DORA & ANDY GET HITCHED

September 26th was just the happiest day. The sun shone for the beautiful lovebirds and it really was the most wonderful wedding.

Dora looked amazing (as did Andy, in his custom made tweed!), the venues were perfect, the food delicious and the dancing so much fun. The ceremony bought a tear to everyone's eye and our divine flower girl's both fell asleep for a couple of hours giving Ben and I some time to let our hair down and bust out some moves on the dance floor.

What a brilliant, brilliant day. I wish with all my heart my Dad was there to see it all, but I know he was there in spirit and would be so proud of Dora, and so happy for the new Mr and Mrs Wright.

We love you guys xxxx

I was busy filming all the wedding fun, so didn't take many pictures but I love this one someone snapped on my camera. The finished wedding film I made can be seen here...

FIVE

Five years married, and I love you more than ever.

Through the thick and the thin, the good and the bad, the happy and heartbreaking.

I love that you let me have a lie-in every Saturday, that you always buy me chocolate when you stop at the shop and that you watch Eastenders with me.

I love how wonderful a Daddy you are to our babies, and I love how much they both completely adore you.

Here's to the next five years, and all the others after that. I'm so lucky to call you mine xxx

LOVE

Yesterday was our third wedding anniversary. Tonight we'll be heading out on the town, to eat steak and talk future adventures. 

You know how much I adore you, my love. Then, now and forever. 

Photo by Tori.

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Today is a special day for two reasons.

Firstly, this is my 100^th post. I can’t believe I’m at this milestone already with this little blog. I’ve loved every minute of blogging so far and the opportunity it’s given to meet some awesome people from all over the world. Thank you to everyone who follows our adventures and leaves comments too. It’s thrilling to see a new message and I always appreciate your kind and funny words so much.

Secondly, today is mine and B’s sixth month wedding anniversary. I can’t believe how quickly the time has past and how completely awesome these months have been. Being married to that boy is the most amazing thing and I love being his wife more every day. I love you so much beautiful husband of mine xx

This is one of my favourite wedding finds. Our original 1950s American cake topper that I tracked down on eBay. It was a total steal and is just the prettiest thing. It sat on our simple wedding cake and now stands very proudly indeed on our bookshelf.

When we got married in May, B and I got each other some pretty cool wedding presents. My most favourite thing from B was this little heart. B got an i-touch. Man, was he ever desperate for one.

I also gave him a notebook. Somewhere we could write our hopes and dreams down, somewhere to plan our next adventures. On our honeymoon we spent a rainy day writing things in this notebook. Stuff we wanted to do over the next year. One of which I hope to be blogging about soon.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking specifically about where I want to be heading career wise. I know that in a couple of years this will be on hold so I want to make the most of the next twelve months. Get myself into a position where I’m doing something I truly love. I enjoy my job, but I find myself less interested than I thought I would be when I was studying to become a journalist. What I dream of is being my own boss. Spending every day crafting the things I love to craft. I am determined to make this dream a reality, just like this cool chick. And B thinks I should do it. Live the dream. I’m not quitting my day job or anything like that. But maybe when the time comes, going back to work won’t be necessary.

I work well to deadlines so this weekend I’m setting myself a task. Devise a little business plan. Figure out what I want to be creating, the vibe I want to follow and how realistically I can make this all happen. I’m with that most awesome of bloggers, my mate Jaclyn. Just Do It.

After a pretty darn lazy weekend, it has been a crazy day at work. But when our wedding album arrived this morning, you can imagine how bloomin’ excited and distracted I was. I emailed B and said I’d try by hardest not to open it until he got home, but all I needed was his “open it at lunch if you’d like – you worked really hard on it, so I don’t mind!” comment to give in. The package was ripped open and my nerves were laid to rest when I saw how awesome, how seriously awesome it looks. It was a lot, A LOT, of work but man oh man, it was totally worth it. This is something we’ll cherish forever and sit with our children and their children looking at forever more. When we’re old and grey and can barely remember our names, we can look through our album and we’ll be right back there. On the best day ever. When I married my favourite person in the world.

Sorry for the little break in posts. This week has been mental... I've been designing our wedding album and it appeared to slip into being a bit of an obsession! In the last week I must have spent around 30 hours (at least) AFTER WORK designing it. As in get home, design, eat, design, bed. Bless B sitting on his lonesome for the week (our computer's in the living room too, but it's much nicer to squish on the sofa!) However, this did give him the perfect excuse to play Madden on the PS3 for hours, so I don't think he minded too much.

I finished it at about 1am this morning and have spent the morning uploading the designs and sending it off. Now we have to wait 7-10 days. We're so freakin' excited about it arriving I can't tell you.

In other news I had my first weigh in yesterday. I was feeling pretty slim and was pleased to see i'd lost 1lb. Despite my Nan giving us a box of shortbread (AKA my favourite). It's not much I know, but I don't have too much too loose and so I'm expecting it to come off pretty slowly. 1lb a week means a stone by Christmas though and that's my goal. I'm still feeling nice and motivated so I have high hopes of achieving this! I only ate two tiny slithers of shortbread over the week, which is a miracle. How are you other lovely "health kick" ladies getting on?

It's a Bank Holiday here on Monday, so three day weekend! Crafting this afternoon with my nephews and B and I are going on an actual shopping trip tomorrow. I can't remember when we last did that. We have vouchers from the wedding still to spend so are heading to Bristol on a spree. I seriously can't wait.

Hope you all have an awesome weekend too xx

Yup! That's me and my guy right there. In a published magazine. In all our wedding glory! Ok, so I write for this magazine and have had a column in it revealing the process of planning a homemade budget wedding ever since we got engaged, but that doesn't make it any less exciting. Everyone at work swooned over the pictures, which was very lovely and I've popped a whole stack in the post to family and friends who were all desperate for a copy.

I was a bit hesitant of including our wedding in the magazine at first, but it's a lovely thing to have and show our grandchildren one day, don't you think. I might even frame it and hang it as a reminder of our five minutes of magazine fame, hehe!

I hope you all had an laughter-packed weekend. Ours was manic. But fun. A family trip to see Toy Story 3 in 3D on Friday (we all loved it!) Then back to my sister’s and a very late night indeed. Especially considering we were then up 4 hours later to head to Devon for another wedding.

We travelled down with my best mate Em and her awesome husband and got stuck in a lot of traffic. A lot. Another couple we know missed the wedding because of the queues. Savage. It was a fun day though and our friend Lizzy looked very beautiful and happy. The food was good. The company was good. Drunken husbands were mostly funny. As the designated driver, the long journey back at midnight was not so good though. But hey ho. We got to have a lie in on Sunday and sleep in our own beds, so it was worth it.

Sunday we popped into town and got some tasty treats for dinner, and we went for our Sunday walk. Which we haven’t done for a while, what with all the day trips, weekends away and weddings we’ve been to over the last few months. But now our schedule is clear of advance bookings. Awesome news. Time for impromptu lunches, meeting up with friends, shopping trips and more walks in the park. Hoorah.

We spent yesterday heading to Breacon in Wales for the wedding of one of our favourite people in the world, the beautiful Lynne. The drive was pretty long (especially on the way back, in the middle of the night!) but the scenery was incredible and the day was so much damn fun, it was totally worth it. We have known Lynne and one of her bridesmaid's and best bud Fi (good work on the bridesmaiding FiFi!) for years as they were on the same food degree course with B at uni and he quickly introduced them to me knowing how much I would also love them! These lovely ladies were the only people we knew at this wedding, which was a new experience for B and I, but everyone was lovely and made such an effort to come and chat, which was cool! Plus they had a bouncy castle, which is always good in our books...more bouncing fun to come!

Congratulations to the most glamorous bride we've ever seen and her favourite boy, Gareth. We hope all your dreams come true and you live happily ever after xx

We always wanted to get married outside. One problem. We live in England. Where it rains all the time. Even in summer you can no way guarantee a period of nice weather. Still we went with the idea and had a backup plan ready just in case. In the week running up to our wedding it was beautiful weather. In fact 7 days before we had the hottest day in May on record. Blistering sunshine continued until Friday. Then on Saturday morning we awoke to rain. Big, grey, rain-filled clouds hung over our venue. The weatherman assured us that by midday the rain would clear and it would stay dry until the evening. Sorted. We were getting married at 2.30pm so it would be dry enough for everyone to walk over the grass, so the ushers laid the chairs out beautifully.
Then at 2.25pm (seriously, no exaggeration) the rain started to fall. And then it poured. It was a case of everyone grabbing chairs, running into the marquee and my cooler than cool guy (my Mum always says “he’s so laid back he’s pretty much lying down” and this behaviour continued as wedding disaster loomed) arranged the chairs so all the VIP guests would be sat at the front of the marquee, with all the other chairs flowing around the bottom half of the tables for the rest of the guests. Disaster averted.
When I walked down the aisle there was a definite higilty pigilty look about our congregation and you know what? I really rather liked it. Loved it in fact. It truly added to the relaxed feel we always wanted for our day.
So thank you lovely guests for being so easy-going and for not complaining about the soggy bottom situation. And thank you Mother Nature for rewarding our patience and understanding with an hour of dry weather. The perfect amount of time it turned out to walk around a meadow and have pictures of just me and my beloved, as well as a few shots with some rather special family members xx

Me and my boy have lived together for 6 years (including 3 of at uni) so when it came to a wedding gift list, the traditional department store idea wasn’t really appropriate. We kinda wanted to get vouchers towards our honeymoon but weren’t sure how people would react to giving us money, so I was pretty chuffed when we found out about Buy Our Honeymoon over at Broke Ass Bride (a truly brilliant and unique blog!) We got to write our own gift list and the money was transferred into our Paypal account. Perfecto!
So thank you lovely guests for sending us off for two weeks of bliss in the Dominican Republic. It was heaven on Earth and after all the chaos (albeit most fun chaos ever!) leading up to the wedding, there was nothing more delicious than getting to spend 14 days just me and my love.

Those last couple of pictures...with a couple of cigars to take home and our fedoras just lying there, we couldn't miss the opportunity for some gangster-esque shots!

I just wanted to put a little note on here about my hair. Simply because it looked so amazing I figured it deserved a post all by itself. Thank you to beautiful Amy who did exactly what I asked for and I'm really not sure how many people would know what to do when I asked for a ‘rusticy’ kind of style – luckily she knew that by adding some plates and keeping it a bit messy she’d achieve the look perfectly! Everyone thought it looked so fab and so did I. And so did my groom who said the plaits gave it a very ‘Milk-Maid in the Barn’ look – rustic-style achieved, I think you’ll agree!

I love, love, love flowers. Seriously. And my guy buys me a bunch every few weeks because he knows how that warms my heart. I’m sure there’s nothing prettier than having a bunch decorating the shelf. And, for me, the brighter and messier the better. I’m a big fan of that whole “I’ve just walked through a meadow and picked this bunch” look. So that’s what we decided on for our big day. Plus we decided to do all the flowers ourselves.
This meant my sister and I heading to the Bristol Flower Market at 4.30am on the Thursday before the wedding, filling my car to the roof with flowers and stuffing the 130 or so jam jars we'd collected.
Everyone commented on how amazing they looked plus it was lovely to see all our guests go off with a little bunch to decorate their homes with at the end of the party.

When it came to decorating the marquee we hired we knew we wanted to inject some serious colour and the mix of deep purple, green, burnt orange, hot pink, bright blue and yellow carried on through the whole wedding.
From the moment I saw Martha Stewart’s pom poms I knew they’d be perfect and thanks to some bargain tissue paper purchases on eBay they turned out to be the cheapest decorations you could hope for!
We loved the garlands you often see at Indian weddings but real flowers were out of the question and all fabric versions we could find were at least £10 each – we needed around 150 so that was a big no-no.
Then one day I was walking past Monsoon and there they were; the perfect garlands in the ideal colours, used in the store’s window display. So my Mum and I spent a week calling every branch in the country gathering them together. They were an absolute bargain plus all the money we paid went to the Monsoon Trust, which helps disadvantaged women and children in Asia. So that’s pretty cool :)
And apart from the odd few we plan on keeping as a memento, we’re going to sell them on eBay and make a bit of dosh. Hoorah!

ps can i just say how much I love that my guy chose pink socks to wear on our wedding day to perfectly match our colours! It made me smile a lot when I got a glimpse of those beauties!

From the moment we got engaged we knew that our wedding budget was pretty darn small, but you know what – we would have never spent the supposed national average many couples do, no matter how much money we had.
One of our best buys was our wedding cake. £25 for three tiers of fruit cake wrapped in white icing at our local supermarket. Add my Nan's vintage cut glass cake stand and the most amazing 1950s cake topper I found on eBay in the US and we ended up with a beautiful cake.
We also spent many a night crafting nearly all the decorations for our wedding and our guests complimented us at every turn, which left a nice warm feeling in our tummies. But hubby dearest and I can’t take credit for all the DIY creations – we had a pretty brilliant team of rather creative friends and family helping out too.
From my sister’s brilliant stationary and my Mum, Nan and Grandma’s sewing talents to the beautiful poems my new Mother in Law wrote for us and the delicious cakes that a whole bunch of amazing people baked – it all made the day perfect. So thank you lovely ladies xx

On the mission of creating the perfect invites, the next aspect was the illustrations. I sent my sister, Dora, a mammoth email with all the designs we'd seen and that we liked aspects of as well as the colour palette we wanted and an explanation of the look and style we were aiming for. About two weeks later we got exactly what we wanted. I set to work on the back of the invite using my faithful InDesign and soon enough our invitation was ready to go. And everyone loved it.

I sent Cori from August and After an email once the designs were done to thank her for the help her blog had given us and when I visited her site a few days later, you can imagine how freakin' excited I was to see our invites staring back at me. So thank you Cori. I'm sure I'm not the only bride-to-be to have found your blog and been reassured that planning a wedding with a difference on a teeny budget isn't a completely mad idea, and is in fact a rather lovely one.

Next up was our invitations. My favourite blog when planning our wedding day was August and After - hands down, no other contenders. Cori's blog offers a big bag of treats if you're looking to plan a down-to-earth and natural-style wedding. We uncovered some great ideas thanks to Cori that we eventually used in our own wedding, the first of which were her own engagement pictures and invitations.

When it came to our invitations we seriously wanted to steer clear of any pastel coloured calligraphy designs and were struggling to find anything else that appealed. Then one day, when I was rummaging through a load of papers in the cupboard, I found an old invitation I'd been sent to an exhibition at the V&A for The Art of Lee Miller. Now this was a cool invitation and once my guy had approved it, we set out to turn the general design into something that could work for us.

We knew we could count on Dora for any illustrations we wanted, but what picture to use? Then I saw Cori's DIY pictures; some natural shots of Cori and her boy Evan in the woods. So lovely. So with a little persuading my guy packed up the tripod and a couple of outfit changes and we headed off to the woods. We got some brilliant shots. I mean, seriously. Some are kinda cool (aka Rayban Wayfayer and hoodies) and some were slightly Twilight-esque (although don't tell my hubby - that would not go down well!)

But the one we both really loved had a definite whimsical, hippy-style, 1970s album cover feel about it. And it was actually rather perfect. With a bit of editing when we got home (a smidge of sepia and a few scratches here and there), we had our invite image.

When we were planning our wedding, I scoured numerous blogs on a daily basis for inspiration and unusual ideas that would sum me and my guy up and be perfect for the laid back, brightly coloured, unique day we envisioned. On so many occasions I was tempted to start my own but with a full time job, crafty projects-a-plenty to prepare for the wedding, a fashion and textile evening course at college and some sneaky snuggles on the sofa with my love to fit in, I just didn't find the time. Of course the problem with starting a blog after the wedding is that I have so much I want to reveal from our whole wedding process. I figured the best place to start is at the beginning, so first things first - our Save the Date cards.

From the moment we got engaged, we knew what we wanted our wedding to be. Young and fun and everything that went with that, so when it came to designing our Save the Date cards we knew we wanted to reflect this. After all this will be the first glimpse our guests will have of what our wedding will be like. So we called in my sister Dora; AKA an artistic genius who had just finished a Fine Art degree. We planned to put her talents to good use across all our wedding stationary and so we talked to her about what wanted and came up with the idea of doodle style postcard with a graffiti hint to it. Then I put a beyond simple font on the back. Perfect.

* when it comes to the perfect time to start a blog, dear readers, it turns out the during the World Cup is it. With my boy determined to watch as many footie matches as possible I can spend guilt free hours on the computer. Luckily for me our computer is in the living room, so I can still get the odd sneaky kiss!

Three weeks ago I married the boy i've loved for nearly 10 years, from way back when I was 16 and he was 17. The boy who's become by best friend and the person I have the most fun with in the whole world. Our wedding was a day packed full of love and was more awesome than we could have even dreamed. Our beautiful family and friends helped make it a day that was totally unique and one that we'll remember forever, and for that we love them even more.

This blog is all about creating the wedding day we always hoped for, what modern married life is like for two little love birds like me and my guy, what inspires us, what makes us laugh and what adventures we find ourselves on.