Hello!

The final countdown came around so much quicker than expected! And I kept a lot of my DIY projects until the last couple of weeks so I have absolutely loads to talk about. But before that came a final shopping spree so I'll talk about that first.

I always thought that I'll probably do my own make-up, and I decided to have a "bridal make-over" on a make-up counter to get some tips on how to do this. I don't wear much make-up, and I've never spent money on it before, so it's been a real treat getting myself some really good stuff. I was really unhappy with the make-over, they put far too much foundation and various other products on, and despite it being a very upmarket brand I thought I looked pretty awful, but it really helped cement the fact that I want to do my own! I have since had a bit of help from a couple of other brands, and I'm amazed by how good expensive make-up is. I've also bought a few nice skincare products, all of which has made me feel like a real grown-up woman! I have a skincare routine! It's so addictive though, I had no idea how many products I needed! I'm hoping that just by making me feel my best, even if they're all nonsense and I look no different, I will feel confident and that's what matters really.

We've decided that instead of just having wine on tables we're going to also have some nice bottled beers, and have ordered our beer choices from our local beer shop called The Curious Hop. We try to shop here rather than the supermarket for beer, so we're both really pleased to be able to use the shop for the wedding, although their insanely good range made it really difficult to choose! We've mostly gone for local stuff, and luckily for us a lot of local brewers have been releasing bicycle themed beers to celebrate the Tour de France coming to Yorkshire in July, so we even have one bottle with a bike on to fit our (very loose) "bicycles and sewing" theme perfectly! Another big purchase has been made: Dan finally has a suit! So we should all look super smart. Speaking of which, I bought an extra dress for dancing in the evening, what a diva.

We've also made our final cake order. I mentioned right at the beginning of our planning that we're using local vegan bakers That Old Chestnut for our cake table, and I'm really really excited for their ideas to spruce up their cakes so that they're extra special for the wedding. I wont give anything away, but I can't wait to see them! Both my mum and I are going to bake something each to add to the cake table, so that there'll be absolutely loads of the stuff to go round all evening. We've also ordered some flowers from a really lovely organic flower farm called Ducks and Daffodils. We're buying a couple of buckets of flowers and then doing our own really basic arrangements in bottles and jars. My attempts to grow my own flowers have been mixed, but I hope to have a few to add to what we're buying. My main enemy when I first planted the flowers out was my toddler Rose; she found them terribly exciting and pulled up handfuls of defenceless stems, and even smashed two plant pots moving them around! She now understands that they're not for touching, but has been replaced by a new super enemy: slugs. I hate slugs. I have been out in the rain several times to pluck them from my poor plants, and the record for one evening is 20 slugs. A lot of the plants had no chance against such an onslaught, but against all odds some are still going strong and a few have rather annoyingly even flowered early. I will be so so happy if we have even a small bunch to show for all this hard work!

So, on to all my crafting. I've stitched table numbers on a mixture of fabrics to put into frames in the middle of the table. I'm more happy with some of these than others, some were a bit rushed but never mind. I learnt some new embroidery stitches in doing these, and I enjoyed them so much that I think I'll try to use my new skills to make some new products once I've recovered from the wedding. I've also made various other little bits, in fact this has been a bit of a problem for me. I'm really used to making tiny things because of making little brooches , so I've struggled a bit to think big. I've made some tiny little flags and bunting to stick into cakes, which is cute but wont really do much to decorate the room!

I've also made the name tags by stamping everyone's names onto nice card and then using the sewing machine to stitch along the bottom - it took a few experiments to find a stitch which wouldn't just chew up the card which was pretty frustrating, but I'm really please with the final outcome. There has been some predictable bunting making, and "Just Married" bunting to hang on the front of the top table. I've also made some menu's to go in the centre of the tables, and decided to peg them to copies of "Stitch by stitch" magazine from the 1960′s, to add to our sewing/vintage theme. It's been hard to find time for all this crafting, so there has been lots of sewing amongst the general chaos of parenting a small child, and en-commute sewing on the bus!

And amongst all this organising I went on a hen do. I don't really go out with my friends at all any more, since having Rose life has just been too busy (sob), so it was nice to organise a fairly low-key affair surrounded by my favourite people. I showed a friend and my sister the venue during the day as there was a vintage fair being held there, and then in the evening we had a wild(ish) night out, complete with photo booth photos. It was perfect and made the whole wedding thing seem a lot more real, eek!

I'm very impressed by all our decision making; I've found the time frame of planning a wedding for a whole year far too long not to change my mind on everything! I found the last few weeks quite stressful, but once we went to our rehearsal and I spoke to the wedding co-ordinator at the venue about our plans I found that I could sleep at night again. So my next blog will be the actual wedding as Mrs Wilson, how exciting!