Etsy shop of the week: Yiskah Knits

£10

 Ok so I know its spring and if you’re like me you are already eyeing up your summer dresses but Yiskah Knits shows a very cute way you can bring knits into spring! I particularly love these adorable bow rings, everything is too charming!

£7

£5

DIY DIVA: Spring clean!

 With spring comes the ‘spring clean’. This lovely weather means the doors and windows can be opened and I always find it easier to do housework like that. Sometimes you want some little DIY projects that can rejuvenate a room so I thought I would share a few tutorials I discovered:

I love these rope vases as found on Green Wedding shoes. They are perfectly economical as they can really be made with any kind of containers and in any colours. So easy as well! I love the neon colours used in the tutorial but just think of all the colour combos!

 

I love coasters. We have photo coasters but I love this coaster tutorial as seen on The Pretty blog. Of course these are a pretty wedding favour idea as well! Perfect little tutorial for a spring weekend.

We recently replaced the lampshades in our apartment and I can’t believe the difference that it makes. Here are some lighting tutorials I found:

 Totally adore this Oh Happy Day tutorial. Paper lanterns are so cheap they are a staple in the student household however they are so popular in weddings as well so a great inexpensive tutorial!

 Another fantastic paper lantern tutorial from Oh happy day. This time making it into a funky disco ball! I would die if I saw a wedding with glitter paper lanterns.

I love these luminaries! The Hey Gorg tutorial is perfect for a light however the vase would be perfect with flowers in as well, great way to update a plain vase!

Its all in the details....

http://greenweddingshoes.com/a-desert-inspired-wedding-valerie-jonathan/

http://www.blovedweddings.com/blog/real-wedding-diy-country-marquee-wedding-eddie-judd-photography

http://ruffledblog.com/san-juan-capistrano-wedding/

http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/2012/03/relaxed-summer-wedding-claire-pettibone-juliet.html

http://www.100layercake.com/blog/2012/03/26/southern-california-ranch-wedding-steffani-linton/

http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog/2012/03/26/colorful-persian-wedding/

http://ruffledblog.com/diy-canadian-american-wedding/

http://www.rocknrollbride.com/2012/03/a-horror-movie-themed-wedding-catinka-dennis/

http://www.rocknrollbride.com/2012/03/a-homemade-whitstable-wedding-sinead-dan/

http://www.stylemepretty.com/2012/03/06/boulder-wedding-from-christina-kiffney-photography-plum-sage-flowers/

Pink and turquoise inspiration

 

Yesterday love my dress featured this gorgeous shoot by Marianne Taylor on the blog and I was so pleased, turquoise and pink is my favourite colour combination, exactly why it’s our wedding theme! A lot of the photos went straight into my favourites to be kept for my own wedding inspiration. Some of my personal favourite touches are the lace around the napkins and the stationary is dazzling!

 

This wedding shoot from Brushfire photography as seen on Ruffled also takes note of this gorgeous palette, this time against the backdrop of the Las Vegas desert so a perfect combination of our wedding colour scheme and honeymoon destination! Again I felt like there were little details I could take for inspiration for my own wedding such as the little heart pinboard things.

I love a dessert table so I get a lot of my inspiration from Amy Atlas, love this ruffled cake which was a submission from Harper Event Design.

Elizabeth Anne Designs (photographed by Alison Conklin) absolutely stole my attention with this pink and turquoise dessert table, with the addition of a gold edge. That shot with the cake pop and the pastel nails, just gorgeous!

We gave notice!

Swinton Civic centre where we gave notice

We gave notice! I was sooo excited about this, I was counting down until it would be less than a year and we could finally give notice. I cannot wait to start organising our ceremony!

Naively it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be! Our situation is that we are students in Manchester however we are still registered as living down south in our parents homes. I looked at what type of documentation needed to be taken to the registry office in order to give notice and the stuff needed to prove address (driving licence, council tax statement or bank statements) was only applicable to our southern addresses. So I thought I would make an appointment to give notice down south. To give notice somewhere you have to have resided there for 7 days but in Easter break we could easily arrange to be down south for that length and seeing as we’re actually getting married in Buckingham I actually was looking forward to incorporating our hometown in our wedding planning in some way.

Unfortunately the staff at our hometown told us we couldn’t give notice there, that as we spent the majority of time in Manchester to give notice down south would be a lie. I was a bit dejected and called the Manchester offices to make an appointment. However when we spoke about identification, although they were very lovely, they explained that without the correct ID we wouldn’t be able to register there.

So it was back to the hometown. Again I was told I would be registering falsely and that if I had a formal letter from my landlord or mortgage lenders that would suffice. Another technicality in our situation is we live in an apartment owned by a family member so although we pay rent we have no formal contract to prove this. Oh my god, by this point I was getting so fed up! 

Luckily the lovely staff at Manchester said they would make an exception for us and so we went and gave notice...finally!

I was kind of nervous giving notice, all the ‘if you’ve lied we can prosecute’ stuff is scary, even though I know we’re innocent haha.

 Our notice is up in the registry office for the next 15 days and then we have to collect it and send it off. We’ve already got an email from the Buckingham registry office containing all the information about witnesses and readings and all those ceremony details which are the number one thing I’ve been looking forward to organising! 

 We have a lot of things to think about now :D

Sunday catch up

 So I didn’t do a catch up last weekend and that’s because I had a bumper catch up as the boy and I went to Italy for a little city break. I’ve loved Italy for a long time and I was so happy to bring the boy to one of my favourite countries, he had never been before. 

On our hotel balcony

We went to Milan and had a gorgeous hotel. We stayed in the 4 star Mercure Palazzo and had a lovely balcony looking out over the main strip.

 We spent a lot of time sightseeing and I came back with about 200 photos (over 3 days!)Everything was just so picturesque. Of course being in Milan, a fashion capital, I had to do some shopping...I ended up in Zara haha.

 

For us the whole trip really centred around food and drink. We consumed sooo much prosecco and pastry and cream doughnuts and ice cream and pizza, it was amazing!

Oh and Milan has the best graffiti ever!