wedding plannng Archives - Page 3 of 5

September 15, 2014 by lambandbear Leave a Comment

Bridesmaid Dresses – what i’m loving – Maxi Dresses

Choosing your bridesmaid dresses can be almost as difficult as choosing your wedding dress. Actually, I would say it is more difficult. I wouldn’t describe choosing a wedding dress as difficult. That’s not the right word. It’s a huge mix of emotions, but not necessarily difficult.

Finding a dress that fits 4 girls, all different shapes or sizes, all different heights. Now that’s difficult.

I was lucky. I found my bridesmaid dresses pretty quickly. And its a style that will fit most shapes and flatter most heights. Phew.

If you’re turning into a bit of a bridezilla (don’t worry we all do), and have a style in mind and there’s no budging from it, have a think about small details you can compromise on, that can not only works for all of your bridesmaids, but makes them feel comfortable, which is extremely important.

I have decided to start a series of posts with some of my fave dresses on the market that would be perfect for your big day.

Today’s post is all about maxi dresses from ASOS. Here are my top 6 maxi’s in neutral colours, perfect for a spring/summer wedding.

Maxi Dresses

Maxi dresses are a popular choice for a bridesmaid dress. They are glamorous, striking and will stand out enough without taking attention away from the bride. The options above, in my opinion, are perfect choices for a spring/summer wedding. In fact, one of my closest friends got married this weekend, and the first dress I have given you is the dress her bridesmaids wore, and they all looked stunning.

What I love about maxi dresses, is the comfort of wearing one all day. Personally, I hate my legs, and would hate to have them on show in front of hundreds of guests. Maxi’s (as long as they aren’t too fitted) are easy to walk in, comfortable, and will most likely hide any lumps and bump that want to be hidden.

Perhaps consider a short sleeve if you aren’t planning on giving the bridesmaids a cover up (not everyone loves their arms!)

If cream is too pale, why not try a soft pink, or a print to add a bit of colour?

Even though your wedding is your wedding, turning into a total bridezilla isn’t pretty. My advice would be to ask your bridesmaids what they don’t want to wear, anything they struggle with on their figures, or colours that totally don’t suite their skin tone. Make life easier for all of you. Don’t put them in something they feel uncomfortable in – the last thing you want is a fidgety bridesmaid in the wedding photos that cost you over £1000 to get, trying to stand in a position that hides their lumps and bumps (which I’m sure they don’t have, but we all have our problem areas!)

I hope you have found this post useful. Look out for the next post in this series looking at more dresses I think would be perfect for bridesmaids.

If you want to read any more of my wedding posts, you can find them here.

Alex xx

September 10, 2014 by lambandbear 2 Comments

My Wedding Stationary

My wedding stationary

Now that everyone has received their invites (well, nearly everyone!) I felt it was time to share them on the blog. I am very lucky to have two amazing graphic designers in my life, my father-in-law, and my brother! Both were more than happy to design for me, and I was torn between the two (they suggested only one of them design so styles don’t cross over), but in the end I asked my brother to do the work. My father-in-law is extremely busy at work, he travels a lot and works long hours and I would have felt so guilty if he then had to spend his evenings designing for me.

I was so excited to get designing with my brother, he’s extremely talented (i’m not just saying that because he’s my brother – he really is). We are really close and he knows me better than anyone and he got it right first time. He’s in the process of setting up his own graphic design business, and hasn’t worked on many commercial projects, so hopefully my wedding stationary will be a positive addition to his portfolio.

Save The Dates

A ‘save the date’ is a pre-invitation card letting people know you are intending to invite them to your wedding. You only need to send them to guests invited to the whole wedding, not the evening guests. I sent my save the date cards out around 10 months before my wedding. Some people may send them a year before, but it all depends on the wedding you are having. If you are getting married abroad, you might want to give everyone enough time to save for the flights and to book the time off work, so you may want to give more than a year notice.

As you can see from the image above, we decided to design the save the date card around a movie poster, and treat the card as more of an advert for the wedding. It has a 1920s style with the font and arch pattern, but with a contemporary illustration, allowing the design to be new and fresh.

Ceremony Invitations

We sent our main invitations out 5 months before the wedding. I think this is pretty average. If you are having a huge wedding with hundreds of guests, I would advise to send out at least 6 months before, as getting the RSVPs back takes longer than you think! We are still waiting for the RSVP from both of our parents! The deadline is next week!

The design of the main invites was really complicated for us. We had to include so much information. Everything from the time guests need to arrive and be seated, to dietary requirements. As we have offered meal choices, we had to find a way of everyone giving us their options. A tally or tick list seems to be the easier choice, however my venue requires each person to give their choices individually so they can make sure meals don’t get mixed up on the day. This made things so much more complicated as my invites are only A6 so there isn’t a lot of room on the RSVP. After much deliberation, my brother and I decided the easiest way for our guests to respond would be for them to write their name and choices, rather than create a tick list. This gave them the opportunity to tell us if they required a smaller portion, or needed a children’s meal, which is something we offered on the menu.

We followed the same design as the ‘save the date’ cards to keep the wedding stationary uniform. Plus we had such an amazing response, everyone loved them! Like I said, my brother is really talented.

The colour is taken from the bridesmaid dresses. There isn’t a huge amount of colour in my wedding so far. The burgundy features on the bridesmaid dresses, the groomsmen ties, the page boy suits and now the wedding stationary. I’m hoping to add the same colour to my bouquet and somewhere on the tables. At the moment burgundy is the only strong colour I am using, other than a bit of bling with gold and silver. To be honest, a winter wedding doesn’t need colour. You can absolutely get away with white, white and more white. I added burgundy to give the wedding some warmth and move towards the theme I have in place.

Evening Invitations

Finally, we have the evening invitations. We decided to re use the design from the save the date cards, as these were only sent out to the all day guests, so the evening guests had not seen it before. It’s such an amazing design, so was definitely worth using again. My favourite party of this design is the title. Rather than calling it a wedding reception, we named it ‘The Premiere After Party’, it is an ‘Oscars’ wedding after all!

Designing and sending our wedding invitations was so exciting. I couldn’t wait, and still can’t wait, to receive the RSVPs (not all of them are back yet! – you know who you are! 😉 ) It’s all getting so real now. Some days I feel so relaxed about everything, then others I’m in panic mode as there’s still so much to do.

Next on our wedding schedule is my hair trial. This is going to be in the next couple of weeks. I have an idea of what I want, but I’m so indecisive. No doubt I will change my mind many times!

Oh, and I’ve got to go for my first dress fitting. Dreading it! I haven’t done any dieting since January…. wish me luck!

Look out for my next wedding post on how my hair trial goes.

Alex xx

August 30, 2014 by lambandbear 2 Comments

Choosing Your Wedding Stationary

How important is your wedding stationary?

Well, in my opinion – VERY! It’s the bridge between your guests and your big day. The moment they open that precious envelope is the moment they feel joy and happiness for being invited to be part of your special day. It’s the moment they are introduced to your wedding theme. It’s the moment they get a glance of what your day will be like.

To me, the effort put into the wedding stationary sets the benchmark for the rest of the celebrations. Casual stationary suggests casual wedding, luxury stationary suggests luxury wedding and so on.

Whatever your plans are, make the most of sending out the save the dates and invites, and use it as a way of announcing exactly what your big day is going to be like.

Design your own or buy off the shelf?

There are so many amazing options out there for you to choose from. Personally, I was always going to have mine designed. I love being different and I love having something that is completely my own. Designing my wedding stationary from scratch made it that little bit more special.

If this isn’t something you want to do then don’t worry. Perhaps you’ve had a whirlwind wedding and only have a few weeks to get the invite out, or perhaps you found the perfect wedding stationary online and don’t see the point creating your own, either way there are some amazing places to buy wedding stationary.

I particularity love Not On The Highstreet. No matter what your budget is, they have everything you need to create the most amazing wedding.

Designing your own will most likely work out more expensive than buying off the shelf, however there are clever things you can do to reduce the costs.

Do you know a graphic designer? A friend or family member could be the perfect solution and you could ask them to design the stationary as your wedding gift.
Contact the local college or university. You never know what a student will do for work experience or work to put in their portfolio. If they won’t do it for free, then I’m sure they will be pretty cheap.
Make your own. Invites don’t have to be professionally printed. Go to your local craft shop and buy some quirky card and trims and get glueing!
Shop the sales!! If you have plenty of time, then you will most likely come across a few sales before the big day. Plan ahead and you could find some real bargains.
Social media. Get on twitter and ask around. Someone out there may have used an amazing value service that they don’t mind sharing with you.

If you decide to design your own stationary, it’s really important to have a theme in mind. This may not necessarily be the theme of your wedding, but you need something for the designer to go on. This could be anything from colour, font, a time and place, decade, or county.

My theme is a bit blurry, but it’s there! What I mean by blurry is, there are a couple of themes merged together.

1920s/Hollywood/Oscars/Movies is my theme. So anything from The Great Gatsby to Bugsy Malone. Marilyn Monroe to Angelina Jolie. If it’s glamorous it’s ok!

The theme came to me the day I found my wedding dress, and it came by accident. Looking at myself in the mirror, wearing my ‘dream’ dress, I said “I feel like I’m going to the oscars, not a wedding”. There it was, the lightbulb moment. There was my theme.

Getting married in December, very close to Christmas everyone thought I would have a winter theme. Which, yes, initially I was. However, it just didn’t feel different enough. I wanted my theme to stand out. Be something unique and special. With the theme I have now, I can mix fur shrugs, pearls, feathers and crystals to create the most glamorous and luxurious 1920’s/Oscars inspired ‘winter’ wedding. Perfect.

Save The Date cards designed by Dominic Claydon-Scott

I hope this post has helped you decide what sort of stationary you want for your wedding, feel free to comment if you have any questions! I love my invites and have been so excited to share them with everyone! Above are my save the date cards. Stay tuned for my next post telling you all about my ceremony and evening invites and more!

Alex xx

August 7, 2014 by lambandbear 4 Comments

My fourth and final bridesmaid…

Since I wrote my post on how I chose my bridesmaids, there has been a little development, I’ve added another! And who else could it be than Mummy Bear herself!

Here we are in matching outfits (not planned). We totally spend too much time together.

Vicky and I have become really close over the past couple of years, mainly because of Little Lamb and Baby Bear making an appearance last year. Oh and our fellas are BFFs.

We have been wring the blog for 8 months now, and we love sharing our experiences together. Basically, we now have an excuse to do lots of fun things so we “can blog about it!”

Vicky has been a huge support for me recently. Lamb is quite a difficult baby (I hate saying that). He stopped sleeping though around his first birthday and literally doesn’t eat anything. He’s quite clingy and is now approaching the terrible two’s. Bear, however, is a little angel (Vicky will hate me for saying that as I’m sure, like any mum, she also has her difficult days) but from what I’ve seen Marnie is pretty happy and content most of the time. Oh, and has the appetite of an actual bear. I’m not jealous at all….

Lamb is also so much fun, he has the best sense of humour, and would kick a ball all day long. I don’t want you reading this thinking I don’t enjoy being a mum, that’s not the case. Jaxson is just a little high maintenance that’s all 😉

When I have my ‘dark days’ of stress and worry, Vicky listens and always has positive things to say. She has genuinely helped me rethink why I’m worrying and whether I’m being a typical mum and worrying over nothing. At the same time, she has first hand experience with Lamb, and understands the struggles I have.

So basically Vicky is where I go for a bit of mummy therapy (she charges in diet coke and lemon drizzle cake).

Not only that, she can drink me under the table.

What else do I need in a bridesmaid!

Alex xx

August 2, 2014 by lambandbear 8 Comments

Our Wedding: What will Lamb wear?

Hi everyone! I’ve reached a very important and difficult decision for the wedding, and I would like your advice. Lamb’s outfit!

I’ve been shopping around and scouring the net and I’ve shortlisted a few outfits I really like. I would be extremely grateful if you would comment below with your preference and why, to help me make my decision.

Here’s a little reminder of my beautiful, blue eyed boy….

Lamb’s outfit needs to look good with the Bridesmaid dresses. I want him to have a little colour, but nothing that will clash. Here is a hint of what the Bridesmaids will be wearing…

Outfit 1

This suit is from Next. It retails between £33-£36 (depending on age) for the whole outfit. I love the colour and I know it doesn’t clash with the bridesmaids as I’ve already checked. It’s not the same colour, it’s more purple, but it still looks nice against the dress. What would be nice about having this suit, is Lamb and his cousin (my other page boy) will definitely look like part of the bridal party. The colour will stand out and they will look really special.

Outfit 2

This second suit is from Marks & Spencer. It retails between £35-£37 for the whole outfit, again depending on age. As you can see this is slightly more casual. The waistcoat only has 2 buttons, so will be less fitted, and the sleeves are rolled. You can’t really see in the photos, I only noticed this when I was in the store, but the waistcoat and trousers are slightly checked with red, which obviously works well with the colour scheme I have. It’s a really lovely suit, and very similar in price to the one from Next, but in my opinion, not as special, although I love the bow tie!

Outfit 3

My third option is from Monsoon. I don’t like many of the suit sets from here, they are all way too formal and shiny! But I did pick out these shirts that work well with the colour scheme. Both shirt & tie sets retail at £18, and the trousers are £20. Put together they cost more that the other outfits, and that’s without the waistcoat! Unfortunately, there isn’t a waistcoat to match these trousers, so I may need to find those elsewhere, but the above options give you an idea of the overall look.

To sum up, the options are as follows:

Plum suit from Next, so the boys are in all over colour.
Grey checked suit from Marks & Spencer, with a hint of red in the suit, shirt and bow tie.
Purple patterned shirt and tie from Monsoon, with grey trousers and waistcoat.

I would love to know which is your favourite, and especially which you think will work best with the bridesmaid dresses. There are 4 bridesmaids, 2 flower girls and 2 page boys. Each bridesmaid will walk down the isle with a child. The flower girls are in all white (to look like a mini me!) and the boys will be in something like above.

I hope you like my choices!

Alex xx

Bridesmaid Dresses – what i’m loving – Maxi Dresses

Like this:

My Wedding Stationary

Like this:

Choosing Your Wedding Stationary

Like this:

My fourth and final bridesmaid…

Like this:

Our Wedding: What will Lamb wear?

Like this:

Categories

Archives

LOOKING FOR…

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Categories

Archives

LOOKING FOR…