I strongly believe that life shouldn’t go “back to normal” immediately following a wedding. I couldn’t imagine spending a year of my life planning one day, only to go back home after the reception and return to work on Monday.
Of course, this all comes down to budget. And time off work, but I just want to focus on the budget element of this right now.
We’re incredibly fortunate to be able to go away for three weeks the day after we get married, but before the option of Disney became available, we threw around some lower-budget ideas. Although I have to admit, I found it near impossible to find something “honeymoon-worthy” for around £500.
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine was taken on a surprise birthday trip by his girlfriend. When he returned he sent me a link to the place he stayed, and Oh.My.God why hadn’t I known about this site before?!
If you live in the UK and want a mini getaway for less than £500 (or even less in some cases) then I want to let you in on this little secret…
Canopy & Stars is a site that lists rural retreats across the UK, Spain, France, and Portugal. Some of these cabins are to die for.
My colleague stayed at The Wriggly Tin in Hampshire.
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Image via Canopy & Stars
There are two of these little huts in a secluded meadow—one at each end. With a shabby-chic interior, this hut also has a wood-burning stove, hurricane lamps, and candles. No electric here—you are completely cut off from the world in your own little romantic bubble.
The escort cards are coming along nicely. I’ve so far managed to get hold of 55 out of 81 photos. Which is pretty good, I think!
A lot of them were family, so it just meant going through photo albums, but I’ve also managed to score some absolutely hilarious ones of family friends. This is going to be so much fun.
So I’ve done a bit of a “practice run.”
I wanted the photos to look “old,” so if I came across a photo that looked too new, I used Picfull to do a bit of online “Instagram’ing.” God bless the hipsters and the demand for “retro” and “vintage” these days.
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All photos personal
Once the images all looked “aged,” I inserted them in Word (because I’m not a fancy-pants designer) and spaced them out so they would all have a border. I aimed to make them look like a polaroid and made the bottom border a little bigger.
Next, I wrote in the names. I decided to use Courier New as the font for a “typewriter” kind of feel, and printed them out!
Getting engaged made me do something I needed to do. Really, I should have done it a lot sooner, but once I got engaged I knew that soon time wouldn’t be on my side and I needed to get a move on. I needed to fix my skin.
I never had awful skin as a teenager, just normal teenage skin. A bit spotty, a bit oily, but not really bad acne that I’d seen others suffer with. However, as I got further into my 20s, I realised my skin wasn’t getting any better and with planning a wedding I figured I’d better get a move on to see if I could sort this out.
I made an appointment with my doctor for 9:00 AM so I could go and see her before putting on my makeup. When I walked in the room she asked me what my problem was, and when I told her it was my skin her response was, “Oh good! Because when I saw that I thought ‘well, if she’s not come about that then I will definitely have to mention something!’”
Naturally at first I was horrified—was it really that bad? But then I realised that this could only be a good thing. I had been worried at first that I’d be brushed off and it would be described as “cosmetic” and not really a problem, but she was adamant that we do something “aggressive” to sort this out.
It’s weird…before the ‘Bee I never even realised that people had such strong opinions about registries.
Apparently a registry should be spread via word of mouth, and it should be for only household gifts. You should never expect a gift, and you should be thankful for that plastic flower that your great aunt gave you that says “do not display in direct sunlight” on the label, even though you’d never display it anywhere where light could get to it because it’s so hideous. (That didn’t happen to me…OK, it did.)
We’re not doing a household registry. We’re doing a honeymoon registry. We will be putting the registry details on our website and app, and we can pretty much guarantee that everyone will be thankful that we did.
You see, registries just aren’t a big deal. Not with my circle, anyway. We’ve had household registries, honeymoon registries, and even little poems about how it’d be nice to get cash. And it never offended me. Not one bit.
Oooh I do love a bit of technology. Jack loves a bit of technology. We’re pretty much an Apple household. So when I suggested we get our own wedding app, Jack was really excited by the idea.
I’d come across Appy Couple on Pinterest about a year ago. A friend of mine was engaged and whenever I saw something cool I passed it on to her. She loved the idea but, luckily for us, she never used it. I don’t know anyone who’s had a wedding app before, but I quite like the idea of doing something a bit “modern.”
Usually I would wonder if anyone would use the app or find it useful, but back in 2011 I went to a wedding in Cornwall, six hours away from home. In my rush to pack and leave the house before 6:00 AM, I stupidly forgot the invitation and other important details. Thank goodness I’d been messaging the bride on Facebook and had all the details in a message; otherwise I’d have had to call her—and I doubt a girl wants to know that her guests are lost!
As we are having a sort of destination wedding (in the sense that all our guests live at least two to three hours away), we figured having this information on a phone could end up being useful. And I think an app is pretty cool thing to have, anyway.
I didn’t look at any other apps if I’m honest. I liked this one and stuck with it!
We went through a number of themes before finally settling on this one, which we think matches our invitations nicely.
So I was miserable about my invitations but happy with my stamps.
And when I received my stamps I started thinking about what I could do to the envelopes to make them a bit more…awesome. It was whilst searching for ideas that I came across this picture…
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Image via Bang Boom Pow Design
…and I sort of fell in love with it.
A quick look on their website showed they had an Etsy shop, and a set of these invitations would cost £250 ($375), which was around £100 more than I was originally going for. Still, this price was for the whole set which included things I wouldn’t need (save the dates, for example), and I wondered if omitting them could reduce the price a little.
And there was the other obvious thing staring me in the face, of course.
I see a lot of posts on the boards by people asking for advice when trying to plan a Disney World holiday, so I thought I’d write up a little post about the things I’ve picked up whilst planning mine.
When I first set off planning mine, I knew only two things.
The rest, I learnt from research. Insane research. The kind of research that led me to watch YouTube videos and find out the price of meals. I went into a lot of detail.
I’ll break down planning into a few categories.
But to start, let’s look at the best time of year to visit.
So I think we need to address the fact that I have dreadlocks.
I’m not a hippy, or a vegan, nor do I listen to Jamaican music. This is everyone’s assumption. They also assume that it’s OK to touch my hair when I walk past them in the street (?!) and that I am guaranteed to stop when street fundraisers target me. Hello—I’m on my lunch break just like everyone else!
Would you like to know the real reason I have dreads?
…I have really, really, fine hair.
And that’s the honest truth!
When I was 12 I started dying my hair for the first time—it was really blonde when I was little, but then I started to get darker when I got older and the bleach came out. I dyed it blonde continuously for eight years, and then I did something even more drastic. I dyed it black.
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All photos personal
I liked it! I could get away with it being “messy” when it was black, but when the roots started showing through I looked like I had an airport runway on the top of my head—not a good look.
So I dyed it back. But dying it back meant that I pretty much ruined my hair. My already fine hair. It became so fine that it basically just stuck to my face and the only thing I could do to make it look good was to chop it all off.
This was Jack’s Facebook status late last year.
Teehee. This made me laugh LOTS. More than lots. I sat and laughed at him for a good 10 minutes when he realised that all his recommended films weren’t recommended for him anymore, but for me because I’d hijacked his account on the Wii and spent many evenings watching chick flicks. (I’m even laughing now as I type this, it was just that funny.)
In the space of about two weeks, I managed to watch Bride Wars, Bridemaids, Revenge of the Bridesmaids, The Fake Fiance, The Accidental Husband, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and others I can’t think of off the top of my head.
I’ve become hooked. Wedding films, wedding TV shows…wedding anything. But it got me wondering why.
So I’m off to America for my honeymoon, but what about those of you who’d like to visit England for your post-wedding getaway?
I’m going to cheat a little bit and not talk about my actual hometown. I grew up in the northwest of England in a town called Bolton, which isn’t really somewhere that I would recommend tourists visit. It sort of looks a bit like this.
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Screenshot of the very popular soap Coronation Street
It ain’t that pretty.
But I did spend most of my childhood in The Lake District. We had a static caravan on a park on Lake Windermere and I had the best time. We’d go water skiing and make dens in the trees by the parks.
We visited every weekend during the spring and summer for 10 whole years, so naturally I think I can call this place my “home away from home.”
Our caravan was on Fallbarrow Park. Rules meant caravans had to be replaced once they were 10 years old in order to stop the place from “aging,” and the result was a beautiful place where everything was kept well maintained.
My venue is beautiful and I love it. The hall is why I booked the venue, and the hall is absolutely worth the horror that lurks behind two doors…
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All photos personal
…orange bathrooms.
Back when Jack and I were long distance, he had a little Cushie pillow that he used to sleep with.
One weekend, as I was leaving, he said he’d miss cuddling up to me and so I took out my bottle of perfume and spritzed a bit onto his little pillow.
He curled up to that pillow every night, and I used to refresh the scent every time I visited him.
That was back when I had excess cash to throw around and didn’t wince at the thought of wasting a spritz of not-cheap perfume on a pillow.
Nowadays, I hardly ever wear that perfume. I have a bottle of it on my dresser, but it’s only used for special occasions because I just cannot bare the thought of the bottle being empty. Instead, I will wear every other perfume I own just to avoid using all the good stuff.
But when I do wear that perfume, Jack notices. So I’ve decided to buy myself a new bottle of this perfume to wear on our wedding day.
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Image via The Perfume Shop
Accessories. If there is one thing I really need to work on, it’s my ability to accessorize.
I sometimes look at girls who walk around in their fabulous outfits and think “Howwww do they do that?! They look so amazing!” and I would realise that not only are they wearing “outfits” (as opposed to “just clothes” that I throw on every morning when I’m in a rush to get to work), but their accessories are perfectly coordinated and make the whole thing look “just right.”
Clearly, I will need to wear some jewellery on my wedding day. I had initially thought about wearing the red heart Swarovski necklace Jack bought me for Christmas last year, but as the neckline on my dress is pretty high and has enough detail already, I won’t be.
When I first met Jack, I had loads of piercings, and the majority of those were in my ears. I had a rook (top one—left photo), a tragus (middle one—left photo), an orbital (the hoop on the right photo—my absolute fave), and five lobe piercings.
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All photos personal
I used to bite my nails a lot when I was growing up. In fact, it was when I was 19 and had false nails put on for the very first time that I stopped my habit. When the false nails came off I saw that my natural nails had grown underneath them for the first time ever, and seeing them like that was enough to stop me from biting them ever again.
Seven years later, though, and that’s pretty much the only thing I’ve done for my nails. Not biting them. I don’t get manicures (in fact, when I got false ones that was the first and only time I’d ever been to a salon), and apart from the occasional hand moisturiser, I did nothing.
It was only when I got that shiny ring on my finger that I actually started paying attention to the quality of my nails, what with people grabbing my hand to look at it and all.
For once, I painted my nails, but after a day or so the polish just chipped right off. At first I put it down to tapping keys a lot at work, but then I realised it was actually because the quality of my nails was so poor.
Look at them! Brittle and flaky. Eugh. What have I been doing all these years?!
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Personal photo
The top table is one thing that I’m really struggling with.
I’ve been looking through some of the bees’ posts and found that I’m not the only one! Mrs. Seal had this problem, and so did Mrs. Pumpkin, Mrs. Snow Cone, Miss Otter—it gave me a lot of reading to do!
You see, traditionally, the top table is seated like this (I hear it’s different from US top tables).
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Image via Wedding Services 4U
But Chatty Man will know no one at this wedding except for Jack and me, and his wife. So if he sits with us at the top table, then his missus will be on her own, and I don’t think that’s very fair.
