I’ve realised lately that as we get closer to the wedding and the pressure is on to get things done, I’ve started to drop other projects and hobbies in order to work on wedding related projects. I usually have several personal projects on the go, but these days whenever I feel like starting something I stop and feel bad that I’m not working on wedding things. And instead I procrastinate by reading comics or spending hours browsing Pinterest, looking at projects I want to do After the Wedding.

The problem is I then achieve nothing anyway, and plannings things for After the Wedding is about as useful as planning for After University – something always comes up to fill up that time (in my case usually procrastination) and somehow you never end up with as much free time as you’d hoped.

So, here’s a few projects that I intend to do which are completely unrelated to the wedding – and I intend to do them and not feel bad about not working on wedding stuff!

• Sewing things, starting with aprons for The Boy and I
• Redesigning my main blog, ChiGarden
• Trying out some of the food photography techniques I’ve learned in ‘Plate to Pixel‘ (book review here) that I seem to never have time for
• Learning how to actually take decent photos of myself
• Drawing! I feel that I haven’t drawn anything in ages, and my skills are suffering
• Framing and hanging the lovely prints I have that are languishing in a folder at the moment
• Culling the stuff in our apartment in a ‘Living with Less‘ project
• Giving my poor potplants some more attention, so they can be fruitful come Spring!

I think it’s really important to not let the wedding take over your life or prevent you from doing things that you want to. What non-wedding things do you do?

…I would have gone for a nude/neutral colour scheme instead of yellow and grey.

from Brunch at Saks - click through for credits

The colours are so lovely, and so easy to find in winter and spring. It would have been so easy! But I’m not sure we’re really a nude/blush people in the end.

I’ve written before about some alternatives to a photobooth, and I think now I have my decision. I’ve been lusting after the Fuji Instax Mini 50s even though it doesn’t really fit into our wedding budget, but when my girls asked me what I wanted for my birthday I spied a way of sneaking it in. We had a little birthday dinner party at our place for me, The Boy and Miss T (our birthdays are all within two weeks of each other) and there they presented it to me.

I love it! The excitement of seeing the photo slide out and slowly develop is a beautiful thing. I think that our guests are going to have a lot of fun playing with it (but hopefully not too much, as the film is not exactly cheap!). The quality is not bad, very much reminiscent of Polaroids, and the flash works very nicely.

My plan is to have a guestbook/photobooth table somewhere with the camera and extra film cartridges, as well as some blank card the same size as the prints for people to write messages on. Guests will be instructed to put one photo in the box to go in the guestbook (which I’ll collate at some point after the wedding) and keep one for themselves. By the end of the day if we haven’t used up all the film, we can tell everyone to take more photos if they want to. I haven’t decided how I’m going to put them together yet – possibly in an Instax sized photo album or a scrapbook type thing.

I’m unsure about backdrops and props at this stage – the prints are so tiny that they seem a bit unnecessary, although I suppose they do help people to loosen up and have fun with it.

The next thing to do is decide how much film to get. I’m hoping people will be happy with keeping one or two prints each, but it is cheaper to buy it in bulk and I think I’ll end up using the rest of the film on our honeymoon or just around the place anyway.

Just going to preface this by saying I’m not receiving any kind of payment for this review – I contacted Shoes of Prey and asked them to mail me some shoes to review (and then return), and they were nice enough to do so. So this is 100% my real personal opinion and an item that I genuinely think is of interest to you readers – I won’t feature any products or services that aren’t!

So Shoes of Prey are a Sydney based company that make custom shoes. Orders are made through their website, which allows you to choose and customise the shoes in a bunch of different ways.

Putting a design together

As a web designer, I was really impressed with the interface – it’s very simple to use and gives a pretty good idea of how the final shoes will look. Besides the basic shape of the shoes, things like heel height, toe style, straps and other decorations can all be chosen and most give the option of using different materials for the extras if required. The number of options, especially colours and styles that can be really hard to find in stores, very impressive as well.

Onto what they sent to me:

Little extras

It was all beautifully packaged inside a box lined with foam to protect the shoes, which were wrapped in tissue tied together with a ribbon. Packaging might seem a little irrelevant, but if I’m paying (what I consider) premium prices for products, I expect premium service and presentation – and they definitely don’t disappoint in that respect. The shoes also came with a soft bag to store them in, and a pack with various shaped inserts to help the shoes fit and feel more comfortable.

The look

Look, I’ll be honest – these shoes are pretty far from my style (no offense if they are your style of course – you can get them here). That wasn’t the point though of course – these shoes weren’t custom made for me, they’re just shoes that were in my size and available for them to send out to me at the time. But comparing it to the design, I’d say that it matches up decently well, so if you really wanted it to look like that then you’d be pretty happy receive this pair of shoes. The patent leather is nice and glossy, the gold very shiny and I can’t really fault the overall appearance at all.

Make quality

Comparing these shoes to my own pair of nude patent leather shoes, the general make quality seems excellent – the stitches are small and even and neat, there’s no visible traces of glue and the inner lining is all leather. I must admit though that I’m no shoe fanatic, so probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in quality between a $150 pair of shoes and $1150 pair of shoes, if there is such a difference.

Fit & comfort

Unfortunately, these shoes didn’t fit me at all. Not in the sort-of-uncomfortable-but-I-can-wear-them-to-dinner type fit, but the oh-god-the-pain type fit. I’m an odd case in that my feet are wide, flat and often in between sizes – I asked for a size AU 6 / EU 36, but I think a half size up would have helped immensely. It’s not at all uncommon for me to find shoes that are the right size but simply too narrow for me feet, and it seems that this is the case with these. The FAQ on the site does mention that you can request shoes to be made wider or narrower to account for weird feet like mine though, which is encouraging. Unfortunately as the shoes are made to standard sizes (plus any requests for wide feet etc) rather than physically measuring your feet and making them specifically for you, there isn’t any guarantee on the perfect fit the first time around. It seems they will remake or rework your shoes for free if they don’t fit though, which is nice.

Since I’m unable to stand up in these shoes, I asked Miss T (who is also a size 6, but with lovely normal shaped feet) to try them on and do a lap of my living room. They fit her perfectly and she said that they were comfortable despite their height.

Price

I’m not a big shoe person – I have less than 10 pairs of shoes (which I wear to death) and most of them are under or around the $100 mark. The pair of shoes I was sent are classified as a ‘mid heel’ and will set you back $250; flats are $195, higher heels are $300 and ankle boots are $350. The prices seem to be irrespective of the number of fabrics or embellishments that you add to them. To some people that might seem like nothing, but to me that’s a fair chunk of money that I would not ordinarily spend on shoes. In terms of materials and quality they seem comparable to slightly cheaper pairs of shoes that I own (although as noted previously I’m not sure I’m enough of a shoe connoisseur to be able to tell).

To be honest, if you were after a fairly ubiquitous pair of black pumps or something that you could easily be able to find in local shops for a much lower price, I’d say Shoes of Prey is an unnecessarily pricey way to go.

On the other hand, if you’re after something very particular and not easily found (for example, the yellow soft leather round toed shoes with a not-too-high heel and maybe an ankle strap that I want for the wedding), this is a decent option for getting exactly what you want. There’s no way I’m going to find exactly the right shoes that I want for my wedding locally, and even if I found it online it’s likely that they won’t fit my wide feet – and the game of buying shoes and having to return them if they don’t fit gets costly fast, especially with international suppliers. This would be a splurge no doubt, but when I hear about other brides springing for Louboutins it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. And if the wider version of their shoes ends up working well for me, this opens up the door to other shoe designs that I generally can’t find to fit me.

Other bits

They have an excellent returns policy, which is nice considering it’s a custom made product. Shipping is a flat $25 fee worldwide. The ladies that I dealt with were lovely and nice to allow my request, especially considering the readership of this blog is much lower than some popular social media stars they’ve had review their products.

Protip

Actually measure some shoes that you have currently to see what kind of heel you want instead of just guessing – I had set up a design of my wedding shoes to order before I received this pair to review, and they have the same heel height (3.5 inches) – which as it turns out is much higher than what I wanted. I’d also suggest reading the information about their various materials before making a decision too – the little thumbnails on the design page don’t necessarily give the full picture.

Bottom line

If you want something really different, specific and hard to find or have difficult to fit feet, and don’t mind paying $195+ for a pair of shoes – go for it. If they don’t fit or you don’t like them, you can always return them for the cost of postage. If you want something that’s more easy to find or are on a serious budget, this isn’t the place for you. The cost definitely made me pause, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be going with this option for my wedding – I’ll write another review when they arrive!

I’m not normally a fan of fake flowers, unless they’re done really well. But these felted billy balls/craspedia look super adorable, and quite a lot like the real thing! I’m into needle felting, so I even already have some bright yellow felt I can use for this purpose if I can’t get the real flowers in.

See the full tutorial over on Design Sponge.

I’m working on our gift registry at the moment, and let me tell you it is hard work! The Boy and I have been living together for 2 years and are fairly well set up – we have everything we need to get by, although most of it was bought on a low budget and could possibly do with upgrading. I’m reluctant to add anything that we don’t really need as our apartment is tiny. We’re also thinking of living overseas for a bit in a couple of years, and would have to store or sell everything we own anyway.

Online gift registries seem to be extra daunting – they have to give you lots of options so there’s so many things to choose from, and eventually you just end up adding stuff just to fill out the list.

So in an effort to not just go through the entire list and add things for the sake of it, I’m going to put down things that we actually want/need and then search for them instead.

• stainless steel cookware
• cast iron casserole dish
• non-stick frying pan
• quality kitchen utensils (ours are all plastic!)
• tumblers (I keep breaking them)
• rice/noodle bowls (ditto)
• serving platters
• KitchenAid and (and associated gadgets)
• teapot and teacups

…and that’s all I’ve got. I suppose I need to fill it out a bit more to give people options! I have to admit I am tempted by the traditional fine china dining sets (Royal Doulton Signature Gold!) but we already have enough dinnerware for 8 people (the maximum that can fit around our dining table) and I break things so easily that I’d be terrified of ever taking the fine china out. Ditto to expensive glassware.

What’s going on your registry?

So it only took me 2 weeks, but I’m finally done with my list of things to do in a weekend. Mostly as a reminder to myself, here’s my next to do list:

• Go over details with venue
• Start thinking about ceremony decorations
• Choose a reading
• Write vows
• Do final mockup of invitations and order materials
• Figure out dessert table setup, order any bits that need ordering and figure out who will be setting it up
• Sort out ideas for the guestbook
• Figure out table setup and sew table runners
• Start experimenting with (cruelty free) make up brands

Not the most exciting post, I know – to make it up to you, here’s some recent things I’m loving from the wedding world that ended up on my Pinterest board.

1. Hand carved rubber stamp sets from MemiTheRainbow; 2. Adorable wedding favour via SMP, photo by Brandon Kidd; 3. Cute veil by Tessa Kim, via SMP; 4. Origami lotus flower decoration by fishandlotus; 5. Origami place cards from a lovely wedding on A Practical Wedding

I meant to blog about this forever ago – finally a bridal fair that looks like it won’t make make me cringe. First Comes Love is an alternative bridal fair for people who want something a bit different from the conventional wedding, which is right up my alley. The list of exhibitors looks excellent (and not overwhelmingly large), I like that it’s in a pub and the whole thing seems to have a great vibe. I probably shouldn’t be going to any bridal fairs as we’ve already booked most of what we need, but I love a chance to chat with creative peoples.

Details:

Saturday 18th June 2011 – 12 noon to 6pm
Sunday 19th June 2011 – 12 noon to 6pm

Upstairs @ the Oxford Hotel
368 Oxford Street, Leederville, Western Australia 6007

It’s the start of a long weekend here in Perth (not that it matters to me as a freelancer, but I’m waiting on some things and don’t have much work to do on Monday anyway), so I hereby dub this A Weekend of Getting Wedding Shizzle Done (Amongst Other Stuff). At just over 4 months to go, I really need to be getting a move on! Here’s my to do list:

• Finish invitation design
• Design map card and a card explaining gifts
• Order or find paper samples
• Actually send out the email Save the Dates I designed ages ago and forgot about
• Send our celebrant our picks for the ceremony, so I can get that moving and start designing the program!
• Get The Boy’s parents to translate the invitation into Chinese, to go on an extra insert
• Discuss flowers with the friend who is helping me with them
• Contact the dress shop to see how my dress is going
• Go through the buffet menu substitutions and make a decision on what will be served

I’m squeezing this around social things, a photoshoot and a ton of exercise, so we’ll see how we go!

About time for a post with some actual pictures!

Flowers have never been a particularly big thing for me. I buy the occasional bunch of flowers to decorate our apartment when the mood strikes, but that’s about as far as it goes. I don’t even really like to grow flowers – I prefer things I can actually eat – apart from some chamomile I started as seeds and am hoping to be able to harvest the flowers from for tea. So as horrific as it seems to some, I’m not hiring a florist and decided to do the flowers for the wedding myself, with the help of a generous friend who does flower arranging as a hobby.

She’s asked me to have a think about what kind of flowers I want to have, so I’ve been looking around for inspiration from blogs. I want the colours to be mainly yellow and white, and I want the bouquets and any table decorations to be simple and hardy enough that I won’t be stressing out about them too much. But based purely on appearance, here’s a few things that I like:

I thought I was being good and keeping the links to the pages these photos are from, but they’re all just saved as the Style Me Pretty homepage! Apologies to the florists/photographers, I will do my best to keep track of things and give credit better.

I don’t know all the flowers here, but from what I know I’m loving the round yellow billy balls, silvery grey succulents, bright yellow or white chrysanthemums, and adorable teeny daisies (are they chamomile? If so I love that it’s a flower that also makes a great tea!). I have no idea how readily available these flowers are here in Australia in October, apart from chrysanthemum which I see everywhere – and honestly I think I’d be happy with just that!