Category Archives: weddings

An Easy Guide To Planning Your Wedding And Honeymoon

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So he popped the question and you’ve said yes. First of all, congratulations! Once you get over the initial ecstasy, it’s time to start planning for the big day! What follows is going to be a strange mix of stress and excitement. You’re in the driver’s seat for planning the happiest day of your life. It’s natural to feel pressured; ceremonies like this only come around once in a lifetime. And although you’re probably bursting with ideas, organising the whole thing might feel a bit daunting. To help you out, here’s a guide to planning your big day and your perfect honeymoon.

Budget

As with anything, you should start with the budget. When you look at the finances available for your wedding, this can be a little disheartening, and that’s without adding in the cost of a honeymoon. We’d all like to get married under the northern lights or in a beautiful Tuscan village. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the means for something like that! The good news is that wedding prices are pretty versatile. Whether you’re spending thousands or are a little more limited, there’ll be a venue and catering service within your budget. If your budget is looking a little tight for what you had in mind, my advice is to look at where you could make savings – whether this be a few less guests, or swapping a sit down meal for a buffet. It’s all about deciding what is most important on your day. Shop around for items like bridesmaid dresses, maybe look at hiring rather than buying  the ushers suits, look at what can be made at home rather than shop bought, the savings you can make are endless.

One way that you could get the honeymoon that you really want is through setting up a honeymoon fund, this is in place of a wedding present list or traditional gift ideas. The idea is that you do the costings for your perfect honeymoon, taking in everything including travel, hotel, food and transfers and then you present this like a traditional online wedding gift list on a site like Travelers Joy (I so love their hashtag #skiptheblender ). Those who want to buy you something can then contribute to your dream honeymoon instead if they wish and you get the chance to truly relax after your big day.

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The Venue

One of the most important aspects of your wedding is the venue. When it comes to choosing the venue, there are things you need to bear in mind. First, have some dates in mind, and allow a bit of flexibility, as you might get a bit of a shock when you first check the availability of  venues. The further ahead you plan your wedding, the more options you’re going to have available. If you’re not too fussy and want something traditional, then you should be fine. However, if you were planning something extravagant or unique, then I recommend pushing the date pretty far ahead in order to not put yourself under to much financial pressure in a short period of time.

The Rings

Next we have the rings. Even if you’re quite laid back about the aesthetics of your  wedding in other areas, I advise taking your time with this. You’ll be wearing your ring for the rest of your life, after all! There’s a massive industry for wedding rings, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something both you and your partner will agree on! There are some gorgeous classic bands out there, but that’s no reason that you have to use them! It’s your day, and your marriage, so take your time finding a pair of rings which says something unique about you. Weddingrings-direct.com has a fantastic selection.

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The Guest List

Next up, the guest list. This is probably the one area of your wedding which you have planned for. While you were working out your budget, you should have set a limit on the reception. Aside from that, the limit on your guest list is completely up to you. Do you want it to be a large and glamorous occasion, or a smaller, intimate affair? I advise creating a kind of family tree structure to draft your guest list. Start with the close family of you and your partner. Then, extend out into your closest friends, and important people in your lives. Keep a strict numbers limit, and soon you’ll have a guest list which you’re both happy with.

The Dress

Choosing the dress is probably the part you were looking forward to the most! You’d have a good reason for this; picking out a dress is probably the most exciting part of the whole planning process. Take your time and have fun! Make sure you try lots of styles and don’t rush into buying the first dress you see.

Once you find your dress ,you’ll need to consider the ushers, bridesmaids and pageboys. Getting a whole dress scheme which fits in with your tastes will give you a uniquely satisfying feeling and will make your wedding a truly stylish affair.

Invites And Finishing Touches

Traditionally, the invitations should be sent three to six months in advance. There’s plenty of time to look at different designs and fonts. Many companies can send out samples so make sure you shop around. After all this, take a look at your budget and shop around for any finishing touches. This could included Chinese lanterns, sparklers, confetti and anything else that could make your day even more magical.

There you have it; my guide to planning your wedding. Do you have any further tips for planning that perfect wedding?

Choosing A Wedding Venue In South Wales

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Your wedding day is, without doubt, the most important day of your life, and everything has to be just right, and this is most definitely true when it comes to choosing a venue. These days, a wedding venue is not merely limited to a church or a registry office, you can quite literally get married anywhere you choose, which makes your big day so much more special and personal to you, your interests and your taste.

But all this choice can also mean a lot more in the way of searching. You can look at lots of different venues online, moving from site to site, and then you will have to wait for them to send you a brochure, before moving onto the next one. There are lots of brilliant venues in South Wales, particularly in the Cardiff area, so if you are looking for wedding venues in Cardiff you can choose from hotels, concert halls, stately homes and country houses and even St Fagan’s Natural History Museum, a real stand out venue. But finding all the relevant information about each venue, along with the availability and cost can take a lot of time.

One way you can get around this is to use WeddingBooker.com. This is an easy to navigate and use site that has the biggest database of licenced wedding venues in the UK all in one place. The site can also help you to get prices & availability instantly and helps to put you in contact with the venue through their online query form which allows you to arrange viewings, ask relevant questions and look at your requirements and budget. You can do this for lots of venues at one time, thereby taking out the need to look at lots of different sites which can be both time consuming and soul destroying.

Looking for a venue can leave you bogged down, trying to think of all the different questions you need to ask. The great news when using a site like this is you can see all those important issues already answered, from the transport links for people travelling from further afield, to the sort of food available – sit down meals, buffets, and everything in between. There are also the kind of things that you may forget – does the venue have WiFi? Does it have an ethical stance on waste and litter? Are there any hidden costs that you have to remember and add to your budget?

If you are planning your big day in South Wales, you are lucky enough to have a whole array of stunning venues on your doorstep. Your only problem may be choosing just one!

Engagement Cam – Capturing That Special Moment Forever

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Once upon a time, the only way to share a moment was to try to tell someone about it, to carefully preserve all those special details in your mind in order to share it with loved ones, friends and later generations. But we now live in times when not only do we want to share with our nearest and dearest, but we also love to share the details of our lives on our social media, on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And when those details happen to also be the most incredible moments of our lives, we want to share them even more.

Celebrities and every day folk alike share images of their weddings, their children and the events that make life so special. Birth announcements come with specially staged images (I’m thinking of you Beyonce), whilst gender reveal videos featuring balloons filled with coloured paper warm the heart. And now, a new technology, Engagement Cam, will help you share that special moment of ‘Will you marry me?’

Engagement Cam is a brilliant innovation, a tiny camera concealed in a wedding ring box, that captures the moment of proposal for posterity. It records the proposal and the instant reactions so that you can share these with your loved ones, and, maybe one day, your own children. And of course, you can also share the moment on your social media if you so wish.

The engagement cam’s hidden camera can record up to 15 minutes of footage at just the touch of a button – it is non intrusive and will not spoil the romance of the proposal, it will merely capture it. It has an inbuilt microphone to pick up the responses, and you do not have to worry about the battery running out – fully charged it will last for one hour.  You can then download the footage to your computer, either to view and save, or to share.

If you want to buy the camera, the current cost is £400, but you can rent the Engagement Cam for two weeks for £200. Two weeks will give you time to plan your proposal, and to choose a different day if something does come up to put it off for a day or two. There is an option to rent for longer if required, and the postage to return the camera and editing of your footage is free.

Your wedding proposal is one of the most glorious, romantic moments in your life, one that you want to preserve and cherish forever. Engagement Cam allows you to do just that, true romance in a small package.