Save the Date! ♥

Before we got engaged, I hadn't really thought of Save the Date cards, and when buying wedding magazines and surfing the net, it became more apparent they were pretty popular. The concept of them, is to send out a card with the date and perhaps the location of your wedding before the invitation, so guests can get it booked off work in plenty of time. I've seen some nice idea's for Save the Date cards.

Some people like to take a photo with themselves in, and send that out by itself, or a formal card like the invitation. Here are some examples.

The idea is to be short, sweet and one sided. I like the photograph concept, however for ours I wanted something that would give an idea of the theme of the wedding. The card below is more like what I seem to come across more regularly, as it's straight to the point.

So, after a little while messing around on Photoshop, I came up with a design that I quite like for ours. Also, I am going to send ours out as magnets, so our guests can stick them on the fridge, and not forget! They will be about Credit Card size and come with little envelopes. They are priced at 20 for £6.99, or £8.99 with envelopes if you require them. If you don't fancy your chances with Photoshop, there are also some pre-designed magnets, that you can personalise with your names and date. 

I've got to do a final count of the guest list before I know how many to order. Obviously it is one card per house hold, so I think it's going to be around 50, which is a little annoying with it being 20 per pack. Nevermind! The link to the Ebay seller for the magnets is HERE.

This is the first design I have done, I wanted something a little bit vintage and floral. I'm a little unsure about the font looking at it now though, I'm not sure if it's right for the theme. But, that's what it's all about, trial and error and I shall get there in the end.

I'm not actually sure on when to send these, I'm thinking around Christmas or just after in January, with just over a year to go so they don't get mixed up with the Christmas post. 

Thanks for reading, tomorrow is my first Weight Watchers weigh in, so a post on #OperationWeddingDress will be coming either tomorrow evening or Wednesday morning! I'm a little nervous, but I think I've lost at least a pound (out of my pocket), so I'm not sweating it too much. 

Tilly xXx

P.S. I've just done a quick Save the Date card with the use of my background, and I think I much prefer it. I'm thinking when I receive them, to stick a little pearl heart in one of the top corners to make it a little bit more pleasing to the eye. Reckon it's better than the first one?

X

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