Wedding Discounts

One of the first things I did after getting engaged (and continue to do so) is sign up to every wedding related newsletter I can find.

Gail's List - White Wedding Pages is specifically for brides and grooms in West Midlands.  She lets me know about any local fayres and today I received these offers and thought someone may find them useful.

If you then please quote Gail's List Wedding Discount Vouchers when calling.

Magician - 2 hours of close-up magic - normally £350 now just £295. Russ Stokes 07773 803933

Transport - 25% discount, free bottle of bubbly and the quote inc all mileage. Beetlebugs 07565 426381

Photography - £125 off my photography package price until July 2010. Jon Thorne 07734 459 708

Videoography - £100 off any package – call by 31/03/10 to get this offer. Lucid Moments 01384 821381

Bridesmaids Dress - £100 off, when having your bridal gown made. Greensleeves 01386 446242

Please note I am not affiliated with Gail's List or any of the companies offering discounts.  I'm just being nice and passing along the offers!

An Evening of Invitation Making

The other evening when Suzie and Hayley came round to help make up our wedding invitations we made a little video.

An Evening of Invitation Making from Laura Francis on Vimeo.

I love the cameo from my dad!

Thank you Suzie, Hayley and Mom for all your help.  Big kisses to Has who helped me edit the video (disclaimer: It was my shaky and inexperienced hand holding the camera for the close ups not the boy with the degree in video production!)

Music is the Banana Splits by the Dickies.

The Moana

One of my jobs for April was to research honeymoon hotels.  So, what do you think of this one?

The Moana Surfrider in Honolulu. Also known as "The First Lady of Waikiki" the first beach front resort opened in 1901, the re-opened in 2007 as a Westin hotel.

The location is perfect for us, it's central without being too busy.  We won't be renting a car for our stay as I've heard parking in Waikiki is a nightmare and expensive.  The buses will suit us just fine.

I love the colonial style furnishings, it all looks so grand and elegant.

Another plus point is that this hotel is a Westin,  which means it comes with Heavenly Beds!!  We stayed in a Westin when we went to Orlando a few years ago, and I seriously can't tell you how amazingly comfortable they are.  They really do live up to their name!  When I win the lottery I'm getting one of these bad boys!

Although we won't be slumming it on our honeymoon, we have a budget to keep to. However Honolulu is somewhere we've both decided we'd like to really treat ourselves.  

Ideally we want an ocean view room with a balcony.  I can envisage us ordering room service for breakfast (french toast for me please!) and sitting in the morning sun on our balcony planning out the rest of the day.  Bliss.

We're pretty sure this will be our Honolulu honeymoon hotel, we should be able to book the majority of our hotels by the end of the month.  Once that's done there'll be no stopping us!  How real will it all feel then!

Evening Invitations

Even though our day invitations are not yet finished, I've made a start on our evening invites.  I wanted to keep them as simple as possible.

I've carried over the purple swirls and created a document just shy of A5.  I shall print them out on the same ivory pearl paper as the day invitations and back them with a lilac pearl card.

What do you think? Also my next question is... Should I include a map and directions in with the evening invites?

Spare Change

We're terrible with spare change. Has hates carrying any thing lower than a 50 pence piece as it bulks out his wallet and I always put my "twos and ones" in a pot by my desk for the same reason.

I bought us a small wooden bowl to keep our spare change in but that didn't seem to contain it.  We would still end up with a sock drawer full of "coppers."  We also started to keep it in large pint glasses in a cupboard, until they started to over flow.  It was around this time last year that we took 3 pint glasses full of small change to Tesco to use their coin machines.  It takes a small fee but we found that depositing nothing larger than a 20 pence piece we had over £60 in change.

At Christmas, Has' Mom Sue bought us a large jar with an electronic coin counter on the top.  So now when ever we see a rouge 5p lying around it goes straight in the jar.  Our aim is to fill it and change it into dollars for a treat on our honeymoon.

Since Christmas we've managed to save over £50 in small change. We never put anything above 20p in the jar (we have a separate pot for 50p's, £1 and £2 coins) it feels good to see our change grow, and to know it has a purpose instead of just sitting around with our socks!

Saturday's Wedding

A little different to any of the weddings I had been to before.  Let me start by telling you a little background.  The bride who works with Has is Indian and the groom is from a Japanese family.  Last weekend they had their Indian ceremony and this weekend was the actual legal wedding.

Their ceremony began at 3.  A few close friends and family members were invited to witness the marriage then at 6 the evening guests arrived for a sit down meal.  I say "sit down" our starter was served, then we had to go to a buffet style set up to get our main meal.  The food was traditional Indian style food, I wasn't keen on the starter, which was a cold pakora served with chick peas and yoghurt. The main meal was a selection of curries, rice and naan breads, they were delicious.  I could easily have gone back for seconds!

It wasn't until our strawberry cheesecake was being served that I realised there were no chair covers.  Has and I both thought it proved that the minor details are sometimes not as important as you think.  Small details that can cost a lot of money are not always appreciated.

It was a lovely wedding, and we both really enjoyed ourselves.... someone enjoyed himself a little too much!

The bride and groom

Perfect day for wedding

We're off to the wedding of one of Has' work colleagues this evening.  The weather is gorgeous and the sun has been shining all morning.  Perfect day for a wedding!

Some Things for the Weekend

Friday again!  I love 4 day weeks.
We have an evening reception to go to on Saturday, that makes only 3 more weddings before it's our turn!

from here

What about you - what do you have planned?

Things I've been loving this week...

~ I've been noticing a lot of purple weddings around lately. All gorgeous but my favourites are this Texan wedding, this stunning wedding in the wine county Napa and this really beautiful wedding in Sydney

~ A disposible two hours in New York

~ A really cool idea for Save the Date

~ I absolutely love the light in this engagement shoot. I don't know whether it's natural or created during the editing stages... anyone know?

~ Beautiful pancake breakfast

~ A bride from one of the blogs I read got married last Saturday, congratulations!

~ Cupcake liners + pipe cleaners = pretty!

~ A pretty Hawaiian wedding

~ Bryant Park in bloom

~ Good advice from the Wedding Genie

The Blue Apartment

~ My dream apartment

~ Cute as a button

~ 2 bras for £10 and 5 knickers for £10 at New Look

~ Win a £2000 home make over from John Lewis

Have a happy weekend! xxx

Invitation Pocket folds Part 3

This was the scene from last night

Ribbon, double sided tape, circle punches and purple card can only mean one thing...   Part 3 of operation pocket fold invitation was under way.

After ensuring the troops (Mom, Hayley and Suzie) were fed and supplied with tea we started the task of attaching the purple ribbon to the border of the flap.

Using 3mm double sided tape I had bought from eBay, we lined the edge.

The carefully stuck the ribbon down.  In our testing stages we had done this using two pieces of ribbon.  Suzie suggested we try doing it using one long piece with a tiny fold in the middle.

It looked a lot neater and has reduced the risk of the ribbon fraying in the middle.

We also punched out the circles for the band that goes around the outside.

The circles punched out are smaller than the one we used on our mock up, (as modelled by Hayley!) so we are struggling to find a way to attach the ribbon.

Instead of rushing into anything it was decided we would leave that part until we could find the best way of achieving the look I want.

So, these are invitations at the end of part 3.  Thank you Mom, Suzie and Hayley for all your help x

If you're interested you can also read about part 1 and part 2 of operation pocket fold invitation.