4 Sleeps!

Holy crap! It's happening! This week!!  I am going to marry the most wonderful man in the entire world!! :)

Only 4 more sleeps!  Or, as one of my students told me, 3 more sleeps because I won't be sleeping the night before! She is probably right!

I am so excited!! I am also nervous. It's the good kind of nervous though... well, except for the upset tummy, the fluctuating high and low blood pressure and the wanting to throw up every couple of hours.  Does every bride go through this?? :) 

So, what's left to do? Tomorrow we have the rehearsal on site. I also get my eyebrows and eyelashes done after work (never had either done before...). Thursday I get my nails done, and go shopping (coz it's pay day) for a few essential things I need to get before we head off to Tasmania on Monday. I will also get my engagement ring polished and pop in and see Dave's sister Sarah so she can give my glasses a good clean (handy that she works at an optometrist!).  Friday is packing for the stay at Mum and Dad's Friday night and for Saturday night at the hotel.  Friday also sees us setting up the reception room after having dinner with the family first.

And that's it. We are on the home stretch now!

Oh and for those following my craft stories, I've finished!! I finished a couple of hours ago!! YAY!!  Go me!!  Can't do anything else until I get to the venue and start setting up on Friday night... then I might make some slight alterations...


I suspect the next post will be after the wedding. Watch this space for a run down of events and some photos :)

13 Days! Crazy!!!!

I have somewhat neglected the blog of late. Work has been hectic, and with trying to sort out the final bits and pieces of the wedding, I have been coming home most nights, flopping onto the couch and working on my impression of a comatose lump! As much as I love my job and as much as I am looking forward to the wedding and the honeymoon, I am also looking forward to the 21st of April when I can start to relax again!! :)

So much has been happening. Everything, except a few little bits and pieces, has been organised. I picked up my dress on Thursday and it is so totally amazing! Emma has had her calico fitting and will have her first fitting this Thursday (as she is 7 months pregnant her dress has been left until the last minute to allow for bub to grow).  We have had the hair trial and I am so happy with what Maria is doing for both Emma and I (thanks Maria!!).  Dave is just trying to hunt down a shirt for the best man and some cuff links and then the boys will be all sorted.

The makeup trial is on Tuesday night. I am looking forward to that :)

We had a meeting with the reception venue a week or so ago. They too are awesome. They are going to have the room set up by 5pm the night before the wedding so we can go in and set up the decorations (which I have ALMOST finished making! YAY!) - they basically put a line though the Friday night in the book so no bookings could be made.

The boys had their bucks night. I don't know much about it. I know they were bright eyed and bushy tailed when I dropped a few of them off at the train station on the Saturday morning (they went to Sydney) and when I picked them up again on Sunday afternoon they were somewhat less bright eyed and bushy tailed!  But from all accounts it sounds like they had a good time.

I had my hen's night last night. It was awesome. I have wonderful friends and I especially have a wonderful 'best woman' in Emma. She hosted it and organised it all, to the point that I really had no idea what was going on - it was all a surprise. I am somewhat hungover today, and typing this post is proving to be a little difficult - I think I have caught all my typos... I apologise for any that you have encountered!

So, 13 days. At the end of next week David and I are getting married. Wow!  It is blowing my mind that it has come around so fast. But I am excited and I can't wait start introducing myself as Melissa Plush!! :)

1 Month Until The Big Day!!

It's one month until the big day! It has come around so fast! 

Since the last post I have tried on my wedding dress and WOW! Anita has done an amazing job and I can't wait to wear it!  I pick it up on the 29th!

I've booked my hair and makeup trials and I have bought something to wear in my hair.  It's been so long since I had my hair styled, and I've never actually had my makeup done (I've always done it myself before a formal event) so I am looking forward to being pampered a little. Also have my nail appointment booked a couple of days before the wedding to get gels done. I'm having so much trouble with my own nails at the moment - they keep splitting or just breaking off - so I know if I don't do something before the wedding I'll have horrible chipped and uneven nails in my wedding photos... especially the ones with the wedding and engagement rings!!

We have also met again with the celebrant (the lovely Nicola Todd) and given her our order of ceremony and discussed logistics.  We still need to have the rehearsal - Dave is in charge of organising that!

Tomorrow we meet with the reception venue to discuss the menu, the different wines, champagne, the arrangement of the tables in the room, etc.

On the craft front... I've finished the magnets! YAY! Actually, I've pretty much finished all craft-related things. I just need to make a small bouquet for the flower girl, finish the boutineers for Dave, Rob and Dad, make name tags for the guests, work out how I am going to do the table numbers, sort out the seating plan and design the menus for the reception.  I'm on the home stretch!!  Not sure what I am going to do after the wedding when I have all this free time on my hands...

Question... if you went to a wedding, what is a song you would LOVE to hear played at the reception? There are so many to choose from and as Dave and I are doing the iPod and PA System setup to save $$ we need to start purchasing some tunes from itunes sooner rather than later. So, all suggestions welcome!! And no, not the chicken dance!! :P  You can either post to facebook or leave a comment here.

6 Weeks & 6 Days!

The wedding has taken a back seat the past couple of weeks as I have been busy with work. This year I am the AST coordinator at my school. The AST is the ACT Scaling Test and it is completed by all year 12 students in the ACT to help with their final scaling of results before they are issued with an ATAR (the special number that then allows them to be accepted in different university courses).  We had a trial this week just gone and as it was my first time doing this solo, I focused all my time and energy on it.

Well, it went off without too many hitches and now I am back to focusing on the wedding...

Which is only 6 weeks and 6 days away.

YAY!!

We paid off the wedding cake the other night. It was nice to have paid off something in full! We are getting our cake from Cakes of your Dreams! We visited there back in October and were blown away by how awesome the cakes were. I had had a quick peek at their website before hand and was very impressed but seeing the display cakes up close and personal was enough to make us order a cake before we walked out of there. The exact cake we are getting is not up on their website but it is a conglomeration of a few cakes that they have photos of.

I've been working on my craft items. The error I made in the magnets has been corrected and I have successfully completed 47! I am about to order more magnets so I can finish the rest.

A heap of organza bags arrived in the mail all ready to have sweet treats placed in them just before the big day!  I will be adding small embelishments to the bags so as to tie them in with the theme.  I will do this when the magnets are done.

Dave has got his suit. He modeled his jacket for me the other day and he looked spunky!  We need to sort out the ties for the groom and the best man, and their cufflinks.

Emma and I have our hair trial on the 31st of March which just happens to be the same day as the hen's night. We will have awesome hair when we hit the town!

Dave, Rob and Ken have been busily planning the buck's night. I don't know much about it but they had a meeting yesterday whilst enjoying Grill'd for lunch and as far as I know, things are starting to roll. The buck's night is on the 24th of March (same day as Emma's baby shower!)

So it is all systems go and I am getting more and more excited each day!!

RSVP Time!

The invitations have been sent!! I popped them into the mailbox on my way to work yesterday. We have had a couple of RSVPs already. We are doing all the RSVPing via the website seeing that every single person we sent an invite to more or less has a facebook account they use on a regular basis! Why not roll with the times eh?

All the loose ends are starting to be tied up and the organisation of the buck's night and the hen's night are well underway. Rob, the best man, and Dave, are in the process of organising the buck's night (a trip to Sydney to see naked chicks in bars apparently!) and the lovely Emma is currently organising my hen's night, which I am very much looking forward to!

In a way I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed by all the things that still need to happen. Two months is not a long time and it will be here before we know it. This week we are focusing on paying off the smaller items so we don't have to worry about them closer to the date. I am also finishing off a bunch of craft items. I am still working on correcting that mistake I mentioned in my last post - almost there though... only a couple more to go and then I can move onto the next stage of that particular project.

Oh and here is another sneak peek! I put this up on facebook yesterday as part of my #febphotoaday thingy... I've made over 60 of these and they will serve a particular purpose at the reception! 

I am also racking my brain over things I may have forgotten. I am going to make a list of stuff that has been done and if you  can clearly see something I have missed or want to suggest something you think is a good idea, leave a comment!!

• Dress for me and suit for Dave sorted. Just need the ties for the boys.
• My hair, makeup, shoes, underware and jewellery are sorted.
• Ceremony location, decorations and chairs booked and confirmed.
• Photographer arranged (actually, the photographer was the first thing sorted after we got engaged seeing that she was there when Dave proposed - Thanks Emma!! And yes she is my bridesmaid too... go the multitasking!)
• Celebrant booked, just need to meet with her to finalise paperwork (mental note to ask Dave to email her)
• Cake booked - just need to confirm some specific details closer to the date (the reason why will become apparent at the reception!)
• Reception venue sorted - must email them and make an appointment to finalise the menu, drinks, and a few other bits and pieces.
• Decorations are well on their way to being finished. Chair covers and napkins for reception have been booked.
• Bird cage which will act as a wishing well has been arranged, and also a pin board for the seating arrangements.
• MC arranged (thanks Rebecca)
• Music at the reception is being sorted (this is Dave's domain!)
• Wedding night accomodation sorted.
• Car sorted (using Dave's car coz it's awesome!)

So, what have I missed? Any help is appreciated!!

Bits and Bobs

The wedding has taken a little bit of a back seat this past week as I returned to work for 2012. I am rather excited about being back and am very much looking forward to tomorrow as it is our first day with students. 

It was 11 weeks yesterday until the big day. The countdown is going to be really easy from here on in... 10 weeks in the school term and I get married on the first day of the school holidays!  I feel sorry for my students as I am sure I am going to mention this fact to them numerous times over the coming weeks!

I had my calico dress fitting yesterday! I saw it hanging on the wall and said to Anita that it looked like a robe you might wear in a church! I also told her that I could see where she was going with the design!

I put it on and wow! That's all I'll say! Wow!

In about a month I'll be trying on the real thing! YAY!

The invitations arrived a while back! I want to mail them out on Valentines Day as it will be exactly 2 months to the wedding. Must start working on putting names on each of them...


I am fairly certain everything else is more or less organised. I just need to book Emma and I in for hair and makeup trials, and the lovely Glenda at work said I could borrow some miscellaneous items from her daughter, things like the wishing well, etc.  Just got to finish the craft items... (I may have made a mistake in quite a few of the magnets and may have had to unpick about 80% of them and redo them. I may have also changed my mind about some of the colour being used and may be in the process of unpicking another area of the magnet and redoing it in a better colour... yes, I am pedantic and Dave just shakes his head at me!!)

Wedding Admin...

I've spent this afternoon doing wedding admin. It has kind of reminded me of some of my past jobs where I had to plan big events. All I have to say is that I bloody well hope this event goes better than some of the others I organised! Not that I am a bad organiser - it was always another party that didn't do their bit or failed to produce a product to what I would call 'acceptable standards'.

Anyway, I've put more money on the wedding dress and changed all my fitting dates (as I don't have Friday afternoons off work this year thanks to only being able to teach chemistry on a line that sees me teach a class at 3pm on a Friday afternoon!). I've emailed the cake people to ask if we can put down some more money on the cake and I am waiting on a response from the people we have hired to set up chairs, etc, at the ceremony location.  I have also emailed my makeup artist to try and line up a time for the trial and tomorrow, assuming she is back in the country (she has been posting lovely photos of her holiday in Fiji on FB! Jealous!), I'll call my lovely hairdresser and book Emma and myself in for a hair trial.  Must start looking at styles.

I have also been filling out all the details in my 'MyWed' planner. This thing is so cool! It has checklists, hints, supplier pages, pockets where I keep dress fabric samples and invoices/recipts, etc. If you are getting married, or know someone who is, I recommend this thing! Check it out here: http://www.mywed.com.au/

it will make a nice wedding keepsake. I'll be able to look back in 20 years when the pages are all yellow and see what I did to make my own day special. I am thinking of adding photos to it of different things as we get closer to the day.

It's only 80 days away!

I also ordered some magnets today. What for I hear you ask? Ahhh... small spoiler... there will be handmade magnets as part of the bombonierre! Dave is excited about the magnets. He chose them and I gave him permission to get a $20 magnet sample pack! I love how he is so geeky and how these things excite him!

Also visited Spotlight... again... got some more ribbon to finish the project I posted about the other day. I'll finish it tomorrow! YAY!

Wedding Craft Sneak Peek #2

More buttons! I took this photo a few weeks ago and am 90% finished with this particular project. It is looking even better than I thought it was going to. Even Dave is impressed!  Can't wait to show you all the finished product but that will have to wait until wedding day!

Not long now...

So, it's less than 3 months until I say "I do".


Less than 90 days!

OMG!! YAY!!

We are both very excited and can't wait!

But before then I still have a few things to do, such as pick the menu for the reception, find someone to do my makeup, find someone to supply chair covers, sashes and serviettes, etc. I also have to finish some craft projects for the big day so I have plenty to keep me busy.

I go back to work in 2 weeks so I need to get my butt into gear! On top of organising all of the above I also want to finish sorting out my kitchen (1/3 done already), sort out the spare room (because it would be nice to be able to walk into said room without tripping over something) and I want to sort out all my old clothes and give a bunch of it to charity. Oh, and I should probably start revising chemistry seeing that I am teaching it this year!! (Very excited about that actually!)

Ok, enough procrastinating... things to do!

Shoes!

I hate shoe shopping. I have the crappiest feet and finding something that fits and is comfortable is almost impossible. Also, when you take into account that I need to wear orthotics, I generally have a better chance of squeezing water out of a rock!

I decided the other day that in order to find a pair of shoes for the wedding that weren't going to kill my feet, I should probably start looking now. So today, with mother by my side, we hit DFO.  I figured there was no better place to start looking for shoes than in a place with more shoe stores than is necessary for the entirety of Canberra!


Before we started I had a few things in mind about what the shoes should be like...

1. They have to be flats. I have knock-knees and badly pronating feet (thanks to 10 years of calisthenics during my growing years). As a result, my ankles roll. You put me in anyhthing that has a heal over half an inch in height and I am likely to trip over myself. That is the last thing I want on my wedding day!!
2. They have to have some padding and arch support. I figure that my clunky bright blue orthotics are not suitable wedding attire, so for this reason I need some padding under the ball of the foot and a little bit of arch support so that I am not in serious amounts of pain from the moment I walk down the aisle - it's a long day on my feet afterall!
3. They have to make my wide, ugly feet look less wide and ugly.

So I started the day with almost no chance of finding shoes based on the above list. I tried on so many pairs of shoes, in so many styles. They were either too narrow, had no padding, made my feet look even uglier than they already are... blah blah blah.

(I just want to state here that I have no idea how people can wear those ballet shoe things... they have no arch support and no padding - they are the most uncomfortable things I have ever tried on! I'd rather go bare foot and risk tentanus than walk around in those for a day!)

But I did find a pair.  A comfortable pair. A pair of lovely flat shoes that more or less hide my ugly feet. They are shoes that will probably see me in a little bit of pain but not until well into the reception, at which time I might just go bare foot or sneak on a pair of slippers (it will be April after all... gets a bit chilly Canberra at that time of year!).  They are not 'wedding' shoes. You wouldn't look at them and think 'ahhhh someone will wear them for a wedding one day'. But with the (pink and purple) dress I will be wearing, it won't matter. Also, there is a little room for 'embelishment' so I can do some things to the shoes to make them match my theme! (Dave rolled his eyes when I told him this hehe).

I was honestly prepared for a month of shoe shopping to try and find the right pair but damn I am glad that I got it all done and dusted in one afternoon!  Next thing I need to buy is my undergarments so I can go to my first dress fitting all prepared! That is next week's job!

A Plug For...

There are so many different people and companies are involved in putting together our wedding. Without them I would be walking down the aisle wearing something out of my wardrobe, having the reception in our backyard and serving CostCo muffins as our wedding cake (not that there is anything wrong with CostCo muffins... they are awesomely yum!).

So, I have decided to give each a little 'plug' here on the blog.

Where to start...

Let's start with the dress (which, as far as Dave is concerned is pink with purple stripes!).

My dress is being made by the lovely Anita at Anita J Bridal Couture. Anita is awesome! When I first went and saw her back in August I only had a vague idea of what I wanted. Through me telling her what I would like, and her suggestions, she has designed a beautiful (pink and purple Dave, it's pink and purple) dress! I have my first proper fitting next month and I can't wait!

I will be wearing it FOR REAL in less than 100 days! YAY!!

Anita is also making the dress for my bridesmaid (I sometimes refer to her as my Best Woman!), Emma. I was going to get Emma something off the rack for the day but she kind of got pregnant and will be close to popping by the time the wedding rolls around.  I will be having serious talks to her unborn child in the weeks leading up to the wedding so he/she is aware of the consequences of arriving before the due date. :)

So, if you are planning on getting married, or need a dress made for whatever reason, pop over to Anita's website, take a look, and give her a call :)

Wedding Craft Sneak Peek #1

These buttons on sticks will be making an appearance at the wedding... but not in their current form :)

The blog is finally here...

Hey all. It's been a while coming but we have finally set up a blog for the wedding website. Unfortunately, we are unable to put it directly on the website (strange considering that Blogger and Google are one and the same now) so you can either follow the link from the main website, book mark it, or follow it from Facebook or Google+ (I'll put a link up when I have posted).

Ok, now that is out of the way, I want to wish you all a very happy new year! It's 2012! This is the year I get married!  It's going to be a good one... I can feel it!

I went and saw a workmate get hitched yesterday and ever since I have been very focused on 'wedding stuff'.  Instead of going out and partying hard and drinking myself into obvlion, I spent NYE night at my PC working out the wording of the invitations and finalising the design.  The invitations are doine... they are just sitting there on the website I am using waiting for me to hit the 'submit' button. I have decided to wait a couple of days before doing this just in case I change my mind about something. I also spent a fair amount of time online last night looking up things to help me with my wedding 'craft'.

I'm making lots of stuff for the wedding... much to Dave's dismay! *grin*  There will be sneak previews of these items as time goes on but for now all I will say is that floral stem tape is evil and sticky but is making certain things look lovely!!