Ebridal expo..

So off to the expo we went.. mum, the kidlets and I..  right before our 4.5 hour drive to Geraldton! Luckily, even though I forgot to get their snacks out of the car, there was free popcorn, free slushy samples and cupcakes for sale. Bribery goes a long way with the kids.. and it helped that practically every stand had a huge dish of candy.

As previously mentioned I had $500 in vouchers to spend at the expo and a list of about a dozen things I was interested in spending them on. About 80% of those things weren't available. I *did* put down a $100 deposit with Sugar Blue Burlesque, and have now handed over the booking details/responsibility to my Matron of Honour Mrs McD.

I spent another $100 at The Luxury Shop on some freshwater pearl jewelry (including some earrings I was hoping would be my perfect wedding earrings, but they were too long and the wrong colour). We had some trouble finding other things we could buy and "take straight home", so we put down $200 to spend at Put it Out There on wedding and/or hen's stuff and the last $100 I ended up blowing on personalised chocolates for my hen's night from Amanda Dwyer. All in all, a pretty successful outing.

Veil, Shoes, Chair Sashes.. check!

I picked up my chair sashes (as shown in the previous owner's photo) on Wednesday night. They're very much a yellow gold and I was wondering whether I would have been better off with a "Champagne" or even just plain "Ivory" but mum and I talked about it and she said that maybe the paler colours would 'lack' colour, and that the gold will atleast stand out. And it doesn't clash with my dress, so that's good. I'm just still unsure. I'm reserving judgement until we do a table mockup.

Then yesterday I went over to mum's to work on my veil. Got side tracked on my shopping trip to buy a hair comb to attach to said veil and ended up buying shoes for the whole (girl half of the) wedding party! I love a bargain, and while my sister and I were waiting for Kmart to print out my photos (pictures of my hair/flowers/dress/cake to give to the hairdresser/florist/MIL etc) we were planning to walk over to Spotlight to buy some tulle (to practise on before touching my veil!) and a hair comb. And we did.. but not before walking past Williams and seeing a SALE stand. Of course we had to stop and take a look, and what did we find? Some gold satin peep toe slingbacks, and some black peep toe strappy heels marked down to $30! And incase that wasn't an excellent price already, it was "buy one pair, get the 2nd pair half price"! So we bought both pairs of black heels (and fingers crossed that one pair fits MrsMcD!!), the gold slingbacks and a pair of pearly coloured flower girl shoes.. all for less than $100! And even better, when we got back to mum's and pulled out the pearls, they match the shoes perfectly! 

Not to mention that at Spotlight when we were buying tulle, I found some adhesive pearls that I thought were approximately the right colour (perfect match, actually!!) to embellish the veil comb, but there are so many in the pack that I will have enough to consider bling-ing my shoes up. Speaking of my veil, we got as far as finishing the gathering when it was time for me to head home for the night, but the plan is to hopefully finish it off tonight so that it's complete and ready to take to my hair trial on Monday morning!

Burlesque Brides..

MOH Mrs McD, my sister (BM) and I have been phoning back and forth all week with ideas for the Hen's night, when to hold it and what things I ABSOLUTELY do not want. Current #1 idea is a Sugar Blue Burlesque flavoured Hen's Party. My sister and I saw them at the last ebridal expo and thought it was a fabulous idea - and I've spoken to a couple of people who have been to their parties and they said it was well worth it. Definitely sounds more my style than a stripper!

Speaking of the ebridal expo, did I mention that in addition to the $100 voucher I won at their August expo I won $500 to spend at this weekend's expo? (Conveniently in 5x $100 vouchers so that I don't have to spend it all in the one place!) So I've written a list of things that I'm hoping might be at the expo.. including hair pieces/fascinators for the girls, clutch purses, lingerie, scrapbooking supplies for the programs/placecards/table numbers etc - there are about a dozen things on my list. If I can find even two or three things that I can spend my vouchers on I will be happy!

Decorative signage..

So I mentioned yesterday that I was browsing the DIY section of Wedding Bee, and there were a couple of pages that I forgot to bookmark as good ideas that I'm now having trouble re-locating! But one idea that I saw and liked was this "&" idea instead of a "Bride" and "Groom" sign on our chairs at the reception.

Now I don't think that I mentioned specifically that I've managed to find some gold organza chair sashes second hand on Gumtree that are an excellent price and I'm hoping to pick them up this weekend. There are 100 of them, and given that I only expect 40-60 at the reception that leaves me enough to use some as table runners (maybe) and pew bows too.

But today whilst looking for a birthday present for my BIL at Loot Homewares, I came across some wooden letters, including an... ampersand! And they were only $11.95! They also had some of those "Love" wooden signs (that's one of the things I'm sure I saw on a cake table on Wedding Bee but can't find again now) but only in red. But they have ordered some in white and they should have them in about a week or so. So the plan is to go back and get the love sign and the ampersand and then maybe paint them in an appropriate colour (or maybe leave them white.. who knows?).

And that's where the extra chair sashes will come in handy!

Pretty things..

I've spent most of the day browsing the DIY section of Wedding Bee and I've seen some pretty spectacular ideas..

There was some DIY "I Do" wedding shoe bling.. and then there was the Bridesmaid Survival Kit:

After that, there was the jewelled comb mantilla veil:

And the super cute dyed crinoline petticoats!

I also love the idea of these hot cocoa cones (but don't think it will fit with my theme specifically)

There were lots of other ideas that I found along the way, and I'm still only on page 97 of 186!

Photography..

Ziph and I were having trouble finding a *good* wedding photographer in Geraldton. Sure, there are lots of photographers up there, but considering what a technical snob (I mean that affectionately) Ziph is, we can't just use anyone with a pretty facebook page.. their actual work has to be good. So that cut the field down significantly.. and the good photographers hide themselves pretty well - they don't tend to come up in google searches for "Wedding Photographer Geraldton"! But we managed to find two. Yes, only two. So we contacted them both to find out if they were available, and to get quotes etc. The first photographer was Carrie Young. She's located in Geraldton, but upon receiving her pricelist it became apparent that she wasn't going to be within our price range.. but that was ok, because Ziph actually preferred photographer #2, Dani from Wheatbelt Photography.. so we were very happy when we received her email reply and not only was she available, but she was definitely in the ball park price-wise! Yay!

So we arranged a meeting with her here in Perth last week and had a talk about what we wanted and what she offers and looked through one of her wedding albums etc.. Dani & Ziph also had a nice little chat about photography equipment (which went straight over my head, but I smiled and nodded when I thought it might be appropriate!). So when we got home I emailed her to confirm that we are definitely keen to have her as our wedding photographer and now I'm just waiting on her to send through her booking/agreement form etc so that we can get it all locked in! Fingers crossed.

Wedding hair..

I thought that with the changes to my veil I'd have to change the way I was planning to have my hair. But I was browsing the internet and I found this hairstyle which is more or less exactly what I had in mind (except my veil will sit higher). Now I just need to find a hairdresser in Geraldton. I tried one salon (that came recommended) but they said they can only do wedding hair for existing clients as they're very busy - but I forgot to mention that I'm getting married on a Tuesday morning, incase that made a difference! Then when we met up with the photographer, she suggested that a mobile hairdresser is a good idea because then you get to have photos of the makeup and hair preparation etc. Looks like I'll need to get MOH Mrs McD onto the case.