Monday 29 August 2016

ENGAGEMENT PARTY: PLANNING, TIPS AND IDEAS


Hi lovelies! Another Engagement/ Wedding themed post today, I promise eventually I'll post about something else, but I thought I'd get this post up while it was still fresh in my mind to do so! So, I mentioned in my Bridesmaid Gift post and my Engagement Party OOTD that I'd get a post up all about our Engagement Party, what we did, why we did it, who we invited and some little DIY's that I did for the day!

So, we held our Engagement party at my Parent's house and had a garden party that started in the afternoon and went on into the night. We decided to do it this way as we wanted a really chilled, relaxed environment for everyone to get to know each other and socialise before the wedding. We kept it fairly small and only invited those would be invited to the wedding, some people may not agree but I think this is quite important, we're keeping the wedding quite small as you can definitely go crazy on the guest list, so I didn't want to invite anyone to the engagement party who then wouldn't be getting an invite for the big day! The main thing for us was to get the majority of the two families together so that they'd at least know who everybody was when the wedding comes around.




We kept the decorations fairly minimal but I did want to DIY a few just for a bit of a personal touch. One of my favourite things was this 'D Heart C' hanging sign. I made this simply by cutting the letters out of thick card and gluing scrunched tissue paper to them. It was really cheap and really easy to make. The pink and blue bunting was from The Range and the tassel bunting was a DIY that I found on Pinterest. I won't even try to describe it, so if you'd like to give it a go, I used this tutorial! I got the tissue paper from card shops as I used the kind that you'd typically use to wrap presents, if you could though, I'd recommend using craft shop tissue paper, as the kind I used had creases!

Something that went down really well, particularly with Darren's nieces and nephews, was our party favours. For these, I used cellophane bags filled with various treats. I used Popcorn for the 'He Popped The Question' bags, Party Ring biscuits for the 'He Put a Ring on it' bags and Peppermint Rock for 'She Got Her Rock'. I really loved how these turned out. They were really easy to make, but I did have to make 50 in total, so it took a while. I enlisted the help of my sister with these so that saved some time and I did the rock bags in advance as the sweets were wrapped. If you're going to do the popcorn or party rings though, I'd keep it to the night before or morning of, as they can go stale if they're not tied tight enough!




One thing I'd highly recommend doing if you can is this polaroid guestbook. I had the polaroid camera already and I just bought lots of films to replace throughout the day and evening and guests could snap pics from the party from their perspective (this is just a small selection of the ones we got!) and stick them in with stickers and either sign their name or leave us a message. I think we may even do this sort of thing again on our wedding day as I love silly pictures like this and it's so lovely to look back on.

I absolutely loved our engagement party and I'm so glad we did it the way we did as it was just lovely to have almost everyone that'd be attending the wedding together and getting to know each other in such a chilled out way. As it was during the day,we just did buffet food which was perfect for everyone as we didn't do anything too formal and everyone could pick and choose what they wanted. My sister and I also made a huge completely vegan cake, which I can't for the life of me find a picture of, but that went down extremely well, which I was super pleased about - as a vegan you can't help but feel slightly smug when people enjoy your food!

To finish this post, I thought I'd share a few quick tips for anyone throwing an Engagement party - this is just my opinion, of course you can throw your party any way you like!

  • Keep it simple, too many organised activities or forced dancing can feel very awkward and uncomfortable for people who don't know each other too well yet.
  • Invite only your wedding guests. I think it comes across a little rude inviting anyone who won't be coming to the big day. If you're having a very small wedding, or are planning to elope though, it could be nice to throw an engagement party for those who won't be attending, but I'd make this clear from the get go.
  • Expect gifts, but don't make it a big deal! We didn't ask for or expect gifts at our engagement party at all, but our friends and family were so generous. We kept it low key though and put any gifts away in another room so that anyone who didn't bring something wouldn't feel awkward. We waited until after the party to open them and sent out personal thank you cards to everyone.
  • Say thank you! This ties in with the last point, I do think you should send thank you cards to everyone, not just those who bring gifts. Every person you invited has made an effort to be there and I think it's really important to recognise that.
  • Make an effort to introduce people and chat to everyone. I made sure that I introduced everyone to each other so that everyone knew who they were talking to and I tried my best to take some time to get around and talk to everybody. As I said before, they've made an effort to be there and the least you can do is give them a moment or two of your time! 


So, that's it! I've kept this post as short as possible, but if there's anything else you'd like to know, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions in the comments!


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Monday 22 August 2016

WEDDING WISHLIST*


Bridesmaid's Robe - Boohoo
Bride Night Tee - Boohoo
Wooden Number - Festive Lights
Dream Catcher - eBay
Flip Flop Basket - eBay
Sandals - Etsy

Hi lovelies! Another wedding post for you all today, along with some massively exciting news! It's looking like I've found my wedding dress!! All going well, we should be ordering this week, eek! So, that means the wedding planning is getting pretty real so as you can imagine, I've been coming up with lots of ideas and doing a lot of browsing for wedding things!

I think the Bridesmaid and Bridal robes and PJs are so cute and perfect for the morning of the wedding when you're getting ready. There are so many out there but Boohoo have been one of my favourite sites to look on as the prices are so reasonable! I've got six bridesmaids so spending tons of money on each gown is definitely not an option!

As for decoration on the day, we've not decided 100% what we're going to do yet but I do want to keep it fairly simple. That said, I do absolutely love the Wooden Number lights, they have letters and numbers and I'd love to have either the date or maybe our name/ surname or something! I also love these big white dream catchers, I'm not sure what I'd do with them but I'd definitely love to have them hanging somewhere.

The sandals though you can't see, have blue soles (check out the Etsy page to see!), which I thought was lovely as it means you have your something blue but it's hidden. I'm not too sure, but I think I want flat shoes, at least for part of the day and these look fab! As much as I love heels, I do think it's important to be comfortable too, so I'd love to have an option of some flat shoes to change into. Speaking of which, I think this flip flop basket is just gorgeous and such a lovely idea for all the ladies at your wedding. So many people end up barefoot in the evening and I think to have some flip flops out is much nicer for your guests.

So, that's it! What do you think of my picks?

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Thursday 18 August 2016

SUMMER STYLING: MY ENGAGEMENT PARTY




Hi lovelies! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, as you'll know if you follow me on twitter or instagram, it's been getting pretty real with Wedding planning lately and I've been so busy with it all and as a beauty therapist, summer is definitely the most crazy time of year, so unfortunately, my blog has taken a little bit of a back seat! However, I'm so excited to share the whole process of wedding planning and the lead up to the big day with you all, so it felt like a great time to share the outfit I wore for my engagement party! I did style this around the idea of engagement and weddings, but of course it'd be fab for any other summer party too!

Our engagement party was such a special day, we invited almost everyone that will be attending the wedding, which was great as it meant that they all got to meet before the big day. I'll do a full post on the party itself soon, as it may be helpful to those of you who are engaged/ have friends who're recently engaged!

So, as you can see from the photos above, I decided to go for a white mini dress as I thought this was like a nod to a wedding dress, but much more casual of course! This is a Missguided dress that I bought on ASOS and if you like it, you're in luck as it's currently on sale! Be quick though, as I've noticed a few sizes are now sold out! I bought this in a size 6 which is my usual size and it fit perfectly and I got so many compliments on it from friends and family, I absolutely love it.

I kept it seriously simple with accessories and simply wore my Tiffany necklace as it was a gift from Darren a few years ago and some blue heels that I got from New Look a couple of years ago. They're not in stock any more, but I'm sure you can find similar elsewhere! The idea was to wear a white dress with 'something blue', I wasn't sure if people would catch onto this, but they did and it was definitely a talking point throughout the day!

So, that's it! What do you think of my outfit idea? As you can see, I roped Darren in too and he also wore white with blue shoes! An engagement party (and wedding of course!) is something you'll only do once (hopefully!!) so I really wanted to have fun with it and having the perfect outfit obviously helps! Let me know if you'd like to see more wedding/ engagement type posts in the future as I love doing them.

This post was in collaboration with Ocean Credit Cards as part of their Summer Styling project.

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Wednesday 3 August 2016

'WILL YOU BE MY BRIDESMAID?' GIFT IDEA


Hi lovelies! You have no idea how excited I've been to share this post with you all as it's going to be the first of many Engagement/ Wedding posts on my blog! If you follow me on any social media you'll be aware that my boyfriend (now Fiancé!) Darren and I recently got engaged! I've been absolutely dying to start writing up some posts on the engagement party (which will follow this post shortly!) and early wedding preparations, but I've had to keep it all quiet until after the party in case any of my friends and family had a peek beforehand! One thing I've had to keep extra quiet was my plans for asking my Bridesmaids to be in the wedding. I decided that though we've not yet set a date, I wanted to ask my girls early so they'd know in plenty of time and because all of these girls are such a huge part of my life, I wanted them to each have a special moment at our Engagement party too.

So, obviously I decided to ask my girls at our Engagement party as I knew I'd have all (but one, unfortunately as she was unable to make it!) the girls together in one place and it just seemed like an appropriate time to ask. I'm going to have six girls as my Bridesmaids, three of which are my cousins, two are my best friends from school and of course, my Maid of Honour is my twin sister! I wanted to ask them in a creative way and at the same time, give them each something to show how much I appreciate them. I'd seen so many ideas of ways to ask your girls on Pinterest, so I did take inspiration from that, but I also wanted to include bits and pieces that were actually useful for all the girls, as well as being cute things that made the bags look super pretty!

First up, I bought six matching gift bags and six cards, all from John Lewis. I think you can buy actual Bridesmaid asking cards, but I just really loved these ones and they were totally blank inside, so there was plenty of room to write my own message. Inside each card, I wrote the same message 'I don't know when, I don't know where, but I know I want you there! Will you help me tie the knot and be my Bridesmaid?', I then attached a silver bow necklace to each card, I found these on etsy - I actually can't find the exact seller now, but if you type in silver bow necklace into amazon, etsy or eBay, there'll be tons of options similar to this one. I thought this was really cute as it tied in (figuratively and literally!) with the 'tie the knot' message. I then wrote each girl their own personal message on the other side of the card about how much they mean to me and why I'd love them to be in our wedding. I sort of do know when are where now, but it wasn't set in stone when I gave these out, so I wanted the note to be something that didn't give too much away so I thought this worked perfectly.

To fill each bag, I chose an assortment of things that both looked pretty and should be really useful. All but one of my maids are 18 and over, so for the older girls (except one who doesn't drink wine!) I bought a little bottle of Moscato Sparkling Rose, then for the other two, so it matched, I bought these cute mini bottles of Fentiman's Pink Rose Lemonade from Waitrose. Again, for the older girls, I bought each of them Pink Champagne Truffles from John Lewis (not vegan, but none of my girls are and I don't like to force my views on others!!) and for my youngest lady, some cute pink foil wrapped heart chocolates from The Cocoabean Company, also from John Lewis. I'm pretty sure you're not going to get sloshed on Champagne Truffles, but I thought plain old chocolate would probably be her preference anyway!

You could absolutely leave each gift bag at that with the drink, chocolates and necklace, but I have an absolute obsession with gift giving and wanted to get a few more bits to make the bags extra special and slightly more personal to each girl. So, I picked up a set of seven miniature perfumes from Next, I thought this was fab as each perfume had it's own cute little box too, so it just made it look that bit prettier! I then tested each one (sorry if you're reading this girls, your perfume is missing one spray!) and decided which perfume would best suit which of the girls. I then also got two packs of three mini notebooks from Home Bargains and put a colour and design to suit each girl into their bags.

Finally, I found these cute mini manicure sets in a local discount shop and I thought they were perfect, as they fitted my colour scheme (these aren't necessarily our Wedding colours, but they matched the Engagement party theme!) and the flamingos tied in with the ones on their cards. For my youngest bridesmaid, I got a cute little pink rose pocket mirror, as she's only 11 at the moment and I wasn't sure her parents would be pleased with me giving her a set of tweezers - I tried to do my own brows at that age and the result wasn't pretty! Finally, I picked up six tiny nail polishes from Superdrug, this was kind of to show the possible direction I'm thinking of going in with wedding colours, but also just because I thought it completed the gift bag quite nicely.


So that's it! That's how I asked my girls to be my Maids! I'd love to know your thoughts on this and if you've done anything similar, or any wedding themed blog posts, I'd love for you to leave a link in the comments!

Let me know if you're excited for more wedding themed posts in the future, I can't wait to write some!

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