A tale of two superheroes

My fiance and I used to run. That is past tense. We, and our respective bodies, have decided we don't like running anymore. 

However, on our second date, we participated in a 12km "fun run". I did not run the whole thing, nor was it fun. But it revealed a lot about his character. He encouraged me to run in sustained bursts, and stayed by my side for the entire 12km. 

Before I had met my now future husband, I resolved to enter the City 2 Surf, which is a 14km run in Sydney. I had planned to wear a Wonder Woman costume to complete the City 2 Surf, as I figured people generally have low expectations of anyone participating in a running event in a costume. As a further indicator that he was my Mr Right, he agreed to participate in the City 2 Surf with me, dressed as The Flash. 

We walked most, ran some and crossed the finish line together. We happily agreed to have our pictures taken afterward, and entered the best dressed competition. We did not win best dressed and really didn't think more of it. 

That was, until the next year when they started advertising for the City 2 Surf in 2013...

On a sleepy Sunday, as we read the newspapers, my now fiance let out a barrage of expletives. When I asked what was wrong, he showed me the newspaper. There we were, as part of a double page spread, in colour. Wonder Woman and The Flash. 

That year, we entered again, dressed as our respective superheroes, and ran much more of the course. We significantly improved our times. Most importantly, we stuck by each others side, encouraged each other through the uphill challenges, enjoyed the downhill stretches and maintained a healthy sense of humour.   

Naturally, there will be a number of elements included within our wedding to represent Wonder Woman and The Flash. Our wedding is not full blown superhero, but there are many more subtle nods such as glassware, flowers, and cake decoration.  

True colours

Following the purchase of my dress, the colours and style of our wedding were quite easy. Even though the main theme of our wedding is cheap and cheerful, I still wanted our venue to be nicely decorated and to have consistency in colour and style from our invitations through to ceremony and reception decorations.  

Posies like these inspired my colour palette. I found this image on Pinterest, but originally posted on Love my Dress.

I wanted muted tones, nothing too bright, bit of a vintage feel. I had not delved into the specific Pantone colours I would require, but the tight arse Gods were smiling on me. My local Lincraft store was closing and they had a 50% off sale. At the time, I thought I would just go along and see what they had. But as I stood there, waiting for the store to open, I sensed the danger of potentially coming between 50 other women and their arts, crafts and haberdashery bargains. When the doors finally opened, there was a crush. Shopping trolleys banged, women ran, stumbled, and hobbled. In the frantic moments before I entered the store I ran through the ideas I had, and tried to take snapshots of the colours and textures I was after. Adding to this, I prioritised my attack based on the expense. 

Number one priority, lace. During my Pinterest trawling for cute wedding ideas, I had seen lace. I could see how this would work. Sure! Lace. Three different types. Tick!

Secondly, hessian. I had seen hessian used in some cool ways. I had thought perhaps it was a little too harsh for the look I had in mind. Fortunately or unfortunately,  all I could find was hessian with some maps and stuff on it. In hindsight, a lack of hessian is a win. 

Next, ribbon. With the hasty mental picture of my colours, I took on the ribbon aisle. Much to my delight, it was completely devoid of any other bargain shoppers. This afforded me the time and space to consider the colours and how they would be used. Ribbon. Four colours, six different widths. Tick! 

Said ribbon...

All of the ribbon is different in width, and as I have began to use it, I have found that I favour the lilac and dusky pink, however all of the ribbon plays a part. All of these colours have influenced the invitations, and will feature in the decoration of the ceremony and reception. Depending on how much ribbon of any colour is left, it may also be used on the bridal car. 

The lace has been used for the decorations but I will share more details of the decorations in a future blog. 

My other Lincraft bargains include calico and some fascinator fabric for my birdcage veil. All up, I halved the cost of lace and ribbon, by being flexible with my vision and impulsive with my decisions. It is not often that I fly by the seat of my pants but this was one journey that saved us some serious dollars.

My (not so) little black book

I have a not so little black book which is full of names, and numbers. 

It details names of venues, phone numbers, guest list, costs, dates, amounts paid, and amounts outstanding. It contains invoices, quotes, receipts, swatches of colours, drawings, pictures from magazines and any other information relevant to our big day. 

Importantly, it tracks expenses so that the entire way through the planning process, we are aware of how much has been spent so far, and what we are looking at as a grand total cost for the wedding. As much as you might keep a running tally in your head, it is quite easy to lose track or overlook costs and every little bit adds up. While we do not have a fixed maximum spend, it all comes back to the equation that it must cost less than it would have to get married in Vegas (based on flying all of our kids and parents there). 

While I do love real books, and being able to sketch ideas, my ipad is an extension of this black book. There have been a lot of things I have shared on my pinterest, I often prefer to screen shot some of the 'secret squirrel' stuff, but most the stuff I will need to refer to repeatedly or in a hurry. 

The black book

Let them eat...pizza!

On one of our many long walks, my fiance and I were discussing some of the wild and crazy things we could do at our wedding. Jokingly we suggested we should have pizza at our wedding instead of a sit down meal. We laughed for a bit, then our thoughts turned more serious.  

We both love pizza. A lot. Pizza has been consumed on many a date, and was the meal we shared on the night of our engagement. So it made sense! 

We were not talking about just dialling Dominos and ordering a stack of pizza, we originally considered holding at wedding at Michael's Family Restaurant, as this seriously the best pizza we have ever tasted. But given the number of people we wanted to share our day and the size of the restaurant, had to abandon this as an option. 

So our attention turned to gourmet pizza that could come to us. We looked into mobile pizza trailers we could call on to come and cook up a storm on site. After comparing all of our options, we finally locked in a local provider. Crunching the numbers, about 80 people will be fed for less than the price of feeding 15 as part of a three course sit down meal. Great value and yummy pizza. Winning! 

We have advised on the invitations that pizza is the main meal, and have asked anyone who cannot or does not eat pizza to give us a call so we can make other arrangements for a meal for them. If my fiance had his way, all non-pizza eaters would be immediately un-invited as we don't need to be associating with those kind of people :) 

I said "yes" to the dress!

When we first started planning our wedding, we wanted something low-key, with our nearest and dearest sharing the afternoon with us. Despite this, I wanted a dress that I loved. 

My pinterest board  "say yes to the dress" was created to save any and all dresses I liked, or liked elements of. I started with dresses in bold colour, lots of sequins, Jessica Rabbit-esque designs. I was looking for more of a party dress than a wedding dress. I kinda felt that with this being my second wedding, I was obliged to scorn any white, ivory, cream creation as I was not worthy of these hues and what they represented for a bride. I poured over episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress", "I Found the Gown", and "Something Borrowed, Something New", trying to find some inspiration for the style of dress I wanted. 

It was not until November that I set foot into a bridal store with the intention of actually starting to try dresses on. Even then, I was primarily looking at their coloured bridal gowns, bridesmaids gowns and evening wear. 

The first half a dozen dresses I tried on were nice, but just not me. I was still somewhat resistant to any white/ivory/cream dresses but did find my resistance was waning as it was these dresses which made me feel special. I did find a one shouldered bridesmaid gown which was lovely, but more fitting of a formal wedding as a guest, than as the bride. Last stop was Kel-Leigh Couture. I nervously entered the store and was greeted by a bubbly assistant, Jade. I explained what I was looking for and she gently walked me through some options, from bridal to evening wear. The first few dresses were lovely, but again, not me. 

Then, it happened. I tried on a dress which was quite simple, but with lovely detail. It fitted like it was made for my body. Could this be it? I tried in my head to talk myself out of loving this dress. It was ivory! It was too much for the style of wedding we had planned! But as much as I tried, I could not un-love this dress. As I was alone, I figured it was somewhat too impulsive to buy the dress then and there, so I made an appointment for a Saturday so that I could gather some of my friends to have a look and get their opinions. 

Two weeks later, I returned to the store. This time with two of my best friends. I was more nervous this time! Would they love it as much as I do? Would they pick out something even better than 'my' dress? I tried on some other designs first, then slipped into 'my' dress. With some oooohhs, some ahhhs, and a little bit of squealing, my fate was sealed. This WAS my dress!

I would love nothing more than to show you pics of the dress. It is divine! But alas you, and the groom, must wait for the big day :)
     

Pick a date, any date...

Deciding on when to get married took a long time. We enjoyed the excitement of our engagement for almost 6 months before we started looking at any dates, locations, etc.

My fiance is a huge Jarryd Hayne and Shane Warne fan. So to 'encourage' the locking in of a date, I looked at their respective birthdays. Hayne, February 15 was going to be cutting it fine as we really only started considering dates in December. Warne, 13 September would mean a spring wedding, and the price premium that goes with it.

We bounced ideas around for a few weeks, contacted a few locations we thought would fit in with the style of wedding we wanted (i.e. cheap/affordable/no fuss).

We did have a focus on a cheap wedding, otherwise we could justify the cost of a Vegas elopement. The decisions we have made, and continue to make, always harp back to, "could this have bought our tickets to Vegas/funded our wedding in Vegas?"

In the end we found an amazing surf club, in winter.

Date locked in.
Venue locked in.

Warnie, Hayne, if you are reading this, please contact us so that we can formally invite you to our wedding :)

He asked and I said, "yes!"

On a beautiful July evening, my amazing boyfriend took me out to dinner to celebrate our recent move and to enjoy our favourite meal, pizza.

After dinner we enjoyed chocolate fondue followed by a walk on our favourite beach.

When we got to a particular patch of sand, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I was laughing and crying at the same time. It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

This blog has been established to share our journey from engagement to marriage. We had always joked about eloping in Las Vegas but we have opted for a small wedding in our local area. It will be minimal fuss, minimal cost but a whole lotta fun. In reality, it is not so much about the wedding, more so getting the marriage bit right.