I am the Biggest Loser!

Well, no actually, I wasn't.. but at the completion of the Biggest Loser Challenge at my local Shapes Health Club I had lost a total of 6.5kg during the 12 week program, and a whopping 12.3kg since I joined the gym in April 2010. Only 7.7kg until my wedding goal! (I'm a bit concerned about a Christmas-relapse, but as long as I can keep it to ~2kg I think it'll be ok.)

So ideally I'd like to lose the whole 7.7kg between now and the wedding, but given that Christmas is in the middle, I'd settle for 5kg+ (plus whatever I put on over Christmas). Definitely plan to sign up for the next Biggest Loser Challenge in February - just in time for the wedding!

Pearls

So you know how my dress came and I was about to go hunting for a strand of pearls? Well mum finally found her (grandmother's) pearls, and they match so perfectly that you'd think we'd deliberately chosen the fabric to match the pearls! So I have a single strand with a matching double strand bracelet, and I just need to go hunting for some earrings. My SIL thinks that I don't need earrings if I'm having my hair down, or just to get some simple pearl studs, but I just can't go past the allure of either drop pearl earrings or dangly earrings.

Some of my inspirations for dangly earrings include the Wannabe DIY Bride's cascade earrings (shown above, in appropriate colours of course!) Or some of the PANDORA compose earrings (like the ones on the left).. Orr I could get some cheap faux pearl earrings and use an appropriate coloured nail polish (as required) to make them match. Good thing I've still got time, yes?

I also need to take my (mum's?) pearls in to be cleaned and re-threaded.. they've been sitting in their box for quite some time now, and I'd hate for them to fall apart on my wedding day!

Oh, did I mention that mum's pearls are gold? (Hence the comments about making earrings match!)

Disaster!

So I think I need to come up with a new bomboniere & table centrepiece idea. I had been planning to use pink & white everlasting daisy flowerheads as table scatters and have seed packets as bomboniere and place cards. So in aid of this I had planted some seeds so that I could harvest the flowers as scatters. But we had some super hot weather last week and my plants shrivelled up and died just before flowering! *sigh* Clearly it was not meant to be.

Now I need to come up with another idea, which is maybe a good thing considering I've been tossing up about the theme etc.

I found some very cute place card holders/bomboniere on (where else??) Pink Frosting:

They're "kissing bells", so guests can "ring for a kiss" at any time through the reception. They come with the coordinating place cards as well, which is a bonus.. so something like that could serve as the bomboniere & place cards and then I'd still need to come up with an idea for table centrepieces.

Alternately, one of my friends has started making cakes & cookies, and does these beautiful butter cookies with fondant icing. There are a couple of options to use her delightful cookies.. I could get her to do single cookie bomboniere, or she also does a 3 cookie boxed set which looks gorgeous and could then double as table centre pieces because I could stack the cookie boxes in the centre of the tables (and then maybe just have something like those diamond table scatters or something to fill the gaps).

Or I could have helium balloons.. but is that a bit too tacky?

I think this needs a bit more thought..

Dresses..

The dresses arrived today! Very exciting! The quality and workmanship is excellent. I cannot fault the quality or the amount of effort that has gone into the construction. The only things "wrong" are little things that are generally my fault.. I ordered a "standard" size 4 for the flower girl dress, but it's long enough to fit an 8 year old! Even held up against my almost 5 year old, it would skim the floor! But aside from the length, the bodice fits perfectly, and she looks like an angel with the dress floating all around her! And atleast it's easier to take something up than it is to have it too short.

My dress will fit perfectly when I lose a few more kilos. It looks ok, but my decolletage would look better once I lose more centimetres in the bust! It also buckles a little at the hips, but again, once I lose some more weight we're pretty sure it will sit almost perfectly. Still, it doesn't look entirely ridiculous.. the colour is amazing and the style is generally flattering.. I need to buy some new support undies though - having lost 10kg, my current control garments are less controlling than they used to be!

It could also have been that the dress needed to be pressed after having been folded for posting, but it looked a little like I have a pot belly with the dress on.. so that's another great reason to buy new control garments that reshape my "problem" areas!

I'm also impatient to lose the rest of the weight, Ziph promised to buy me $1000 worth of clothes when I've lost another 14kg (my "healthy weight range").. and losing the weight is clearly imperitive now that I have the dress! (And if I don't lose it, I'll look moderately ridiculous!)

The veil didn't have the hair comb attached, but after laying it out, one of my girlfriends and I decided that it was probably a little bit *too* long anyway, and might look better if we turned it into a 2 tier veil (which we trialled by folding it, and it will look pretty nice).. but then I'll have to change my hairstyle.. I think I'll have to consider a half up style instead of just an all down, straightened hairstyle. It's just not going to work with the dress & the veil. So back to my wedding ideas file/scrapbook to have another look at hairstyles that I like.

It did help to crystallise the jewelry ideas though.. I definitely only want a single strand of white pearls. Anything else will be overkill and will detract from the overall look. Just need to go hunting for a strand of pearls now.

So overwhelmed..

I've been stressing a little bit because Ziph wants to design the Save the Date cards and the wedding invitations, but so far, nothing. I found some perfectly nice invitations on the Vistaprint website that were priced in the bracket that I was willing to spend - but no, Ziph's will be better.

Meanwhile, I'm also stressing out over the 'theme'.. I feel a little bit like I don't have a concrete concept and that everything is going to seem mismatched.. from the cake, to the bridesmaid dresses, to the bombonniere, to the flowers, to the invitations etc, etc.

But maybe I'm over thinking it. It occurs to me that maybe I should put together a 'mood board' with pictures of the things I'm having (the real dress, the real BM dresses etc) and the other things that I like (the cake design, the flower style/colours) and see if something emerges when I have it all there in front of me.

We finally set a date for the engagement party.. only 10 days to go! My girlfriend, Miss Kitty has a catering company and will be providing a fair portion of the food for the day.