Our Day by Design

Hopefully by now we are on route to Bratislava {after a ridiculously early flight} where we are spending a couple of days before moving on to Vienna. Im really looking forward to our trip as both cities are completely new to us; we plan to spend our time seeing the sights, relaxing and celebrating with a drink or two! We will be in Vienna on our actual anniversary; can you believe its been a whole year! I'm also looking forward to a full week off work and we still have a day and a half off at home to enjoy once we return. We are using that opportunity to visit The Kitchin for dinner. I'm not sure if we will have Internet access or not but since I don't plan to be online much I'll catch up with everyone when we get back next week. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Inspired* by Kirsty from a safe mooring , I thought my last post about our wedding should share the marriage advice given to us by our wedding guests. As you may remember the guest book had different questions for them to answer, one of which was 'Any advice for the Newlyweds?' We received lots of wonderful wisdom from our guests; some funny, some helpful, some we already followed and only a few that were really silly! Here is some of the fabulous advice: "Always listen to Gaynor" {sound advice from our very wise flowergirl} "May the best days of your past be the worst days of your future" {a perfect reminder that your wedding day shouldn't be the best day of your life; there is plenty more to come} "Be happy and treat life as an adventure to share together!" "Never let the sun go down on an argument" {and loads of other variations of this theme} "Keep a sense of humour" "Be best friends!" "Always remember t...

A couple of Saturdays ago {12th March} we were able to use one of our Christmas presents by having lunch at La Potiniere in Gullane. We were given a voucher from my aunt & uncle and my parents received the same and bought one for my aunt & uncle too so we could all go for lunch together, masterminded by my aunt. Since my dad and aunt had been ill at New Year it was really our new year celebrations. I'm fairly sure we confused the other diners by our 'Happy New Year' toast in March! The restaurant is quite small and just has 20 seats, which allows one of the owners, Keith, to serve as well as be in the kitchen; this makes it a lot more like being in someones house, rather than in a restaurant which is lovely. They bake two different types of bread so I tried the sunflower kind while we looked at the menu, along with a glass of prosecco for our toast. With such a small restaurant, they choose to only offer two choices for each course on the menu, with one meat &...

As you know we had our gift list with John Lewis . We were very lucky to receive the majority of the items on our list. We were also given a lot of John Lewis vouchers; half of which we used to buy the remainder of our list so we ended up with everything we chose. We had the delivery arranged for the Friday after we returned from honeymoon on the Wednesday as Graham was still going to be off work. When we were stuck on honeymoon my dad phoned to cancel the delivery for us. The first Saturday we could then rearrange for was the 29th May, when loads of boxes appeared at my parent’s house so we could store them in their garage until we could unpack them. Having lived together for three years before the wedding we already had a lot of everything. However most of it was fairly cheap from Ikea so we used our list to upgrade things like pots, pans, glasses, towels, bedding, bathroom accessories, bins and a new fancy Dyson ball vacuum! We also got a Wedgewood china dinner service and Robert ...

As we originally found our photographers at the SECC wedding fair, they had an offer for a free 16” x 12” framed print. We chose the image they had put on our mini album covers which is one of the black & white images of us in amongst the trees. (Image by Craig & Eva Sanders ) The print looks fantastic in its black frame with the white mount and it will look even better when it’s finally up on the wall {hint hint G!} Our names and wedding date are on the mount as well. They also gave us a 10” x 8” print of one of favourite photos which looks lovely in the black slate photo frame we were given as a wedding gift. We have loads of other photos on display, including square black & white ones of us in the car and during the first dance; a square one of me & the girls laughing; one of us in amongst the daffodils, the full bridal party photo and the one of us against the wall. I have loads more printed out in square format that I’m planning to put in the purple frames we used ...

The photography package we chose included a 16” x 12” landscape album with 40 pages / 20 spreads, by Bellissimo. We had looked at some album examples when we met them in the February before the wedding and decided to change it to a 12” x 12” square album with 50 pages / 25 spreads. Rather than having the photo cover, which was included, we opted for the engraved aluminium cover. It cost us an additional £70 and we were able to use some of the money we had received as a wedding gift. Eva created a first draft of an album design to get us started back in May last year. Once we had received our CD of images, I swapped some around and made some changes to the layout before the design was finalised. This process did take a while and in the end we went through to their studio so I could see each page once the changes had been made. After deciding on the last spread we had two options for, we were finally happy and ready to order it by the end of July. The album & prints we had ordered...

There have been a few posts on the subject of name changing lately and the choice women have; I thought I would let you know what I chose to do. I thought about it for a long time and went over all the options; I wasn't ready to lose my name but at the same time I wanted us to have the same family name, especially when/if we have children. My dad and his brother both had daughters so if we all change our names, our family surname wont continue. The same thing already happened with my grandads name as my mum and my aunt both changed their names, however, I was given that name as my middle name so its still here! Also all of my degrees and professional qualifications were completed before I got married so I never wanted to lose any of my original name. After ruling out hyphening {which was my original plan way before I really thought about it in any detail} I chose to take Grahams surname and keep my maiden name as a second middle name, effectively just adding Grahams name on, withou...

It only took 30 posts for my wedding recaps & 15 posts for the honeymoon ! (Image by Craig & Eva Sanders ) I cant believe they took me so long but 2010 was a busy year, I'm just glad I managed to get them finished before our first anniversary! I have listed all of the recaps together on a page in my sidebar so its easy for everyone to find or in case you missed anything. Ive made a separate page with all of my DIY posts as well. I'm thinking of getting all of my recap posts made into two books so I can have a record of it all. I still have a few more posts to do to finish off everything wedding related {that wasn't a recap} including changing my name; our album; the photographs & our gifts. However, I was wondering if there is anything else you would like to know that I haven't covered? If you have any questions about anything to do with the wedding or the honeymoon, leave me a comment on this post and I will try to answer it.

We found out on the Saturday that we had been put on the Male to London flight the next day, so we were able to enjoy our last full day in the sun before we packed and got ready to come home. Our flight wasn't too early on Sunday so we had time to enjoy our last breakfast and take some final photos of the island. We met the others also going on our flight at the jetty and while we waited we found someone to take our last island photo together. We were taken back to Male airport by speedboat and this time were made to wear our life jackets. Once we arrived at the airport we had to wait around a bit before we could check in. Once we had got rid of our cases we made our way up to the lounge which all Kuoni customers had access too. Here we enjoyed lots of food & drinks {no alcohol as there is none in the Maldives except on resorts} and used the internet to let everyone know we were on our way home. After a fairly long & uncomfortable flight, we arrived at Heathrow a bit la...