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

DIY Wedding: Confetti Bags...

Credit

I seem to have become a lot more creative within the past couple of years and I love a bit of diy! The prospect of making things myself for our wedding in September really excited me and Pinterest provided a lot of inspiration.

My first project that I wanted to do was to make some confetti bags for my guests to use after we are married and are making our way back down the aisle as husband and wife (it's going to be so strange being called this in just over four months time!). I had an idea of what I wanted to do as I'd seen an idea on Pinterest that I really liked and I knew I could just adapt it to our colour scheme. The idea on Pinterest lead to the actual project, which was on a site called b.loved weddings.

I didn't follow the project word for word as on the day when I wanted to gain access to the labels and change the colours myself to match our colour scheme, I think the website may have been down as no matter how hard I tried to get onto the website, from different places, it wouldn't load. In the end I showed Si the image of the confetti bags so he knew what I wanted to re-create and he said he could do the labels for me on Microsoft Word, which was a huge help. I purchased the glassine envelopes from Ebay (you can choose the size you want and the price you're willing to pay according to how many you need) and I was lucky enough to be gifted with my confetti for my project from a local company called Shropshire Petals who grow their own petals that they sell. The only other things I needed were some scissors which I had and a glue stick (I bought a Pritt Stick in my local Poundland). You'll also need a printer and some ink in order to print off the labels.

When Simon created the labels for me, I loved them. You can check them out via Dropbox. You should be able to print them off as they are if you wish. If you save it to your computer (not as write only), you should be able to open it up in Microsoft Word and edit it yourself, so you could change the colours or the wording to relate to your wedding/theme. Otherwise if you're pretty clued up on Microsoft Word they are pretty easy to re-create using just a few shapes, lines and colours. Obviously you only need to create one and then just copy and paste the rest according to how many you need to print out. Alternatively you could just have a play around on Microsoft Word and totally create your own, original labels. I needed to make 19 little bags for my guests (minus me & Si), so I printed out those and a few extras in-case something went wrong.

I had a fab time making the confetti bags and it felt good knowing that I was putting a personal touch into something that would be seen and used by our guests on our big day, aswell as knowing that confetti is a tradition that's been present in British weddings for over two centuries and is supposed to symbolise the wish of a fertile marriage. This is what I started with when making the confetti bags:

Ocean Mist throwing confetti from Shropshire Petals, 61mm x 92mm glassine bags, scissors, Pritt Stick and diy labels.

I was initially sent some samples from the Shropshire Petals company relating to our purple and ivory colour scheme. We chose Ocean Mist from the samples (above) as we loved the colouring and thought it was aptly named considering we are getting married abroad, by the sea. The natural petal confetti is completely natural (no dyes are added), biodegradable (easily broken down) and eco-friendly. On the website you can choose your packaging, including baskets, pails and individual sachets and then you choose your petals via the pick & mix. We were sent the throwing confetti which is 1 litre and typically provides enough for 10 handfuls of throwing confetti or enough to scatter on 10 tables. It comes in a cream 1 litre bag with a cream satin ribbon (I thought the packaging was lovely with its little ribbon and see-through window). Our confetti is available to be selected as one mix, but it is made up of classic deep blue/purple and cream natural petal confetti, with midnight blue and icing sugar delphinium petals. 1 litre of this is priced at £11.25 and we were sent 2 litres which in total would have cost us £22.50. Bare in mind that for the number of bags that I needed to make I had more than enough confetti to fill each bag and I only used 3/4 of a 1 litre bag. I emptied the remaining confetti into the other full 1 litre bag and will use this for aisle petals or table decoration. They have lots of inspiration ideas on their website, aswell as help and advice in relation to the petals that they sell, a confetti calculator (to help you decide how much confetti you'll need for your guests), show dates (where you will be able to see some petals for yourself), special offer mixes of the month (special priced petals per month) and amongst lots of other information on the website, you can also order some free samples so you can get a feel for some of the petals before you place an order.

Making the confetti bags was literally as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1 - Take a little glassine envelope.

2 - Fill it up with the confetti but make sure that you can still fold the top section over.

3 - Take a label and glue all around the edges. Position it nicely over the envelope so you have half over the front and the same or less at the back.

They were really easy to make and I'm so happy with the results. They will be placed on our order of the day cards which will be waiting for our guests at the ceremony as they take their seats.

I was initially interested in Shropshire Petals natural throwing confetti anyway and was looking at the website for some time, I liked that the company was local, the petals were grown locally by the company themselves and that the confetti was a little different to the usual paper confetti you get, aswell as the petals being natural, biodegradable and eco-friendly. Obviously this task can be made using any confetti, including if you want to cut out your own shapes using tissue paper for example but to help you on your way if you do like the sound of this company, you can get a 10% discount from Shropshire Petals when you spend £50 using this link.

Are you a fan of diy? What diy projects have you completed? Whether for your wedding, someone else's wedding, day to day life etc...I'd love to hear about/see all of your creative projects!

Thanks so much for reading!

Gemma XxOo

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