More wedding things... photography and fabric swatches!

Not much has been happening on the planning front - we really, really need to work out a photographer soon, but I think we're somewhere between being overwhelmed with choice and freaking out about how much wedding photography costs. It's not like we haven't been looking... but we're going to set aside Sunday night to go and narrow it down a bit more and work out who we actually want to go and see. We went and saw Emotive Images a couple of weeks ago - Louise was lovely, but... I don't know, I think there was still something missing? I'm not sure. I'm hoping that a Friday wedding will play in our favour and whoever we want to go with isn't booked already... Oh well, if it's meant to be, it'll all fall into place. Like when we bought our house, don't get to emotionally attached until it's booked in.

Meanwhile, the exciting part of today is I got fabric swatches from Honeypie Boutique!




I went with Ivory, White, 49, 56, 72 and 86. I was lucky enough to have a friend in the UK, so I got the samples shipped to her (yay for free shipping within the UK!) and then she posted them to me for 95p. Instead of £10.49. :\ I'm assuming they send it via courier, but I really wish they could do a better shipping price for just samples. I'm not sure how they were sent to my friend, but she could fit them into an envelope easily.

I really like the sweetheart neckline because that is more flattering for my bust. And I like the lace up back.

Anyway, the fabric is nice - good for the price that they are offering. They don't feel cheap! I think I might go and see if I can find fabric of the same quality or something... so at least I know what I'm getting in to.




I tried to get colours as correct as possible, but I am taking the photos in the evening in fake light..



I'm thinking of going the ivory with either the red or the purple as the contrast. I was so taken with green online, but it's a bleh, sagey colour. I wanted a great lime colour! Hrm, maybe I'd go red or purple with an ivory or white sash... The chocolate is a bit schmeh as well.

My dress in my head is a contrasting crinoline and matching shoes and sash.... I think it will be easier to find shoes to match purple or red than the pretty green I have it my head... and then Chrissy and Megan would wear the colour I'm not...

A call out - I would love to know anyone else who has used Honeypie Boutique! After exchange rates, shipping, crinoline and of course, dress work out to be about AU$350? which is awesome, seeing I don't want to spend heaps of money on my dress.

We have a date! And a venue! :O

I have just gotten back from putting the deposit on our venue, Topiaries at Beaumont!

It's such a beautiful place - we saw it when we moved house (which was four months before we got engaged), and it looked gorgeous - we didn't even know what it was called! I don't remember who suggested looking into getting married there, but we were so sure that it would be out of our price range (and we didn't even have a price range :) We did the slow-drive-by one day to find out what it was called and kept it in the back of our minds.

The first wedding magazine I got was one I borrowed from the library, and it had a little write up in there about the place. The next one I bought actually had a feature on the place under their "Perfect Day" section, and I giggled that the couple that were married there found it the same way we did - driving past it a few times (coming home from work, opposed to moving house, but then again, Tam had seen it driving around for work as well...

They had an Open Day on the 28th of February - which of course, I was working. I sent Tam on a reconnaissance mission, and he had a good time, getting the feel of the venue. Took a couple of shots of the place, grabbed as many leaflets for the photographers, cake designers, djs, dresses, suits, celebrants as he could, and talked for a little bit about the day. Peter said he would call Tam during the week to organise a time to talk more if he liked.

Piccies from the Open Day:

Ceremony area, with picnic benches for seating

Pool, which is outside the guesthouse (six rooms available)

The venue overlooks Samford Valley

Inside one of the guest rooms

The Beaumont Room, which is where we'll have our reception. The tables were done up in a few different styles.

So we organised a meeting on Sunday the 7th of March, after breakfast

Pancakes with berries and maple syrup

French Toast with Bacon (mmmbacon)

and it was so pretty!

I knew, walking back to the car that it was the place.

We did, however, want to be fully well rounded, so we wanted to look at a few other places. We checked out Tom Petrie's Restaurant and Function Centre at Old Petrie Town. It was nice... but (of course, there was a but!) it just didn't have the same vibe as Topiaries. Even between the people... the gentleman we spoke to was very nice, but ... you know when you know, you know? ;)

Old Petrie Town - Fig trees

The back of their chapel

Then again, Old Petrie Town did have a pig. Random, I know - the gentleman was showing us around the property and showing us the beautiful fig trees, where we found a pig having the time of its life, digging up around the bottom of the tree. Wasn't wild, just having a good time.

Pig.

But it was odd. OPT was asking us why we wanted a lunch time wedding, why we wanted a Friday... I felt very put off on justifying our decision. Whereas Topiaries went "Friday lunchtime? Awesome!". I dislike having to justify my decisions, having done that last week when trying on dresses (more on that another time...). And they didn't make any concessions that we were having this on a Friday lunchtime - they were charging us Saturday night rates, which I thought was a bit crap, honestly.

And then we went to a wedding at Boulevard Gardens at Indooroopilly on the weekend! Again, gorgeous area, very nice - they certainly knew what they were doing - but I didn't like that there was another wedding going on at the same time. It loses something when have other people there that aren't part of your wedding, I think.

So, we were sold on Topiaries. So I went there this afternoon and paid our deposit. We are getting married 8th April, 2011. :O Which is starting to get not that far away (I know, terrible grammar). We don't have to do anything venue wise now until about two months out.

The other reason I love this place is that we can get ready there, spend our wedding night there ... and in my imagination, I can see us going out for dinner that night, in our dolled up gear, and spending that first night just on us - which is why I like the idea of a lunchtime thing even more. And that means savings on hire cars (or putting our friends out by using their cars) and the night's accommodation is included in the $500 booking fee (which is pretty awesome).

That's us! :D

It already feels strange if it is not here...

We've had a bit of exciting news since my last post.

On the 14th November, 2009, my darling boyfriend became my darling fiance. *1, 2, 3... awww*

This is us just after the proposal:



Pretty awesome, huh? There's a cute little story about how it happened to.

A lazy afternoon a few months back, I asked Tam to tell me something. Something I didn't know about this impending engagement that was "eventually" going to happen. He was almost asleep, and he said "It'll happen before the end of the year". I'd heard this before, so I confirmed, "before the end of this year? Before the end of 2009?" A lazy smile, and he said, "yes, it will happen before the end of this year".

We had a family reunion coming up in December, so I thought, "Well, of course it will happen before that. But when? How?!" The jewellery shop was in the city, and seeing we live about half an hour outside the CBD now, it was becoming a bit difficult for him to get in there on the sly.

Saturday morning came along - we'd been invited to a BBQ at Melissa's place, but Tam wanted to go into the city to pick up his comics. I said, "oh, can I come into the city with you?". "No." he said very bluntly. I raised my eyebrows, and went "okay then. Fine. We'll go to the BBQ first and then I'll drop you off at the train station". But by the time we got to the BBQ, Tam wouldn't have had time to get to the city via the train - the comic book store closed at 4pm, and it takes about an hour to get to the city via the train. He gave in, and I said, "Don't worry, I won't follow you around. You can do whatever you need, I'll just sit and knit in the food court!". As we left Melissa's, I gave her a very strange look as Tam said something about buying comics, which tried to convey "I think he's going to pick up the engagement ring today!!!!!!". Unfortunately the message didn't get across ;)

We made it into the city about 2:30pm, craving some lunch. The closest Commonwealth ATM I knew of was at Broadway on the Mall, which also housed Gillett's Jewellers. Tam mentioned needing to buy a external hard drive for his aunt at Harvey Norman's, which is just about the jeweller's. He asked, "do you want to come with me upstairs?". I said, "No, it's okay. I'll go and have lunch." Tam stared at me with a funny look on his face, saying "are you sure?" "No, you can go by yourself".

20 minutes later, I had almost finished lunch, when Tam comes back from Harvey Norman's, an external hard drive in tow. I felt... a little sad, and I assumed he had paid some money off the ring, or he really didn't need to go in there, he was just buying a hard drive. We had lunch, went to Comics Etc, and headed back to the car, which was parked down near the Belgium Beer Garden.

While strolling back to the car, hand in hand, I looked down at one stage and saw something in his cargo pocket. Puzzled, I snuck another look a few minutes later - that looks like a box! A box that it little enough to put a ring in! Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh... that sneaky boy! I began to giggle. "What's wrong?" he asked. "What are you giggling about?" "Nooooooooothing!!!" I replied. This continued for about two blocks... giggling... trying to get closer to his pocket. He finally worked out what I was trying to do, and he swapped sides, putting me as far away from the pocket as possible. "What!!" I cried. "So I'm allowed to be over here, touching this pocket" - I pat the empty one - "but not the pocket over here?" - I tried to pat the other pocket, but he ran away, laughing as well.

We got back to the car, and he unlocked it, put the bag from Harvey Norman's in the back seat, closed the door and said, "Do you want to go for a walk?" More very inappropriate giggling: "maybe!!" We toddled down to the Botanical Gardens, where we walked around for a little bit, until we found an empty park bench. Then we sat down, and watched the house boats for a little while, giggling at the people rowing from their house boat to the shore.

We sat there for a little while, until Tam said, "I'm not very good at speeches". I smiled, and replied, "It's okay, I still love you". I don't remember what else was said now. I'm a bit sad about it. But there was smiling... and feeling safe...

He fumbled in his pocket, and took out a little purple box. And then there was a box within a box. Heh. And then he got down on one knee, and asked, "will you?"

"Will I what?" I asked with a grin.

"Will you be my wife?"

"I'll have to think about it ;)"

"Oh."

"Of course I will be your wife!"



This ring has actually been picked out for over three years now. The details written down on a card, chilling out in his wallet for that long. Actually, I think we've had them written down two or three times. Every time we'd go into Gilletts, we'd look through the rings... none of them looked as nice as this one.





After, Tam called my dad, asking permission. Originally, he said no. And then he said I suppose so. And then asked something about our new house. That seemed to be a common theme in telling our male relatives about our upcoming nuptials.

Our families are very excited about this - as of we, of course! We had a little engagement party on the weekend for my family in Mackay - just a few friends were invited as well.

We are thinking of an April 2011 wedding. We don't have a theme or a plan or anything as of yet, but hopefully after our other engagement party in January, we will start jotting down some ideas.

So very exciting! :DDD