I'm baa-aaack...

We've eaten lots, drunk more coffee than I care to remember, and walked for miles. Thanks for your recommendations, we've been on wedding research trips, climbed very high monuments, meandered round the botanic gardens, met old friends, and I've shopped my little socks off.

I spent about an hour in a barnados vintage shop on the Grassmarket (thanks Peonies for the tip:)) going through a hamper of linens and lace talking to the lovely lady in there. I came out with this lot:

Most of its just because it was pretty. One or two of them, with pretty bits of embroidery on, I thought I could sew into pinnies with cute front pockets on, but the reason its on my wedding blog (yeah, I know I don't always talk about my wedding, but meh) is because I found this sweet set of four linen hankies with rosebuds embroidered on them. I thought I might embroider the bridesmaids names on them or something and put them in their bags maybe... (this list of DIY projects grows by the day!) and maybe do the fourth one for Mum. even if I don't, they'd be nice stocking filler one year...or another pinny...

I also went in Paperchase. Oh what a mistake. I can't cope with stationary shops, they're an addiction to me. I deliberated over my purchase in there for 2 days. I bought a linen covered photo album as a potential wedding album. The package we have with lillian and leonard is digital only, so we get lots of images, not in an album (which we like, this isn't a bad thing - before we were getting not so many pictures in an album) so I suddenly realised that I get to pick an album of my very own :) - I like photo albums. Cue looking at all those silvery shiny sparkly covers with 'wedding' and horseshoes and love hearts on the front.

No.

So I bought this.

I deliberated over these for quite a while like I said. they had different sizes and shapes and colours. I was very tempted by the purple, but like James said, the linen colour is more weddingy, and I might hate purple in 20 years. so I went with linen. The size was sort of decided for me by the shop, who only had it in A4 in the type of page I wanted, but it was cheaper than the massive square one, so I'm down with that. Like I think I said before, I want to do a sort of guest book thats incorporated afterwards into this album, so hopefully I can put messages from my aunt, next to a picture of my aunt - for example - So I wanted large enough pages that I could mess around with the layouts, and so that we can print up some of the images larger too if we want to. I actually had to ring my mum about this album, I must have sounded like such an idiot in the shop:

me: 'is it mad that I want to buy a photo album for the wedding 15 months in advance?'

mum:'no...'

me:' its just so pretty and nice and doesn't have horseshoes on. Do you think I should?'

mum: 'you're a big girl now, you can make this decision yourself'

me:'ok.....'

Seriously.

In my defence, its really pretty, and if I find an even better one before the wedding i can use this for my first babys album or something - now thats preparation.

Finally, we went to the shop in Morningside that I've been talking to about paper for the stationary. I expected James to do what he usually does when I enter a shop, and stand in the corner only offering opinions when expressly asked. but no, he offered them! he got involved, he took card of shelves and showed me it. I've had several sample packs from them - basically they sell papers and card, including a wide range of recycled papers, and ribbons, and tools, and envelopes, either just a sheets, or they do kits of stationary designs. They will cut/print for you, and the guy was generally the nicest most helpful person ever in a shop. So we ummed and ahhed for quite a while, picked up envelopes and put them down and so on. A groom came in who had apparently been in the day before doing what we were doing then, looked at us, and told us that he had spent 3 hours choosing theirs. That scared me. So we hurried up. We bought some card in cream and a sort of burgundy colour, a lovely insert paper which is apparently made in a bucket in india, so no two batches are ever the same (it was this fact that convinced us just to buy enough sheets there and then - he said he would return it anytime in the future if we didn't use it!!)and some envelopes in both colours.

We're going to make up some trial invites etc in the two colours to see what we like more. I was so chuffed James got in on this, he'd not been bothered before, but its hard to see paper online, so the shop was great. I can't recommend them highly enough, the service was great. If you're wanting to make your stationary yourself, give them a call.

So thats my trip to edinburgh in a weddingy nutshell. I had a wonderful break, but I'm glad to be back. more tomorrow I think.