Entries Tagged 'ideas' ↓

I made a little discovery today and I’ve had so much fun with it!

Are you stuck with picking a colour scheme for your wedding?

Try this – the DeGraeve.com Color Palette Generator!

It is actually used for generating colour codes for website and blog designing, but I had a ball!

Have you discovered Pinterest yet? I wish it had existed when I was planning my wedding…

Its a fantastic place to pin anything and everything you think you might want to incorporate into your own wedding, and its SOOO much easier than adding a website or a link to your shortcuts or favourites list! I don’t know about you but half the time when I am looking for something I’ve seen- I go to Google, not my “Favourites”. Using Pinterest you can immediately see a picture showing you why you pinned it to your board, and clicking on the picture will take you back to the link you liked in the first place!

Its awesome!

I now have several wedding-related boards on Pinterest. It started out with just one, but I’m gradually splitting them up so they’re easier to look at… Here they are:

In various parts of the USA, the bride and groom write special love letters to each other, and these letters are delivered by the maid of honour and best man- or other trustworthy person- whilst the couple are preparing for their big day!

I think its a glorious idea.

There’s so much happening on a couple’s wedding day that often the romance disappears until they wake up the next day! Imagine sitting having your hair done and you get a love letter from your fiance! Its a special little reminder of why you have spent months planning and emailing and organising and driving yourself and others crazy!

This is Cassey and Jerrall’s story, in Cassey’s own words!

Our engagement was no elaborate affair. After we’d been dating for about 8 months, we were just hanging out and chatting about something arb. We decided that it would be something we’d do after we’d both finished our studies and were in a good spot financially. It was very important to both of us that we’d be able to pay for our wedding ourselves. When Jerrall got a job in Durban, I decided to go with him even though we weren’t engaged yet, and it seems that time when we only had each other was just what we needed to get the ball rolling for marriage.

We’d been together for about four and a half years when we started planning our wedding.

Our wedding was tiny- 30 people including the two of us.

It was on a wine farm and we did most of the stuff ourselves, but had help from friends. A friend’s sister worked at the wine farm, and helped us get a discount on the venue due to it being so small. She also put us in touch with the person that did the most amazing flowers. Everything for the venue, food, flowers and photos was done via e-mail as we planned for a wedding in Cape Town while being in Durban.

Our friends helped a lot, one made our invitations, another the table cards with our thank you notes inside them, one gifted the wine and champagne and the other had a very talented younger sister who we hired to do our photos for next to  nothing.

I had my dress made for under R1000 including the fabric, and my shoes were a gift from a friend. I borrowed a friend’s tiara and wore it as an aliceband, and we bought my husbands suit the day before the wedding – he arrived back in SA just two days before the wedding!

I did most of the planning, but he had some input, our starter was a mini burger coz he loves them.

We also used our cake for dessert and it had green, white and pale pink polka dots on them – our theme and colours. I think the burgers and the polka dots made it unique to us. Oh, and the fact that my maid of honour was a guy!

Not to forget that we sat with our guests and rotated during the courses. Oh, and there was the music as well, mostly osts from animes we both enjoyed. I even walked down the aisle to music from one of our favourites. It was another thing friends helped with, a friend’s brother has a band and he loaned us his speakers etc. So I’d say the help we had from friends also made it unique to us.

Although the day was our big day, it was special to our friends as well. Many of them helped, and they were all along for another part of our journey as a couple.

Cliched I know, but true.

Their photographer was Nielen Bottomley and she’s on Twitter as @NielenB.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some photographs from their wedding!

If you’ve ever planned a bridal shower- which you may know as a pamper party, a bridal tea, a wedding shower, a kitchen tea or a hen party- you will know that its no small endeavour!

Once you’ve covered the guest list, important family or cultural traditions, decided whether to have a couples shower, a cocktail party or a tea party and chosen the food, you’ll probably be hoping that that’s all there is to it… But if you’re up for it, here are a few suggestions for how you can make your bride-to-be’s shower a simply unforgettable affair!

What about asking each guest to bring a wine glass, a champagne glass, or a teacup and saucer, with which the bride can build up a unique and quirky collection of crockery!

Games for your guests are always a good idea! Watching the bride open her gifts can be dreadfully dull, and you can only “ooh” and “aah” so many times… Playing games- whether you give prizes or not- can help your guests get to know each other and the bride a little better! There are ample games for bridal showers to be found on the world wide web- from scavenger hunts and memory games to toilet paper wedding dress competitions and not being allowed to say certain words. My personal favourite game list is right here!

To do something different, instead of formal games, why not have cupcakes for your guests to decorate! You can have the icing and decorations matched to your bride-to-be’s colour scheme and theme, and each guest can then literally have their cakes AND eat them! Its something different, its fun, you won’t need to buy party favours or cake, and who doesn’t love cupcakes!

If you are planning to decorate your venue, there are endless options from flowers and balloons to paper streamers and banners! It could cost you a fortune, unless you have the time and help to go the DIY route… but if your venue is pretty already, you really need not worry about decor.

You could ask your guests to wrap their gifts with a length of ribbon in a particular colour, which the bride can then ask her florist to incorporate into her wedding bouquet! You could also make the ribbons into a “bouquet” on their own, and the bride can then use it at the wedding rehearsal, or toss this “bouquet” at the wedding reception instead of her own- often very expensive- wedding bouquet.

What about a guest book? In it, your guests can write wishes for happiness and perhaps make a note of what their gift is, enabling the guest of honour to remember who gave her what. Or the hostess could arrange with someone to keep a list of which gift was from which guest as they are opened.

But, before you consider any kind of decor or entertainment for your bride-to-be’s shower, ask her what she would like. Its a celebration of her upcoming marriage, and you would like it to be memorable! If she has mentioned many times how much she’d like to have a “girls night out” at a stylish club, she may not enjoy a champagne breakfast quite as much… Speak to your bride-to-be, and use her input to start your planning.

Have fun and take lots of photos!