Open Bar? Erm...no.

So one of my favourite budget wedding sites, The Broke Ass Bride, recently had a post about bars at wedding, and the different options available and it got me thinking. From what I can gather, it is the norm in America for the bride and groom (or whoever is paying) to take care of the bar bill. They have an open bar, and guests don't have to pay for drinks, either all night or for part of the night. A couple of blogs I've come across even seem to imply that it is tacky to expect your guests to pay for drinks at your wedding.

This is most definitely not the case in the UK! At least, as far as I know! I have never heard of weddings in this country having an open bar, and would always expect to pay for my own drinks if I was invited to a wedding. And I definitely do not think that this is tacky! After all, your guests are coming to celebrate your love and marriage with you - the free meal and free booze is just a bonus, surely?

OK, so realistically, I know that some people probably do go to weddings mainly for the free food and booze, but if it that was the case, we are providing a 3 course meal, reception drinks, table wine and a toast drink. Plus our favours are shots! That's plenty of free alcohol in my opinion. I mean, sure, it would be great to be able to buy drinks for our friends and families all night, but we simply would not be able to afford it, especially with the amount I know some of our friends can drink!

And as for it being tacky - there is a great article on Offbeat Bride explaining that there will always be someone who thinks that something about your wedding is tacky. Hell, there will always be someone who thinks that getting married at all is tacky!
I'm sure there will be someone who doesn't like our venue, someone who doesn't like our colour scheme, someone who doesn't agree with our non religious ceremony. But if there is someone at our wedding who complain because they only got 3 or 4 free drinks, then I doubt they will be the sort of person whose opinions I care about.

Anyway, rant over. I was just getting a bit sick of reading (US based) wedding blogs that listed an open bar as one of the most important aspects of a wedding. If we had an open bar, we would probably have to double our budget! We wont be doing it, and I'm sure our guests will still enjoy themselves.

Sorry, I'm rubbish...

Deepest apologies for not blogging as often recently - I know you've been spoilt by twice a day updates, so to go so mnay days with nothing must have been difficult. However, I have a good reason - I started a new job! Yay me!

I wont bore you with the details, but will say that I am loving it so far. Unfortunately it means I have less free time to blog, bit I promise I'll try to update atleast a few times a week.

The other issue is that we are currently at that 'inbetween' stage of our wedding planning, where we have chosen pretty much everything and made all the big decisions, but we are not quite ready to actually buy/make things yet. This means that I don't have too much to blog about at the moment. But no matter, I'm sure I'll change my mind about something, and pretty soon we will be able to actually start doing things! Hurray!

First Dance Song (again!)

Ok, ok, I know that I have changed my mind a few times about what our first dance song will be, but this time I am certain!

You might remember that I originally wanted The Luckiest by Ben Folds, then Karl decided that he preferred If I Had A Million Dollars by Barenaked Ladies. However, we decided that the Barenaked Ladies song might be a bit too fast to do the classic "stand and sway" to, and Karl does not like the idea of dance lessons!

Anyway, I came across this song on YouTube - the original was by Barbara Lewis in the 60's and I had heard it before and liked it, but when I heard this cover by the Arctic Monkeys, I just fell in love! I have literally been playing it on repeat for about 3 days now.



Karl has agreed to it - possibly because he just wants me to stop playing love songs to him and asking for his opinion! Although I did catch him singing along to this song, so it's safe to say he like it! And it's the Arctic Monkeys, so he can say "Oh yeah, we're having our first dance to the Arctic Monkeys" and sound cool, even though it's not even remotely.

It's slow enough for us to do the "stand and sway" to, but has enough of a beat so that if we suddenly decided to learn a dance it would still work (although the chances of that happening are slim!). And its less than 3 minutes long! Hurray!

Cosmetic Bag Discount Code

Just a quick post to let you know that ArtsCow is doing the same offer that I used to get my Bridemaids gifts. You can get 3 cosmetic bags of any size, personalised with any photos, designs or wording, for only $8, with free shipping.

The discount code is 3CBAGSFOR8 and the offer is valid until 24th November.

I was really impressed with the quality of the bags, and they are a massive bargain too. I'm currently collecting various products to put in the bags - I will do a post on them when they're done.

Happy shopping!

Cake topper addition

I recently found Wedzu which is just like Etsy, but only for wedding related items. Whilst browsing through the products, I came across these cake topper banners by the seller Ready Go.

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How cute are these? I think our cake toppers would look really nice under one of these banners, possibly the just married one, because I think couples can sometimes go a bit overboard with sticking their names on everything wedding related!

These are £20 from Wedzu, which is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a bit of card and some skewers! I reckon I could make one of these fairly easily - just print out the words with a banner clip art, cut it out and stick it on some wooden skewers. Then we can just stick in into the top of the cake, above the bride and groom toppers. Simples.

I'm going to keep an eye on Wedzu, because I think it will probably be a brilliant source of inspiration for DIY projects.

I love you more than....

A while ago, I found the website for the I love you more than blank  project, which is run in New York and based on the belief that you can never really measure something unless it is compared to something else. They ask you to submit an end to the sentence "I love you more than..." and you can see other peoples answers on the website too.

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I spent literally hours on this website, reading through the answers. Some of them are funny, some are really sweet, and some of them are sort of sad.

When I first found this site, I started to think about how the idea could be used at a wedding. I really liked the idea of asking each of your guests to complete an "I love you more than..." heart and stick them into the guest book, or pin them to a notice board, or even string them up like bunting. It would be lovely to read all the comments and it would be a nice, different memento of the day.

We probably wont use this idea for our wedding, just because I don't want to plan too much for our guests to do, what with a photo booth and guest book frame already. However, I might decide to make some sort of display with "I love you more than blank" hearts, just made up of our own answers, possibly just as decoration. Maybe.

Anyway, here's a couple of answers that we came up with ourselves. As you can tell, we were being a bit silly!

• I love you more than chocolate covered pretzels
• I love you more than finally being able to sneeze
• I love you more than a "70% off Shoes" sign
• I love you more than  I love Gibbs
• I love you more than John McCain loves shooting things
• I love you more than I love Coca Cola 
• I love you more than Barney Stinson loves suits
• I love you more than a hot water bottle in bed

Anyway, have a look at www.iloveyoumorethanblank.com to see more hearts.