Forevermissvanity - A UK Lifestyle Blogger : wedding

The Forever Miss Vanity Wedding

As many of you will know, I recently got married on the 6th September 2014 to my irish sweetheart James. We had a wonderful wedding, despite spending most of out time hiding under brollies to escape the rain. I thought I would do a really short post showing you all my lovely wedding pictures taken by my good friend and professional photographer Toby-Baxter-Gale, I hope you like them.

Have you been to a wedding lately?

It's not like me to go a few weeks without doing a post on here - in fact I've managed to blog for over three and a half years with never more than a week off. However, I have been so busy lately that a break from my blog was very much needed and to be fair, I probably have one of the best excuses not to blog, I got married last week and today I returned from my honeymoon.

Despite the heavy rain and the repetitiveness of lifting my skirt up every time I went outside, I had the most perfect wedding. I was told before the big day that it would go so fast and I didn't quite believe it until the very next morning when my husband and I were laying in bed and we could barely remember a moment of our big day. It was one big blur of excitement, emotion and a lot of alcohol and it was the best day in my entire life.

There's nothing that beats the thrill of walking down the aisle to your husband/wife/partner to be and finally embarking on a new journey together as life long partners. It was wonderful and without getting too soppy, I love my husband so much for making the day so special. Official wedding photographs will be published soon, so if you want to see more of my big day make sure you check back.

Once the wedding was over, I had three days to pack and then we flew out to our favourite place, Ibiza. Yet again, we both had the most amazing time snorkelling, visiting new islands, taking random boat trips and enjoying the Ibiza water sports such as being strapped to the back of a speedboat on giant inflatables. We dined at some of the best restaurants on the Island, watched the famous Ibiza sunset and even watched one of our favourite bands at the Hard Rock Hotel Ibiza.

Now here I am back on my trusty laptop embarking on a new journey as Forever 'Mrs' Vanity (I won't be changing the name though) and trying to discover what's next after so many big occasions. There are so many blog posts I can't wait to write and so many opportunities lined up that the future seems so exciting. The most important thing however is that I now have a husband, a fabulous job, the opportunity to write for all you lovely people and right now i'm the happiest I have ever been. Keep your eyes peeled for exciting things on the blog these next few weeks.

Have you done anything exciting lately?

Finding the right perfume to suit your personality can be a nightmare on most days, never mind your wedding day. With more perfumes on the market, it is getting harder to find 'the one' - we have more choice than we've ever had and these days, there are far too many perfumes that simply smell so good.

On your wedding day it is important to find a scent that matches your personality and lasts the whole day through. I have certain fragrances that remind me of special occasions and I always buy a new scent when I have a special occasion on the horizon so that scent will remind me of that day in years to come. The Eau De Perfume Original Jimmy Choo reminds me so much of my friends wedding and I wore Roberto Cavalli the day I got engaged. The Michael Kors perfumes always remind me of University and Elie Saab reminds me of Christmas. I found it really tempting to wear one of my old favourites on my wedding day, but I want a scent that was brand new and that would remind my partner of only our wedding day. Therefore I headed to my local House of Fraser and purchased of one the most iconic wedding perfumes there is.

If you're looking for something classic with a fresh musky scent, yet hidden floral tones Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel is the perfect choice. Chanel perfumes are concentrated meaning and long lasting, compared to other less expensive brands that are slightly diluted. This means that you're applying pure perfume that will linger on skin and although Chanel perfume isn't cheap, you will spend less time reapplying it, meaning it is a lot more value for money in the long run. Every girl deserves a little bit of luxury on their wedding day and Chanel is definitely the way forward.

Have you tried any Chanel perfumes?

When I started dating my partner I always knew he would be 'the one'. We had been friends a considerable number of years and we have always had a connection. Our love for the same music, having similar hobbies and the same ambitions in life made us a match made in heaven. Since the moment we got together, we have been inseparable. Me and James knew each other for 7 years prior to dating and dated for a mere 7 months before he proposed. It was a whirlwind romance that still is still thriving and making us both happy. When he proposed to me in a posh suite of a London hotel, neither of us knew what we were getting ourselves into. The thought of a wedding thrilled us and we were joyous about the prospect of spending our lives together, however neither of us envisioned the amount of effort it takes planning a wedding. We have less than 5 months until the big day and both of us have sweaty palms and an air of confusion about what we have left to do. Organisation has always been my strong point, but I've never had to organise anything so big. My partner on the other hand has a tendency to panic every time he needs to arrange something. Although both of us are madly excited about the wedding and cannot wait until the big day, there have been times where we wished we booked a trip abroad and got married on the beach with only us two there.

To help me plan my #stressfreewedding StressFreePrint* have gifted me a few items to help with wedding planning correlating with their current #stressfreewedding campaign. These items included a beautiful little wedding notes booklet, a copy of Bridesmaids on dvd to fill me with laughter, a book to made my wedding stress free and a handful of face masks to calm me down after my wedding planning sessions.

I have had many comments in regards to the little notebook I posted on Instagram - it is beautifully handcrafted and fits great in my handbag. The face masks have been a delight after a long day of printing invitations and wedding prep with the bridesmaids. The stress free wedding planning book has really helped me figure out what I want for my wedding and how to achieve it. I find it funny that many of us will spend thousands of pounds and effort over a wedding, which in reality is only one day of our lives. I am lucky that me and my partner have similar beliefs, as long as we get married - it's our future of travelling, having children and leading a healthy, fun married life we would like to invest the most time in. I can't wait for my big day and I know there are stressful times ahead,but with the help of my best friends and this #stressfreewedding kit, I know I'll eventually get there.

Are you planning on getting married?

It's the time of the year where all the weddings start to happen and the sunshine is in full force. I have already been invited to one wedding this year and I know I will probably be invited to quite a few more. I love spring weddings - the sunshine, the fresh newly blossomed flowers and the baby animals making their way from their mothers nests. Spring is so beautiful and it makes the perfect time to celebrate romance.

As many of you may know I'm getting married in September. Me and my partner decided that getting married in September would leave enough time for me to finish university, rather than the spring wedding I once desired - this does not stop me getting all gooey and wedding broody this time of season. One question I get asked frequently is 'what should I wear to your wedding?' I am having a 1950s style shindig so I'm encouraging my attendees to think vintage, but if it was any other wedding, I think you cannot go wrong with pretty pastels and a cute fascinator. Weddings* are a tradition here in the UK, but I don't really like them. I find them too flamboyant and they get in the way. Hats belong at Ascot and in the sunshine, not really weddings.

This little outfit I have put together consists of this beautiful Jones and Jones dress currently on sale at Topshop, a pair of white court shoes from New Look and this pretty fascinator from House of Fraser. I like this outfit as it is feminine, vintage and looks neutral. The eyes should only be on the bride on her wedding day - stray away from colours that are too bold and daring and what ever you do, make sure you ask the bride what her colour scheme is so that you don't clash with the bridesmaids.

Are you going to any weddings this year?

The New Year is always full of excitement, wondering where you will be in a year from now and what changes will be coming your way. Next year I've decided to go all out and go for probably the biggest and most stressful year I could possibly have. Although I say that like its going to be a bad thing, next year is seriously going to be one of the most exciting years of my life. The reason why? There's a clue just in the top image. I'm getting married. Not only am I getting married, but I'm also graduating from uni, moving from the parents house and potentially getting my first ever job all in 2014. For the most part I'm incredibly excited, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly anxious as to how I'm going to juggle it all. Preparing for a wedding is harder than it actually looks, trust me. I remember going into this whole engagement malarky quite naively - "Yes darling, we will have a wonderful wedding and it will be incredibly easy to organise. Don't worry, it won't be anymore added pressure on top of university, how hard can it be?" Well it wasn't until a few months ago that I realised such things as 'favours' and 'save the date' cards existed. I was a complete novice in a world that presumes because you're a woman you should know exactly what goes into a wedding.

A few weeks ago, whilst going on my daily prowl through my Twitter feed I saw a request for bloggers to review Save The Date cards. Realising that there's only 10 months until my wedding and I'm severely behind on my preparation I thought I'd give it a go. I was asked to choose a design from the Paper Themes website and hey presto, they arrived a few days ago in this beautiful box (check me out in my onesie) looking every bit better than I ever expected.

Mine and James' wedding is very much vintage focused. We wanted to do a 1950s theme, but it's become more of an amalgamation of all our favourite decades from the 50s through to the 60s and 70s. Both of us had no clue what we wanted our save the date cards or our wedding invitations to be like, but when we saw these we knew we had to have them. Paper Themes specialise in vintage wedding stationery, making them the perfect company to make our save the date cards. There's a variety of designs and best of all, they are fabulous quality. The invitations I ordered are not too flimsy, beautifully embossed and more importantly they are the perfect size for a wedding invitation. Paper Themes have been providing happy couples with wedding stationery and invitations for over 100 years and with years of expertise, they know exactly what would make your wedding invitations stand out from the crowd.

Unfortunately I'm unable to invite all my wonderful followers to my wedding, but make sure you save the date as I'll be blogging all the way to the aisle.

http://www.jardinsdeden.co.uk/

I'm currently sat in bed with my Jardin D'eden aromatherapy candle burning in the distance, reflecting on my blog developments throughout the last few years. I thought this lighting this candle would fit the atmosphere perfectly as the tea tree and eucalyptus promises to cool, relax and refresh my mind. A few weeks back I was sent the candle to review and it's only now I've appreciated it's relaxing and thought evoking scents. The Jardin D'Eden candle can burn between 2 - 4 hours at time, giving you chance to really indulge in the relaxation and take time out to refresh your thoughts.

Refreshing is an apt word for the evening as I introduce you to my fabulous new refreshed blog layout made by the talented Sarah from BonjourBelleDesigns. During the last few blogging years, I've experimented with many layouts and even attempted to design a few myself, but somehow throwing a few emails together, Sarah has managed to grasp exactly what I've wanted from my blog from the beginning. I feel that this new layout not only looks fantastic, but it really captures my personality.

When you begin writing, you never know what to expect, what will be around the corner and what opportunities may come your way. Starting a blog is like a little adventure into the unknown and with hope you will discover a sense of your personal identity and begin to feel the thrill of the journey. I started my blog a few years ago out of sheer boredom and the longing to express my love for fashion and beauty. I was never good at writing, laying out webpages or photography, but as time progressed everything seems to have fallen into place and I'm now with the help of my new design, I'm feeling the happiest and most optimistic I've ever felt with my blog baby.

This week has been very overwhelming in a positive way and now it's time to sit back and really appreciate everything that is happening in my life. A new job, a wedding on the way, a revitalised blog and my third year of university to attend, I think this year is going to be special.

As many of you will know, in just over a year's time I will be getting married and right now, the pressure is on to get all the preparations started. Before I got engaged, I envisioned myself as a Bridezilla knowing exactly how I wanted things and frequently throwing temper tantrums. In fact, I'm now completely the opposite. I'm calm, collected and I have a kind of 'don't really care aslong as I get married' attitude. The struggles me and James have faced during our times together and the loss of some really prevalent people in our lives has made us realise that we could get married in shack and still be insanely happy. We're looking for a low key, intimate affair with friends and family being our focus.

Sometimes having a laid back attitude is the best way, but then again, there is a time when it becomes borderline lazy. I admit, I've very much become that person. I keep looking at the list getting all excited and then when I realise how much work I have to do, I freeze and try to distract myself. I really underestimated how much there is to arrange when you get married. I mean - I don't know the difference between chrysanthemums and gypsophilas and don't even get me started on the various descriptions of wedding dresses which all inevitably conclude they are the same colour, white.

Despite all this ranting, I'm very much excited about the wedding and marrying my handome prince. Aslong as we make it down the asile in one piece, I'll be a happy bunny. To make sure there is a wedding to attend, it's vital that I start looking into wedding invitations. I'm intending for all my wedding invitations to be sent out before the middle of September and I haven't really started the search. Recently I came across a few designs on Vistaprint. Vistaprint was never my choice of wedding invitation makers, until I came across this design.

I love the little flowers and the simplicity of this invitation. When dreaming of my perfect invites, I was looking for something along these lines. I'm not a frilly type of person and I don't want to invest a huge amount into invitations when the majority of them will be thrown away. I love the price range of these invitations (10 for £12.74) and I think they look rather classy. With all these thoughts pottering round my mind, I ordered a few samples and when they arrived, I was really impressed.

The card seems really sturdy, which is great as you know the wont get damaged in the post and the gloss makes them look more appealing. The text is simple yet pretty and the border looks vintage which fits in with my wedding theme.

The design is replicated on the inside of the invite, along with the same text for the information. On this sample, you can see I have made a few mistakes, but for a tester it looks really good. I've shaded my wedding date and information for privacy reasons. As much as I love you all and would love to invite you all to my wedding, I simply do not have the catering budget!

What do you think of these designs?

http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/

Wedding Plans:

My dream wedding plans are truly coming into fruition. I've talked to my Dad's friend about potentially loaning me his 1960s car for my wedding transport, I've booked my venue and church and I still have over a year and a half until I get married. How organised am I? Today I decided to delve into more wedding dresses. I'm pretty sure you'll get bored of these posts eventually,but I'd like to think that my blog also can serve as an online diary that shows me wedding dresses that I have liked in the past - plus I get to share all my excitement with you, rather than annoying my friends 24/7.

Gay Marriage:

On the topic of marriage, gay and lesbian couples are currently under battle with the British government to allow gay marriage in the country. Parliament are currently in the voting stages and are receiving very mixed views. Like the majority of current day women, I have dabbled with my sexuality whilst sipping a bottle of my favourite alcoholic beverage and in my opinion, I see no difference to the love of a woman compared to a man. Everyone falls in love with the same sex at some point in their life, it's just not always full on. For example, as women, we idolise other women with perfect bodies and lust after them. Therefore, aren't we displaying a short display of bisexuality? Love is love. We are all made to fall in love and respect other people, it's human nature. If two people decide that they fall in love with the same gender, why should we care? We live in a world with so much hatred and crime, we should be celebrating people that would like to be at peace and declare their love on a wider scale. After all, times have changed dramatically in the last century. Some women are now opting for designer babies, more and more people are changing their bodies dramatically with cosmetic surgery - who are we to say what is natural anymore? Love is natural, it's probably one of the purest things to come out of this world. So for any gay, straight, bi, pansexual, asexual follower of mine, know this - you are always welcome in the Forevermissvanity community.

Outfits:

Today, or rather this evening, I have decided to give you a mini run down of some wedding mood boards I've created. I was contacted by a lovely woman named Charlotte who pointed me in the direction of the new Phase Eight wedding collection and I thought I'd play around with some of their products. Here's some of my look books.

None of these images are my own

These mother of the bride outfits would suit my mum down to a tee, especially the one of the left. She is a lover of pink and likes anything floral. I like to think of the 'mother of the bride' figure as elegant, sophisticated and wise. I'd like her outfit to be approachable, friendly and subtly stand out. Mothers are supposed to have a caring appeal and I think floral patterns, baby pinks and light grey colours are definitely the way forward. I'm not too much of a hat person, but if someone would like to wear one to my wedding, I wouldn't object.

None of these images are my own

Sticking to my late 1950's, early 1960s theme, I've chosen these beautiful retro looking bridesmaid dresses to show you. The red one reminds me of a rock'n'roll type dress, whilst the other makes me think of 'Sandy' from Grease in her innocent days.

None of these images are my own

These bridal dresses have such vintage appeal, with lashings of vintage lace and trimmings. Unfortunately I've already fallen in love with another dress elsewhere, but these are fabulous contenders for anyone looking for a vintage style wedding dress.

None of these images are my own

Gay marriage isn't something I have any experience of, but I did not want to leave anyone out. I decided to focus more on blazers as a lot of lesbian weddings I have seen, the women who prefers to wear the dress (a lot of the time both) goes for the usual wedding dress types. I'm all for slim fitted, tailored wedding dresses for gay weddings. They really cling to the woman's figure showing off her best assets, whilst being simple, yet striking. The blazer on the left is by Ann Taylor, middle is by Next and the final blazer was picked from hertuxedo.com. I really love these blazers as they're really feminine and fitted, yet have a masculine appeal.

I hope you like all my choices. What do you think?

As many of you know, I've been engaged since April 2012 and I have some exciting news to tell you all. As of yesterday evening, me and my partner James have placed the deposit down on our wedding reception. I'm beyond excited and I seem to have gone into wedding overdrive. I'm not getting married until 2014, but it's great that we're so prepared and we can have a gradual planning session rather than doing the whole 'Don't Tell The Bride' thing of booking a wedding within 3 weeks. Of course, being a really girly girl, I'm so excited about trying on wedding dresses in the near future, so I decided to celebrate by showing you some of my favourites online.

My wedding theme is 1950s/60s. Me and my partner can't choose with decade we really prefer, so we're going for the turn of the decade. Think Dreamboats and Petticoats and early Beatles. I'm looking for a dress with plenty of elegant lace and quite big. This top dress is from the Maggie Sottero range. I love the beautiful lace top half and how the lace trails along the bottom. I have slightly bigger hips so I like the fact that this dress goes in at the wait then out again.

This second dress still has the lace elements that I really like, but it's much more slimline. I'm not overly keen on the gloves, but the dress looks beautiful. It's simple, yet incredibly elegant.

The final dress is known as the 'Snow White' dress. I love the floral decoration on the top and the fact that it looks so retro. Right now if I had to choose one dress, this would definitely be it.

Whilst we were discussing wedding plans at the hotel last night, we were told that the hotel is pet friendly and that guests are allowed to bring dogs if they are struggling for accommodation. Words cannot describe how happy I am to hear that my little yorkshire terrier, Ozzy, can be a guest at my wedding. Of course he isn't allowed in the reception room, but he can be in my wedding pictures and have a lie down upstairs whilst we all party. I definitely need to look at dog tuxedos...

Which dress would you choose?

The Forever Miss Vanity Wedding

Forever 'Mrs' Vanity

Choosing Your Wedding Perfume

Wedding Planning

Spring Wedding Attire

Save The Date: Forevermissvanity Wedding

Thursday Thoughts - New Blog Design!

Here comes the bride - Wedding Invitations

Wedding Fever & Gay Marriage

Wedding Planning