Our Day by Design

Last weekend I went shopping with my parents to look for my mums outfit for the wedding. We went to Catherines of Partick in Glasgow as we had heard they had a large selection. The shop was busy but they were really helpful and mum was able to try on loads of different styles and colours. The trip was a success and mum managed to find a stunning outfit from the Condici collection in a colour called thistle which should look great with the bridesmaids in purple. Grahams mum still has to get her outfit and she is going to continue her search this weekend, also at Catherines. She did find an outfit in Chique in Edinburgh last Saturday, which she reserved, but unfortunately we discovered when we returned from Glasgow that it was the exact same outfit as mum had just bought, in a different colour! They are obviously not going to wear the same thing so it was lucky that she hadn't also bought it! They both must have the same taste! While I was shopping with my parents, Graham ...

Following our lovely week in the Cotswolds we returned home on Saturday evening. I spent the rest of the evening with bridesmaids Lucy and Karen-Louise then we went to the wedding fair at our reception venue yesterday. We went with very specific objectives in mind which were to book the florist, the chair covers and look at cakes. We had a very productive hour and managed to accomplish each item which was great and it takes care of the major remaining items on our list. The florist we booked is Val Hamilton , whose arrangements we had previously seen at the last wedding fair and open day we attended at Norton House and really liked, especially the tall table centres. The arrangements she was showing yesterday were also really nice and she had plenty of examples of bouquets to look at as well. As she doesn't have a shop, and only concentrates on wedding flowers, she is able to keep her prices reasonable and it means that any appointments can also be made at weekends or in the evenin...

Yesterday morning we went to the wedding open day at our reception venue . They hold them a couple of times a year when they allow people to come and look at the rooms set up for either an actual ceremony or wedding breakfast, depending on what is taking place that day. It wasn't like a wedding fair when there are suppliers and examples of layouts etc but you saw the actual wedding preparations. Obviously you aren't able to wander round the tables when the staff / florists are laying stuff out but you are able to look from the open doors at the end. They did let me take a couple of pictures of the ballroom we are having our reception in {since we had already booked the venue}, just so we could remember how many tables they had set up. The wedding below was set for 112 people which is more than we will have and I was relieved to see it didn't look cramped at all and at the same time, no table seemed to be too far away from the top table in the centre. They had 9 guest tables...

So with the church and venue booked, the wedding planning took a back seat as I was in the middle of my professional exams to become an Architect. It wasn't until after my exams were over in March that we started to think properly about other things. Saying that, we did go to 4 different wedding fairs during February; Dedicated to Weddings Exhibition, Assembly Rooms (31.01.09); Scottish Wedding Show, Ingliston (08.02.09); Scottish Wedding Show, SECC (21.02.09) & the one at Norton House (22.02.09). Despite his protests, Graham did come to 3 of the fairs and only managed to miss the biggest one at the SECC which I went to with my bridesmaid, Helen, who is also planning her own wedding (trying to explain to each supplier that, yes, we were both getting married but also both each others bridesmaids was fun!). At each fair, we mainly concentrated on photographers & cars, since they were next on the list. O f course we did sample plenty bits of cake, saw all the fashion shows, lo...