Our Day by Design

The rest of the reception went so fast! Our photographers stayed until around 20 minutes after the first dance so they could take some shots of the guests dancing, which I loved seeing. All of a sudden it was time for them to leave, they had been with us for over 10 hours by then which was fantastic and meant we got every part of the day captured. The band were brilliant and had everyone up dancing all night, I don't think the floor was ever empty which was great. Hip Operation are an 8 piece band which was prefect for the large stage at Norton House so I'm so glad they were all able to come. {All images above by Craig & Eva Sanders } We had 3 ceilidh dances included; the Gay Gordons, the Dashing White Sergeant & the St Bernards Waltz. I managed to drag Graham up for the Gay Gordons since it was the first one but I sat out for the others; my organza train had come a bit loose from the lining during the Gay Gordons {think someone stood on it} and...

After around a 40 minute drive, we arrived at our reception venue, Norton House Hotel. Our car must have been fairly fast as we were out of the car before the photographers arrived so we did have to jump back in for a couple of photos first! After we properly got out of the car, we were greeted by the piper and a glass of bubbly! The other cars had arrived by this time so mum and Ashleigh helped to lift my train and we made our way inside. The hotel wanted to show us the reception room all set up before anyone else got to see it so we went to have a look and everything looked great, with just a minor layout change needed to the top table. By then the rest of the guests had arrived and we spoke to a few more that we hadnt seen at the church, while they also got their welcome drink and some canapes. Then it was time to head outside for the first of the photos, the guest group shot... (All images by Craig & Eva Sanders )

Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few weeks, things have been quite busy as you will see from the update below: I ordered more card samples to start thinking about the order of service', placecards, menu's and table name design. I ordered more grey ribbon to use on the order of service' and for the favour boxes. I paid for the rest of our honeymoon. I paid 50% of whats left to pay for our venue and arranged to meet our coordinator on Sat 30th Jan. We paid for and picked up our wedding rings; I love how mine turned out! {A separate post will follow with more detail!} I bought my shoes! {A separate post will follow!} I ordered some samples of veil fabric to look at the different colours. I booked the hairdresser; they have another wedding that morning too so they are going to open at 8am for us! I booked my hair trial for the 6th of March. My mum spoke to the women who does the flowers at the church who will arrange all of that for us with a mixture of white, purpl...

Last Monday I went to meet the florist, Val Hamilton , at her studio in Linlithgow. Graham didn't come with me as he isn't really that bothered about the flowers and the florist had suggested that it would be better as we could properly discuss my dress as well. I quickly put together a couple of pages of pictures to take with me showing the types & colours of flowers I liked as well as another couple of pages showing my dress since I don't have a fabric swatch yet. I had some ideas about the type of flowers I wanted including orchids and tulips but I wasn't sure what else would tie in. Val was really helpful and together we went through lots of different ideas and looked at what would be in season. As we had thought, the sweet peas that both my mum and granny had in their bouquets, are not available in April so I wont be having any in my bouquet. Val suggested she could get fake ones if I really wanted them but I only want fresh flowers, which she was happy about a...

We had to pay another bit of our reception venue cost today, since we had just passed the 9 month mark. While its never great to be paying out more money, its good to feel we are getting something achieved! It also spreads the payments out and means that including this payment and our original deposit, we have probably paid about half of the reception cost (although this doesn't include the additional evening reception). Once we have finalised the details with the hotel, we will receive a more detailed costing and will have to pay 50% of the total cost around 3 months before. The remainder will then be paid 3 weeks before. Plenty time till then though!

I was reminded of our plan for the table names when I saw the picture below on Seven Weddings . (Image from here ) Since we got engaged in New York, we are also planning to name all our tables after New York buildings, which also ties in with my job and is very me, with the top table being the Empire State. Our list so far includes: Empire State Building Chrysler Building Guggenheim Museum Statue of Liberty Rockefeller Center Flatiron Building Grand Central Station Museum of Modern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art United Nations Building Seagram Building Woolworth Building Times Square Tower Trump World Tower Brooklyn Bridge Lincoln Building The Chrysler & Guggenheim are my favourites so they will probably be used for the bridesmaids & ushers tables. Obviously we wont need all of the above and this is just our preliminary list until we finalise the table numbers and decide which to use. I'm not sure whether to include only interesting buildings, only tall buildings or only f...

We knew we wanted to have a live band that could also provide some ceilidh music, since its a Scottish wedding. The function room that we have chosen has a massive stage for the band to go on which also meant we could choose a fairly big band. We got a couple of recommendations from Grahams mum and one of my colleagues and set about contacting them to find out their availability and price. After a few discussions, we have booked an Edinburgh band called Hip Operation . They have 8 members which will look great on the big stage; they play totally live and have a mixture of male and female vocalists. Nearer the time we will have to finalise the timings & details with them and decide what we want for our first dance!

So with the church decided we started thinking about venues for the reception. We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted and there was one hotel near the airport (Norton House) that I had always thought would be perfect and that was added to the top of the list. However, in the spirit of wanting to make sure we had the perfect place, we searched around and made a list. We then spent some time gathering lots of brochures & information and taking a drive round some of the venues. The list included the following: Norton House Hotel - Top of the list especially when the brochure arrived. Marriott Dalmahoy - Other possibility. George Hotel - Centre of city, too big & expensive. Dalmeny Estate - Too far away from church. Hopetoun House - Too far away from church. Dundas Castle - Would need marquee for amount of guests which we didn't want. Melville Castle - Would need marquee for amount of guests which we didn't want. Dalhousie Castle - Too expensive and one of my ...