I GOT ENGAGED! ♥ Our Wedding Plans

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post, and it’s dawned on me that I haven’t actually shared some big news on my blog. I got engaged! It’s actually quite old news now, as Gavin proposed in September last year. The past 11 months have really flown by and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat – we’ve been so busy doing up the house/garden and wedding planning! But I thought I’d finally write a blog post and share with you our engagement story and a bit of wedding planning.

Our Engagement Story

So we were supposed to go on our Caribbean cruise in May 2020 but obviously this was cancelled due to Covid-19. Gavin had planned to propose whilst we were away, but as this didn’t happen, he needed a new plan! We were then supposed to go to Seville, but again, it was cancelled! I remember he kept on saying we should book a UK break or a night away somewhere nice, and I kept saying there was no point and we should just save our money for our next holiday abroad. But he decided to book us a surprise night away anyway and I had no idea where we were going or what he had planned.

He had booked us a night at a gorgeous manor hotel in St Albans, and when we arrived I said I was tired so wanted to just chill out in the room for a bit. But Gavin kept on pushing for us to get dressed up and go for a drink instead, so eventually we did – he was so keen to go for that drink! So we went down to the bar and then sat in the manor gardens on a bench overlooking the beautiful lake. We just sat there chatting for a while, and then Gav started waffling a bit about what a weird year it had been, before eventually popping the question!

I was really surprised and of course, absolutely thrilled (we did have a little teary moment!)! And there we have it.. that’s the story! Afterwards we went for a yummy steak dinner and some celebratory cocktails (and bad dancing!). I am absolutely in love with wearing my engagement ring. It’s a platinum diamond halo ring, it’s so sparkly – I can’t stop looking at it!

Wedding Planning

I am quite an organised person anyway but I was particularly keen to start wedding planning soon after our engagement as I knew Covid would have affected things. And I’m so glad we started booking things straight away with a date in mind for 2022, because so many 2020 weddings were postponed to 2021, and then as Covid was still lingering this year, they’ve been postponed again to 2022! So there are so many suppliers totally booked up for next year now and I would have hated the stress of trying to find available suppliers, and I didn’t want to wait until 2023.

We started our wedding planning by firstly looking for a venue. I know that a lot of girls have a good idea about what they want long before they get engaged, but I didn’t really have a clue! So I spent a lot of time researching local venues and trying to find something that suited us both. We didn’t want to go for a hotel ‘package’ type wedding, and we wanted it to be beautiful but also cosy and exclusive, so that ruled out a big manor house. We also liked the idea of a barn wedding but the venues we saw locally were like actual barns… dark, concrete floors, with straw everywhere. Not the vibe I had in mind. So we started looking a little further afield and we managed to find a beautiful venue! It’s within an hour of where we live so not too far, and our family and friends are all over the place anyway so we could be flexible on location.

That’s all you’re getting out of me for now I’m afraid – I am probably an over-sharer at the best of times but trying to keep specific wedding details on the down low! But I will certainly follow up on this post with some more little details, as I have been sharing some bits on my Instagram stories. I recently shared this photo of some specially made biscuits which I used to officially ‘propose’ to my bridesmaids! I ordered these from local baker Flair For Party who is based in Leighton Buzzard and they were so perfect! I thought delivering a box of bridesmaid biscuits would be a cute little touch and they all loved them!

Save The Dates from norma&dorothy

Once we found our venue, we picked a date! We went with 25th June 2022, so hopefully we will have some lovely summer weather! As people are already booking holidays for next year I thought we should send out our save the date cards a year in advance. We are using a lovely UK based company we found called norma&dorothy for our wedding stationery.

They can produce everything we need for the wedding, all using the same design elements so that everything matches! We absolutely love our save the date cards and can’t wait to order the invites and other stationery. Receiving our parcel of pretty wrapped up cards really made the wedding seem so real! It was the first tangible thing we had, so we were so excited to receive them and get them sent out!

We chose the ‘Spring Flowers’ design which I like because we didn’t want anything too feminine, so I think this is perfect. The standard design comes with blue flowers but norma&dorothy allow you to change the colours upon request, so I opted to have a few of the flowers in a shade of dusky pink instead (okay.. they’re slightly feminine!). norma&dorothy can change any colours, fonts or wording which is included in the price – I love that you can customise the design to suit your colour scheme! They will email you over the proofs before printing too so you can be sure you are happy with the design and ensure there are no typos!

Our save the date cards are printed on white slightly textured card and we selected a square one sided design, but you can get different styles and you can also add extras too. You can customise your order to include magnet tabs, reverse printing, matching stickers and envelope printing. We chose to get the matching stickers to seal the envelopes, and we also got the envelopes printed with the guests addresses too, as our handwriting isn’t the best! I’m so glad we went for this option as they look so professional!

So that’s it for now, but I plan to do a few more wedding related posts soon sharing a few more details. I post a lot more over on my Instagram stories (there’s a wedding highlight!) so you can follow me on there. I hope you enjoyed reading a more personal post from me today! ♥