Traditions

An email in my mailbox this morning from Project Wedding outlining what they see as the 10 Wedding Traditions You Can Do Without. I do agree that none of them are completely necessary, especially No.8 and the wedding vow to "obey".

I was planning to follow a few of them however, including No.6 with Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue. To me this is a sweet traidition, and fairly easy to achieve! My only real question is hold old does the "Something Old" have to be? I will have to investigate...


Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

Hot chocolate spoons!

Birthday Girl blogged about making something similar to these hotchocspoons made by the Dutch Chocolate Company. Just stir into hot milk and you have yummy hot chocolate!

E suggested these as bomboniere for the wedding. They do look like a lot of fun!

Bridal websites

A new Aussie bridal website Real Weddings has just launched.
It seems that to see some of the content you need to subscribe... at $99 for the year I am not sure that I will bother. Some of the content looks nice but I am already feeling overloaded with the amount of information out there and I think that I will manage to find what I am after!

I also signed up for Project Wedding (for free). They have lots of hints and tips and also a massive collection of inspirational photographs!

Ooh, and I have just signed up to Martha Stewart Weddings. There seem to be some lovely ideas and inspirations on the site.

Another local site, Swoon

KeepCup

The Keep Cup has been designed as an alternative to the disposable cups you get when you buy takeaway coffee. They come in three standard barista sizes. What an awesome concept! Now that would be an interesting and unusual and hopefully very practical bomboniere.

Cars and things

From the start I maintained that wedding cars were unnecessary and a waste of funds - money that could be spent at the bar after the wedding, don't you know?? However last week I was overruled. It all came about after we spoke to our photographer. He suggested some interesting location shots, including East Perth, King's Park and of course the surrounds of South Perth. I had originally had thoughts of having a few photos between our ceremony and lunchtime reception, however he was enthused about photos after the reception and we could then get to some lovely and interesting locations. Assuming of course that the boys were not too drunk... Anyway, in order to reach these locations, we would require transport, and the thought of driving around and trying to find parking lost some of its appeal.

I did have some influence over what was booked, C initially rang up about hiring a stretch Hummer ($2200 for 5 hours!) but that really did not appeal to me for so many reasons. I could not reconcile the image of a stretch hummer with myself in any way, shape or form, and especially not for my wedding!

Here are a few of the other options around Perth. At this point I will leave it to speculation as to what we have actually booked...

Perth Hummer


Wedding Cars of Perth

Princess Wedding Cars

PS I found these limo sites by doing a search on google... I have no knowledge at all of the service offered.

What season is it?

Walking to work this morning it felt almost like Autumn had come! Cool breeze and not too hot at 19C.

There's a cyclone formed off the north west coast, and this accounts for the drop in weather. I do not understand the ins and outs but I am fairly confident that Tropical Cyclone Magda has something to do with it.

I am sure that we will be back in stinking hot summer territory soon! Until that happens, I will enjoy the cool change.

Photobooths

E is keen on the concept of a Photobooth. I must say that I think it is an awesome idea too! On a simplistic level, you can achieve the look with a funky coloured fabric backdrop, some strategically chosen props and a digital camera.


The wedding of kelli murray via sitting on a tree


Sarah and Rick’s wedding via Ruffled


Photo Booth Fun! via Frenchie and Flea


Isabelle's Wedding via Dos Family

You can also find some DIY Party Photo Booth {Expert Tips} via Hostess with the Mostess

Southbound!!

My sister-in-law-to-be K and I went down to the Southbound Festival in Busselton over the weekend of the 7^th-11^th January 2010. I had been to the first three, but had not been to the last two due to a lack of friends to go with me.

This year we camped for three nights, and the festival went for two days with Friday a bonus day of music for those who were camping there.

We decided to be "Lazy Campers" and purchased tickets that included a tent that was set up for you as well as inflated air mattresses. Our little area was staffed around the clock so that if we had any issues there was someone to try and sort it out. It was mostly quiet in our area, and in fact it lacked a little of the atmosphere of the general camping area however I am not sure how we would have done trying to cart a tent and bedding on top of the esky and bags that we had!!  Maybe we should have only taken one change of clothes...

It was very hot during the day at the festival and cool during the evenings, so our survival method was to find a nice piece of grass and some shade and ride it out until the temperature dropped. Copious amounts of water was consumed and lots of fruit as well! We had both come well stocked with fruit.

Musical highlights of the festival included (for me, and in no particular order) Wolfmother, Datarock, Little Birdy, Moby, Sarah Blasko... and more when I can have a look at the play list and remember who else I saw!



I did not see any really tragic acts, and there was always something to watch or do so we were kept very well entertained!

There were definitely food highlights of the festival. One previous Southbound I had discovered the Gozleme, and this Southbound did not disappoint!  We went back a few times to test them again. And again. There were also organic doughnuts, freshly made, twice as big is a regular doughnut and with a wonderful texture... plus the Chai Tent in Basecamp, where we sat and chilled with iced chai. Yum!


The atmosphere was fairly mellow, although it felt a bit less mellow that what I remembered of the 2007 Southbound. The crowd was not too manic or aggressive and everyone seemed to be able to enjoy themselves. We were heartened to realise that we were not the oldest campers or festival goers, and a good time was had!!

Photos from of Sunset Events

Photographer

Last week we ticked another box in the wedding checklist, and booked the photographer for our day.

Anton from C Photography is going to share our day with us and capture the special moments!

I had been emailing Anton last year and finally after Christmas C and I had the time to meet him and discuss our wedding. We both felt comfortable with Anton and we admired the samples of his previous work that we were shown. He had some great suggestions for location shots, and we were able to see examples of those from previous weddings.




Selecting a photographer was one task that I found intimidating. There are so many different choices out there, encompassing a wide range of talents and prices. Most of the photographers that I looked at were referrals from friends' weddings, and I was able to check out photos from previous weddings on their website. E was my main critic, and she had some intelligent words to say regarding each portfolio that she viewed.

Let them eat cake!

There are so many different choices when it comes to wedding cake. Square or round, chocolate, fruit, vanilla or something more exotic, cupcakes or large cakes... How do you choose?

I love this cake, so simple and elegant:

From blisstree.com

I also love the work of Kayle Mitchison, as documented in her blog, Delicate-Lee. Kayle works for The Cake Box. They made the cake that I had for my 21st!!


Another elegant cake, the Picasso below. According to the babyCakes website this is their most popular tiered wedding cake!

Limit the planning stress...

...by planning your wedding in one week! Check out this post detailing how one couple pulled it off.

Wedding Planner

My sister E has put much love and creativeness into the Wedding Planner that she made us. I do love it, and need to make use of it more than I currently do.


She has used all sorts of different papers to make a special file for us to record all of our wedding notes and plans. The planner has been broken down into sections so that we can organise our day more effectively. The Engagement Party has been left to the end, as E rationalised (correctly!) that once it was over we would not wish to always be flicking through it to get to the wedding information!


She has individualised the divider for each section relevant to the content. For the Honeymoon section below, she has used the patterns from the inside of envelopes to create the illusion of the ocean!


When I first was engaged I had a few vague thoughts about getting a planner of some sort. I did a survey of a few of my (girl)friends who had recently been married, and the concensus was that they used an Excel Spreadsheet. Noone seemed to own up to having used a planner! Even so, I thought that a planner might be a nice addition to my wedding stationery, as an item more collectable than an Excel spreadsheet. I was more inclined to just buy a nice blank book and make it up myself, rather than some commercially overpriced effort where you are forced to conform to someone else's idea of how you should plan your wedding.

Very early on E asked if we had a wedding planner. When I answered in the negative I think that her creative processes went into overdrive and she transformed a plain tan file into the very stylish and useable planner that I have tried to show in the photos.

PS I do also have an Excel spreadsheet, but it's useless for saving bits of paper and business cards and samples!!

Bridesmaids are individuals

This photo of un-matching bridesmaids was posted on the Veils & Vows blog. I do like the colour combinations!



I will be hoping to achieve a more coordinated approach for my bridesmaids - something to tie them together a little more closely than this wedding. I am after an effect in between this picture and a completely matchy matchy bridal party!!

Gifts for the bridal party...

My sister E has suggested something similar to these giftboxes from Victor Sizemore as gifts for the bridal party... Such lovely presentation and obvious care taken in putting these together.

Bio plates

My work Christmas function is usually a barbecue on the river foreshore. It's a lovely spot, and they do really well to get the hundreds of hungry families fed! This year the plates that they used appeared to be of an organic nature, and C commented that we should remember the name and get similar for our engagement party. The wonders of google and I tracked down several different versions of plates made from the leaf of the Areca palm. I have ordered a stash of them from Biome, who claim that they are "Totally biodegradable, with no chemicals or synthetics used in the manufacture, they can also be mulched, given for animal fodder, or used upside down on garden beds as a mulch". Hopefully they will be good to use as well!