Our Day by Design

Just before I start my recaps, one of the last things I wanted to tell you about was what I was up to the week before the wedding. I ended up being busy every single day and the week involved lots of shopping for last minute stuff; I think I was at Ocean Terminal, my local shopping centre, every day! Sunday 28th March: Honeymoon shopping in Edinburgh {sunglasses, sun hat, 2 dresses, 2 tops, a skirt, 3 books & a DS game}. Monday 29th March: Picked up our marriage schedule ; had lunch with bridesmaid Lucy; some shopping {pens for guestbook, plastic wallets for the stuff for each table, toothbrush, tissues & contact lens drops for honeymoon, glue pens, blotting tissues & underwear}; ordered a couple of umbrella's {post to follow about the terrible weather all week} and had a meeting at our venue. {While we were at the venue, we also booked to stay on the Sunday night too, rather than having to come home before we left for honeymoon on the Monday.} Tuesday 30th March: Spoke...

...another 1lb lost! Current Weight [22.05.10] - 9st 5.5lbs Total Loss = 43lbs I went back to our WW meeting for the first time in over 3 months on Saturday, just to check my maintenance plan is working and that I hadn't put on too much since the last time we were there. I was surprised to have lost another pound as I certainly haven't been trying too, especially with all the food we ate on our honeymoon. I think I did lose more before the wedding so I'm happy to have got back to roughly the same weight. The last time I was there was the day we got measured for our bridesmaids dresses for Helen's wedding and as we have our first fitting on Saturday, I'm glad I haven't put any weight back on! We took a few wedding pictures mum had to show our leader and the other women too.

Of course I couldn't get bags for the girls and our mums without getting one for myself too. Handbags are totally my weakness, unlike shoes {which I why I bought 3 new ones in Florida last year}, so there was no way I couldnt get one for my wedding! Again, Emma was able to make exactly what I wanted for my bridal clutch and she even put my new initials and the wedding date on the label inside. Since I wanted to use it on the day, I went for an ivory satin bag and got Emma to make the main tab & frills in organza to match my dress. I added some colour with purple satin lining to match the girls bags. I love my bag and on the day I filled it with the stuff I would need like my lipstick, lip gloss & perfume then a few other random things I might have needed like plasters, tissues & blotting paper. I took my bag in the car with me which was great as it meant I could touch up my lip gloss on the car journey down. I ended up leaving it up in Ashleigh's room after we ...

I thought about buying a new perfume for the wedding but the more I thought about it I didn't really see the point. I already have all of my favourite perfumes, which are currently Romance , Chance , Euphoria & j'adore , among others, so I decided to use one of those. {Graham used to always bring me back perfume when he went away on detachment with the Air Force, which I why I have loads and never seem to run out!} (image from here ) I chose j'adore by Dior as its classic, feminine, fruity & floral and I have the eau de parfum, which lasts a lot longer than eau de toilette. I think I did actually buy this one myself, when we were in New York one year. However, although I didn't buy the perfume for the wedding, I did buy the perfumed body lotion to wear along with it so that the smell would last longer. (image from here ) I searched for the lotion in boots as I had lots of advantage card points to spend but couldn't find it so had to get it in Debenhams ...

The lovely people at wishpot got in contact with me a while back and invited me to be a wedding expert. Of course I accepted and created a profile under Our Day by Design ; I haven't added much to it yet but I hope to in the next couple of weeks. On wishpot you can create a wish list / registry with products from any store or website and it could be used for your wedding, for a birthday, a holiday or just for fun! You can also create personal shopping lists and recommend items.

I got this lovely award from Chocolate Lover at A Chocolate Lover's Confessions back at the end of March but have only just got round to posting it! Thank you Chocolate Lover! I am supposed to tell everyone 7 things about me and pass the award onto 7 other bloggers but instead I'm going to tell you 7 things about our wedding that you don't yet know before passing on the award! I will expand in more detail in my future recaps but here are a few facts to keep you going: 1. I was about 20 minutes late! 2. Our flowergirl surprised us by singing during the ceremony. 3. Our godmothers {who are also our aunts} surprised us by giving us a signed bible during the service. 4. I got to wear pink & purple polka dot wellies {only purchased the day before} while me & Graham were trooping through the hotel grounds getting our photos taken. 5. Dad mentioned this blog during his speech & surprised me with a purple & grey striped tea cosy that...

Woo hoo, I have reached my 200th post and on my blog anniversary too! It all started with this post a year ago and I am really glad I have managed to keep writing. Thank you all for the lovely comments too, it really makes it all worthwhile! I wonder if I can keep it up for another year but I certainly have loads of recaps to keep me busy for the next few weeks. I will leave you with one of my favourite photos from the wedding {we just got our DVD of photos today so I can start the recaps soon!} (All images by Craig & Eva Sanders )

We also got gifts for our parents to say thank you for helping us with the wedding. Like the gifts we got our wedding party, we also wanted them to be things they could use at the wedding. Our dads both got the same hip flask that the best man and ushers got, along with miniatures of Macallan Single Malt Scotch Whisky, as its one of my dads favourites. I know its traditional to give the mums flowers but we decided against that for a few reasons; there would already be loads of flowers from the centrepieces that we would could give them, what would they do with them at the hotel on the day and mostly because it wasn't something they could keep. Since I loved the girls bags so much I decided to get another 2 made for our mums too. I kept the gunmetal grey satin as its really lovely but got the lining in black satin and the frills in black chiffon; so that they were different from the bridesmaids and also black goes with anything! I got their initials put on them too. Obviousl...

Although we got the girls things they could use on the wedding day, there wasn't really anything the guys needed since we were hiring them full kilt outfits. We wanted to get them something they could keep but also that they could use if they wanted on the day so we chose hip flasks which they could carry in their sporrans. (Image from here ) We got the hip flasks online from a company called Kiltmakers . They also offer engraving so we got their initials engraved onto the front. We thought we should also get them something to put inside the flask so got miniatures of their favourite tipple's from the Whisky Shop in Ocean Terminal {they have every kind you could want!} Sailor Jerry Rum for Murray; Jim Beam for Andrew; Southern Comfort for Jake & Macallan Single Malt for our dads {who also got hip flasks with their initials!} I mentioned before that we also got them a funny gift of Storm Trooper Lego cufflinks from Etsy seller Crimson King . (Image from here ) They were so...

We gave the bridesmaids, best man, ushers and parents their gifts at the rehearsal dinner night before the wedding so I didn't want to share what we got them before then. I'm going to start with the bridesmaids gifts. All of the gifts could be used on the wedding day; we got them jewellery, a hair comb; a clutch bag and a pashmina. We also got them a letter tag of the first initial but that was just for the gift boxes {and hopefully they will hang them on their Christmas trees}, rather than for the wedding. The girls dresses had rhinestones on the back so I wanted to find jewellery that had some crystals incorporated. I didn't just want crystals though so started looking for pearl & crystal earrings & necklaces . After a lot of searching {almost every set I found just had metal backs and I was looking specifically for sterling silver, since that's all I can wear myself}, I found a lovely delicate set, including earrings and a necklace, on Etsy, from seller K...

The last bit of DIY I did was to amend our guest book. We got the book from my mum and dad for Christmas. It came with a box to keep it in and they also ordered a metal tag with our names and wedding date to put on the front of it. We already knew that we wanted to make sure space would be left in the book for us to stick the Polaroid Pogo prints of all of our guests. I also didn't want to just leave the book plain inside as I felt that everyone just writes the same things and I thought it would be good to give them some pointers of what to write. I came up with 5 questions as follows {most of which I got from other bloggers ideas & the guestbook store books}: Name(s) How do you know the Bride & Groom? Where did you travel from? Any advice for the Newlyweds? Your Special Wishes for Us I got the 5 questions made into a clear stamp from The English Stamp Company as they could create anything you wanted and they could do it in the same text that I had used for all of the oth...