It's all coming together!

Whilst I was busy (not) working last night, I was chatting to my friend about the wedding planning. I showed her the draft of our new invitation, and (unprompted) she said she really liked the wording. She said it was casual and friendly rather than stuffy - phew! One less thing to think about.

I also showed her a picture of the cake that we're basing our cake design on - she loved that too. Then she said something really interesting.

"The invite, and the cake, and the dress - it all fits together. It totally works with what you're trying to do; creates the right mood."

Wow. I was hoping that when we had everything together (i.e. in april), we would manage to create the fun atmosphere we're hoping for. To be told that we're already achieving it is awesome. It makes me glad that we started with the big picture, and have really concentrated on that. We refer to it whenever we need to make a decision - is this us? is it fun? If the answer to those is yes, and it's within budget, the decision is made. It actually makes the decision-making process really easy - we don't worry about the overall 'look,' just the feeling. Although this was number six on the list, it's definitely the top priority.

I hope my friend is right and our process is working. My biggest wish for the day is that us and our guests have a really great time and laugh lots. My other wish is for lots of awesome photos, but this will be made easier if everyone's having fun!

Actually letting go of control

I keep saying that I am trying to be relaxed about details that are not on our priority list. I genuinely mean it, and mainly I think I am achieving it. Or I thought I was.

We've just got back to Auckland after two weeks in the South Pacific. I wasn't planning to do anything wedding related whilst we were there, but the last few days we had wifi and not much else to do. You can guess what happened. I started by catching up on my blog reading, and ended up doing etsy and google image searches. Then I pestered Gadget with my findings.

He was surprisingly agreeable to this. In fact, he found a great idea for an invitation and decided on table names. The table names are still provisional as we don't know how many tables we're having, but they'll be easy to adapt.

The invitation is a more concrete decision. There isn't a finished design, because we've decided to go down the route of having custom artwork on our invites. Given that we're sending evites and there is very little money budgeted for stationary, this would have been a problem if I didn't have a talented brother.

My little brother (who is very tall and not little at all) is an amazing artist and has very kindly agreed to do the artwork for us. I think he'd rather have been asked months ago when he wasn't working and was still in the UK with his graphics tablet, but never mind!

This means that I no longer have control of the invites. I don't have the design to tinker with whenever I want, and I don't get to determine when they'll be ready. I've told my brother the deadline is December, and now I will have to leave him to it until he has something to show me. And that's actually quite hard.

This is the first decision I've made that has meant handing over control. Obviously I'll still approve the final design and text work, but the process is now in the control of someone else. And that feels very odd.

I'm surprised by these feelings, as I haven't had them with other things. My MOH bought shoes for my page boys last week - and I'm very happy with them. I have no need to be present for every purchase or consulted for every decision. If it's not on the priority list, then it just needs to happen.

The invites (and stationary in general) are not on the priority list. Having said that, they are one of the few parts of my wedding that I have thought about over the years. I'm happy with the plan for the invites, and I'm happy that my brother knows what we want. I guess I'll just have to come to terms with feeling a bit out of control!

Feeling a bit bitty

I've been trying to write a post for a few days, but between a bad week at work and trying to get ready to go away (we're going to Fiji today!) it's been hard to find the time. Then when I do find a few minutes, I stare at a blank screen and can't work out what to write!

We haven't achieved much wedding wise recently. My parents found some ties and pocket squares for the guys which sound like they were a bargain, so that's one thing done. My mum has also bought a dress (for her), but it might not be the right dress (watch this space, it hinges on the accessories)!

I'm racking my brains to see what else we've done. I think these last few weeks have been mainly about groundwork. We've done lots of googling and pinning and making short lists. This includes the song for our first dance (trying to find something that we like, that isn't soppy and is ok to dance to = quite hard), ideas for honeymoon destinations and invites.

The invites are not going to be finished any time soon. I've discovered it's not just the wording that's wrong but the design too. The problem is that I started from the designs I would have used if I'd made them by hand and translated that into photoshop. It doesn't translate well. Gadget also rightly mentioned that most people will be viewing our invite on a screen, so it needs to be designed to look good on a screen. That means landscape is better than portrait, and probably a purple background with white writing will be better than a white invite with purple writing. So it's back to the drawing board (aka the pinterest board), and start again when we're back from holiday.

I intend to do nothing wedding related in the next two weeks, so hopefully I'll be full of inspiration and motivation when I return!