When it's all over

I've been a very bad blogger, but i'm here to tell you i'm back, married and refreshed after six weeks of amazingness in South America. Drunk on life with a dip in my hip and a glide in my stride in fact.

The realities of cubicle-dwelling have taken the shine off a little of course, but that's another discussion. The wedding was awesome. Twelve months of planning boiled down to that one surprisingly balmy Friday afternoon of love, hope, and rump-shaking fun.

And while our driver was 20 minutes late to pick me up, we made a few fumbled mistakes in the ceremony and I accidently threw my bouquet on the restaurant's roof, I would not change a thing. All those things paled in comparison to the overwhelming feeling that things don't get much better than this in life.

Not long before the wedding a recently-married colleague at work told me to try and take time to remember every moment as it happens, as it really goes by so fast. Many people recounted a similar story in their advice to me during wedding planning, but this stuck with me - maybe because it was a guy saying it perhaps. As I stood next to my soon-to-be-husband during the ceremony, I did just that; looking out at the familiar faces of dear family and friends I saw a cross-section of our lives together, these wonderful people giving up their day to be there for us - to celebrate us.

So if I could go back and change one thing I'd slow time down, because it flies by so fast it's almost unfair.

{image via fffound}

sore cheeks + warm fuzzies

This photo captures the hilarious good fun that was my hens last weekend. There was bountiful penis paraphernalia; very embarrassing, too-much-information-for-my-mum pass the parcel, hilarious garbage brides strutting the catwalk and shiteloads of mojitos and malibu.

But what overwhelmed me most was how lucky I felt to have such amazing girlfriends. And that's what this is about. It's not just me and Marcus getting married, our wedding is also an occasion to thank everyone we love, because without them we wouldn't quite be who we are today. And that's awesome.

special delivery

Yesterday I got an email from the work receptionist letting me know that two boxes had arrived for me. I knew it was too soon for the ebay jars, so it had to be my wedding invitations - and here they are!

When my mum and I started the design process with the Save The Date cards six months ago I hoped we'd end up with something pretty awesome, but these have far exceeded my expectations. My beautiful mum has worked tirelessly on these and put up with me changing my mind and throwing up different ideas here and there, to produce something she can be very proud of. Thanks mummy!

Together with having a mum who is a graphic design teacher and Adobe Illustrator whiz, I was lucky enough to have a designer and printer I use through work offer their services as well. The designer made some final tweaks to get the files print-ready and my amazing printer sourced paper and created the envelopes, all as a wedding gift. Very sweet since all I was asking for in the first place was whether he knew any stockists of string and button envelopes!

ebay win (I hope)

I just snapped up six of these pretties for $8.74 on ebay. Trouble is, they're in the US and when I asked about postage costs the lady told me after the auction that she doesn't ship to Australia.

I'm hoping she'll give me a sweet price to post them to Florida where I can use a parcel forwarding service to get them here. I think shipping could be about $80 - $100 so they're certainly no steal, but they would be perfect as vases together with some plain glass jars, plus they'll go splendidly with our vintage photobooth.


(image via google - the ones i'm looking to buy were photographed with tatty old carpet as a backdrop, not nearly as pretty!)

dancing shoes

Together with bad music and exhaustion, stiletto-challenged tootsies are guaranteed to send people off the dancefloor.

So i've got a plan to put paid to that old chestnut. Thongs. A whole basket of them. So ladies there'll be no excuses not to bust a move!

{image via once wed}

the first dance

We heard this while listening to Splendour Bender on the way to Mt Buller on Friday night and loved it. It's Angus & Julia Stone's rendition of You're The One That I Want from Grease. This could be it!

hiatus OVER

I went through a month or so of complete ambivalence over the wedding. I couldn't even look at a wedding blog (apart from APW, but that's different) or even feign an interest in talking about the details of the wedding. I needed a bit of time out. Hell, I was even looking at mummy blogs as a diversion - what's THAT about!

Hitting the four month mark has been the smack in the face I needed to get back onto it (much to my mum's relief - not the smacking part obviously). Refreshed and revived, i've had a red-hot go at a proper to-do list and man is it long.

Among locking in a DJ, rings, makeup artist, boy's suits, cars and doing the invites, there's also the post-wedding BBQ and six-week honeymoon to organise. So much for spring snowboarding!