Graham Robinson

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Password was sent with the save the date cards or contact us.

Graham

Talk of the wedding has been going on for the last month or so but the blog hasn’t, so it’s time for a catch up.

A few hours ago we put the deposit on the Moss Bros suits. The men can get measured up in their own city and then pick up / return the suit wherever they like. There is a Moss Bros 2 minutes from the hotel so I would recommend paying the £5 and collecting from your store (so you can try it on asap) then drop it back to our local.

The wedding list got sorted out at Debenhams and then, after having no end of trouble trying to add and remove items, we gave up and switched to a John Lewis list. We weren’t even going to do a list in the first place so we thought it wasn’t worth the stress. Items from the list are purchased quite late (4 weeks before until 2 weeks after) from a store, online or over the phone.

The invites are here and hopefully we’ll start writing names tomorrow. Part of the wedding package includes the stamps to post them off!

I suppose the next step is finalising the flowers. At least we know our wedding colours in more detail than before.

I’m sure they’ll be more to come

Graham

… as both mothers now have found their outfits.

We went to the Solent Hotel again for Valentines day and saw another wedding going on. The bride looked really pretty and really made me feel like it won’t be long now, which I suppose it won’t be.

Graham

We’ve got some save the date magnets that we’ll be posting out soon. Hopefully you’ll all like them.

With the magnet will be a password to the ‘more information’ page we’ve added to the site. We’ll make sure this has all the important information about the day that we won’t publicly place on the site.

On a side note we had decided we might use Debenhams for our wedding list as it is the only place we like in all the cities people are coming from. Anyway, when we went to get more we found a wedding day event going on. So we got a free bottle of bubbly for giving them our details.

Finally, I hope you like the new website theme.

On the shoes-front, I tried on a pair of shoes while I was trying on dresses sometime ago but they seemed really low heeled – too low!!!  I have a boyfriend at 6 foot and a sister at 5 ft 9. Heels are in order me thinks. They were Else Metropolitan (by Rainbow), but I’d spotted another pair much earlier that I really fancied which were much higher, by Rainbow which were more expensive but I decided to leave the shoe buying until I went back for my dress fitting. Anyway, in the Christmas sales in John Lewis, I was having a wander around for a feather duster of all things…and as I walked past the shoe section spotted all the wedding shoes on sale, row after row of Rainbow shoes. I got the higher heeled shoes I was after for half price @ £32.50. Bargain and they’re utterly fabulous!!!!

On the bargain front me and Graham are rackin’ em up. Dress, shoes, at the hotel, and the photographer too, but even after all that weddings still cost a lot so we are doing our best to get best value for money.

The next on the to-do. Bridesmaids

I’m sure Amy will update you all in some more detail soon but in the past week we have managed to book the

• Photographer - http://www.simonjcoulson.com/
• Florist – http://www.tigerlily.me.uk/

We’re nearly at the ‘turning up’ stage now*. What we are still missing is a colour scheme

*Well we are in my eyes

I spotted ages ago in one of my very early wedding magazines the exact flowers I wanted, and never cut out the picture and have never found the picture since. Anyway, after attending the Southampton Civic Centre wedding fair, we met a florist there who had some example flowers with her that I loved. I looked at her website and she makes lovely stuff. So I think we will be visiting her soon to get her booked. I’m really pleased we found a florist we connected with, who does the styles I like. I had been looking at websites for local florists and just couldn’t find anything I liked and gave up looking for a time because I was quite dis-heartened by it all. I’m useless with flowers so I was checking out websites for inspiration and just couldn’t find anything, until we met this florist at the wedding fair. Hoorah for us!

A tip for any other bride: you see flower pictures anywhere that you like – take a picture (if you can) or cut it out. Even if it 2 weeks after you got engaged (that’s what happened to me). If like me, you’re useless at describing flowers then this is VERY useful.

Choosing a photographer is REALLY hard. The hardest thing so far! We have a list of various ones we’ve found, with a really good idea of what we want out of it, but when we choose one, even with all the examples on websites, it still feels like it’s going to be a gamble as to whether we will get what we want out of the end of it.

I really feel we have to get the photographer bang-on right, out of everything, the wedding shots will be there for a heck of a lot longer than a lot of other things in a wedding, such as the cake (that definitely doesn’t last long), and food (gone by the end of the day) and the list goes on.

I am thinking that I might write a little comparison chart of the various photographers and grade them on what we want out of the day. Maybe that will help.

Thought it was time to blog as I haven’t done in a little while. Progress hasn’t really been made on new wedding stuff until very recent weeks. I went to the Birmingham NEC wedding fair with my mum and both my sisters. It was really busy and every bride for herself pretty much. I was also taken aback with how many brides had brought with them an army of people (some had 5 or 6!!) which would then fill a stall up and no one could get in properly to look which wasn’t ideal and really quite selfish.

It was a fab weekend (drank faaaar too much wine lol). I tried on 2 dresses while I was at the fair, the very first I tried on was loooooooovely and on sale (from 1700 to 600). When I left the wedding fair I was really concerned I’d let it slip through my fingers, but recent events have removed that feeling (thankfully!).

There were a lot of local suppliers at the Birmingham fair for things like photography and flowers, but I have been aiming to get those more local to Southampton, so I didn’t find those stalls so useful.

The most useful thing I found out of the fair was looking at dresses. I’d seen plenty in magazines but none ‘on the hangers’. Something that strikes me is just how awful some dresses look hung up, then on a person really nice. To be frank I saw more dresses I didn’t like than what I did which was a little disconcerting in one way, but at least it made me more clearer on what I wanted.

We had a brilliant weekend, ate at some wonderful places and went through I fair bit of alcohol and had such a laugh. The hotel was a nice place my sister picked, close to the station and the shops too. Susan managed to get a bargain on a 4 star hotel, so it was quite posh.

On Sunday before we all went home we went shopping in the city centre too, Birmingham is a brilliant place to shop.

We had a picture sent to us from the Hotel in an email showing the room we’ve booked for the wedding all decked out for a ceremony and it looked really nice. It was pink, with white chair covers. Anyway, I’ve now been thinking colours, everywhere I look I’ve been thinking ‘colours’ hehe. While I was doing some web designing I found a deep purple/pink/red that I like using one of my colour designer programs, but it’s so hard to decide. Graham also showed me a very beautiful deep purple colour that he found on a dress, which would also look nice. I am also wondering ’should I go 2 tone’? For example deep purple, with a matching lighter colour.

It’s hard to decide but I want the wedding pictures to look fab (doesn’t everyone in a wedding? lol), which means getting the colour just right.

Answers on a postcard…….

Forgotten to say we have finally started spending our money.

The venue now has a £750 deposit down on it and the council has 25 of our earth pounds to save the date.

Our letter said that they arrange all the details 10 weeks beforehand but I think that we (or should I say Amy) will be arranging things well before then.

Graham

So now we’ve nearly got an initial booking for a venue. Graham has been exchanging emails with the hotel and we’ve got some dates to choose from. The next step is wedding insurance from the looks of it. Now this cost as much 28 or 78 quid, dependent on the value of the wedding. We have a more modest budget then your average wedding, you’re average weding being being around 15k it seems…hehe we’ve decided to not be that extravagant. We were looking at various insurers on a web based money saving guide Graham uses, and looked at Greenbee and Confetti. Now something strange was going on there. They both have exactly the same form to fill in when buying it online!! Why is that I wondered? They’re both underwritten by the same company from what I can tell, yet charge different prices!! Lol

Our venue search up to now has been the following cycle

1. “Ooh that looks nice”
2. “Lets send off for some more information”
3. “The brochure’s here”
4. “Aww, minimum numbers. We don’t have that many people”

Nearly without exception.

The only place that seems to be the exception to this is the first place on our list. The Solent Hotel where we got engaged in the first place.

This hotel’s prices work on the ‘All Inclusive’ model that some people like and some hate. I really like the idea of letting someone else do all the hard work but I think that Amy would like a bit more of a hands on role. The compromise will probably come in the centrepieces.

Solent has a price per head of somewhere between £80 and £100 for the wedding breakfast, food, bar drinks, wine at the meal, toastmaster, etc. Impressivly they have no room hire charges (for the breakfast, there is still one for the cerimony), which I think makes up for the expensive price per head (that an an hour of free bar and ‘free flowing’ £28 a bottle wine included in the price). However the important thing is that they actually have a range of rooms to put people in.

Many other hotels seem to have a wedding area. This area fits 200 people in and they want as close to that many people turning up, paying and staying. We aren’t anywhere near this number. This hotel has a room that fits 100-200 people, however it also has an area for 60-100 and 20-40 people. We’re very close to 40, but not nearly close enough for 60.

What has really empressed us though is what they are doing for us in the evening.

Average age at our wedding will be nowhere near the 30 mark. Hiring a disco would end up being a £2-3000 first dance photograph and nothing else. We don’t even fancy it ourselves very much. We’re more social people than dancers.

Solent have offered us an area of the bar that we can have to ourselves for the evening (no hire charges), we can put a few quid behind the bar for people to get a drink and people can also buy their own if they have really had a bad evening (maybe if they have kicked themselves in the face and given themselves a black eye… just me then). Despite it not being an evening do, they have even said we could order some buffet food, maybe a few plates of sandwiches, but just something to be there while we all have a natter. We don’t want people to come 250 miles for a few hours and then be sent straight back home again, so this really has worked out for us.

And to top it all off they are offering 20% off Friday weddings for next year*. Great stuff

* For anyone who hasn’t planned a wedding recently here is how days work out

• Saturday – The premium day. This is the day that minimum numbers were created for. Send 200 paying adults or don’t come at all
• Fridays and Sundays – We might talk to you if you don’t have 200 people, but don’t expect anyone to smile at you or return your calls
• Monday – Thursday – No-one would want a wedding on these days** so expect the wedding organiser to bend over backwards to get you to agree to a date on these days. Any numbers would be concidered and discounts would be offered like cheese on cocktail sticks.

** OK, so I even know some people who got married on these days, but you get my point. We even thought of doing it this way as 90% of our guests would either have as little problem with a summer holiday weekday as a Saturday or would need to book holiday for a Saturday as well as a weekday. Pretty much only Ian, Amy and I who do a normal Mon-Fri doing summer.

I think I am may become the queen of bargain hunting (or soon will anyway…).
I’ve made progress on wedding cake ideas. Most places charge hideous prices for custom flavoured layers and custom design weddings cakes that cost 300-1000 quid. Well that seems extreme for a cake lol. Recently Graham’s sister Karen gave us advice to spend money on the things we will remember most, and a magazine I also read included a quote from someone saying ‘think about the cost per minute’. In other words think about how much things cost in relation to how much time will be spent on the thing that day. A cake is good for photographs and (hopefully!) is very yummy when eaten, but generally will not gather a lot of the days attention. I found M&S do some gorgeous cakes which we then can add decorations to, but I’ve also checked out waitrose’s food service too. Graham and I have so far come to the conclusion that Waitrose offers us the sort of thing we are after and at a more stomachable (excuse the pun!) cost, which will let us spend more money on the important things…like ensuring everybody there has a cracking good day and things like the photography is fabulous.

One thing I am doing is I’m making a scrap book for the wedding magazine ideas that I really like and want to look into implementing. Magazines have some really good ideas that I’d like to centrally put somewhere so I remember them in future, so I’ve bought a large thick notebook and I’m going to turn it into a scrapbook of magazine cut outs. Should do the trick.

So – all the parents got together last weekend at Cardiff and all went well, other people you read about who are planning their own weddings say about parents not getting on and all that, and all those comments made me stress but I shouldn’t have stressed out about it really!!
Had look at the Royal Horticultural Society flower show which was really nice – I got some herbs…anyway back on topic I was looking to see if I could find inspiration for wedding flowers but I didn’t spot much. I wonder if this is because of my rather big lack of imagination on the flower arranging side of things. I’ve got no clue what I really like and what I don’t. I look at magazines and think, that’s alright, that’s alright, but don’t really have ANY strong feelings about flowers. Is there something wrong with me lol? I think the magazines will have to help me on that front.
Whilst away at the weekend, my dad had a fantastic idea about doing some fancy thorntons-like chocs, bought in bulk for the favours (which would be then contained in a paper wrapper with the box) rather than just regular chocs in fancy foil (which, after checking prices seem to be priced at the same sort of cost in bulk). Say the word ‘wedding’ and even the cheapest thing becomes ‘fancy’ and about 3 times the price, which is what happens with a lot of these websites selling regular chocolate hearts in foil wraps. What a con.

The first week of engaged life has brought a number of wedding books, magazines and adverts into our humble abode. Most of it is good but some of the adverts are for dresses that are double our entire wedding budget.

Amy still doesn’t actually have a ring that fits on her finger, but she hasn’t quite turned into ‘Bridezilla’, as she calls it.

This Sunday we went to a beautiful hotel called the Legacy Botleigh for a wedding show. Everyone asked when the wedding was and the answer was ‘we’ve only been engaged a week’. Ah well, they won’t be getting money out of us just yet.

The hotel has a lovely garden that would look fantastic in photographs (hence why they let the shows happen there) and we’ve been trying to do some sums about it all. They certainly don’t have the most included in their wedding packages but the album would look very nice.

Another hotel we are looking at has a lot in the price, strangely enough including centrepieces, which I thought were too expensive to include free. We aren’t sure if it really has an outside though. Hard choices, if a little premature at this stage.

We’ve also been trying to blast through a few numbers. Fortunatly both our families aren’t exactly big and although we have a few friends there aren’t many that I’d feel close enough to bring to the actual ceremony. Money wise we’re looking at self funding it, anything else we come across might be a bonus, but we aren’t expecting it.

Is it really that modern to feel like we shouldn’t be asking parents for piles of cash to pay for these things? I’m not even sure whether or not we want a guest list! We’re toying the idea of just telling people to spend the money staying in the hotel and enjoying themselves. We have no room in our kitchen as it is; imagine if we got a new dinner set and another toaster. Hell, we’ve just got an Ikea within walking distance, I could have 5 toasters here in a couple of hours.

So I’m sure this will all be interesting. I’ll have to make an effort to blog how things are going. I know no-one reads this, but I’m sure it will be interesting to look back on once the day has gone by and see how we have paniced / lost hope / given up / decided on flowers with a spin-the-bottle game over the months.

p.s. How can I find a wedding photographer that costs £500 for two hours that supplies negatives (well a DVD seeing as they don’t use film anymore), yet the ones that cost £1750 don’t?