Weddingbee Blog

I started working on making my dress special and more appropriate for my black tie affair, but it isn’t going very well. In fact, it is a mess. I don’t know whether it serves me right for buying something cheap and expecting it to hold up next to my beloved’s tuxedo on the night.

I have tried it on a gazillion times, pinning it here and there and nothing works. And the more I fiddle, the more it unravels and I freak out and put it back in the cupboard. It seems my bargain purchase is coming back to haunt me.
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I am an avid follower of the blog Vintage Glam Weddings. It’s been a great inspiration thus far, and has recently calmed my wedding related concerns. With my vintage style invitations already in progress, I have decided to incorporate a little more of the 1930s in my overall theme. I love the style of the 1950s but with a black tie affair to consider, I believe the 1930s and 1940s vintage glam will be more suitable. I’m thinking an evening inspired by star such as Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn. The retrospective will culminate in my beloved 1950s and 1960s music.

My favourite part of incorporating a little of the “dirty thirties”?
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It had been a long time since I perused Martha Stewart’s wedding site when I came across the free download above. The content just hadn’t been all that inspiring to me in the past few months. But, I am happy to say that Martha is BACK. Tagged in a post by iDIY, I came across these perfect lace pattern freebies!! My personal favourites are the luminaries, napkin rings and photobooth backdrop. The 2D lace pattern is the perfect combination of vintage and modern that I am looking for. I downloaded EVERYTHING and plan to mess around with the pdfs and make my own projects from the elements. Ah the possibilities…
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While I love flowers passionately, I have always felt they are an unnaturally large expense at weddings. A good portion of any wedding budget can be sucked into this, and in the end, the flowers often go to waste.

With our own budget in mind, I have already reduced our centrepieces to include only a few blooms, if any. But then there are other elements, such as boutonnieres, bouquets and corsages to consider. I have always been determined to make these things myself, but I have to admit that time will be limited to make these with fresh flowers on the day of the wedding, or even the day before.

So I began researching alternatives for flowers… and look what I found.
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So, a few months into wedding planning, Mr. Lightning and I had this elaborate bird theme for our wedding. We were quite convinced that this was a great, innovative idea that we could tie into all the decorative elements. We were so convinced that we purchased 10 birdcages that happened to be on sale, an indicator to us that this was meant to be.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we were quite sure this was a huge mistake.
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In the spirit of going against tradition, my lovely bridesmaids will be choosing their own dresses. They are all beautiful and unique, and as my friends, deserve to shine independently by my side.

With this concept in mind, I spent a great deal of time looking for dresses in possible accent colours to inspire them on their quest, but soon realised that there were just two many hues and fabrics for this to all go wrong.

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We chose our beautiful venue after my parents lunched at Pure, a refurbished restaurant in Hout Bay, one summer’s day back in February (the hottest month of the year here). They had been talking about it ever since it was featured in a local leisure magazine and were therefore convinced it would be the best place for our future nuptials. In fact, they were so settled on the venue that I think they would have booked it there and then. To ease their excitement we visited Pure, the restaurant of Hout Bay Manor, that weekend, in hopes of ending our fruitless venue search (Cape Town is known for its vineyard wedding destinations and as a result, it’s a little overdone and also a little hard to find something unique).
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With a late ceremony and reception a likelihood, I have decided to embrace it and find things more suitable to a candlelit evening. The first is to carry lanterns instead of bouquets. I have already started sourcing reasonable and sturdy lanterns with handles, but nothing has been quite right yet. In particular, I am looking for silver metal and glass. I have decided I will carry lanterns, and so will the groomsmen and bridesmaids. Each will place a lantern on either side of the imaginary aisle at the center of the restaurant. In my head, it seems to be a good idea, as there will be no aisle unless I make one after guests are seated. There are 9 people in our wedding party—5 girls and 4 guys. I will carry the 10th lantern and place it behind me to complete the aisle (subject to this all going to plan).

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With plenty of time to go, I have almost everything booked. I am incredibly proud of this achievement, considering I started planning this year with only a handful of Saturdays at my disposal.

Even with so much organized already, the one thing that everyone asks about is the dress. To be honest, it is a question I often dread. Mainly because when I explain what I intend to wear, I often receive slightly negative responses like: “but you can’t wear that!” I first encountered this response when I did an initial exploration of nearby bridal stores. While I didn’t quite expect to find the right thing at a bridal store anyway, I figured it was worth a look. Apparently I should have stuck with my initial judgment. With my determination not to wear something that resembled a traditional bridal gown, I managed to frighten away a few shop attendants. I think I was too “difficult” a bride for them. I think I should have found a better way to describe my request to “not look like a bride”.

In the end, I resigned myself to having something made. Something I don’t really believe in, either.
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A few months into wedding planning I organized for my 5 bridesmaids to join me for a spot of tea, cake and mini sandwiches. While we didn’t drink much tea, we certainly polished off a few bottles of bubbly.

The purpose of the event was to show them my ideas, get their input, and allude to some of the tasks I may need them for. This last part was most important for me because being in my early twenties, I will be the first to walk down the aisle, and most likely the only one to be in this stage of life for quite sometime. It’s something the girls are still getting their heads around, and while they are all trying their best to be supportive, they don’t really know where to start or how to respond to the situation.

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Well hello there hive! I can’t say what a pleasure it is to greet you as Miss Lightning, It’s an honor and a privilege to contribute alongside the hive’s group of wonderful and inspiring bride bloggers. Stormy Cape Town, you say? Well yes, I’m halfway across the world at the Southern tip of Africa where the two oceans meet. It’s the middle of winter here and my favorite time of year. Bartholomew Diaz named the area the Cape of Storms in 1488 and even today as we settle in for a cold weekend, the phrase reigns true. So with my love of the cold and the cities tumultuous weather, what better name to go by than Miss Lightning!

I moved to this beautiful city when South Africa became a democracy in 1994. My parents lived here before I was born and after many years abroad decided to return to what had become the Rainbow Nation. I’m still a California girl at heart and whenever I can I return home to catch up with friends, family and my beloved Milano cookies.

While living abroad I met Mr Lightning through mutual friends we made at the University of Cape Town. Fast forward two years and I find myself engaged to and madly in love with this kindhearted soul. Our whirlwind romance may have been short and surprised many, but when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start now. And that’s just what we’ve decided to do!

Set to take place in a refurbished icon in the Harbour of Hout Bay, a suburb on the scenic coast of the Cape, will be our vintage retrospective wedding inspired by our mutual love of oldies rock ’n’ roll.
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