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Lantern-tastic
One thing I’ve discovered during this whole wedding planning malarkey, that I wish I’d found out years ago, is how fantastic wholesalers are. I always thought you had to own a business to source items from them, but most I’ve come across seem to be happy to sell directly to the public. I’ve also sourced from a bunch of high street chains – I managed to catch the end of summer sales which my credit card appreciated…
Blighty
Inspirations Wholesale, Dotcom Gift Shop, Graham & Green, Next, Cargo, IKEA (candles).
Stateside
Bargain Bunch, Jamali, Koyal Wholesale
Jamali in particular has awesome and affordable vases, among other things. The customer service leaves a little to be desired (!) but I could have spent a lot of money there, my wallet went scrambling for cover.
So there you go, save save save!
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Sensational stationery (the quest for…)
So the stationery suite was always going to be a big deal. I’m a total dork when it comes to pretty stationery – seriously, whenever I’m within a 200 metre radius of a Paperchase you’ve lost me for at least an hour.
The issue we had was marrying that up with the fact that we wanted to do a DIY job in order to allocate our wedding budget to other bits of the bash. So many hours were spent researching ideas and creating our invitations in Microsoft Publisher. I was so surprised when Ali agreed to the fuchsia/marigold/gold combo, thought he might find it too girly, but he loves it (or so he tells me anyway!).
Anyway, so here are some pics of the process of getting them all together, it was a bit of a mission…
And here’s the finished product!
The custom stamp is from this lovely lady, and the gorgeous thick 135gsm envelopes from this budget supplier.
We’ve had lots of compliments so far and I’m really proud of them actually! I was really worried that they’d look too ‘homemade’ and that I’d regret not getting a proper letterpress/calligraphy jobby, but am happy we can now afford more bellinis on the beach instead!
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The beach is back!
It is with a big siiiiigh of relief that I can post up these images of Boggy Sands Beach from last weekend. It’s back and it’s looking beautiful! We’re going to have to do some seaweed/rock clearing before it’s wedding-ready, but it’s getting there.
Fingers crossed no storms will wash it away before February…
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I’m having a mild panic attack…
100 days to go, eeeeeeeek.
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Music baby!
So Ali and I really love music, especially Alistair – there is rarely a moment of silence in the MacDonald household. So the decisions regarding the music for our wedding were quite a big deal! We made the call to have a live band for the reception followed by an ipod playlist, as opposed to a DJ for the whole night, as we don’t personally think DJs add much value to a wedding celebration.
Sadly in Cayman there are very few good bands. Happily for us, we’re buddies with one of the great ones! Clever Knots have been rocking our socks for the last couple of years, and we’re super-stoked they’ve agreed to play at our ceremony and reception! Check out the link, they have some fantastic songs – my fave track is ‘Yer fingers’, and I may or may not have just had it on repeat for the last half hour…
Anyhoo, so for the ceremony they’re going to play acoustic guitars before and afterwards, and my little bro Ed is going to join them which I am SO excited about. He’s a bit of a guitar maestro and I’m really happy he can be involved in the ceremony in this way.
So that’s that – I know there are a few future Cayman brides reading this, and would strongly recommend contacting Richie and Sean to play at your weddings! All of you!
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A note on the Curse of Bridezilla
So this is probably a smidge too personal to write up here but, crumbs, here goes anyway…
Yesterday Ali and I had a huge bust up over moustaches. No he has not started sporting anything on his upper lip, and nor does he intend to. We were arguing over fake moustaches on sticks and whether we should or should not have a fancy dress chest for photo booth purposes at our reception.
I know, completely absurd right?! We usually hardly ever argue about anything, but yesterday found ourselves having this blazing row over something totally and utterly inconsequential.
So anyway, last night I had a really bad dream – I woke up at like 3am, totally convinced that Alistair had been killed in some Indian terrorist attack. Seriously, I was so upset I managed to inadvertently wake him up by mistake and it took me like 30 minutes to calm down and be okay again. It was bad. Really bad. It also made me realise that moustaches are not very important in the grand scheme of things. What is important is that I get to marry the guy I love, facial hair or no facial hair.
Has anyone else out there had any crazy bridezilla moments?! Please tell me I’m not alone…
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Dress decisions
Two of the next most important decisions were the bridesmaids’ amd groomsmen’s (and Ali’s!) attire. For the ladies, I was lucky enough to discover the fabulous online shop Joielle, which stocks all the main US bridesmaids labels from Landa Designs to Lela Rose. In addition to offering more reasonable prices than wedding boutiques, this website is a fantastic way to coordinate different styles/colours/designers, as they’re all under one internet roof, as it were. We opted for these two designs by Landa, in a goooorgeous coral shade, perfect for the beach!
And for the chaps we’d heard only great things about J Crew, and after setting our hearts on finding the perfect taupe chino/waistcoat set, it was the only place that fitted the bill:
We’ve been dealing with the most helpful lady in the UNIVERSE who’s got all seven sets locked in her office in the New Orleans J Crew store waiting for us to pick them up!
And as for my dress? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see!
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Beach side nuptials
So Ali and I went up to Boggy Sands the other evening for a walk on the beach and, I’m not kidding, there is about 1 metre of sand now, disastre! Reeeeally hoping it grows back in the next six months or else we are in trouble!
Anyway, I’ve been collecting some pics of cute beach ceremonies that I’d like to use as inspiration totally 100% copy, check ’em out!
(credits: Style Me Pretty, Crystal Blue Weddings, Parfait Weddings & Events)
I can’t waaaaaaait!
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Let’s get married by the sea
Arguably the easiest decision to date was where to hold our wedding ceremony. Our favourite street on the island is called Boggy Sands Road, and is the most beautiful quiet Caribbean road with a breathtaking stretch of beach out front.
Two of our best buds now live in this old Caymanian cottage! Amazing!
The only problem is that for a good chunk of the year there seems to only be about 3 metres of beach up there, which is a minor problem… Last February there was quite a large stretch so we’re hoping it’ll grow back by then and look a little like this!
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The venue of our dreams…
One thing I’ve learnt that I would advise every British bride-to-be is DON’T GET MARRIED IN ENGLAND if you can possibly avoid it. The costs of hiring a UK venue are absolutely insane – you have to pay like £5000 ($8000) just to hire somewhere nice-but-not-particularly-spectacular and then have to pay for overpriced menus and liquor on top of that. I don’t know what the situation is in the States but here in Cayman you generally just have a minimum spend that you have to meet if you choose to hold your reception in a restuarant, so we can safely say that our budget will go a helluva lot further here than back home.
So once we’d made the decision to get married here in Cayman (not solely for budgetary concerns!), the venue hunt was on. We initially thought we’d hold the ceremony and reception on the beach by the Caribbean Club until we found out that would cost about $2 million…
The Beach Suites (excellent wedding coordinator), Grand Old House, Tiki Beach (great manager) and Morgan’s Harbour all came into the running, but we eventually decided on Osetra Bay restaurant for the reception after holding the ceremony on Boggy Sands Beach.
Osetra Bay is a gorgeous seafood restaurant up in West Bay with a glam lounge-y vibe to it.
It’s closed and boarded up for hurricane season right now so when we went to check it out we had to use our imaginations somewhat, but suffice to say I am slightly overexcited about filling it with candles and lanterns and flowers. But let’s save that for another post!
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Wedding décor porn
[WARNING: do not read this post if you are female and ever want to get any work done ever again for the rest of your life.]
I have no idea how people used to plan weddings before the invention of the Land of Blogs. Seriously, they must have spent the equivalent of the GDP of a small developing country on wedding magazines, that’s for sure. There is SO MUCH information and inspiration out there for brides-to-be, all at the click of your mouse.
My faves have to be Style Me Pretty (*heart* the destination weddings page, Abby you are a genius), Snippet and Ink, 100 Layer Cake and the UK-based Rock My Wedding. There’s also a gem of a blog here in Cayman called Crystal Blue Weddings, which covers all things Cayman related.
I could honestly sit at my laptop all day every day staring at the insanely gorgeous images on these blogs. But I won’t as I have a city loft to design! The problem I have though, is that there are so many different themes and styles you could incorporate into a wedding. Before we decided to get married here on island I just found myself in a constant state of indecision thinking about all the different delicious possibilities – a rustic English country garden springtime affair or glam slick contemporary city styling?
vs.
Piles of cutesy vintage birdcages and foxed mercury glass, or an exotic ethnic vibe with a million Moroccan lanterns and candles?
vs.
Festival-style welly-wearing shindig in a field full of teepees with roaring fires, or an elegant winter soirée in a gorgeous old Cotswolds barn.
vs.
(credits: Style Me Pretty; Rock My Wedding)
You see?! It’s an impossible decision, every single option would be beautiful! So beware ladies – I can’t quite express how much help these blogs are (well I think I probably could, but it’s 4.37 on a Friday afternoon and my brain is pooped) but they will probably also leave you hyperventilating and desperately wishing you could pretend you’re from one of those awesome cultures where wedding celebrations last an entire week so you could tick off all of the different options…
Alrighty, must go check out SMP, it’s been at least 24 hours since my last fix!
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Technology is our friend
So what to start with…I guess the first thing would be our website. We decided that after living on a Caribbean beach for two years it would be termed clinical insanity to not get married on it! We have a bunch of friends and family coming over from the UK and various other countries, so figured a website would be the best way to communicate all the info we needed to.
Now this blogging malarky has taught me a helluva lot about technology – I by no means profess to being any kind of pro but have somehow managed to go from practically being able to break computers by glancing at them to having to get down and dirty with line upon line of CSS code, and can now Photoshop my butt off. Ha, I didn’t actually mean that how it sounded, but maybe I will actually literally photoshop my butt off, that’s not a bad idea…
Anyway, seem to be digressing…erm, so I’m pretty proud of these little steps I’m taking if I do say so myself, and figured I would put them to good use with a wedding website. However it turned out we didn’t even need to, as The Knot (dotcom) have a fantaaaaastic free tool which allows you to create your website however you desire. We decided to keep it sweet and simple, as you can see here!
www.ellyandalistair.ourwedding.com
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And so it begins…
‘So why is an interior design student blogging about wedding planning?’ I hear you ask, ‘surely she’s getting confused between sofas and reception cocktails…’. [Side note: ooooh, I could really do with a cocktail right now, T minus 2 hours to happy hour.]
Weeeeell, the reason is I’ve discovered I quite like it and that there are a whole bunch of parallels between designing a room and designing an event: aside from the obvious selection and execution of the overall theme and colour scheme, there’s the acutely precise sourcing for each element of the wedding, the attention to detail needed to make it a truly perfect event, and then the practicalities encompassing the timings of hire deliveries, to the paperwork such as the catering and photographer contracts, to the budgeting and project management side of things, and I could go on…
So I thought I’d record my progress on this little blog for three reasons:
1. Setting things down here seems to calm down all the crazy ideas hopping around my brain into a neat and succinct plan of attack, at least it does occasionally…;
2. If all the work I’m doing for our wedding helps anyone else out there plan their big day (in Cayman in particular I guess) then that’s a ruddy great result too; and
3. I’m sure there’s a-plenty of peeps out there who could not give a flying monkey’s bum about my impending nuptials and who just want to read about quirky pendants and colourful furnishings, so figured if I keep all the W Day chat to this page I shall not alienate you guys totally!
So if your interest is piqued by this make sure you stop by next week – I’ll be updating this page on our progress to date!
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Caribbean Living 