Our Wedding (at long last)...

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been over six months since we got married in September (28.09.12 to be precise), and I can honestly say that the first half of our first year of marriage has absolutely flown by in a haze of busy, challenging, fun work and happiness! We're so in love... schmalzy, but true. I love calling Ryan 'my husband' and he loves calling me 'wife'! You don't quite realise just how awesome being married is, until you ARE... it's so special.

We are excited to be able to finally share some shots of our Wedding with you - as it's coverage, in Mollie Makes Handmade Wedding, hit the news-stands last week. We're in love with the spread in the magazine, so want to say a huge thank you to the team for featuring us, and the day we created, we had the best time.

Our Wedding was a thoroughly hand-made affair, and we made and designed almost all the details ourselves, as we were on such a shoe-string budget (and wouldn't have wanted it any other way, anyway!) so it felt unbelievably personal to us and really reflected what we wanted it to look and feel like. We had an amazing time, and hope our guests did too, so we hope you like seeing a little more of our day, even after all this time!

Venue- The Merchant Hotel / Photography - Tarah Coonan / Make-Up - Jennifer Ireland Make-Up Artist / Hair - Lynette Murray Hair / Head-Piece - William Chambers Millinery / Dress - Lynne Gregg (Ryan's Aunt - contact us for details) / My amazing lace for the dress - Berwick Street Cloth Shop / Cupcakes - The Cakery Bakery (with our own sugar flowers) 

Anything else you would like to know, we pretty much made ourselves, so just ask if you would like more details! A huge thank you to all our vendors, above, who were so fantastic to work with and did such a beautiful job for us... and to our family and friends who helped make it such a special day. xo!

With love!
Mr & Mrs Bell
aka abigail*ryan

P.S. We hope you enjoy viewing these, but we would like to request that you do not blog these without prior written permission, and if you Pin the images, please be respectful and credit both us (abigail*ryan) and our photographer (Tarah Coonan Photography) - they are very personal to us, as you can imagine! Thank you so much.

Mr & Mrs...

Well... we did it... we got MARRIED! After all the planning and hard work, last Friday was our big day and everything (pretty much) went to plan... Ryan is now my husband, and I am now his wife! All is right with the world!

We are back at work already, though I am down with a throat infection (post wedding burn-out, of course!) so we are easing our way back in and trying to make some headway with some big deadlines and exciting projects, we can't wait to share... we have SO much going on right now, I'll never quite know how we made time to get married in the first place, hehe!

Our wedding truly was a LOT of work - we opted to do absolutely *everything* (bar the catering) ourselves, which although in part was a budgetery choice, really was, I think, the only way we would have wanted to do it! I know we would have always wanted to have control over all the little details of our day, to really put our stamp on everything, so it TRULY was *OUR* day and only one that could be created by us, for us (and our guests)... it's actually at times like this when you thank your lucky stars that being creative means you can turn your hand to anything! I know so many brides & grooms would love to do all the little details themselves but would not know where to start, and would have to pay a LOT of money, and put in a LOT of hard work, to find the right person to get those details from. Looking back, although everyone thought we were utterly crazy, we will always know that we crafted every detail of our day with our own hands... from our save the dates and wedding invites, to cakes, to our flowers, to our ring pillow, decorations, favours and everything in between... and that's something very special for us to know we achieved...

All those things truly were the icing on the cake that was standing next to Ryan on 28.09.12 and saying 'I DO'. And I really do. 

Love you RB.
Your wife. xo

Wedding count-down!!

We're sorry it's been a little quiet on the blog... Our impending wedding is in part responsible, as well as a boat load of work! We have just under three weeks until we say 'I do!' (so excited!) and we have a lot of things to work on and create for our big day... Here's a little sneak of what's been happening so far!

I'm sure the next few weeks are just going to vanish! I had better get to it! ;)
A @ a*r

Let's talk (big) Bridal...

It's been a while since I have posted anything here about our forthcoming Wedding... and it really is forthcoming, now, only 7 weeks away! (yikes, how did THAT happen!)


I have been mulling over whether to blog about this or not, but it's something that I have really come up against when putting together my look for the Wedding, and I'm just going to say it, it's not easy being a plus size bride!!! Sometimes, it just feels like an uphill struggle! 


I am 6ft tall, in my flats, and wear a size 22/24 UK (yes, I said it) and it is impossible to find any inspiring, beautiful images of brides online that I can relate to... plenty that I relate to in terms of their style, absolutely, but not in terms of their shape and size. I found myself scanning pinterest for a 'chunkier' lady to see what I might look like dressed head-to-toe in the kind of pale tones I usually avoid...and when I found someone in the sea of size 6's, they were probably a 12/14 MAX, and that scared me a little... if they looked 'chunky' in their bridal whites, am I going to look like moby-dick?! I did a fair bit of internal crying at this stage...


I would love, love, to be like these uber-fashion bloggers who are part of the 'fat-acceptance movement' (where basically, they dress as if they weren't bigger, and have no issue wearing raised hemlines, exposing their skin etc and areas that would normally be expected to be covered up if you're bigger) but I'm not... I like to dress to really flatter my body shape, and like to dress to make myself look smaller (if possible). There are parts I like to draw attention away from, and parts I would NEVER expose.


To this end, I am designing my own wedding dress and having Ryan's talented aunt, Lynne, make it for me -- but, this lack of beautiful larger, taller, curvier, chunkier brides is so missing for me online it did make me quake in my size 9's a little... oh yeah, I have massive feet too, so this makes bridal shoe shopping equally gruelling!


I just thought I would throw this out there - there is SUCH a lack of appropriate, inspiring, beautiful dresses and shoes for someone my size and height, it just rather takes the fun out of that side of things. I'll never have that moment in a bridal shop, or quirky vintage boutique, of finding 'the dress' because I frankly don't want a sleeveless, backless, corseted job and can't fit in to a size 6 dress for someone who is 5ft1" tall... granted, the road I am on may end up more fun in the end, and indeed give better results, but it's a difficult one no less and one that has made me wish for a magic lamp to rub to shrink myself a good half foot on more than one occasion! ;))


Does anyone else out there relate?!
Abigail xo!

Details, details...

After booking our ceremony date a few months ago, we happened to cut through Marks and Spencer straight afterwards, and while their spring sale was on. There we found a beautiful hand woven tweed blazer that we both fell in love with, and it fitted Ryan like a dream, the last one left in his size! It seemed a little like fate, so we bought it and knew this would be what he wore for our Wedding day. When we got home, we found beautiful bridesmaids dresses in a perfectly toning pale blue-grey on Asos, and spotted some gorgeous hand-made navy leather brogues with red soles (the tweed has a hint of rusty red through it) on TK Maxx (our shoe bargain heaven of choice!) - before we knew it we had our colour-scheme, all centered around this jacket, and a big chunk of our to-do list ticked off... everything came together so quickly, it all felt just right, and, well, awesome!

Since then, we have been keeping our eyes out for the right shirt/tie/trousers to complete Ryan's look and yesterday we hit the jackpot. Anyone who has been following my wedding Pinterest board might realise I am a little obsessed with blue hydrangea (thank goodness we are getting married in season!) so when we found this shirt with BLUE HYDRANGEA on it we knew fate had dealt us another good hand...

Really enjoying having the details for our Wedding come together so naturally, and serendipitously. We are intent on keeping to a very strict budget for our big day (and are big bargain hunters at the best of times, anyway) so it's really nice to know that you don't have to spend a fortune, or go the utterly traditional route, to get something extra special and a little different.

Having a really strong idea of your theme, colour palette and aesthetic means you can take the time to shop the sales, take advantage of discount days online and take your time piecing your looks together... we're so happy we're doing this, and know it will lead to a beautiful day that won't leave us in a huge amount of debt when starting our married life! Yet another thing to look forward to!

A@a*r

Bits and Pieces...

Hmm. The weekend kind of crept up on me, or even, the week kind of disappeared on me... i'm a little unsettled today, thinking it should be Friday, or even Thursday if the universe wanted to be a tad kind of something!


Anyway, so far today, we've been working pretty hard on an application and I'm just taking a little break now from all the typing (to do more typing and online looking, go figure!) while the pup, and Ryan have a little nap. In that respect, it totally feels like the weekend. Planning on cooking a Laksa tonight to keep the cold away (we have had snow flurries and crazy hail), and maybe an early night.


Remember I mentioned I had made Ryan a birthday present? Well, here it is: it's an amazing slanted wooden box with a glass lid I rescued from my Gran when she was going to throw it out some years ago, and I have kept it since. I have never found a good use for it, and don't have any idea what it was for, but I gave it a little TLC, and a new olive green washi tape edge around the glass and made a new embroidery for R. Elderflower leaves (again!) - can't get enough. I had planned for it to be a box for him to keep all his watches safe in - but he wanted it on display so he could see it all the time (secret smile) so I made space up on our mantel (cube unit from ikea, but it's as close as we have!)... and it looks pretty nice amongst all our little bits and pieces...


In other news, we're going to our first wedding fair tomorrow and I am SUPER excited. We have been talking about plans almost non-stop since getting engaged, and, I'm not going to fib - there is a huge amount of frustration at this stage of the game in relation to finding a venue that we feel is 'us' and that fits our budget (pretty small!)! We have felt a little deflated more than once when quotes come flooding in - Ryan has actually even exclaimed 'we're not BUYING the place' a few times ;) However, we're slowly but surely getting an idea of what we want and it's like the fog is lifting a little and we are beginning to come up with plans and ideas that actually inspire us, and starting to put together the bigger picture of the how's and why's. All good.


Hopefully tomorrow will help us on our way even more... we will report back!


What are you doing this weekend, anything nice?
xo! A@a*r

Confetti (thoughts)...

One thing I never truly realised about getting engaged, was how all-encompassing thinking about what kind of Wedding you would like, and all the little details involved, could be! I have already had a few sleepless nights with ideas spinning around my head, and we haven't even set a date yet... (yes, really!)...

We stumbled across an amazing UK based supplier today - The Real Flower Confetti Company - that I am sure will be a MUST for our big day! We both adore the idea of confetti - and adore the idea of real petal confetti even more. To have found a supplier who grows, and dries, their own amazing selection of flowers is fantastic... and now, all we have to decide is which petal to go for?

I vote Hydrangea (isn't the pale green just gorgeous?) but then, Wildflower is pretty stunning, too.

You see, DECISIONS! ;)

A@a*r

all images courtesy of The Real Flower Confetti Company

Lucky...

We're very lucky, and touched, to have received so many beautiful cards from friends and family to celebrate our Engagement - thank you to everyone!

Happy Weekend, all!

xo

The happiest of news!

Did everyone have a wonderful Christmas?! I would love to hear what lovely pressies Santa brought you... what lovely food you had?

We had a lovely quiet morning - Ryan bought me some beautiful presents, gorgeous stained glass from Flora Jamieson, a beautiful plate from Julia Smith, an amazing Mimco handbag (to match my planned xmas day outfit!) and lots of other goodies, too! He was lavished with all sorts of games for the wii and xbox, and he is now happily playing Skylanders... I may not see much of him for a few days ;) Our parents also lavished many gorgeous gifts on us (we had Christmas dinner with Ryan's parents and sisters), and we are overwhelmed with how many lovely things we received... thank you to everyone!

We have some very happy news to share! On Christmas Day - Ryan called me in to the living room and told me there was something hidden in the twinkling Christmas tree... I had a wee hunt, and found a box, and inside, the most gorgeous ring! When I turned around, Ryan was down on one knee and asking me to be his wife... I burst in to tears and of course instantly said YES! We are so happy and I am just over the moon with my beautiful engagement ring and the most wonderful man I could ever hope for, who I can now call my fiance...we already knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, but now it's official...

It really was the best Christmas, ever!

We will be back soon, but I have lots of staring at my engagement ring to do and dreaming of weddings ;)

much love from a very happy A & R!

xo