We’re Married!

Wedding eve!

Eek! The big day is almost here!

Yesterday night I went and got my nails done, a mani with French polish.

Today I collected my bonbonniere, boxes of 4 multicoloured macarons from Le Petit Gateau. They were $9 each.

Tonight I made the 5 layers of my cake, which I’ll frost tomorrow.

Bernard, the celebrant, called me today to see how everything is going. That was nice!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll pick up my flowers at Style by Nature.

Then Steve and I will go to Mitte for some breakfast and the rest of the day will be spent getting ready, I suppose!

Moet & Chandon, Hansi Limonades and Antipodes Water

This week I’m sorting out all my beverages!

For the wedding toast, I’ve got Moet & Chandon ‘Nectar Imperial’ Champagne
It’s a Demi-Sec, so a sweet champagne. None of my family really drink so I think a Dry or a Brut would taste disgusting to them!

At my local Thomas Dux store, they have these beautiful Hansi French Limonades.
I just love the bottles and colours more than anything else and I think it’ll look great on the dinner table.
It’s also a little bit more special than just having standard softdrinks.

I got Lemon, Pink Lemonade and Blood Orange. 750ml bottles were AU$8.79.

I also got some Antipodes Still and Sparkling waters, they’re from NZ.
Again, I just really like the bottles!
1L bottles from Thomas Dux are $4.50 for Still and $4.99 for Sparkling.

 

Fussing

I’m glad I only gave my Mum 3 weeks notice!

My grandma and mum are fussing to the max! It’s pretty funny cos what they think a wedding should be and the wedding I want are two separate things!

They’re saying ‘shouldn’t there be champagne for a toast’ (I wasn’t going to have a toast!) and they’re fussing about where the cake is going to go, what needs to be tidied up, what drinks we need and what table cloths to use and where the flowers should go and who should do what flowers, does the photographer eat, where he should sit, lol!

I really just want them to dress nice and turn up. I’m trying to make their lives as easy as possible, but I think they’re having a mini freak out. I think they think they should be doing more!

I’m glad I only need to deal with 3 weeks of fussing – imagine if I gave them longer notice! 😀

Telling my parents

So, this arvo Steve and I went around to my parent’s place, like we do most weekends. We stay over on Saturday and then go visit my Grandparents on Sunday.

I got a metallic gold calligraphy pen earlier this morning and I went upstairs and quickly wrote Mum & Dad’s name on their invite.

I had to wait till they were both in the room together before I could give them the invite and this took a little while because Mum was on the phone to her Mum in South Africa.

So it was around dinner time and Mum and Dad were both in the kitchen. I quickly went upstairs to fetch their invite and I said, Mum and Dad, Steve and I have an invite to give you.

Mum was like, what is this? So she opens it and she says, Is this real? Are you two playing jokes? Really? Is this true? Really?

Lol! Mum didn’t believe us, for like a full 10 minutes she thought we were playing a prank on her! She said, I know you two like to play the fool. Hahaha! We were like, okay then, we’re coming around on the 11th, there’s a caterer and a celebrant and a photographer coming, so you might want to zhuzh yourself up a little. Lol!

My dad on the other hand was like, “Congratulations to you both”. How cute!

After Mum realised it was true, she was like, What’s going to happen? What do I wear? Do I have to wear a long dress? Can I wear pants? Do I have to get a haircut? Do I need to prepare anything? Do I need to make arrangements? I need to tidy up. Dad’s suit needs to be taken up! Do you have a dress? Do you need crockery/cutlery/glasses? Do we need to make speeches? We’re not speech people. Is there going to be champagne? (No one in my family drinks! lol) What is the food going to be? Do they cook it here? When do they get here? Do they use my utensils? What does the cake look like? This isn’t enough notice! etc etc etc! It was like a barrage of questions! Poor Mum, her head must have been spinning!

So we told her, she just needs to turn up and that’s all she has to do!

Also, she said that her Mum, my grandma in Sth Africa, just asked her on the phone, when are Steve and Shelley getting married. And she said, you know, they don’t get married these days, they just go out with each other and live together. LOL! I suppose after almost 12 years of Steve and I going out, she probably didn’t think it would ever happen, so it tripped her out big time!

Mum also said, just wait til you see your Grandma’s face (my Dad’s mum), she won’t believe you, she won’t know what to do.

We’re giving Dad’s Mum (and my Aunty and cousins) their invites tomorrow at lunch. Can’t wait to see their reaction!

Invitations

Okay, so we’re getting to the pointy end of the stick here! I was hoping to give my family a months notice about this wedding, but the 11th fell on a Tuesday and I’m not seeing them til this weekend, so they’re only going to get 3 and a bit weeks now!

Is okay, all they need to figure out is their outfits and a present for us 😀

So, running super short on time, I couldn’t really do what I wanted to do, which was use Ann Woods’ sweethearts (love birds in wedding outfits). So I had to go the rush option.

I went on Etsy, scoured all the Aus-based, print-it-yourself, invite designs.

I found two great ones. One by Idoityourself, that looked like a vintage playbill:

And one from The Parchment Place that I just liked the design and colours:

I ended up going with the second option. The clincher was they allowed a matching back design and it was a bonus they were cheaper.

Sarah knocked up the design the same day and sent back proofs. I made some changes and she sent the finished art files that night (thurs). I sent the files to the printer this morning (A5, double-sided, full colour, bleed, 300gsm card stock) and they were done by 4pm! Yay! Ready to give to my family this weekend!

Now, you know I had to Martha Stewart them up before I give them out, so here’s what I did.

I got some metallic cream C5 envelopes, some metallic light blue damask paper and some light blue, stitched, grosgrain ribbon.

Here’s the raw ingredients:

And here’s what the finished product looks like:

shopping for my ring

Today we went shopping in the city for my e-ring setting and wedding band.

We went to Larsen Jewellery in the GPO – they make all their rings on site. They had no appointments to see a jeweller, so I made one for next week, they also didn’t have a ring in the style I wanted, nor a band, nor any loose baguettes, so nothing much to see!

Next we went to Keshett in Lt Collins St, where I tried on a ring in the style I wanted and got to try out emerald baguette, plain and princess-cut wedding bands with the e-ring. Here I found out that the diamond Steve got me is gigantic! I was trying on a ring about 1ct and then he compares it to the diamond he bought which is 2.02ct and it was almost double the size! Until I saw it next to another diamond, I didn’t realise the actual size of it! I’m actually quite shocked!

I also found out that a plain band is too plain, emerald-cut baguettes are not very sparkly and that wedding bands with stones the whole way around are impractical – they bang against the desk and the stones can pop out and they are hard to re-size.

The wedding band that looked the best with the ring were princess-cut diamonds, channel set, halfway around, so that’s what I’m going to go with. It adds a complimentary amount of bling without competing with the centre stone. Perfect!

Next we went to the diamond broker where Steve bought my stone from. It is more of an office, not a retail shop, they are a diamond broker who also make custom settings. We spoke to Graeme there, the 71 year old owner who is so nice and doesn’t try to sell you anything. He pretty much operates on that he can make you whatever you want and he can source the diamonds and the metals. Graeme measured my finger and I found out I’m an “L”. Though I’m apprehensive of getting a ring that fits me now, instead of going something slightly bigger to accomodate for a) getting older and fatter and b) hotter months when the fingers swell. Before I get the ring made I might go in again and re-measure, just for peace of mind.

After speaking with Graeme, I think I’m going to go with him. He’s more expensive than some of the others, but I’m just most comfortable with him. He’s got the right contacts and really understands the ratio between the central diamond size to the side baguettes and then the ratio of the complete ring to my finger size, which is not what I got when I spoke to the retailers. They kind of just want to sell you what they’ve got in stock.

Steve told me that once I spoke to everyone, that would make my mind up for me. And it was true!

my ring: quotes

Okay, so since Steve has bought the centre stone, I can’t buy the setting from Cartier, so I have to get it made.

Getting quotes has been an interesting experience. Jewellers won’t give me a quote via email without seeing the centre stone, however Retailers will (?).

Jewellers will take longer to make the ring as they need to source the materials. Diamond brokers have suppliers, so can make/supply quicker, with a 1-week turnaround to have the ring made.

Some Jewellers are anti-platinum, for their own purposes – they can’t re-use the platinum filings, unlike white gold so they don’t like using it.

18K white gold needs rhodium plating every year ($60 each ring) and at the moment the quotes I’m getting for platinum are only $500 more than white gold, so platinum would pay for itself in 4 years anyway. And you don’t need to do a thing to platinum, just buff the scratches out once in a while. I’d prefer that to giving my rings in every year, it makes me slightly nervous that they’d swap my stone out, a rare occurence, but I’ve heard stories of it happening!

I’ve also had a few jewellers not comfortable with replicating a Cartier design. I’m going to tweak it anyway (6 prongs instead of 4) but this makes jewellers a bit tetchy! Lol!

My dress is on it’s way!

Omg, Val has emailed to say my dress has been shipped today (from the US) and should be in my possession in 10 days!

So excited to see it and try it on!

my ring choices

So, after a bit of googling, I narrowed it down to these rings…

The Bulgari Griffe ring (Steve’s 1st choice)

The Cartier Ballerine Solitaire

The Cartier 1895 Solitaire with side baguettes

And the winner is…

The Cartier 1895 Solitaire with tapered side baguettes. It’s the composition that Steve likes, but I prefer the profile to the Bulgari Griffe and I think the diamonds on the side of the Cartier Ballerine distract from the centre stone, which in my mind should really be the hero.

I like this Harry Winston wedding band, emerald-cut baguettes, channel set the whole way around: