Okay, I know these have been a long time coming – I’ve simply been too busy/lazy to put them online! But here they are finally – you can see the set of photos here. I’ve decided to just put a small set of my favourites online because honestly I feel a little strange putting up somewhat intimate photos for all to see, and I’m quite camera shy as it is! I’m really happy with how they turned out and feel a lot more confident that I won’t be cowering away from the photo or standing about awkwardly at our wedding having now done this.

All photography done by the wonderful Allyeska Photography.

In retrospect I wish I’d chosen my outfit a little more wisely, and given myself more time to make myself beautiful – we went shopping in the morning and I had about thirty minutes to do my hair and makeup, which isn’t enough when you don’t really have any idea what you’re doing. Anyone who is yet to do their engagement/pre-wedding shoot – be prepared and give yourself time beforehand! In the end I really love some of these and it’s nice to actually have a decent shot of The Boy and I together that aren’t us just making faces!

Dresses by English Department

I stumbled across the first of these dresses on Etsy, and the spent a while going through designer Elizabeth Dye’s blog and the English Department website for other dresses she’s made. She has a store in Oregon and only sells a few dresses via Etsy it seems, but I really love what I’ve seen there and in her blog. The prices are pretty good for handmade silk dresses with lots of pretty detailing. I’m still hoping to find a local dressmaker to get something that fits perfectly, but if that falls through these are definitely an option… Oh to live in Oregon!

I think this is my favourite of their current line – which doesn’t seem to be sold on Etsy!

I came across the most beautiful paper garlands today in Apartment Therapy:

Butterfly garland by This Neck of the Woods, via Apartment Therapy

Aren’t they so wonderfully delicate? They’re made with fancy German paper that the seller has screen-printed herself. Can’t really get much more handmade than that. I’m not sure where I’d use them – draped in scallops around the dessert/cake table maybe?

I had a bit more of a hunt around for cheaper options, as my mother is already at me for spending ’so much money’ on the wedding – here’s what I came up with:

Garland String from KristinaMarie

Paper garland tutorial from Hambly Screen Prints

Scalloped fabric garland from Sew, Mama, Sew!

Okay, so the last two are much cheaper than buying already handmade garlands, but do involve quite a bit of work. I’m thinking that if I do decide to do something like this for my wedding and can’t afford to buy them, I’ll get one of those big shape punches, punch out a bunch of the chosen shape in a few different kinds of paper, then sew them together like the garland string above. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?

…is wearing headphones to watch the late night/early morning soccer matches when your fiance doesn’t want to watch them. Or getting up early to turn on the heater for her when she does*. Thanks babe!

Been busy with work and life, so haven’t had a chance to think about the wedding at all! I’ll have more to post here soon.

* Australia vs. Germany was a very depressing game to get up at 4am to watch. Not sure I’ll be doing that again.

How incredible do these handmade programs by Lauren of I Love You Much look? And not just because they’re yellow – the fonts, typesetting and simple style are beautifully chosen.

by Lauren of I Love You Much

From what she’s written of the process of hand binding them though, I think it’s way beyond my level of patience. I can’t imagine doing 150 of them!

I’m currently undecided about doing programs – being a short civil ceremony, there isn’t really a lot to it. And based on weddings I’ve been to not many people decide to keep them, so it feels like a bit of a waste of paper for just ~20 minutes of usage at our ceremony. On the other hand, it gives me an excuse to design some more cool print material, which is always fun. What are you guys doing/did you guys do for the programs?

So I really like The Beatles, especially this lovely song, which I feel is incredibly sweet and full of joy – exactly the kind of emotion I want our wedding to be all about.

I thought it would make a great song to walk down the aisle to – sweet but not too sappy. It is, however, quite boppy – I don’t know the logistics of my ‘aisle’ at this point, but if I was walking along it to this song I’d probably get there before the end of the first chorus.

Then I saw a cover of this song being performed by Katie Noonan on Good News Week, and went THIS IS IT YO. Tell me this doesn’t give you the chills in a wonderful way.

It’s just a Good News Week clue though, not released anywhere as far as I know… so I’m not sure how I can acquire a legal and high quality version!

What’s your song?

I’m so over wedding inspiration blogs. Being a blogger and a geek and already having masses of design inspiration pouring into my RSS reader every day, when I first got engaged I added pretty much every wedding blog I could find. And every day I had heaps of beautiful images of real weddings, ‘photo shoot weddings’, inspiration ideas etc. to scroll through (on top of what I had there already!). At first I loved it, possibly because I had no idea (or too many ideas) about what I wanted to do with our wedding. I definitely found a lot of useful ideas through those sites, and don’t regret the time I spent looking through them.

But now it just feels like a burden, scrolling through picture after picture of weddings that all seem to blur into one. Sure, they’re beautiful, and they’re all unique in their own way. And I have enough of an ego that I don’t feel inferior to these blog-perfect weddings. But they just got BORING and made me feel very ‘meh’ towards weddings. And I’m not someone who feels ‘meh’ about weddings; I’m someone who gets stupidly excited about weddings. I’ve decided that this over-saturation of all things wedding is making me feel this way, so I’ve done something about it.

I’ve pretty much removed all the wedding inspiration blogs from my RSS reader. I’ll probably look at them from time to time to see what’s new, but at least I won’t have the burden of scrolling through all those posts each morning! I have kept Polka Dot Bride (for being Australian) and Ruffled (for being vintage).

You know what’s better than wedding inspiration blogs once you get to that ‘meh’ saturation point? Personal blogs of people planning their weddings. Going through the whole planning process with them in blog spirit makes everything so much better than scrolling through a ton of beautiful photos of complete strangers. For this reason I’m still keeping all of these personal blogs. I have a bunch of my favourites linked over on the side, so go check them out if you want something a little more real!

Anyone else over wedding inspiration blogs?

Rawr. Photo by Allyeska Photography

So the ‘engagement shoot’ went really really well! I was a little nervous to begin with as mentioned previously, but Jenny of Allyeska Photography got us to just be natural and overall it felt really fun and easy rather than cheesy and forced. Poor Jenny wasn’t feeling completely well but trooped on and did an amazing job, making great suggestions and giving good feedback. She’s sent through a couple of shots already, which look fantastic – the one above is my favourite so far, because we’re dorks and are always making faces at each other. I can’t wait to see the rest, and actually have some recent photos of us together that weren’t just taken by me MySpace style!

Fun fact: I made the Allyeska logo, so had to stick it in there to show off!

Initially we weren’t planning on doing an ‘engagement shoot’ – hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I started looking at wedding stuff. But I did a logo and website for a photographer friend, Allyeska, and part of her payment is a photo shoot! We’ve been putting it of for months now, possibly because The Boy and I aren’t really the most willing models – in most situations I have the biggest camera, so don’t end up in photos very often. I also blink A LOT, so the chances of ending up with a photo of me with my eyes half-closed are very high and the look is not exactly attractive.

Um, that said, I’m now super excited for our shoot this weekend! Allyeska is a fabulous photographer, and we’ve decided to take photos in a park with lots of pretty autumn leaves. Personally I want something fun and natural looking, rather than doing things we might not do normally – like posing with a cupcake or holding a balloon. Not that those shoots aren’t cool, but not for me. Playing in autumn leaves is definitely something I do, albeit when I’m less dressed up than I will be. If we have time (and I have time to do some cleaning…) we might be doing some shots in our apartment as well.

Now to do some research on the all important decision of how to do my hair. Wish us luck!

Ah, Mother’s Day. I live on the other side of my country to my mother, so I just called her up to wish her a nice day and boast about going to see the Mama Mia musical in Melbourne.

But now that I have some interest in flowers and kind of like having them around the apartment, I can appreciate that just after Mother’s Day there are cheap flowers!

Sunny yellow chrysanthemums

These babies were half price at Woolies, and since it’s starting to get really chilly here in Canberra it’s nice to have some sunny yellow chrysanthemums to brighten up the place. I can totally imagine having a bouquet just of these for the wedding – it wouldn’t be too difficult and even when not on sale they are cheap! They did lose some petals as I was trying to ‘arrange’ them (that is, stuff them all into a vase), and I’m not sure if October is too early for them.

...or maybe berries?

I also picked these in a park whilst walking home acquired these berries through completely legitimate means a few weeks ago, and they’re still still sitting happily in their vase. I love the idea of having berries and leaves in a bouquet or other flower arrangements, and they definitely seem more hardy. I think they have more of an autumn/winter feel to them though.