Music to dance to

There are few different (groups of) songs to think about:

• Entrance music - pre-ceremony
• Ceremony music - during readings/signing
• Exit music - post-ceremony
• Cocktail hour background tunes
• Entrance(/First Dance?) song
• Speeches/dinner music
• Dancing music

I'm pretty much in love with the Vitamin String Quartet, as discussed previously, and spent the other night curating a Wish List of songs on iTunes. 

And then I went through some of the songs in my iTunes, thinking about which ones I liked for dancing to. Yes, there'll no doubt be a wide variety because I'm quite eclectic in my music tastes, and I know all of you lovely guests like different things too. Oh, and Grant doesn't really care so he can suggest some and all that, but not too many considering he doesn't even dance. So there :p mwuahahah


Anyways, I thinking I might like a selection of rock n roll/50s/60s songs... I have enough in my iTunes from pilfering from parentals collections of CDs, and there's this great German group The Baseballs who cover pop songs into a rock n roll beat... How awesome is that?! The question is: should we have that for the First Reception, Second Reception Party, or both? 

Other songs I'm liking: 

Ryan Shaw - We Got Love

and

Coldplay - Til Kingdom Come

and

Brooke Fraser - Love is Waiting

and

Brooke Fraser - The Thief

*love love love love love* 
Kiwa.

Signage

The wedding I adore the most so far included, amongst numerous other gorgeous things, pretty signs to show where everything was.

I want to do that to, but hadn't thought of a way to do it, until I found this post on Weddingbee - she's using recycled mirror/photo frames! There are a few little black mesh-like tables at Erskine that we can use, so they can be propped up around the place and used to hold the signs and flowers or something. What do you think?

The list of required frames (that I can think of so far) includes:

• Welcome - go upstairs to the "chapel" please (@ the entrance)
• Please take a program! (@ the doors to the "chapel")
• Hey, it's a photobooth. This is where you take awesome photos of yourself (@ the photobooth, funnily enough)
• This a Guest Book. Please sign something so we have a material memory of your attendance (@ the Guestbook table, probs at the bottom of the staircase)
• Do not touch the music (by the iPod/computer/speakers/whatever we decide to use for music) 
• Drinks (@ the bar)
• Food (@ the buffet table)
• Cakes (@the buffet table)
• Toilets - <-- boys | girls -->
• There's grass outside if you want and it's not raining

Any others I haven't thought of?

*love love love love love*
Kiwa.

Stationery and Inspiration 17 June

Today's post is about stationery. And pretty weddings and interesting things over the last week or so. 

It seems I have stationery on the brain - well, it's one of the few things I get to visualise and create from start to finish so this might be expected. There are a number of different pieces of a stationery suite to think about, and hopefully have co-ordinate. Thankfully, The Knot (Australia) have a good article about which pieces of stationery are needed. 

However, before I get anywhere I need to decide what kind of style I - we want and I'm stuck between wanting to be vaguely traditional, modern, funky, cartoony or somewhere in between... Here are some I've seen (comments welcome):

-----------------------------------

And now for the Inspiration part of this post

Martha Stewart's post on "Special touches for wedding invitations"

New favourite weddings:

Martha Stewart Weddings' Joanne and Luke

Including their stationery suite and her flowers:

 

 Look at their yellow and white polka-dot tablecloths!

Once Wed's Mark & Allison (their invitation is above). Their whole wedding gallery is yellow and swoon-worthy. Highlights include:

  Table decorations

Flowers and bridesmaid dress and flowers

 

A new blog I discovered, Snippet & Ink, posted this gorgeous wedding. I'm loving their table decorations:

Interesting articles over the last week

In some respects, we are kind of having a Destination Wedding, with a reasonable number of people coming from overseas (hopefully!) and our planning from far away. This article about what to put in a destination wedding welcome bag on The Knot is interesting. 

http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/photogallery/special-touches-invitations

http://www.diybride.com/2010/06/02/ranunculus-bouquet/

A new colour palette to consider with Martha Stewart Weddings.

Thinking about Wedding Songs? Maybe a little bit. The Knot had a "Wedding Song" week or some-such nonsense and had these articles: 

• "New Classic First Dance Wedding Songs"
• "8 Wedding Songs to Skip"
• "Best Wedding Songs of 2010"

*love love love love love*
Kiwa.

Inspiration 12 May

This week there's been some great stuff from the newsletters. And here we go... 

Project Wedding had a DIY competition going on and this is some of the cool stuff that made it up

• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-2010-scrabble-magnet-favors
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/budget-centerpieces
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/budget-savvy-bride-smaid-planning-a-backyard-wedding
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/an-adorable-savvy-wedding
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/creating-your-wedding-concept
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/flourishes
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-an-old-fashioned-soda-bar
• http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-decor-alice-in-wonderland

The Knot was all about photography and videography this week

• http://wedding.theknot.com/wedding-planning/wedding-photography-videography/articles/50-wedding-photos-you-cant-do-without.aspx
• http://wedding.theknot.com/wedding-planning/wedding-photography-videography/articles/top-20-wedding-photography-mistakes.aspx

Martha Stewart Weddings reminded me that I love ice cream and why shouldn't I have it at my wedding... I mean our wedding... ;)

100 Layer Cake had this wedding as their Real Wedding of the week and I love the vintage, intimate, casual feel of it. Stunning photography and colours too.

Style Me Pretty featured this gorgeous ballroom wedding, a nice contrast to all the outdoors/budget-chic/cocktail weddings that are being featured everywhere (and that make me jealous that we're not having a totally DIY/vintagey wedding... *sigh*). It looks über-traditional in a way I think we're going with... Have to check with His Lordship on that... 

But they also had this Australian wedding - I love the vineyard (jealous!) and the simple round tables. And this super cute outdoors casual-chic wedding where I love the colour palate (yellow and pastels I think?), every little detail in the photos is just heart-breakingly cute... 

And the Design*Sponge featured these Australian stationery designers. Cute!

Ok. This wasn't from any of my newsletters/blog subscriptions/stalkings, but rather a random search on Etsy (which is fully the best site ever for handmade crafty things!). Guess which one Grant doesn't like?

Original Etsy post here.

Original Etsy post here.

Original Etsy post here.

Original Etsy post here.

Ah.... That might be all? 

Oh dear. It's way past my bedtime now... :|

*love love love love love*
Kiwa.

Stationery - image motif ideas

Helloooo... 

I've been a bit bored at going roundabout with venues and whatnot this week, so I decided to start thinking a little about stationery - you know, those wonderful pieces of paper lovingly designed and assembled that people will look at once and perhaps 1/100 will save as a memento? Lol

Well, it also happens to be a relatively safe topic to talk to Grant about, because I can use pictures of others to show exactly what I'm talking about - it seems girl descriptions and boy descriptions differ in their interpretation in the brain... 

Anyways. During one ad break of Survivors - Heroes v Villains (that's been very interesting actually) where I had negotiated Grant's full attention for the 2-3 minutes, we were discussing the merits of Letterpress. You should remember the invitations from Wiggs & Dave's wedding in a previous post, if not click here and/or here. So I was showing Grant the first picture, and lo and behold I got a positive response :D His constructive criticism was that he didn't like the birds or the honey-bees&wheat combo previously mentioned. The conversation continued something like this:

Inspiring weddings

OML. I'm totally getting in trouble once it's found out how much time I spent on the interweb today... :|

But anyhoo, inspiring weddings. Before I forget about them:

Elizabeth and Dave - I found their wedding in a few different places: From their photographer, Yvonne Wong; Mammoth blogger, GreyLikesWeddings; and Elizabeth's own super-mammoth blog, the Beholder including an awesome post of blogs and advice for new brides - which I assume she means new-brides-to-be? ... Which is me!!! :D Ahem, sorry. But, look at the AWESOME shoes her bridemaids had here. 

I especially love the stationery at their wedding by AtlasandCampbell - view the post about the full suite here but here's a sneaky pic (hopefully I don't get stung for copyright or anything...):

And I love her hair and the photography and the colours and the overall feel that I get from the wedding... *swoon*

John and Sherry - Their wedding album is on their website, YoungHouseLove, but here is the wedding album. I like the DIY, home-style, personalised feel of their wedding. I've always liked the idea of an outdoor garden wedding/reception (although it looks like that might not happen... ah well). And they had a photobooth too, which is high on my serious Wish List. Oh! And they used yellow (including lemons and limes on the tables) as a colour, and had bees on their invitations - which as the previous post detailed, they're my new theme idea. And it was so cheap! 

And of course, the wedding that inspired me before i was even engaged: Grace and Aaron. I found their wedding on Grace's blog, Design*Sponge. Here's the first part, and there should be links at the bottom of that to the other 4 parts. Her wedding was so awesome, it was featured on that Holy Grail of weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings.

I'm sure there are more, but that's enough for now. Must. Work... 

*love love love love love*
Kiwa.

Theme

Helloooooo!!

Yes, there has been a slight stall in the proceedings as Grant and I work out the final budget. Happily, Grant's job at Flight Centre is going well (he's actually got a job he's enjoying!) and I'm due for a promotion to an AO4 starting next Monday 22 March, for at least 2 months (and hopefully longer...) so some extra money is now coming in - Yay! Thanks to Mum and Dad and Mum who have kindly offered some assistance as well :)

Anyways, this post is about a theme. I think we all now what colours I want - if not, you're not my friend anymore... nah just kidding, you must need to come visit us though ;) So yeah, colour palette at the moment is

• Yellow
• Ivory
• Black
• Gold? 

As you might have guessed and probably know, I've been looking at a lot of websites for inspiration, including Martha Stewart Weddings, The Knot (US and Australia), Design Sponge and Style Me Pretty (which unfortunately is blocked at work - grrrr).With the colours selected, I thought it might be a good idea to have an overall theme. Obviously Grant needs to agree, but... yeah... I can't imagine him really caring ;)

I've found a GORGEOUS theme on MSW - Honey and Wheat. See the slideshow of images here. It includes my colours - yellow, gold (they have more of a burnt gold/copper), ivory and has super cute ideas like little bumble bees (which I imagine like the bees in all the Disney Winnie the Pooh pictures) and honey (which conjures up totally corny quote ideas like "For my honey" and "Bee mine" and so on...). Thinking about how I could use it, could include cute little bees and wheat on the stationery, favours, table settings, beeswax candles...

I really like the symbolism of both bees and wheat. *Warning: soppiness ensues... Feel free to skip the next few paragraphs*

Honey is the only food that is created by preserving all forms of life - perhaps the idea that we can create one life together without sacrificing our identities? Honey is also the only food that doesn't spoil - and hopefully neither will our marriage. 

Bees symbolise hope, diligence and wisdom - all good things to take into a marriage. (For more, see http://www.godisnowhereonline.info/missy/blessedbee.html).

Wheat symbolises a "successful harvest", fertility - which is all good :D

Anyways, that's enough for today I think.

*love love love love love*
Kiwa.