Choosing our Reception Venue - Taupo

Invitations

We made our own invitations from scratch. This was decided by a number of factors:

• Price - It was going to work out about 50% cheaper doing the work ourselves.
• Personalisation- we got to choose the colours, papers, prints, therefore personalised and unique.
• DIY - we learnt a lot of new skills and a bit more about each other.

We went to Craft House which is a store in Wellington that specialises in DIY crafts ie. Scrap booking, invitations, framing, posters etc.

DIY Invitations

Invitations

We made our own invitations from scratch. This was decided by a number of factors:

• Price - It was going to work out about 50% cheaper doing the work ourselves.
• Personalisation- we got to choose the colours, papers, prints, therefore personalised and unique.
• DIY - we learnt a lot of new skills and a bit more about each other.

We went to Craft House which is a store in Wellington that specialises in DIY crafts ie. Scrap booking, invitations, framing, posters etc.

The Dress

The B.W.D..... (Big. White. Dress.)

Its one of the first images that pops into my head as soon as a wedding is mentioned, it's a pretty big deal.
It will be in all of your photos, you may look back and cringe (*cough* 80's shoulders) or it could be elegant and timeless and be passed down from your grandmother.

It didn't take me long to begin researching which dresses I like (and by that I mean, I started before we got engaged *guilty*).

Luckily we live in Wellington and there are numerous wedding stores here.

I had a few things in mind, it needed to be white, but what shade? Ivory, eggshell, cream, platinum?

The Engagement Party

So... we're engaged, now what?

Throw a Party of course!! (any excuse)

Its a pretty exciting point in your lives. Its the first time we have had something to really celebrate that wasn't a birthday or graduation, so we made the most of it!
I highly recommend it. It gave us an opportunity to catch up with friends and family we hadn't seen in years and let them meet each other. These people are going to be in both of your lives now. Best to let them meet and greet now before they are seated at a table together in a years time (or so).

So how did we go about it?

We got engaged!!! - Finding the right moment

So.... Chris purchased my engagement ring in November. I knew when he had picked it up after re-sizing (I wasn't snooping I swear, he just didn't hide it very well). That little purple box sat next to our bed for WEEKS, until I couldn't take it any longer and asked him to hide it properly. Meaning that I wouldn't be checking to see if it had moved or not....

So the next 4 months stretched on, filled with heart stopping moments of...... him tying his shoe laces (i'm sure he did it knowingly), scenic walks, followed by Valentines day, and just when I had let my guard down, (with our 8 year Anniversary exactly 1 month away) he decided that today was the day (18th February).

 

Not engaged.... yet

We got engaged!! - Finding the ring

Ok, so writing this retrospectively the title is a bit much, but you get what i mean.

So now... with the hows, whats and whys. We know the who ;)

Chris and I had been talking about getting engaged for a while, we were both in a happy place, could afford it and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

One day in November 2011 Chris piped up and said "Hey lets go look at wedding rings! I won't buy one today, I just want to see what you like" or so we thought... I wasn't going to say no to that kind of offer!
We had intended on looking all over Wellington in chain stores and one-off boutique type places in order to find the most perfect ring we could afford. It didn't really work out like that.

Intro - Who am I?

I have recently got married, and thought this would be as good a time as any to sit-back, reflect and share my experiences with the whole process- the ups and downs, the stress and the things I can recommend or would have done differently.

I married my sweetheart who I met while I was in high school back in 2003. We had been officially dating since March 2004, thus making it almost 9 years until we got hitched.

I don't want to get too mushy over it all, as most of you will know me, and some of you may not.
We have seen our share of ups and down over the last decade, through teenage emotions, school pressure, losing jobs, changing cities, living long-distance, losing loved-ones. To moving in together, building a home, creating more personal jokes than I can keep up with, and growing into the people we need each other to be, whilst cherishing every moment of it all.