A Day To Remember...

Hi there lovelies! It's been a while since I last blogged, but those of you that follow my blog or follow me on Twitter will know that me and Si got married in September, in Cyprus! The few weeks prior to us flying out were manic as we were putting the final touches to everything and making sure everything was organised. Not only did we have our normal holiday things to pack, we also had our wedding things to pack. So as you can imagine it was all go!

Here I am blogging to you as a married woman! :). It's taken me a little while to get back into planning my posts and getting back into the swing of things. Post wedding/holiday blues occurred for a while, for a few people within our party actually, but you just have to think that there is plenty more to look forward to and get back to day to day life.

I didn't want to just start blogging about random things without mentioning the wedding and sharing a few things with you as obviously I was blogging about wedding related things beforehand so I thought it'd be nice to finish it off post wedding :).

Here are a few snaps from our special day:

I thought I'd share a few things that I brought for our wedding that I didn't want to share before the wedding or couldn't just in case anyone who was coming saw things on here. The main reason for me wanting to do this is to provide ideas for those planning their wedding as I know it can be really overwhelming thinking about where to start and narrowing down choices.

Firstly, I thought I'd show you the gifts I brought for people within our wedding party. We stuck to the traditional people that gifts are usually brought for, so we had my mom and Si's mom, my dad, our two bridesmaids and our two witnesses (not sure if it's traditional to buy for the witnesses but we found a lovely gift idea that we wanted to give).

These are the mother of the bride and mother of the groom gifts. We'd read somewhere that it was traditional for the gifts to be from the bride, so we thought it would be nice to follow this (aside from the witnesses gifts which are from both of us), so when looking for gift ideas I tried to look for things that were a little bit different.

For my mom's gift, I wanted it to be something from the heart and really personal. I found gift ideas online showing a nice message sewn onto a handkerchief. I liked the idea and to make it even more personal and special I made it myself. I purchased a couple of nice, vintage handkerchiefs from Ebay for a couple of pounds from an auction and I made a few notes of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. It took me a little while to get the right wording but when I did I started to sew using purple thread to match our wedding colour scheme. I have a little sewing kit of my own so I didn't have to purchase any of that, I just had to use my imagination. I brought a couple of handkerchiefs which was a good idea as I messed up the first one, so luckily the second one went well :). I was really happy that I'd made it myself and my mom thought it was a lovely thing to do, especially with it being so personalised and unique. I brought the silver gift box from Card Factory for just under a couple of pounds I think it was and the handkerchief fitted perfectly within it.

The mother of the groom gift was a little bit harder to choose. Pinterest was really useful when it came to looking for wedding party gift ideas, so I spent quite a while having a look around on there before I started searching the Internet for gifts. It narrowed ideas down so it wasn't so daunting in regards to where to start looking for gifts. I'd definitely recommend it for any type of gifts you are looking to buy or make. I found this keyring on Etsy, both me and Si liked the wording and again the personalisation of it. I started communicating with the lady who makes these on Etsy and described exactly what I wanted, mentioning that I'd like purple and ivory beads to match our colour scheme and my name and the wedding date in purple too. She was really helpful and made the keyring to my exact specifications. We loved the finished result and the mother of the groom loved it too! The keyring cost me £17.47 in total, including shipping from Canada to the UK.

I found these mirrors for my bridesmaids on Not On The High Street. I wanted something practical that they could use, that was personal to them but something that I could say thank you on too. I found these initial mirrors and liaised with the lady who makes them regarding the letters that I wanted along with the colour of the letters and hearts, what colour stitching I wanted, the message I wanted etc. It was so nice to hear that she was willing to work with me in regards to what I wanted. Buying the gifts was one of the most fun things we did during the planning of the wedding, I think it's because we found such lovely ideas and companies who were willing to work with us and provide exactly what it was that we wanted. The two mirrors cost me £27.03 including delivery to the UK and they are gift wrapped free of charge. They start off at £9.90 and the price increases depending on what mirror colour you want and also the amount of words you'd like on the mirror pouch. My bridesmaids loved their gift and I hope they get lots of use out of it!

It was my mom that first suggested maybe getting the witnesses a gift and so when I started looking for personalised gifts for them it was between a mug or a pen. I thought the mugs would last longer and be of more use. I found a company on Ebay that sold these and I asked if I would be able to have the witnesses names in purple as they were orange on the website. There was no problem with this being done for me. I just had to tell them the witnesses names, our married couple surname and the date of our wedding. As you can see they have the hearts at the top for females and hats for males. In total, it cost me £15.58 for the two mugs including postage to the UK. They are thick, well made mugs, so you know they will last a long time and you don't have to be ridiculously careful with them. I thought they were really good value to be honest, considering they are personalised too. Our witnesses weren't expecting a gift, so it was a nice little thing for them to have to remember what they did for us on our special day.

I found this frame for my dad on Etsy. It's such a fab website with so many ideas, it's easy to get carried away and spend a good few hours on there. As soon as I saw this, I knew it was what I wanted to get. This was actually from the USA and favourite was spelt 'favorite' on the website, so I asked if this was able to be changed due to us living in the UK and we spell it with the 'u' here. Again this was no problem and they said they often have people requiring the different spelling so it could be easily changed. I just had to tell them what I wanted written at the end, be it with love, love, from etc, my name and our wedding date. The frame cost me £28.71 in total, including shipping from the USA to the UK.

There are a few other things that we brought for the wedding which were bargains or were too beautiful not to share, so I thought I'd include a few extra links (for those items I could find that were still available to buy) just in case you wanted to take a look :)...

Bridesmaids Purple & Ivory Bouquets

White Butterfly Place Name Cards

Dark Purple Men's Ties

Disposable Cameras

Ivory Wedding Dolly Bags

Bridal Clear AB Crystal Swarovski Elements Necklace, Earrings and Bracelet Set

Bridesmaid Clear AB Crystal Swarovski Elements Necklace and Earrings Set

Clear AB Crystal Swarovski Elements Hairpins

Cancer Research Wedding Favours

Everything above we brought ourselves but we were lucky enough to be offered the chance by Vistaprint to design our own thank you cards. I had seen some thank you cards on Ebay that I liked, but when I went to purchase them they had sold out so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to re-create the design I'd seen for our personal thank you cards.

The wording that I used was similar to the wording on the cards I saw on Ebay. Our theme was purple and butterflies so I found an image on Vistaprint that related to this and just moved the image and words around on the card until I was happy with it. They have various images to choose from so you're sure to find what you're looking for. The cards would have cost me £27.78 including postage to the UK and that was for 30 personally designed matte cards and 30 white envelopes.

The website has lots of products that you can design including Christmas gifts and business related products. In terms of the thank you cards, you can choose to have folded or flat cards and then there are endless designs that you can choose from. You can add images, change the colour of the text, change the size of the text etc, there are lots of tools available to design the perfect card for you. As many past brides or brides to be will know, as soon as you mention the word 'wedding' some prices can be sky high. So this might be a good option if you're on a budget as you can control your costs depending on the cards that you design.

The cards I designed were blank inside, meaning I could add my own personalised messages. However, you can write on the inside of cards on Vistaprint if you wish. I chose for my cards to be matte and when I received them I was happy that they turned out exactly as I'd designed them, the colours, image and wording were spot on. Sometimes when you see pre-designed cards online it says in the small print that colour can vary from what you see on screen. With Vistaprint this isn't something you have to worry about. The cards are of an excellent quality and it was a pleasure writing my cards out to send to people. The only issue I had was that I received 10 envelopes with 30 cards. It was meant to be 30 envelopes so I used the live chat option on the website and told the representative of my issue. This was sorted out straight away and an apology was made saying that it was a mistake and that I should have received 30 envelopes. Another order was made there and then for me and I received the correct amount of envelopes a few days later.

I can't believe after so much planning and organising that our wedding is now over and that we've been married nearly two months on the 9th November :), it's gone so quickly!

I hope you've enjoyed this post whether you were just curious about our day or looking for ideas yourself! Don't forget to like and follow if you like my blog and posts and want to read more :). Feel free to leave me a comment, they make my day and I reply to all!

If you're currently planning your wedding, what sites or bargains have you found?

Thanks so much for reading!

Gem XxOo