts as an order...?

Anyway, I'm not going to be denied my bargain shoes so my mum has offered to set up an account and order the shoes in her name, so that I can use the code.

Don't you just love a bargain?!

Useful Planning Tools

I like to be organised and have every little detaield planned out as early as possible. My fiancé is basically the opposite. So I found Google Documents really useful for wedding planning.

Click the title of this post to see the "Wedding Template Collection"  (or click >here< ) which includes a guest list tracker, address book, to-do list, budget planner, seating chart and day of schedule.

Just a couple of handy documents to keep everything organised. I particularly like the fact that you can publish them to the web and send the link to the people involved (e.g. groom, MOB, bridesmaids?). Very useful!

Bargain or Bad Idea?

Recently I have been toying with the idea of buying my wedding dress from an online shop, which makes dresses in China at a fraction of the costs or a traditional bridal shop.

I was horrified to find out how much some of the dresses I liked would cost - I can not justify spending that amount of money on a dress I will only wear once! But that being said, I still want a proper wedding dress! I've seen dresses on the chinese sites for as little as £100 and I know that they won't be the same level of quality as one from the original designer - but I'm not sure I would mind..

Now, we've all heard the horror stories about dresses from abroad, where the fit is way off, the beading is shoddy and the dress is just generally badly made. But for such a low price, I'm tempted to go for it. For every horror story, there is a bride who was very happy with her cheap knockoff dress!

The thing I'm most concerned about is the ethical issues involved. Surely buying a copy of a deisgner dress is the same as buying a pirate DVD or illegally downloading music? Now, I'm not saying I havn't ever done those things - but they are technically illegal. Am i going to have my wedding dress confiscated for breaking copyright laws or something??

Luckily, other people have thought about the same issue and have explained their views much more eloquently than me!

I found this post on OffBeat Bride, where the author talks about why she thinks it's not unethical to buy a dress from an offhsore website. Here's a quote:


"While I personally had no interest in wearing a designer dress, I will say that I have no qualms with off-shore reproduction of name-brand designer wedding dresses through online spots like Kaersen. Many of the commercially-made dresses available at mainstream wedding boutiques are made in China anyway, and I don't think you're doing something inherently awful by taking money out of a big name designer's pocket. Vera Wang is a rich woman who dresses movie stars. The $5k you're not spending one of her wedding dresses isn't going to put her in the poor house. I kind of equate reproducing a designer wedding dress with pirating a Beyonce album.That said, I think it's a totally different game if you're reproducing a dress made by an independent designer!"

You can see the original post by clicking on the title of this post.

I think I'm going to go for it and save a massive chunk of our budget by getting a bargain basement wedding dress from China. I'll let you know when I've found the one I want!

I want that one!

I love looking at real weddings on Style Me Pretty - they are all (predictably) so pretty! Everything is always perfectly placed and so co-ordinated - they look more like magazine photoshoots than real weddings!

Like I said, I love looking at them, but it also makes me a little depressed. I mean, I seriously doubt my wedding will look as amazing as those do! But I'm ok with that, because it will be everything I want it to be, all the people I love will be there, and most importantly, afterwards I'll be married to my lovely fiancé!

So I look at Style Me Pretty weddings with a kind of detachment because I don't think of them as attainable - nothing I'm involved in will ever look so flawless!

That being said, when I saw this couples photos I had major wedding envy! They had lime green, which I love, and the whole simple, fun, relaxed vibe that I am aiming for....

[all photos from www.stylemepretty.com]

And I really want Hay bales for the guests to sit on now! It might look a bit out of place on a golf course though....

A Fruity Twist!

I really love the idea of using fruit as wedding decoration! One of our colours is lime green, and when searching for inspiration pictures, I came across some gorgeous photos of actual limes being used -

[From www.margodittmer.com] A creative alternative to place cards

From Katieandryanwedding.wordpress.com

From www.merrimentevents.com

From thelittlewhitebook.wordpress.com

From weddingwire.com

I imagine that limes would be alot cheaper than flowers and I think they look really striking. The same thing could be done with lemons, oranges, apples - almost any fruit really!

The only thing that would worry me would be how long the fruit would last - especially as we are having a summer wedding. How long do cut up slices of lime last before they start to look a bit sorry for themselves??

Another fruity option of course, is to use coloured jelly with flowers set in -

From weddingobsession.com

I bet these would smell amazing! Although some of our younger guests would probably try to eat them...

Do we need a theme?

One of the first thing that everybody seems to ask me when we talk about the wedding is "what is your theme going to be?".
We don't actually have a theme, unless 'wedding' is a theme?? I suppose we could say it's a purple and lime green theme, but that doesn't seem to satisfy people!

I'd like to say that out theme is 'stuff we like' and then I could get away with having anything at the wedding with the excuse of 'but that's part of the theme!'

I've done a little bit of research and some of the more popular themes for weddings seem to be:

Butterflies -

 Country Garden

 

 

 

 

 Beach/Seaside

 

 

 

Obviously, the theme of a wedding could be anything at all, and I'm sure that every couple chooses something that means something special to them. These 3 are just some that I have seen examples of a few times, but every wedding (even ones with the same theme) is unique. 

Should we have a theme? Does a wedding need one? Personally, I think that a colour scheme is going to be enough for us. I don't want to worry about matching everything to a specific theme aswell! 

If I had to describe the tone of our wedding, I'd say I want it to be simple, relaxed, fun, colourful and happy.  I think this is as much of a theme as we need!