Cool alternatives to vases

18 Jun

I’m a massive fan of simple flowers for the centre of wedding tables. It can help save a few pennies, plus it is very practical from the point of view that guests can actually see each other. I’ve heard of a wedding where the waiters had to dodge the massively ornate floral arrangements that were placed on the floor around the tables because there was no room to serve the meals otherwise – probably not the best outcome! If you’re going down the simple flower (including the thrown together posy look), one way you can make it more interesting is by using an alternative to vases… or even a bit of a special one-of-a-kind vase.

We used tomato tins to hold our simple posies and I think they looked swell. See some pics below (thank you to my gorgeous friends Gab and Lucinda for being our floral designers for the day x).

I’ve pulled together a few non-vase and vase suggestions. Warning – many of the websites I direct you to in this post are chock full of seriously cool stuff…. enter at your wallet’s peril.

Remember the fantastic brown medicine jars that Cecilia Fox used in Tim and Rosy’s wedding? I think the medicine jars contrast so well with the berries and the green leaves.

You can snap some up on Etsy here and here:

While hanging out on Etsy, you could start a vintage tin collection which would look fabulous with the easter daisy / lisianthus combo that we had for our wedding.

And if you’re saving on your flower costs, you might like to splurge on a set of these (this is called a compromise fellas, you will thank me one day):

Never one to shy away from a bit of nostalgia, I’d love to use these sweet milk bottles from Hello Polly or Form.Function.Style.

There’s also plenty of hip looking vases out there and you’ll then be able to use them for many years to come! You can pick these up from here, here and here.

 

In a true one person’s trash is another person’s treasure story, these and these are trash picked up from the streets of Holland and dipped in porcelain.  

Lastly, aren’t these ceramics from Up in the air somewhere just divine? Imagine all of the little combinations you could pull together? They’d look great with two totally contrasting bunches of colours or varieties.

Love these double stack vases? Your home may just well be in need of one of their factory vessels. Check them out here!

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A live lip-dub proposal

28 May

There’s nothing that gets me sobbing like a good proposal story recounted by a gushing newly-engaged couple. I love the tales of trickery and romanticism, the confusion of women when their weekend plans of relaxing on the couch are being mysteriously altered (no I DO NOT want to take off my ugg boots and tracksuit pants and go on some mystery expedition with you!), and of course the nerves from the guys despite them being 100% sure she will say yes. But apart from when getting proposed to, it’s not often that you get to be there for the big event.

Well here’s one that was captured on camera, it will make you laugh and probably cry a little too. This is a blissfully happy couple surrounded by so much love x

Amsale – 2013 spring collection

17 May

One thing that really hurts my pride is when I can’t pronounce the popular things correctly. You know, like the whole Bon I-var / Bone ee vehr thing? And when you say it wrong, people just do a little cough and it becomes abundantly clear to everyone that you haven’t been a fan SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.

Well the same happened to me in New York when my friend was talking about the bridal designer pronounced “Ahm-sah’-leh” and I had NO idea who she was talking about. Turns out it’s the designer that I formerly knew as “Am sale”. Whoopsies.

Nevertheless, we both agreed, the lady can design and she’s proven this again with her spring 2013 collection. There’s a lot of asymmetric designs this season and I’m also loving the dresses with the shortened hem showing off the delectable shoes. And while you’re looking for bridal inspiration, don’t you think those swept to the side chignons are a great, relaxed bridal hairstyle?

The red hair and red lips is almost edible!

Great to see some short dresses popping up in the collection.

And to finish….. my two favourites – there’s a bit going on but still structured, contrasting fabrics and peek-a-boo shoes. Perfect!

I think Amsale’s dresses are great inspiration for a more traditional bride who wants to feel elegant and modern at the same time.

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Secrets of a long marriage

14 May

Andy and I were recently at our friend’s Tim & Andrea’s beautiful wedding which included a touching speech from Timmy’s dad. In it he acknowledged that marriage is tough and that he and his wife would be there to support Tim and Andrea through theirs. What an awesome thing to say? I think people can easily get caught up in the whirlpool of love and then the excitement of organising a wedding but don’t really think about the tough bits that are still to come. It’s when you have kids or one of you loses your job or your partner leaves their wet towel on the floor for the millionth time (notice I said “their”). This is when your marriage may be tested and you’ll be thankful that you have your family and friends there to support you (although they may not care to hear about the wet towel saga – first world problems people!).

So what are the other secrets to a long, happy marriage? This week, I came across a hilarious little ditty from blogger and author Lydia Netzer who has just hit the 15 year marriage milestone. Not only is it funny but I think, like Timmy’s dad, Lydia is wonderfully wise about marriage. Have a read here.

Some of my favourite bits of advice were:

Let your spouse hear you talking about them in glowing terms to other people. Be foolish. Be obvious. It will mean everything. You will stay married forever.

Love it and SO true!

About marriage: Protect it with knives and teeth, not because it’s fragile but because it’s precious.

I’m trying to think of some marriage advice to add (with my massive experience of 1 year and 2 months!) but I think Lydia nailed it so jump on over here for the full list – you won’t regret it.

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Bazaar Brides – inaugural issue

4 May

Looking forward to curling up on this chilly Melbourne weekend with the latest bridal mag offering. It’s Harper’s Bazaar’s first official foray into the bridal world and I’m already sold just looking at the front cover. How luscious are those Elie Saab gowns in the article here?

It took me a bit of hunting to track down a copy but some newsagents are selling it in tandem with the latest HB issue.

Well worth the effort x

Tim loves Rosy

3 May

I’ve finally returned after a little sojourn to Mexico and The States. Before you get visions of me forgetting all about One lush day and kicking back by a pool with a cocktail (well this did happen), I’ll just say that I didn’t do this for the entirety of the trip. In fact I managed to take some time out from handing over our credit card to NY shop assistants to pop into a beautiful bridal salon to meet their marketing director and check out their divine dresses. More on this and other Northern Hemisphere weddingy things that I encountered during my trip over the coming weeks. Today however, I want to share a wedding with you that I’ve been meaning to share for ages. It’s the union of Tim and Rosy who are a couple of nurses from Melbourne.

Tim and Rosy’s story began when Tim was working at Target and one day Rosy went with her mother to return some ill fitting underwear. After striking up a conversation during the return of said underwear, they soon discovered that they lived around the corner from each other and were both studying nursing at the same uni! They spent the next few years propping up Gloria Jeans with their coffee dates and it soon came time for the big proposal. Their proposal story is littered with “love lies” and trickery –  Tim even goes as far as moving dirty dishes OUT and BACK INTO the dishwasher so that Rosy wouldn’t catch onto anything! This man is cunning! It’s best to hear it straight from the man himself and since it’s an epic story, I thought it’s easiest for you to jump on over to their wedding website here to have a read. Impressive effort by Tim!

So you’ve heard a bit about this cute couple, well here’s some shots from their day. They had the smarts to engage Australia’a most fabulous event planners, Georgeous to do their ceremony and reception styling. If this didn’t win me over already, I was hooked when I saw that their reception was at the Mountain Goat Brewery in Richmond. For the uninitiated, the Goat is a boutique Melbourne brewery. You can go there to drink only on Wednesday & Friday nights, their combination of tasty beers and woodfired pizzas are a massive hit. Such a brilliant idea to hold a wedding reception there – you’ll  know why when you scroll down to the pics!

Melanie from Cecilia Fox has rocked these flowers (and berries and chillies). I love this gal’s style.


Pizza, noodles, burritos and gelato at a wedding? I wouldn’t have known where to start. I wouldn’t have known how to stop.


Don’t you love all the Tim loves Rosy screenprinting? Well not only does it look fabulous but it actually has a little back story. Even since Rosy & Tim started seeing each other, whenever he wrote her a birthday, Christmas card etc. he would always write “P.S – I like you” down the bottom. Soon after that, whenever he gave a card to any of Rosy’s family, he would write “P.S. – I like Rosy” down the bottom. I can testify that this tradition continues to this day – that’s how Tim signed off his emails to me!

Interested in seeing a few snaps from Tim & Rosy’s ceremony? They’ve been promised exclusively to another blog but you can jump onto their photographer Brent Lukey’s blog to check them out here. So much love!

Want to be as lush as Tim and Rosy? Here’s some of their vendors:

Event styling including the Tim loves Rosy designs: Georgeous

Photography: Sarah Wood Photography

Catering: Tommy Collins

Flowers: Cecilia Fox

Venue: The Mountain Goat Brewery, Richmond, Australia

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The Melbourne Wedding Registry – all about customer service

10 Apr

It has been very remiss of me not to write about the awesome gift registry that we used for our wedding - The Melbourne Wedding Registry (or for those of you north of the border The Sydney Wedding Registry). I was reminded of this failure again this week when we received a little present in the mail – a 1st wedding anniversary gift from them! How about that for customer service?

There’s lots of things that made TMWR such a pleasure to work with and the consultant in me can’t help but work a bulleted list into this post to point out a few. Don’t judge me, I just like structure.

  • Everything is online. They have great pictures and product specs, so you can browse through and add everything to your registry. If you’re having a bit of trouble visualising things, you can also head into their Melbourne or Sydney showrooms.
  • Speaking of online, your guests can do all their purchasing there which I think should be an essential element of all gift registries (yes, yes I’m looking at your Myer and David Jones with your phone purchase or store purchase only rules. GRRR). Your guests can see lots of product photos and make easy purchases – I have recently bought a gift from there for my friend’s wedding and it was really simple.
  • The gifts get delivered very quickly and they’re very flexible on timing.
  • They are sensibly sustainable meaning you can choose not to have gift wrapping.
  • You can put expensive items on there and “split” them so that people can chip in for a portion of that present. So we had a dinner set on there and split it into 4 lots which were more reasonable from a $$$ perspective.
  • THEY HAVE MARK TUCKEY FURNITURE! Need I say (or yell!) more? There’s other great brands on their too – lots of stuff I hadn’t seen before and a real variety of price ranges.
  • The couple gets 20% off all purchases from the registry for the rest of their lives. WOOT!
  • They’re all about making you feel special – so they stay in constant contact with you, making sure that everything works out well. They also added a couple of gifts into our registry when it arrived – very sweet!

Here’s a few of my favourite gifts that I’ve spied recently on their website….

Anyone for a mojito? Or how about a drop of sangria? How about having them on tap? This bad boy from Artland is sure to be your best friend when helping you serve up your favourite icy beverages. Please, no drinking from the tap, we’re civilised around here.

Artland - Simplicity Beverage Server

We recently gave our friends a Wedgewood teapot for their wedding. They come so beautifully boxed – no need for wrapping! I love the different colours in these plates, I’m sure it will make the little goodies you serve up taste even nicer!

Fabian and Mat are two Melbourne lads running a wee business called The Little Veggie Patch Co. They have heaps of good ideas which are packed into their first book…

The Little Veggie Patch Co.

As I previously mentioned, having Mark Tuckey furniture on The Melbourne Gift Registry is an absolute boon. For the unitiated, Mark is a Melbourne-based furniture designer typically specialising in minimalist designs made out of Australian woods. I would love to deck our whole house out in Mark Tuckey but this would probably involve me then becoming an indentured slave to Mr Tuckey for life. Here’s a few pieces that I love.

Mark Tuckey - box bed

Mark Tuckey - cross base coffee table

Mark Tuckey - rusted mirror

There’s plenty more on offer so make sure you have a browse. I, on the other hand, have a plane to catch. 1st stop Mexico City then onto Coachella! Just a teeny bit excited!

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Our 1st wedding anniversary

2 Apr

Andy and I clicked over to the big one year of marriage this week. I think the time has flown, he thinks it has gone slowly but we’re both in agreement that it’s been full of good times. One exciting thing that we got to do on our anniversary was to crack open the first of our “advice bottles”. To explain: instead of having a guest book at our wedding, we decided to set up 6 bottles (discovered in the ground in Port Melbourne and thought to date back to the 1860s!) to mark our 1st, 5th, 10th, 20th, 30th and 40th anniversaries. We then asked guests to drop us a piece of advice to help us through our marriage and to be read on those anniversaries.

Here’s some snaps of our bottles – it’s an easy thing to set up for your guests to pop in a piece of advice.

The 1st anniversary bottle was overflowing – I’m not sure if this means that everyone was bursting to give us advice quickly or that they thought we would desperately need advice to get past this anniversary? As the bottles are so old, we chose not to break them and so we had fun pulling out the messages with a pair of tweezers. We found it quite amusing to see what people wrote, ranging from some surprising sentimentality from my cousin (Andy – make sure you tell her you love her every day) to quite surprisingly only one baby-making suggestion (that HAD to come from you Lucinda!) to the noticeably unsigned essential advice below….

Probably the best piece of advice came from a 36-year veteran of this marriage business – my father. He wrote, “Andy – If Catriona ever tells you to whatever you want. Beware! If she’s anything like her mother, she doesn’t really mean it.” It probably took my Dad the first 35 of years of his marriage to figure this one out, so I’m glad that he passed this little nugget on to Andy in case Andy was under any impressions to the contrary.

We now have another 4 years to wait until we open our next bottles and I’m looking forward to sharing these with each other over the years as well as chalking up a few marriage milestones. The bottles that we open on our 40th anniversary (when we’ll both be in our 70s) may even contain messages from people who have since passed. How lucky will we be to be receiving their wisdom to help us through those last few years? Or at least something to giggle about if we get some more bedroom gladiator advice….

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Weddings your way

19 Mar

I had the joy of attending my cousin’s wedding yesterday afternoon in the delightful Hepburn Springs. Apart from being a fun-filled celebration of love for a perfectly suited couple, there were a few things about their wedding that I wanted to share.

As it was a “destination wedding”, they decided to assist their guests with making a weekend of it. So on Friday night we all went out for pizza and red wine (a delicious Pinot from a local winery called Sheer Drop). It was such a lovely way to unwind after a big week at work and it was so nice to then be able to have a sleep in on Saturday morning and not be rushing to get to the wedding. Saturday was all about participating in voluntary events – so the bride and groom led a bike ride in the morning (the only fall of the morning was the bride) and then a casual bbq in a park for lunch. A quick change of clothes and everyone was back for the ceremony followed by a high tea in a pretty garden and then the reception afterwards.

The ceremony location was not included in the invite – we were simply told to meet in one place and follow the groom a couple of hundred meters to the site of the ceremony. Easy right? So we all followed him through the bush and walked up a hill (we’d been warned that stilettos probably weren’t appropriate for the day) and we said where is it? And he said, “I’m not sure but I think that tree looks nice, we should have it under that”. We agreed. So he jumped on the phone to his bride-to-be and gave her a few directions to the site where they would be wed. I loved the spontaneity!

All four parents participated in the ceremony by each choosing a reading that they felt was appropriate. The four readings were: George Eliot, something from the bible, a poem written by the bride’s father and a little ditty by Dr Seuss! It was brilliant how different they all were but revolved around the central theme of togetherness.

At the reception, Thomas (the groom) asked his family if they could perform a favourite song that he and Sam have always enjoyed. So unbeknownst to us about these hidden musical talents, up jump some of our cousins and our uncle to sing and strum away on ukeleles and guitar – very Von Trappesque! If anyone is looking for a female singer for their band – you need my cousin, Jane! It was her first time singing in public and I think she gave Joni Mitchell a run for her money. I’ve never heard the song before but here’s the words to the chorus (which we all thoroughly enjoyed singing along!):

You are, by far my favourite

And I’ve been thinking it’s about time that you knew

That you are by now my favourite

And I hope that I’m by far your favourite too

And I hope that I’m by far your favourite too

Anyway, I loved the personal elements that Tom & Sam weaved into their wedding. They proved convincingly that you don’t need to buy into all the trappings of modern-day weddings. Their wedding was fun, touching, humble, love-filled, personal and true to their values – we were all so happy to be there! The moral of this story is: if you’re currently planning your wedding, do what suits the both of you – you and your guests will enjoy it so much more.

I’ll leave you with a shot of Tom & Sam leading us through the Australian bush back to the high tea with a beatbox on his shoulder – so much fun!

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Short wedding dresses (and some shoes to match) – day 2

1 Mar

Continuing on from yesterday’s post about short wedding dresses (and some possible shoe suitors), today I bring you more littl’ dresses from around the globe.

First up is New York designer Matthew Christopher. His dresses draw a lot of inspiration from the old world glamour of Hepburn, Monroe and Kelly. To complete your outfit, pair a Matthew Christopher dress with gloves, pearls, a pillbox hat or a birdcage veil…. and of course some fabulous shoes!

Matthew Christopher - Josyln

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Jimmy Choo – Garland

Matthew Christopher - Arabesque

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Jimmy Choo - Tema

The next dress is from London-based Marchesa who you might remember from my blog about their latest haute couture collection. I love the lacework on this dress and the really strong silhouette. The asymmetry of the bust line and the v-shape detailing on the back view add some edge to what would otherwise be just a pretty dress. They have it spot on with the model having her hair tied back to accentuate the shoulders. The Louboutins that the model is wearing are a great match…. or you could add a bit of sparkle with Kate Spade’s fabulous gold (or silver for that matter) charm heels.

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Kate Spade New York - Charm Gold

Moving on to the Etsy set. All three Etsy sellers that I’ve picked out offer a completely personalised service. So the dresses are made-to-measure (you measure, they make), you will select the fabric colour and in some cases you will be able to instruct on other elements of the dress such as the length. Although I’ve never purchased from these three shops – I find it quite reassuring that they all have 100% positive feedback. If they’re like other Etsy sellers that I’ve encountered, they’ll work with you until you’re happy.

First up is a shop called ouma who is a girl close to my heart because SHE. LOVES. TULLE. Other than her tulle-loving tendencies, Ouma loves a bit of colour too. Her range is definitely worth a look – for brides and also for their maids. I couldn’t resist pairing this pretty little dress with Kate Spade’s charm shoes but this time in multi sparkle glitter.

Etsy - Ouma

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Kate Spade - Charm

The next dress is definitely channeling Kate Middleton and the bride’s tousled hair / fresh flower halo absolutely rocks this look. Brought to you by Bridal Bliss Designs – they have plenty more to offer in the elegant / vintage style.

Etsy - Bridal Bliss Designs

Etsy - Bridal Bliss Designs

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BHLDN - Elizabethan Heels

We finish up today with two sassy dresses from the incredible KT Jean (who happened to grow up sewing with the tulle-loving Ouma). KT also likes to use headpieces in her photoshoots from Mignonne Handmade – if you’re in the market for something a little boho band then she’s your girl.

Etsy - KT Jean

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Carven - Suede Slingbacks

Etsy - KT Jean

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BHLDN - Brilliant Axis Sandle

There you have it…. my snapshot of some short wedding dresses. I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that you can often take designs to dressmakers and they will be able to create something that you want. If you’re in Melbourne try Alice Haute Couture or if you’re in London try Carla Kirste. Good luck!


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