Wedding Wonders with No Wonga - Part Four

Wedding Wonders with No Wonga - Part Four

Published in Issue 22, April 2013

Written by Kerry from Scrapbookerry

http://www.scrapbookerry.com/

Mr L proposed, I said yes and now we are trying to get the wedding of our dreams with the least amount of money possible. Some things we are making ourselves, some things are being given to us, others we are getting through hard labour and lots of routing around for bargains and other things just can’t be budged. So we will try some haggling instead. 

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com 

Wedding Dresses

A wedding dress is one of the most important items within a wedding, anyone that has every watched an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride will more than likely heard a phrase similar too “if I don’t like the dress I am not getting married”

It is something we all dream about I think, and something that takes a long time to choose. 

There is also a vast collection of dresses. 

You can go with a very simple dress, a completely elaborate designed dress, a bling dress, a ball room style dress or a mermaid style dress just to name a few.

You can have it short, long, mid length, or just showing of the front of your leg. You can have your dress strapless, halter neck, thin straps, thick straps, sleeves, no sleeves, high necked, backless or with a heart cleavage. 

The colour of your dress is also very versatile, it can be ivory, champagne, white, red, pink, black or even a bit of a mixture you can have flowers all over it if you desire and the material again can be plain, or elaborate, silk, or lace there are numerous options. 

Actually loads of variations and options. 

It is a minefield out there. 

But the variation doesn’t stop there. 

The price of a dress varies from cost effective to the absolute other end of the scale! Where you are looking at a few months’ mortgage payments to get your dress, we are trying to be a little practical so I have already realised that it is very worthwhile to look around. As the dresses vary a lot in different places. 

I really haven’t had a clue about what dress to get. Or even when to start looking. I went to a wedding fair a few weeks ago and they had a Wedding Dress show at the fair and all the shops suggested that for an August 2014 wedding my best bet was to start looking around Christmas time. 

But what to look for?

I am not the slimmest of brides, although I am hoping to have lost a few pounds before the wedding day, but I generally have an hour glass, to an apple body shape. So I need a dress that not only works around my wide hips and bum, but also covers my large bust. The only thing that I am determined about is not to be pulling up my dress all day long as it is slipping over my bust. So straps are a must. 

I could go for the traditional, quirky or with a vintage feel being that we are doing a vintage tea party. 

I am not wanting too expensive even though there are some lovely expensive pieces out there. 

Or do I go for the ultimate Do It Yourself Wedding and actually look into making one myself? 

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com 

Photo Credits

Flowery dress http://www.ianstuart-bride.com/dress/south-pacific/

Short white dress http://www.maggiesottero.com/dress.aspx?style=J1417 

Quirky Dress http://www.ianstuart-bride.com/dress/bourbon/ 

Wedding Wonders With No Wonga

Published in Issue 20, December 2012

Written byKerry from Scrapbookerry

http://www.scrapbookerry.com/

Wedding Wonders With No Wonga

Mr L proposed, I said yes and now we are trying to get the wedding of our dreams with the least amount of money possible. Some things we are making ourselves, some things are being given to us, others we are getting through hard labour and lots of rooting around for bargains and other things just can’t be budged. So we will try some haggling instead.
If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

Centre Pieces Centre pieces can be very simple or really elaborate. They can range from the traditional to the quirky and even to the slightly insane. They can be
handmade or they can have a lot of money spent on them. But one thing is for sure they are a bit of a minefield to be honest.

We have been looking for centre pieces for a while now and we are in a land we really don’t understand. We want something that caters for both of our tastes but also will fit in with our wedding. It doesn’t necessarily have to fit in with our theme of Vintage Tea Party but it does need to work with us and how people know us.

Traditionally and most popular for weddings centrepieces are flowers, and we have seen some beautiful ones. They have ranged from very expensive and elaborate displays, to the very simple and easy to do. You can have low displays or high displays, ones just in tin cans or jam jars and others in fabulous displays that cover the whole middle of the table.We have also seen unusual flower displays, with flowers around fish bowls, or a couple of lilies stuck in a box of elegant stones. All of these are beautiful and they are lovely but we are not really flowery people.

The only flowers we would be tempted to use would be lilies and these really are not cheap flowers when trying to do something on a budget.
We have seen some lovely candle displays, some with just candles in a row,
some with candle floating in bowls and others with the more traditional candelabras. These are all lovely and we could buy the candles in the exact colour scheme of the wedding, (which has actually changed from cream and brown to aqua blue and brown) which would be lovely.
However safety could be an issue and as we have a lot of children on our wedding list and potentially could have some very small children attending the wedding, neither of us think the candles, however lovely, are really the best idea for us.

We have considered using sweets. We have been to a few weddings which have had bowls of retro sweets as table centrepieces, and we both love this idea. But again we have to consider the number of children attending and we don’t think it would be such a good idea to have a massive bowl of sweets on the table, especially when they should be eating their dinner. We are going to have sweets but we think it will be best to have a specific sweet table, rather than sweets as the centrepieces, as then they don’t have to all be put in one bowl and we can separate them into different old glass jars and that way people can see what they are taking.
After looking around for a while we seemed to come up with an idea that we both really wanted as centrepieces. Mr L really wanted something fun and silly, a small game or something for people to play with while sat at the table, as he really is a great big kid and it shows his personality.
While he wanted something silly, I really wanted something sentimental, specifically something to do with paper, as everyone knows my love for scrapbooking. I want to keep as many things from my wedding as possible and I would really like to include the centrepieces if possible.

We have come across a couple of game ideas, e.g. having Scrabble in the centre of the table, and using the word boards for the guest’s name places. Or having Jenga in the middle and getting all the guests to write their own wedding messages on the wooden pieces for us to keep a very sentimental Jenga game for life.

Then Mr L came up with the idea of Lego! He decided that it was the play thing that both adults and children would love, and that he wanted a huge bowl of Lego on each table for everyone to be able to make their own Lego piece.

It has been discussed in length with his Ushers and Best Man and it seems that he is set on the idea of Lego. It is original and something that we can add to gradually as the months go on preparing for the wedding. So unless his ideas change, it looks like he will be having Lego!

 

I was still set on my idea of having some sort of Scrapbooking sentimental items on the table as well as Mr L’s silly play things. I have been finding lots of different things which would fit into this category. I have thought about giving all guests a little accordion book, but then decided that this would be too big for each individual.
Then I found a perfect idea! We had no idea for what to do for our Table Numbers until I came across this idea of using books with the table numbers on. We can decorate the books by putting the table number on the cover and then every person on that table writes a message with advice on how to cope with that year of marriage. So table one writes advice for the first year, Table two writes advice for the second year. Table three writes advice for the third year, and so on. It means that we can keep these books throughout our marriage and can always look back at the messages that our friends and family have written to us.
So it seems that we have two ideas that we both really want, Mr L with his Lego and my Table Number advice books. I think both of them will make the tables a little bit different to anything else that we have seen, but will also completely work with our personalities which is just we want.

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

Photo Credits
Tin can flowers http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/231015/50-great-wedding-centerpieces/@center/272419/youre-engaged#103584

Fish bowl with flowers
http://www.wedding-flowers-and-reception-ideas.com/fish-bowl-centerpiece.html

Candles http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/231015/50-great-wedding-centerpieces/@center/272419/youre-engaged#177196

Jenga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga 

Lego http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

Wedding Wonders With No Wonga Part 2

Published in Issue 19, October 2012

Written by Kerry from Scrapbookerry

www.scrapbookerry.com

PART 2

Mr L proposed, I said yes and now we are trying to get the wedding of our dreams with the least amount of money possible. Some things we are making ourselves, some things are beinggiven to us, others we are getting through hard labour and lotsof rooting around for bargains and other things just can’t bebudged. So we will try some haggling instead.

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonderswith No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

The first plans.

These last couple of months we have been trying to work out exactly what we want from our wedding and have been having to look at some of the things that we do need to pay for! The dates, themes and venues have been at the front of our minds!

As soon as Mr L proposed, I knew right away that I wanted to get married on the last weekend in August. I didn’t really care what day of the week it was, it just had to be that last weekend. Luckily Mr L knew that I would want that and was happy to go along with that date as well.

The date is important to me. My own parents were married on the 1st of September and my sister and brother in law were married on the 29th of August, so it just seemed right to get married in between them. 

Once we looked at the diaries we saw that in 2014 the 30th of August falls on the August bank holiday and it is Saturday as well. It must hve been destined as it was perfect for us, so within days we had the date set.

We have had lots many discussions about what we wanted and our ideas for our wedding. Everything we have been thinking and talking about has been put into our Wedding Art Journal so we can record all of our ideas. Our ideas usually end up being the same! We are both country people in our hearts and we both want that to be reflected in our wedding.

We thought we would have a quiet wedding and a reception in a field.

We didn’t want anything fancy. We wanted a vintage feel with old style tea sets and a nice simple hog roast for the food. We had various ideas for colour combinations, but eventually decided on brown and cream. It is a colour combination which suits all of our immediate family. As I am strawberry blonde, Mr L is brown and Baba is ginger we needed something that suited us all.

So we were raring to go….

But we came unstuck with the field. We have gone over this idea for the last
few weeks, trying to decide whether it is truly what we want. It is something that we both would love, but and it is a big but, we are both very nervous of the great British weather. We can’t afford to have massive marquees and were thinking of having tents instead. Our next hurdle was trying to find a field near us. We live in an area with lots and lots of fields around us. However finding one that we wanted was a different matter. 

We began looking into village halls instead and some of them near us were remarkable. We have managed to find a fantastic hall we can hire for the whole weekend and can decorate to our own specifications. It has great grounds, so we still have space for our hog roast and it has a playground for the children. It looks fantastic. There are car parking spaces and it isn’t too far from the church. So all in all it is perfect and the best thing is that it is undercover and the price is great! A really good deal for the whole weekend. 

We are set on having vintage china sets and we have narrowed it
down to two options. We can either go hunting ourselves searching car boots, eBay, charity shops and jumble sales or hiring all the china from a company. Like Dormouse and The Teapot http://www.dormouseandtheteapot.com/ This company hires enough china out for a wedding of 80, which would be perfect for us.

They have a stunning range and it is just what we are looking for. But at the moment it is still a decision to be made - whether, to hire or to buy ourselves?

We are planning far in advance so we decided that we wanted to make some Save the Date cards. Nothing too complicated as we wanted the cards to fit in with the simple theme of the wedding itself.
We could go with a very simple Save the Date card, where we would fill in all the details, but this could be time-consuming, or we could opt for a more personal photo Save the Date card.

 

This is more us and fits in well with my scrap booking. Plus once it is made it can easily be reprinted to send to all our family and friends.
The card is more in keeping with a wedding and more in line with what we
are wanting for the rest of our wedding. So it has been decided that these are
going to be our Save the Date cards and the rest of the wedding stationery will be
based on a similar design!

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

Wedding Wonders With No Wonga!

Published in issue 18, August 2012

Written by Kerry from Scrapbookerry

Part 1

In January 2005 I first met my other half. We have bought two houses, had two children, own a dog, lizard, rabbit, hamster and a snail, but we have never got around to getting married.

In April 2012 he proposed, and we have now gone from a couple to two people engaged. 

But we have a little problem when it comes to the wedding.  We really do not have any spare cash to do anything too lavish. So we are using all the means that we have, pulling in all our resources and intend having as much of a Handmade Wedding as possible. We don’t want to spend too much on things that can be made. 

We don’t want to waste money on things that are really not needed. Instead we would like one off pieces that are original, personal to us and made by either ourselves or our friends, and small business owners within the craft community. 

We want an intimate wedding, one that has all of our personality within it and not a big commercial wedding. 

Since the proposal we have been thinking a lot about our wedding and have come upwith a few ideas, but more important than ideas, are the things we actually need! 

On the list so far:

Wedding Dress

Two Bridesmaids dresses, one adult, one teenager

One Flower girl Dress

One Ring Bearer’s suit

Two Ushers suits, one adult, one child

Two Best Men’s suits

Grooms suit

Flowers for Bride, Bridesmaids, Flower Girls and Button Holes

Bridal Shoes

Shoes for Bridesmaids, Ushers, Flower Girl, Ring Bearer and Groom

Tiara

Rings

Necklaces and Earrings

Venue

Food

Photographer

Cake

Transport

Save the Date Cards

Invites

Favours

Decorations for the Wedding

Hairdresser

Hairdresser

Make Up

Seating Plans

Name Places

Order of Service

Menus for the Wedding Breakfast

Entertainment Books for Children

Guestbook

Music

Things may be taken off, things may be added but at the moment this is how it stands. We are planning on doing lots of things ourselves, but there are some things that we will have to look to others for. 

We are looking for creative folk who can help us make this the wedding that we want it to be, but with no Wonga! 

It is going to be a challenge. We have two years to achieve this but we are determined and we will have the wedding that we want. 

So welcome to Wedding Wonders with No Wonga. We hope you enjoy the creative journey to our wedding day! 

It is going to be interesting, a little bit different and lots and lots of fun so why not get involved and be part of the journey. 

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com