Wedding Dresses ♥

Now the venue has been chosen, and the theme is on the right track, my head has been full of what to do next. With just over 20 months to go, it gives me plenty of time to decide on a wedding dress. It is probably one of the most exciting parts of it and I think I plan to buy it around 6 to 8 months before. I really want to shift some weight first, as I'm no spring chicken and I'm a real foodie, which unfortunately shows the minute I put an M&M near my lips. It is a big issue for me, but I can't seem to combat it at the minute for some reason. I think it's all getting in the right frame of mind, trouble is a meal out is something my Fiancé and I really enjoy doing, when really it's lethal. More on that another day.

So after scouring through a million wedding magazines, and pages among the net, I have finally came up with a wedding dress style I like. I want to keep it along with the vintage theme, have something different with plenty of lace. I'm not a fan of these generic satin dresses, when I'm watching 'Don't Tell the Bride', they all look the same. Other people look really nice in them when they are on, but they are just not for me. 

I plan to buy my wedding dress off Ebay. They have some amazing designs, and at phenomenal prices for a custom made fit. Of course, I shall still go and try some on to get an idea of what suits me, but once a bargain hunter, always a bargain hunter. Here are some I have found and loved.

I would prefer something with shoulder straps or some way of holding up the dress rather than the 'boob tube' style. I don't fancy hoiking it up all day. Also I'm pretty broad shouldered, so I'd prefer to take the edge off that too. These are two however, that I loved anyway without shoulder straps.

My favourite at the moment is this dress here. It's different, has side shoulder straps, and abundance of lace with a vintage feel to it still. I absolutely love it, and all for a hundred pounds. I understand it's risky, but I'd rather pay fifty quid to get it altered than another two grand to have a designer label put in the back. That still looks amazing to me, and although it might not be to everyone's taste, it's just what I'm after. The only trouble is with Ebay, dresses like this come and go so I have to scour it everyday to see what is still there. We shall see nearer to the time, but this is certainly a contender if it would still be there. 

Have you bought wedding or bridesmaid dresses off Ebay? I'd love to know!

Thanks for reading,

Tilly xXx

Theme - The Beginning Mood Board ♥

Now we've got the venue, and a good idea of what it looks like, we can start building up theme ideas. I can picture little bit's and bob's to go here and there, and what to use to decorate the venue. As for our theme, I love vintage-ness! I am a big fan of quirky, pretty, Parisian Vintage, so that is what I'm aiming to go for. Obviously, everyone has unique tastes, so it's great to sift through websites like Pinterest to pick and personalise little ideas from each image. 

Think Lace, Taffeta and Peonies, oh and not to mention La Tour Eiffel. Suitcases, birdcages, candles, bunting, mason jars, ribbon fairy lights, bows, pearls - are just some of the things that have me inspired. 

So this gives you a general theme on our wedding. The three main colours being a pastel turquoise (to correspond with my hair!), a pastel pink and a light gold/champagne colour. I didn't particularly just want to stick with a general colour because it makes it harder to get items to correspond, or dresses to match etc. Especially when I am getting a lot of things from Ebay, where the exact colours differ, so it makes things a little more lenient when it comes to colour matching.

Do you like the vintage theme, or had it for your own wedding? I'd love to know! The only thing I'm worried about is shifting so much stuff, especially the flowers, 150 miles up the road the day before! Any tips would be handy! Thanks for reading!

Tilly xXx

The Venue ♥

Today's post is all about the venue. The next stage in the process that we have encountered so far. As mentioned in the previous post, we took a fairly casual approach and it all came from nowhere really. It was nice to find somewhere we both felt confident with, and both agreed on out of the blue. We had been to a few wedding open days closer to home, but they all had something we didn't like or didn't agree with. So at a point I started to feel like 'We will never find anywhere', even though we hadn't been looking for long, you can start getting excited when it's actually booked.

We stumbled across this venue when we had to go up to the Lake District on business. I'd never been to the Lakes before, and didn't realise how nice it was! The views are stunning, it's very green, and filled with Sheep. What more could a girl ask for? There's no where like this near home, so we decided to re-visit for pleasure in March. This is the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal, if you wish to look at their website, click HERE. 

After staying for a second time, the conversation arose that we both loved the hotel, and that it would be a great wedding venue for us. We decided to ask for the brochure just on a whim, and we managed to have a little sneak peak into one of the wedding rooms whilst a wedding was on, and it looked really nice. After much discussing and deciding to bite the bullet, we pencilled in a provisional date of April 2014 just because it was the first half of that year, and just out of wedding season which is a great help to the old budget. We might just have a little ray of sunshine in April too, fingers crossed.

What we also liked about this hotel is that it has the option of getting wed in the outdoor Gazebo. It's so pretty, and after a little DIY jazzing up, it could look the dogs! If it was to rain however, they also set up a room inside for the just-in-case moment. We have opted for the Gazebo as we thought it would put a bit of a different twist on it. After a couple of months we went for a full tour of the hotel. In my Pukka Pad, I wrote down all the questions I had to ask. The wedding co-ordinator was lovely and helpful and pretty much answered them before I had the chance. So at this stage, we have secured the date and paid a deposit of £500.00, which we thought was very good as most were at least £1000.00.

After briefly discussing numbers and figures with the wedding co-ordinator, we came up with a figure that we agreed on after jiggling a few things around, and we are really pleased. If you have this to come soon, don't feel like you can't ask to take away something and add something else. For example, in the package, half a bottle of wine was provided for each person but we said it would be better to just have a glass, and that saved us a fair bit! It's your money and budget to do what you want, and they were actually more lenient than we first thought, so it doesn't hurt to ask! This was us after pencilling in the date!

So there is the venue, new post coming soon!

Tilly xXx

Organisation & Inspiration ♥

So we got engaged, what next? I was so excited I didn't know where to start! We landed back in the UK from our trip from Paris, and were greeted with Champagne at the in-laws house to celebrate. A few weeks later they threw a surprise party with all of my side of the family as well. It was a nice day and totally unexpected! 

We had no idea when we were going to get married really. We hadn't structured it so that 'we must go and find a venue', we took a slightly more laid back approach. Working in a hotel myself at the time, and seeing many weddings every week, I got a pretty good idea of what was expensive/inexpensive, plenty of dresses, themes and the same Grooms speech off the internet. Although I worked in a country house style hotel, I didn't want to get married there due to being in work everyday so it was out of the question. We went to a few wedding open days and that's probably the best thing to do at the beginning.

The venue is what we decided to do first, as you can work everything around that, and imagine your decor or theme fitting in with it etc. The one hotel we looked at called Coombe Abbey was amazing. We had stayed there a couple of times, but it is excruciatingly expensive and so it was a no. I had been collecting leaflets and booklets at the wedding open days, so let me introduce you to your new best friend.

This is a little section folder I picked up from Tesco. They had some pretty ones in their up to date collections for about £4.00, but I walked round the corner to the little sale section and this badboy was in there for £1.50. It's sturdy and can fit A4 items in it so no bending papers or leaflets to squish them in. This blog will be all about bargains, because we all could do with a bargain or two.

My Mom got me this Pukka pad. It's great because it has sections already in it for you to name, so you can divide your wedding categories up. I have found this so useful already, even with 21 months to go! I have got  sections such as Guests, Dresses, Inspiration and Colour Scheme.

Any magazine I get, be it a fashion magazine or a little one free at Asda, I've been cutting to bits and putting in the Pukka Pad for colour schemes or inspiration. It takes a bit of time but I think it will be nice to look back on. As for wedding magazines, I have managed to build up a good collection already, but I don't like cutting those up because they have inspiration and pretty pictures in anyway.

It's nice to make a word montage to reflect your wedding!

Leaflets and Booklets on venues, cakes, photographers will all come in handy. Also great to keep in the file. Here is a little sneak peak of our venue, but a full post on that coming next.

Other good places for inspiration are websites like Tumblr and Pinterest. There are thousands of wedding images including loads of DIY projects. Click HERE for my Pinterest page, and HERE for Tumblr. There are also many great blogs about DIY weddings, just have a search through Google or a great website called Stumble Upon, where you can search for blogs via your interests. 

I hope this was of use to you in some way! If you have any good websites or organisation tips, I'd be grateful to know!

Tilly xXx

Hello & Welcome! ♥

Hello There! Nice to meet you. My name is Tilly, and I am a 22 year old bride-to-be from England. You may remember me from such blogs as: tilldazzled.blogspot.com ! If not however, this is a completely different blog to that. Here I would like to share with you everything I encounter along the journey to my wedding day. It will not only help me pass the time, but could also help you with little pieces of inspiration. As you may have gathered from the title, I plan to 'DIY' most things for my wedding with the help of my family, so here I shall keep a record of it all.

A little introduction...

This is me and my fiancé Ed at the top of the Eiffel Tower about a minute after he got down on one knee! It was amazing, pouring down with rain but we didn't care. It was my 21st birthday and the best one I've ever had! It was planned because we went and had the ring designed and made together, which is also something really special as there isn't another one in the world! He is the love of my life and my childhood sweetheart, or first love if you wish. We met when I was 14 and he was 15 over MSN messenger through friends. We didn't meet in person for about a year, but webcam chatted every night and it very quickly became apparent that something special was blossoming.

To cut a very long lovely story short, we have been together for more or less 5 years, and have talked about getting wed for as long as we can remember. We have been engaged a year now, and have booked our venue, which I will talk about in an up and coming post. Our date most importantly is *drumroll please* :

Friday 18th April 2014.

It is currently 21 months away, which is a fair old time, but we aren't getting married near our hometown, so we have a lot to organise!

This is a current photo of us, so you know who is on the other end of the keyboard! :) 

I do plan at this stage to keep my blue hair for the wedding, but we shall see...

So there is a brief introduction for you, I look forward to sharing with you my escapades and journey along the way to being a Mrs. Please follow if you would like to, and I will certainly check out any of your blogs that you recommend! Thanks for reading and a new post up very soon!

Tilly xXx