30 days of lists…

List One: A few things about myself…

I am engaged… a very happy (but not so yummy) mummy… a dreamer… a planner.. a blogger… a searcher… a chatterbox… annoying… a [chic] geek… a daughter… a sister… a tree hugger.. a reader… a shopper… and most of all a LOVER – of life and the people in it 🙂

List Two: A few things you’re good at…

Being a mummy (I hope!)… planning weddings… blogging (haha)… moaning about people in supermarkets… spending money on other people… reading…walking fast… talking… making slightly innapropriate jokes… laughing at slightly innapropriate jokes… snorting when I laugh… lounging in my pjs…perving over wedding and lifestyle blogs…

List Three: A few things you are looking forward to….

Getting married… My friend’s baby shower which I am hosting… Summer BBQs… Buying a paddling pool… winning the lottery… Ice skating again this winter… meeting friends for lunch next week… shopping Gok-style…

List Four: A Few things you are listening to (Playlist)

Ellie Goulding… The Beatles… Dolly Parton… Adele… George Micheal… Take That… Lost Prophets… All American Rejects… The ‘Big Cook Little Cook’ themetune… 1950s rock and roll love songs…

List Five: A Few Goals for the Weekend…

Treating myself to some new clothes… spending time with Scott and Lily… having a lovely mothers day… visiting the vintage fair at Bloomsbury bowling lanes… going for a stroll around Spitalfields and Brick Lane with the other half…

Ok so methinks that is enough for one day, I’m getting a bit carried away!

xxx

Dear Diary…

Ok so actually finding the time to write a diary or journal can be tiresome so when I came across this idea over on Amy Radcliffe Photography I just couldn’t resist sharing. By the way check out her site – her photos are very sweet :-)… Anyway the idea is that of ’30 days of lists’ which was created to show that everybody can document parts of their lives simply and quickly – making it much easier to keep records of our lives as they are at this moment.

So I figured that I too would start writing my lists, firstly using the prompts on their site, and maybe later on adding a few ‘list titles’ of my own. Maybe when I look back at these entries in a few years i’ll be smiling at how my life has changed, reminiscing about things that I have done, or simply laughing at my taste in ‘celebrity crushes’  – well we shall see!

xxx

Planning – Prioritise

There are so many individual aspects that go into creating a wedding. From big vendors and suppliers such as the Venue, Caterers or Photographers to those all-important little details such as table settings and save-the-date cards. Once you have worked out your budget you need to prioritise what you want from your big day. Unless you have a large budget you may find that you need to cut back in some areas in order to have what you want in others and that is where your basic priorities come into play. When Mr.I and I sat down and discussed our individual wedding day wishes we were lucky that our priorities matched, this is what we had, in order of importance (for us):

1. Venue

2. Catering

3. Photography

4. Stationary and the little details

5. The bridal party

Below these fell items such as entertainment, numbers of guests, flowers, and the lowest on our list: alcohol! This list made it easy for us to choose which things we would spend the larger chunks of our (small) budget on. However every couple will have their individual priorities and this is where communication is key – don’t worry if you have to spend hours talking over the fact that one of you thinks the whole bridal party should be in designer outfits or if the other thinks a top DJ is more important – this is your wedding and the planning is just one way to learn that compromise is a key to a successful marriage!

When you look at wedding magasines they tend to dictate to you what aspects of your wedding should be more important – for example they usually have a ‘budget planner’ and it will list all expenses that traditional weddings generate, and of course they then pressurize you into thinking that if you aren’t spending £600 on your cake then something is wrong with your wedding planning – there’s nothing wrong with it do don’t worry – so what if you don’t like cake? Maybe you’d prefer a tower of Krispy Kremes instead? Don’t worry about what is the ‘norm’ when it comes to the priorities for your wedding – choose what makes you and your future spouse happy!

xxx

Spotlight on: Choccywoccydoodah!

I absoloutely love Brighton, I love everything about it – from the pier and the rusting turquoise paint of the victorian promenade, the seaside kitsch, the winding lanes filled with junk stores, jewellery and little boutiques to the great big shopping centre and the odeon cinema. But one thing I really, truly adore about Brighton is a little shop called Choccywoccydoodah where they sell the most extravagent and amazing cakes you could possibly imagine – all crafted out of pure belgian chocolate… this isn’t cake, it’s art!

These cakes are just simply stunning – they are quite expensive, although they do more modest creations and can create bespoke creations to your set budget which makes them very flexible – it helps that the staff are all friendly and love to see their customer’s faces light up when they look at the window displays! Admittedly i’ve never tried any of the wedding cakes that they create – but their chocolate truffles and bars are divine!

The design above is my favourite! As a Beatles fan I love the quote (in fact i’m looking into getting it tattooed somewhere) and also love the vibrancy of the design. Mr PS thinks the cakes look a little bit busy – but they are designed to be a showpiece – you certainly wouldn’t forget to cut the cake if you had one of these in the room!

xxx

Planning – Budget

Hiya! What a week I have been having – feel like I havn’t stopped to take a breather but it’s been great fun. Mr.PS has had the week off of work so we’ve been having a great time making the most of his limited time off – lots of trips to the park for Lily-Rose (to make the most of her new found walking skill!), lots of cuddly slumbery afternoons and reading side by side whilst Lily naps 🙂 Anyway todays post is all about Getting Started with your wedding planning.

The first step is always BUDGET! Unfortunately this is the biggest, most fundamental building block of your wedding planning. Its just no good to taunt yourself with images of a luxurious gold plated affair when your wages just about cover the rent.

The best way to organise your budget is to sit down and work out your income and outgoings per month – and this doesn’t just mean the bare bones of rent/mortgage and bills this is EVERYTHING – from your monthly gym membership right down to your penchant for bringing home new shoes on payday. For some people, including us, doing this gave us quite a wake-up call as to how we were spending our money and where we needed to make changes. So even if you’re not planning a wedding doing this is a really good idea (although it isn’t very fun!)

When we had done this we worked out that we could realistically save just £100 a month – not a great deal of money, but this amount is without cutting back too drastically on our lifestyle. We didn’t want to sacrifice our regular cinema dates, stop buying clothes or treating our daughter to days out at the Zoo. There is so much more to life than a wedding and if you put too much pressure on yourselves for the sake of the budget you won’t be enjoying the planning process at all!

Some people are lucky enough to have parental contributions to their wedding. If that is the case then you need to sit down now with your parents or future in-laws and work out exactly how much they will be contributing as this will factor in to your final budget. It always helps to keep communication very clear with regards to money to avoid people getting upset or falling out. My dad has set up a direct debit into our account every month – he told us what he could afford to give us each month and told us to ‘do what we want with it’ which is great as unfortunately some people who contribute to a wedding feel that as they are making a monetary contribution they have the right to make decisions regarding your wedding. My dad isn’t interested in that which make accepting his generous gift a happy experience rather than a stressful one.

Spreadsheets like those on Microsoft Excel are always useful to keep a track of your money and budget – but remember they will only work if you are honest with yourself and add each expenditure made – big and small!

Some people decide to take on second jobs so that they can add more money to their wedding budget – this is great if you have the time, but PLEASE please please don’t pressurize yourself – if you’re struggling to find time together as you’re both so busy working hard then you have your priorities wrong. At the end of the day a wedding is about the two of you as a couple and if you aren’t spending any quality time together then you aren’t going to be much of a couple at the end of the planning process!

I am a stay at home mummy and scott works full time with horrible shifts so we didn’t want to put any pressure on our time by me taking on a job – instead i’m doing my bit towards the wedding by cutting back on the spending. For example for the past two years since we got engaged I have spent around £20-25 a month on wedding magasines (i know its crazy!) and so my way of cutting down on spending is to stop buying them! Its not like I even need them when there are so many amazing wedding blogs for free out there! So that is £240-£300 saved a year  that is big bucks!

We have decided to keep the wedding budget realistic – we don’t want to wait a hundred years to get married but neither do we want to get into debt for the sake of one day. So we have set our budget at £4000 which, hopefully we will manage to save by August 2013.

So take a couple of hours out of your busy day to site down and work out a budget with all those involved in your wedding – once you have your budget start doing your research, and most of all, enjoy planning 🙂

xxx



Luella’s Boudoir Wedding Fair (Part deux)

So there I was in One Marylebone surrounded by lots of amazing wedding vendors, spending time chatting to suppliers and other brides and who do I meet other than the amazing sister team behind Hayford and Rhodes Florists. These were my favourite vendors of the whole event *BIG gold star going their way*, they were friendly, helpful and really nice, showing me billions of examples of their amazing work and just generally being awesome.

My main issue with the florists local to me is that so many of them have a ‘mimimum budget’ that they are willing to work with, not so with Hayford and Rhodes who can create striking arrangments on the budget that you set – my favourite arrangement at the show was this huge ornate piece with manzanita branches hung with test tubes of flowers and sparkly crystals – it was amazing and I nearly hyperventilated when they told me that I could have the same sort of arrangement for roughly £80 – now that might seem like a lot, but if you had seen it you would know that it was worth it – it was so amazing you would only need one to make a serious impact!

I loved the amazing ‘bell’ glass arrangements that they were showing – and I showed a picture to Mr Postscript Bride and he very much agreed that they were amazing – surprising as whenever I show him wedding flowers he tends to nod and say ‘yeah they’re alright’, the mystery was solved as to why he liked them when he said that they ‘reminded him of the disney movie beauty and the beast’ I can see what he means can you?

I was really unimpressed with the Vodka cocktail bar upstairs, (I tried two of the drinks on offer – one tasted awful and the other boring!), I loved the Emmy shoes display although I was dissapointed that there was nobody there to talk you through the styles and prices, couldn’t see what the fuss was about the Little Venice Cake company, loved my strawberry snow-cone from Ideas Box and thought the chocolate brownie in my goodie bag from Rhubarb catering was divine so very mixed receptions about the Vendors although on the whole the selection was good.

The best part of the evening, for sure, was the Catwalk show featuring several dress and accessory designers from the Luella’s Boudoir boutique in Wimbledon, unfortunately I fell completely in love with a dress so far out of my budget hemisphere I nearly choked when the sales lady told me the price (£4700 just incase you were wondering!) Kat from Rock’n’Roll bride was absoloutely amazing – she rocked it down the catwalk and gave it some real attitude in everything she wore – what a amazing experience for her and I can’t wait to read her blog post on the event! My only wish is that I had stayed behind and introduced myself – to be honest I chickened out at the last minute hehe!

This sneak peek was borrowed from the Rocknroll bride facebook page and was taken by Liz Eliza Hankins – if you look far left you can see a bit of little old me in my specs 🙂

I had such a fantastic night and it has just made me want to go to as many wedding events as I can – thinking of booking my tickets for the next national wedding fair now 🙂

xxx

Luella’s Boudoir Wedding Fair @ One Marylebone

I was absoloutely thrilled when my VIP  invitation to Luella’s Boudoir Wedding Fair landed in my inbox, and even more so when I realised that Queen of the Wedding Bloggers Kat Williams of Rock’n’Roll Bride fame would be there.

So off I marched (well took a tube) to One Marylebone which is a stunning converted church on it’s own little ‘island’ in Marylebone, armed with a notepad, a big handbag (luckily as I picked up tonnes of leaflets and business cards) and my invite…

^The view from outside One Marylebone – It looks absoloutely stunning, as does the ground floor main hall below

 

Although the outside look amazing, and the stained glass windows and organ in the main hall were lovely, truth be told I was a teeny weeny bit dissapointed with the rest of the venue – particularly the toilets, which might make me sound a little bit crazy but the ott gold textured wallpaper in the cubicles just put me off ANYWAY…

The first vendor I met was the amazing Victoria Ferguson and I spent a good half an hour chatting to her about her designs and my own wedding plans, whilst trying on some gorgeous handmade accessories including the ’50’s chic bow’ above and the ‘Swan lake’ headpiece below (which I have completely fallen in love with!), the pictures just don’t do these amazing pieces justice!

My second stop of the evening was to meet Benny from The real princess company who was really lovely and super enthusiastic. Her website hasn’t been updated yet with the pieces that she created for the show but as soon as they are i’ll be sharing her fantastic tulle bows and sparkly creations with you as they are simply stunning. Benny’s new muse is none other than The rock’n’roll bride herself and she created some amazing accessories for Kat to wear on her catwalk debut!

I fell in love at the Cutture stall (not for the salesman so don’t worry) but with the amazing laser-cut, hand pressed and finished invitations created by the Cutture team. My favourites were the ‘storybook’ designs where the design team incorporated bits of the couple’s lives into their stationary – from Milanese monuments and their pet dog for one couple, to ice skating and London monuments for another.

 

 

The designs are absoloutely gorgeous, the finish and attention to detail is amazing! The invitations are priced upwards of £8 each and would be perfect for an intimate, chic city affair, I am in love!

Come back later for some more information from the Luella’s Boudoir wedding fair!

xxx

Prayers and Wishes for Japan

When I saw the devestating Tsunami footage of Japan a few days ago my heart went out to all of those people whose lives have been destroyed. These people have lost their loved ones, their families, their homes and everything they have ever known has been taken from them. It is so sad to watch the news footage of the disaster however it reminds me just how lucky I am to have my wonderful family and friends and a safe roof over my head.

My thoughts and prayers go to all those people in Japan and all those who have relatives there.

Joanne Fleming of Joanne Fleming Designs has offered every person who makes a small donation of just £5 to the Japanese Tsunami appeal the chance to win won of her beautiful designs. Please do check out her blog and donate – £5 couldn’t even get you two coffees in Starbucks so please do donate this small amount for a worthy cause.

Donate here:

Joanne Fleming designs

xxx

Spotlight On: Peppermint Pretty

I’m a little bit obsessed with Etsy and am constantly on the site browsing through millions of pages of handmade and vintage goods. I was at the PC again this morning when I came across etsy seller Peppermint Pretty who create custom vintage inspired wedding dresses and I just had to feature their amazing designs. Enjoy the eye-candy 🙂

This gorgeous dress is called Cinderella Rockafella – I love the embroidered details, the cute neckline and the super sweet silhouette!

How adorable is this ‘Dear Prudence’ design? The ruffles and texture are modern but the whole look is timeless, cute and quirky!

My personal favourite : Hello Little Lucy! I want this dress, please, pretty please! I also love the shoes and the amazing top-hat fascinator!

Go check out Peppermint Pretty’s Etsy shop – there are loads more designs on there 🙂

xxx

Shoes glorious shoes!

 

When I dream of my wedding there is one feature that is always the same – no matter whether the dream wedding is on a beach in Cyprus, a village hall in the countryside or a glam hotel in the city I am always ALWAYS wearing Christian Louboutin shoes. Something tells me this is not going to happen in my real wedding (I don’t have upwards of £500 to spend on shoes unfortunately!) but I love waking up feeling like i’ve just got married wearing a pair of gorgeous shoes!

I love a bit of sparkle and these shoes do it for me everytime! I actually tried some of these on in Selfridges just after christmas and fell in love… with the shoe but not the £2000 price tag that came with these particular beauties!

I also absoloutely adored these shoes – at £1090 they are cheaper than the ones above but still crazy priced! I love the way they sparkle and look all different colours in the light – although I think if i was wearing them EVERY single picture of me on our wedding day would have me pulling up my dress to show them off… or maybe in a mini dress?!

These gorgeous shoes are only *cough-cough* £550 which is a good price for a pair of Louboutins. However they aren’t as glam as the others and with these being white I can’t see them being worn again and again and becoming a real investment piece. Theres just something about the bright red soles that strikes deep in my heart – the moment I put a pair of these shoes on I feel like the queen, as though somebody should walk in front of me with a red carpet so my glorious shoes never have to touch the dirty floor! Haha! I said to Scott once that I would feel successful in life when I had three things: My own office, A Mulberry handbag and a pair of Louboutins – one out of three wouldn’t be bad I guess 🙂

Something tells me i’ll probably end up wearing something along the lines of those above on my wedding day if i’m honest with myself! Me and high heels (although I love them) do tend to fall out after half an hour or so and I think I could really rock the bridal converse look!

So please do feel free to send me a pair of Louboutins if you’re feeling charitable – or submerge my fiance’s inbox with emails of how amazing it would be if he bought me some for our wedding day – he probably won’t appreciate it but you never know, it might just work!

xxx