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This month our two brides take us through the adventure .jpg) that is dealing with all of those ultra important finishing touches...
Sarah Edwards is the winner of our Diary of Bride competition - she's a Wellingtonian nzgirl who is planning on getting married next March. Our other bride is Lauren Andrews, co-creator and owner of the recently launched wedding planning website, theBIGstep.co.nz. With Lauren as an insider in the wedding industry and Sarah as the typical nzgirl, we thought it would be awesome to show you the two different sides behind wedding preparation! Our brides have been busy gearing up for the big day and dealing with all the finishing touches; from tables and chairs to the perfect honeymoon spots...
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Lauren
I am a lucky lady. I have lots of family and family friends who are only too happy to help out in any way they can with the wedding. My mum’s best friend, Margaret, has kindly offered to arrange all the flowers for my wedding as her gift to us. She is an experienced florist, and we are so privileged to have her offer such a fantastic present.
 Margaret is going to have to arrange all the flowers from Riversdale, and I will probably be responsible for picking up and transporting the blooms myself. I want to stick with green and white for my bouquet and those of my bridal party. I’m thinking of using a combination of lilies, jasmine, miniature orchids and possibly hydrangeas – although we need to check if white hydrangeas and jasmine will still be in season at the beginning of March. If you are just getting started on your blooms, here are three great articles about wedding flowers... Reece and I have a few ideas for table decorations. We like the idea of using tiled mirrors and candles – I’ve seen this at a few weddings, and the candlelight that reflects off the mirror looks really pretty. We are having a marquee wedding, so that means we have to hire EVERYTHING – from tables and chairs to cutlery and plates! When hiring things, you tend to have a lot of control over how your wedding looks, but we have found that you are also limited to a small selection of some materials and equipment (not to mention the huge amount of planning, list making and budgeting that’s involved in organising everything). Don’t be fooled into thinking marquee weddings are cheaper! Our hire equipment alone will cost over $10,000 so far – all of which would be included in an established venue.
.jpg) We are using Festival Hire in Masterton for all our hireage. Our contact, Jan, is just lovely and knows our wedding venue site well, which is a huge comfort. They have a new range of glassware that is really nice and have just purchased all new outdoor furniture. Weather permitting, our ceremony and the beginning of the reception will be outside, so we will make sure we hire shade umbrellas AND heating, in case it’s a miserable day or cools right down at night. That’s the thing with marquee and outdoor weddings – you have to be prepared for the best and the worst. We are just starting to think about honeymoon plans now. We are not going to go on a big honeymoon straight after the wedding, as we want to take a couple of months mid-year to go on an extended honeymoon/small OE. We always planned on doing a big OE, but we never got around to it…so it’s either now or never! If we wait until we have kids, we’ll never go. So we might just book a couple of nights somewhere nice after the wedding, either in the Wairarapa or Hawkes Bay, to relax and let the nuptials sink in.
P.S. I left our application for a marriage certificate in the supermarket this morning! The ladies behind the counter laughed at me when I went in to pick it up at lunchtime. Just a reminder to get on to this, as it takes a bit of time to come through! If you want to read more about what you need to do click here...
Sarah
When I normally plan a party I organise some drinks, put a packet of chips in a bowl and wait for all my friends to turn up. So I have found planning a wedding a lot of work! You are meant to organise what you, your future husband and six of your closest friends are wearing, photographers, caterers, celebrants, invitations, drinks, tables, chairs and what goes on the tables and chairs – it can all go on forever. Things that you never thought you would worry about such as whether chairs need covers suddenly become important. You need clear ideas and a game plan about what you want and were to start. We have a wedding checklist out of a magazine which lists the things you need to organise, and week by week have been working our way down the list. .jpg) Once we had our venue and date we looked for a caterer. Yet again we asked friends from the Wairarapa for their recommendations and they pointed us to Guten Appetit Catering. We met up with Ulli the chef and owner of the catering company at the Tin Hut a bar just out of Featherston and over a few beers went over what sort of food and menu we wanted for our reception. We had a great time chatting with Ulli and hired him on the spot and even he was surprised at the speed we made the decision. I know you are supposed to get prices and bargain people down but we liked him and he really loves our venue. In fact, so much so he was having his own birthday party at Pounui Homestead. We decided that was a great sign. Only a day later he had written up our menu and we were all set to go. .jpg) Dave’s job was to go to the hire company and hire all the tables, chairs, cutlery and linen. He went to McEntree Hire in Masterton and arranged everything. They wrote up a large list of everything we needed. The only hold up was the sales person was very worried that I wasn’t present to pick what styles of things we were hiring. Dave had to explain that I wouldn’t care what my chairs and tables looked like; I am not that sort of girl. If you really think about it have you ever been to a wedding and said, “Boy that would have been good if only the chairs were different”. My next job was invitations. I couldn’t decide if it would be easier just ordering them or making them myself. The problem with making them yourself is you could easily over complicate them and end up spending way more on paper than it would of cost to get printed. Also one would be fun to make but 60 could be minding numbing. A place in Wellington called Kiwiscraps runs a free weddings stationary course and I decided it was a good place to start to get some ideas. I decided on making my invites and in one afternoon drafted up an idea for the invites then printed them out and it then took a few nights to put them all together. I feel like we have done so much but still have a long way to go. We have managed to get this far without too many dramas and hopefully we managed to keep it up. The cost of everything adds up so quickly and unless you have unlimited funds you will have to make decisions around what is important to you and your future husband. Don’t let small things stress you out there is always ways around them even if it means walking around a mall for a whole afternoon praying that the lad doesn’t find a dress. (479).jpg) Want to see what else is hot and new in the About You section? Click here... |
