disposables.

I thought it worth writing about these photos on their own, since I got several different opinions on them beforehand. Personally, I'm really glad we got them, I just wish I'd had more!

(in which I realise that anna is leaving, and james stares at my chest)

We bought 8 cameras in Boots one day, they were on a BOGOF offer so we only paid for 4, and about £5 each, I don't think that's bad. I didn't buy lovely white wedding ones, there's a limit, I reach it before I buy specially-coloured-for-my-wedding disposable cameras. (Having said that I dd make labels for them all, but since they seemed to make Annas day I think it was worth it :), also, thank you R, for help with the quotes!) Bear in mind when you're costing for them that you usually pay to have them developed as well. I think this was another £5 each for us, which SIL got done while we were on honeymoon. It was great to come home tired at night, and to have 8 films to look through straight away, it filled the gap while you're waiting for the professional ones to come back. So the total cost of these was about £60.

( an in joke on the left, from lovely bridesmaid and her husband and Anna!)

I was wondering whether I would be left with a load of half empty cameras at the end of the night, but luckily we weren't. At the wedding of a friend several years ago they had these, and she was left with a lot of cameras with 10/15 photos on each left to use, the only reason we didn't was thanks to the young boys on James side of the family. This was both a blessing and a curse. We put them out on the tables for dinner, by the time the eating was over, 4 of the 8 cameras were finished! The waiting staff then separated them out for us when they cleared up, packed the finished ones away for us, and moved the half used ones out into the bar rooms for us to use. ( I didn't ask them to do this, they were just extremely thoughtful!) The boys then cottoned onto the fact that there were cameras to be used, and went about their work! Its great that we ended up with finished cameras, and no film left to use up, but the downsides were that because they got used so soon I have no record of my evening guests, and I think the boys a) often forgot to use the flash, and b) didn't vary their subjects much, so the ends of the films are largely unfocused badly lit pictures of themselves!

What I'm trying to say is that if you have a choice of when to put them out/who to give them to, do. My mum had suggested doling them out to a few people in the evening and asking them to be photographers for the night. I sort of wish I had done this now, as some people obviously love taking photos, the proof of that is in the cameras from tables who used them up completely before dinner was over. I also wish I'd maybe bought more, given that they were BOGOF anyway, and kept a few back to bring out after dinner for the evening guests. but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

photos

we're up on Anna Hardys blog now, go see it here. She wrote beautiful things abot us, as she does with all her couples, and right at the end my dad posted a comment too :) I promise promise promise I'll be back soon, I'm working super hard and I'm way behind on christmas, its all I can do to keep my eyes open in the evening! but I now have the internet on computer in a war room which is much more condusive to typing, so even though I've just given you the link to a lot of our photos, words may come soon. promise.

Changes

Since I've started getting told off by a certain lady for not posting for ages, I thought I should get you up to speed with the last week.

Last monday, I got an email from our photographer, unfortunately pulling out of our wedding for various reasons. cue a little bit of foot stomping, there may have been a couple of tears, James may have had to make me dinner.

I then spent the next 3 day emailing various recommendations, looking constantly at wedding galleries until every wedding merged into one, and reading and being very thankful for positive, helpful, and generally nice emails from the same aforementioned lady, who quite frankly, I'm not sure I could have got through the week without. On Friday, just when I was getting worried that all wedding photographers would be away for the weekend, and I was really sick of spending more time on google, I got an answerphone message at work from this lady, who was actually free on our date! heaven forbid, a photographer, who takes lovely photos, free 5 months before the date? seemingly unheard of. Anyway, she is a delight. in the last 4 days she must have a had nearly 15 emails from Mum and I, and shes been nothing but wonderful about it all.

So that was the week that was last week, I'm glad its over! normal programming will resume shortly, probably with the headband I'm making, the invitations I'm not making, and the wedding shoes that have been sitting here for a month not being shown to the world. Oh, and we meet the vicar for the first of our wedding preparations tomorrow night. eeep!

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.

big bookings, big smiles.

Several weddingy things have happened in the last week that I'm excited about, All the big things seem to be falling into place, I think I'm about to hit that lull that everyone talks about, where having booked all the major parts of the wedding, its just pottering and fiddling for quite a while until I reach the year mark.

Firstly, I confirmed with the venue for our reception. Cumbria, for all its beauty, seems a bit short on interesting venues for wedding receptions. Its largely a choice of country hotels, even when you get into the Lakes itself, and most of these now market themselves as wedding venues, meaning that the prices are exorbitantly expensive. We didn't want to actually go out into the lakes to get married, while its nearby, and stunningly beautiful, it seems to be becoming a cliche. When we first got engaged we had to decide which end of the country to get married in - I'm a southerner who moved up here for college, and he's a cumbrian through and through - I'd always imagined that I would marry in my parish church, but when it came to it, I didn't want to plan my wedding remotely, and we wanted to see the church we got married in for the rest of our lives, have our children christened in it, and so on.

So a little hotel it is. It only has 11 bedrooms, so we have sole use, which means I get breakfast too :) Neither of us had ever been there before, despite it being about 5 miles from our house, and it looks over the Eden valley. Its a small venue, which limits our guest list for the day to 70, and we can invite 30 more in the evening. We wanted a small wedding, we're not crazy partyers, to be honest the Evening reception is still the biggest stumbling block I have, so we liked the fact that the venue was forcing us to make that choice. Anyway, it looks like this:

pictures from: Crosby Lodge

The other major thing we've booked is the photographer. In one of my first posts I mentioned my photographers, but we've changed quite suddenly at the last minute. I have no regrets about this, in fact I can't stop grinning, and I wouldn't have found them were it not for the blogging community. Heres a couple of their photos:

photos by: Lillian and Leonard

So yes, Peonies and the Boy, or Lillian and Leonard in their official capacity are going to be our photographers! Suddenly, I love living in Carlisle, because we're really close to Glasgow! Peonies has already been delightful to work with, coping with my Mum giving her the wrong year for the wedding, and me asking lots of stupid questions, and what I'm finding really wonderful is that I know she'll record all the little details for me, and that their style is so unobtrusive. J and I are quite camera shy, I love taking photos, although I'm rubbish at it, but I always look like a complete idiot when I'm in front of the camera. We were both a bit nervous of being very posed, doing grooms running up the road pictures etc, so we both really love their background style. Thank you Peonies!!

Lastly, thank you all for the lovely comments you've been leaving me, its nice to know people are actually reading the ramblings I leave here, please keep talking to me!