Where have you been?

Wow! I haven't made a post since the end of February and we are now in June. The truth is that I never meant to leave it so long but life really did smack me upside the head. I really underestimated how busy life would get with my new job and planning a wedding. It was so overwhelming and the day after the wedding I was so tired that I looked like I had a stroke!

In saying that, I did have the best time and I'm so glad that SB is finally my husband - even if he got the flu the week after our wedding :). And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't give you a few sneak peeks of guest photos - we're still waiting on our pro pics and video to get back.

It sort of feels like the beginning of a new chapter in our lives and as such, I'll be phasing out Scribbles as my blogging vehicle over the next year and starting to blog at a currently secret location. Continue to follow me here for sporadic posts here and there and a big announcement when the new blog goes public!

Normal?

So... I'm going to try on wedding dresses tomorrow. Squee right? 

So I'm stuck wondering why I'm not feeling so squee.

I wonder whether it's because I'm not yet the size I'd hoped to be when I first went dress shopping. I don't think that anyone should tie their sense of worth (and their beauty as a bride) to a dress size, but I'd hoped to lose all my weight in a year - at 30 kg from my largest, maybe I should have been more realistic. I'm now hoping to be 7 kg lighter than I am now by the time the wedding and at my goal weight by my weight loss anniversary in November, an additional 5 kg.

I'm also wondering whether... well... I don't care so much. I want a pretty dress but I really don't have many of the details set in stone. White or off-white, silhouettes, sashes, one-strap/two-straps/strapless... I don't really mind! I'm thinking that it will probably be chiffon but I'm certainly not tied to it. I've organized the things that really matter to me and maybe I'm just one of those brides that doesn't care that much about the dress.

I see our day out as a really fun outing with mum and French "sister" C - especially seeing we're taking in "high tea" at the Langham. I'm just hoping I feel a little bit more of the magic once I'm in the dresses!

Wedding Whammy - August Edition

It's been kind of a quiet month wedding-wise here...

• Saving Money. Man, it feels like money has been tighter this month... a lot of irregular costs that I should have bargained for but just haven't. Just last week I had to pay $70 for the repeat of one of my medications :S Uncool. The money is still going into the wedding account but it means there's no spare money to chuck towards the extra expenses!


• Rings. With the US dollar down against the NZD, we're seriously considering getting SB's ring on Amazon. Unfortunately the shape of my ring is making wedding bands hard to find and the only one that has suited perfectly is quite a bit more than I expected to pay! Hoping to find a cheaper wedding dress to balance it out!


• Weight Loss. I currently have 6.9 kilos to lose by November if I am to make my dress goal! I am still feeling the WeightWatchers programme but the expense of meetings is killing my budget and I'm wondering whether to keep going. Accountability, good; accountancy, bad.


• Save-the-Dates and Engagement Party invites. Going out this week! I would have liked to have sent them out earlier but I am waiting on return address labels from VistaPrint... note to self, don't order from their promotions as they are slow when overloaded! I've ordered business card sized product from them before and they were much faster.

That's pretty much it! I think we've hit one of those lulls that people talk about, where there's not a heck of a lot to do! Chugging along on my DIY projects and keeping that weight loss up is my focus for the month!

Wedding Whammy #1!

The response from the post was that you all are interested in hearing about the wedding planning. I figure that once in a while I will do a big wedding post ("Wedding Whammy") and if you don't care to know the details, you can just skip :) Deal?

So here it goes!

When is it happening?

We've set a date - we're getting married on the 1st of June next year! We didn't want to leave it too long but we needed to save money towards the wedding and we also needed to give our international guests enough time to save and make arrangements as well!

Saving? Who's paying?

We're paying for about 60% of our wedding ourselves and are lucky to have generous parents that are helping us out with the rest. It's actually surprising how easily we are saving money each week towards it - what the heck was our (my) excuse before? The biggest conflict we have is what we think should come out of our wedding account. I've ordered a mixed box of cupcakes from Miss Melicious to try and I've paid for that out of my own account, not the joint savings, whereas SB thinks it should come out of the joint savings... with the deposits coming out for various things at the moment, I'm being tight with the wedding account!

What's your biggest splurge?

Definitely videography. I felt very strongly (and I can't deny that having a parent with cancer played a part) that I wanted a whole bunch of visual memories of the day. We didn't want to burden any of our guests with the job of filming the event so I looked up videographers. In the NZ market, it definitely seems that what you pay for is what you get! We decided to go with White and SB feels pretty confident with that decision after he met with them (yeah, the past few weeks have been pretty busy for me so he met with the videographer on his own!). With having a friend who is also a wedding photographer (and a pretty awesome one at that), we felt we could splurge a little bit more given we're not paying some of the more exorbitant prices for photography.

Why a winter wedding?

Because we couldn't have a small wedding, we decided to have a cheap one? LOL, just joking. One reason we chose a winter wedding was because our summers are so full with family birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, not to mention weddings of other friends as well. The discounts we've received through having a winter wedding sure are nice though! We're having our ceremony in the church that we attend and then the reception is in a large ranch-style house/reception venue so we're not terribly worried about what the weather is like.

Anything unusual?

We're trying to steer away from using flowers as much as possible. Winter means that that shizz is expensive. SB would much rather that he and his men had pocketsquares, not bouts. I then decided I really wanted to play up the wintery feel of our wedding and our bridesmaids will be carrying lanterns rather than bouquets into the church. One word for our centrepieces - pompoms (and that's all you get for now). I'm still yet to work out what I will carry... or whether I'll carry anything at all. I certainly don't need it to ward off evil spirits and I hope to spend most of the ceremony holding SB's hands!

I think that's enough of a whammy for now! Tune in next month to hear more!