What I Learnt From My Wedding

This entry will pretty much rundown all of the things that I wish I had known before/on my wedding day.

Hopefully someone reading this will be helped!

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Let me start off by saying: My wedding was amazing. I really really loved it.

It was a very beautiful day and a lot of fun.

I do not, however, wish to ever repeat this day. Ever.

As much fun as it was, when the evening came, I was glad it was over.

My husband agrees with me!

It was such a busy, insanely hectic and stressful day, I don't want to ever go through that again.

I'm glad its over. It was great. But I'm glad its over.

People told me: "Enjoy the day! It goes by so fast! You'll wish it lasted longer! Blink and you'll miss it!"

I disagree. Yes, it does go by quickly, but that is a GOOD THING!

It's such an unbelievably nerve-wracking and panic-inducing time and I'm glad it flew by.

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If you're like me, and you get stressed very easily, try to have your wedding day planned out pretty precisely.

L and I had written up runsheets, and we did stick to these. But we missed a few things out:

SNACKS:

Firstly, girls, if you are having snacks while getting ready, have these set out the NIGHT BEFORE!

I didn't do this, and I wish I did.

I had a whole bunch of fruit I wanted to cut up, but it didn't happen.

Your best time to eat a good meal is early in the morning, by the time you've been up for awhile, your nerves will have set in and then you aren't going to be able to stomach anything.

I ate a bowl of grapes and crackers/chips with dip.

Make sure you have food available that won't mess up your makeup.

LAY OUT WHAT YOU'RE WEARING

I very nearly forgot to put my earrings in, and I forgot to wear my special wedding perfume!!!! NOOOOO!!!!! This happens very easily. In the chaos of your wedding day, you just straight-up forget!

My tip is to put all the things you are putting on (including perfume) in a special area so there is no way to miss anything!

TELL YOUR FAMILY NOT TO BE LATE

At my wedding, I was early. Because its me, and I'm obsessed with being on time.

My family didn't show up as early as I would have liked, and L was stressing out.

Tell your family/friends/misc guests EXACTLY WHEN to show up.

I should have been more strict with everyone and told them all to show up at 1.30pm.

If I could change that, I would've.

At the end of the day, I was right on time and everyone was there, but poor L was freaking out because family didn't turn up early. So if you can avoid this, you should try!

My extended family, minus the Uncle, Aunt and two cousins who left right after the Ceremony

TELL PEOPLE NOT TO LEAVE AFTER CEREMONY

Usually you take family photos after the ceremony, and that is what we did.

Unfortunately our officiant didn't tell the wedding guests not to leave after the ceremony because we would be taking photos.

A whole portion of my family, my mother's sisters family, left.

So they were not there for our family photo.

This is not the worst thing ever, but it is pretty frustrating. Both my mother and I were quite annoyed by this.

Make sure your officiant tells everyone in the church that there will be photos and for them NOT TO LEAVE.

INVENTORY ALL THE THINGS

Make sure you write a detailed list of all the things that should be at your ceremony/reception.

The day L and I set up our reception was very busy and chaotic, we COMPLETELY forgot the iPod we bought especially to play music as well as the cake knife and server we also bought especially.

I realise now that the reason this happened was because the iPod and cake stuff were not in the same place as all the reception stuff.

We should have made sure everything was in the same area so it all went to the reception in one go.

Luckily L's sister (who was a MAJOR help to us!!!) went and got the cake knife during the reception!

HONEYMOON PACKING- OH THE DRAMA

This was a complete disaster. In fact it was, aside from the cake knife, the only major things that went wrong at the wedding, so we did pretty well!!!!!!

I found that packing for the honeymoon was almost impossible.

I did it a few days before and it was just so hard and I forgot so many things.

L came and got my bags on the wedding day and took them to our hotel room, but because I was still using a lot of the stuff that I needed on the honeymoon, they didn't get packed into these bags.

I therefore put them all in my handbag and intended on taking this with me in the limo when I went to the wedding ceremony.

There was a huge drama about where this handbag ended up, and I freaked out, thinking it was left in the limo or lost somewhere.

Turns out I had left it at the house, along with a lot of other things. L's sister found the bag when she went to get the cake knife, thank goodness.

The day after the wedding I realised I had forgotten SO MUCH STUFF at home, so we had to return to better pack for the honeymoon..

It's just too hard.

TRY AND GET SLEEP

I got to sleep on the eve of the wedding just fine, but I woke up to use the bathroom around 5am and I couldn't sleep after that.

I was SO NERVOUS.

I was tossing and turning and my mind wouldn't stop.

I was really hard.

I don't know how you'd combat this. I tried to stay in bed til 7am (I had told everyone I would be forcing myself to stay in bed til 9), then I was up.

I was just too nervous. So so nervous. It felt like the nerves I get before I play a gig, but a lot worse.

Once I was up and walking around I felt better, but a few hours before the wedding I started freaking out REALLY BAD.

I wish to never feel that way again!!!!

TRY TO EAT

Because of the nerves, you may find it hard to eat.

But you should try your best to do so!

The food at our reception was delicious, but I couldn't eat half of it.

I was just too all over the place. I was starving when I got to the reception, and ate all I could, but was not able to finish my plate.

It's just really really hard. I can't even really explain why. Everything is going on around you and your stomach just won't accept all the food you want to give it.

But try your best!!!!!

ITS OVER BEFORE YOU KNOW IT

It really is. Enjoy it. It does go by quickly, but that is a good thing.

And things will go wrong, but hopefully you can sort them out without too many tears.

Good luck to all the future brides out there!

I hope this has helped!!!!!

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How I Made My Table Numbers

Hello blog,


I haven't written in a little while.



So fun fact, it's still a little over a month til the wedding but I'm ALL FINISHED!

L and I have done heaps since my last entry.
Such as this sign:

Lyndon cut and shaped it and stained the wood, and I painted the words.


Well, apart from the wedding favours, which I'm not putting together until the week of the wedding.

But aside from that, I'm all done.



I wanted to write about how I did my table numbers, which was all DIY and took some time.

I also recently did the wedding playlist which took SO LONG! Oh my goodness.

I kept putting off because I knew it would take ages and I wasn't wrong!


But anyway, here is how I did my table numbers.


I started out by buying a bunch of card (that were the same as our wedding colours).



I then

I then hooked my laptop up to the TV and opened up a Word document.
I typed out all the numbers, the traced the numbers onto a scrap piece of paper.

Here you can see all the different numbers I traced.

Here's the Word document with the numbers on it on my laptop.

 I then traced over the scrap of paper onto the good card to there was a visible indent.
Then I traced over the indent on the card so I could more easily cut it out.
This is how it looked after I cut out all the numbers and with the second coloured card showing through.

The last step was gluing all the different cards together with glue stick.

I cut out two sets of each number so every card had a number on the front and back.

If I could do it again, I would have traced the numbers on the scrap of paper onto the card backwards, because some of the card got quite messy when I traced directly onto the card from the indent.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

But yes, that's how I did it!

It actually looks really good. It's amazing how using an actual font makes such a different.

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Further more, I really don't know what else to write.

If you have ANY questions for me at all, you should ask!

I'm watching TV while writing this so I'm finding it hard to focus on more than one thing at once.


Here's a funny picture I took of something L wrote when he was 11 years old.

Classic.

Til next time:

Dear Wedding Etiquette- I Disagree!

Greetings my lovely readers,

Thank you for joining me in this exciting installment.
I'm not feeling too great (please see this blog to find out why --> http://girlthateatschips.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/being-woman-hurts-period.html ).

For this reason I will hopefully not make this very long.

I've been meaning to write this particular post for a while now but I just never seem to get round to it.
Well I'm forcing myself to write about it now.

I literally just got back about five hours ago from a wedding weekend away in Tauranga, so I have weddings on the brain.
Figured now was probably just a good a time as any to write an open letter to the person who makes the rules about wedding etiquette.

Some wedding etiquette makes a lot of sense, some of it is D-U-M-B with a capital D!

You are, of course, allowed to disagree with me.
But this is MY OPINION, so NO, I am not WRONG.
Please don't be offended, I am writing this to entertain more than anything.

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Dear Wedding Etiquette,


Some of your rules are silly, and, dare I say it, stupid.



1.
You tell me that I simply must allow all my family members to bring a date.


No.


I shall not.


If I have never met the person and I do not know them from a bar of soap, and they are not married to this particular family member, then no. They do not need to come to my wedding.

I'm sure they don't mind.


If they knew that their attendance meant that a very dear friend of mine would miss out, then if they are decent human beings, they would give up their spot.
I know I would!

I'm sorry random girlfriend of my cousin, but you are not invited.

This rule is stupid.







2.
Wedding etiquette states that you should NEVER hand write on your wedding invitations.

COULD YOU EVEN IMAGINE?!

HANDWRITTEN WORDS ON YOUR INVITATIONS?!!!?!?


WHAT. A. DISTASTER!!!!!


Tacky. Pure tack.




I'm sorry to inform you, but I did it.


I did it just because you told me I couldn't.

Haha. No, that's not actually the reason.



Instead of working out how to use mail merge and getting each guest's name printed precisely on the invite and forking out even MORE money than the small fortune I already paid, I HAND WROTE NAMES.


I know. I'm a bad girl.

A rebel, even.


I'm not even sorry.


You can suck it, wedding etiquette! I saved time, money and stress!!!!!!







3.
Don't include gift information on your invitation.


Um, hello?!?!!? Greedy, much??


If you do this, your guests will think you want them to BUY YOU A PRESENT.


Its not as if you are paying thousands of dollars to throw a massive party and inviting them as special guests who will get a free show (I find getting married is a bit like a show), dinner, presents and who knows what else?!

You cannot expect them to get you a gift, especially not since they are your friends and would probably throw money at you if you didn't give them gift information.


Etiquette clearly states that gift information should be passed on to guests through word of mouth.


Don't mind the fact that no one would ever be able to remember the weird gift registry website name you chose, and that your mother will list a bunch of things you didn't actually want to her friends and you'll end up with five soup-makers.

I chose to put gift information in the invitations pack, on a separate card of course.


I even stated that people didn't have to give us anything.

Because they don't.







4.
Don't ever ever ever ever ever have a cash bar.


It is rude.



Sorry, but I'm totally having a cash bar.


As someone who doesn't like alcohol or what it does to people, I didn't think it was appropriate for me to freely supply alcohol at my wedding.


L and I thought that instead of having a completely dry wedding, we'd allow our guests to purchase alcohol for themselves.

That way if they REALLY wanted it that badly they could supply it to themselves, within reason I hope.




You can suck it, wedding etiquette.


I am not paying for people to get wasted.



When I drank alcohol, I got wasted at weddings. It's too easy.



I would not care for it happening at my own wedding.

Hopefully our friends and families respect L and I enough as extremely light/non-drinkers to keep themselves in check.







5.
Send out invitations a few months before the wedding.


It's not as if people have to book flights and get time off well in advance or anything.




I DISAGREE I DISAGREE I DISAGREE!!!!!!!!!


This is probably the dumbest rule I have come across.



I think the sooner you get those invites out the better.


I had a friend who didn't get me her invite til about a month before her wedding and I couldn't go because it was too late to get flights and time of work.
I was extremely upset.


If she had sent her invites out 6-8 months before the wedding, this would not have happened.



L and I gave out our invitations 7 months before our wedding date, and I think it was genius.


It's still over 3 months away and I have almost all my RSVP's and am going to start sorting out table seatings, food, favours, table decorations and arrangements etc well before we even reach the wedding month.

Most people do all these things less than a month to go.



STUFF YOU, WEDDING ETIQUETTE! You are so stupid sometimes.








6.
The wedding week crunch.




Okay, this isn't so much of an etiquette thing, but it is something I am trying to AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!


If all goes as planned, my wedding will be ALMOST totally organised well before the day.


I am not leaving ANYTHING til the last minute.



Why would you put yourself through that if you have ample time to do it in advance?



I do not cope well with stress so I want my weeks leading up to the wedding to be smooth sailing, with nothing really left to do.


I will, of course, document my journey on this blog, so let's see how I go!

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Our wedding isn't far away now, we are almost headed into the double digits!
So exciting!


Stay tuned for more silly wedding stuff from me.

I will give you a proper update of what I have left to do in the next month or so.



x



DAYS TIL THE WEDDING: 103