T is for Turquoise & Teal #AtoZChallenge

Today I'm continuing with the A-Z Blogging Challenge. This year I'm doing an A-Z of Colours. I'll be doing a variety of posts, including haikus and poems, arts and crafts, fashion and beauty, recipes and more!    

For the letter 'T' I have chosen two of my favourite colours- Turquoise and Teal. Both colours are somewhere between blue and green, with turquoise being a brighter, bluer shade and teal being a darker, greener hue. Turquoise is named after a gemstone of the same name

Keep reading to discover the symbolism behind these colours and see my Polyvore creations. 

My Wedding (Part 7) Music

Welcome to the seventh part of a series of posts all about my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today I'd like to talk about the music.

We both listen to music from all genres and decades and love to sing and dance. As music is such an important part of our life, it had to be just right for our wedding so I started planning my choices quite early.

My Wedding (Part 6) Food and Drink (and of course cake!)

Welcome to the sixth part of a series of posts all about my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today I'd like to talk about one of my favourite parts-the food and drink!

We had a sit-down meal for about 50 people served by The Poachers Country Hotel and it was amazing! We had home-made tomato and basil soup to start, then a choice of Turkey, Beef or the veggie option (a brie, asparagus and mushroom tart), followed by an assiette of desserts (4 mini desserts on a long plate)-Malteasers Cheesecake, Strawberry Pims Jelly (served in a cute little glass with a spoon), Raspberry Shortbread and Crème Brûlée (to die for). It was so good, I was just sorry that I couldn't eat all of my main course because of the dress!

My Wedding (Part 5) Attire

Welcome to the fifth part of a series of posts all about my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today I'd like to talk about the dresses and suits, for many people one of the most important parts of wedding planning. 

My Wedding Dress

[© A V Brown, 2014]

Initially my budget for a dress was just £200. I had originally planned to buy my dress online, perhaps from ebay, but I was put off by people who warned me about their disastrous experiences. Don't get me wrong, I think it's entirely possible to buy a lovely dress for £200 if you look in the right places-charity shops or vintage boutiques, for example. But it soon became apparent that I wasn't going to find the dress I wanted there. Me and my mum went on a trip to some local bridal boutiques so I could try some dresses on and get an idea of what I wanted. I thought that I wanted a sleek, Grecian-style dress but when I tried them on they didn't really do anything for me.

My Wedding (Part 4) Decorations

Welcome to the fourth part of a series of posts all about my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today I'd like to show you some of my decorations. As we both love the colour blue, we decided to go for what I call peacock colours-teal, purple and gold. We also had a lot of ivory in the scheme to keep things fresh and to match my dress. I included peacock feathers wherever I could to match the theme, which made it quite unique.

Venue Flowers

For our venue flowers we went to The Flower Shop in Kirton. Kerry was brilliant and we got exactly what we wanted for a good price. We had six giant martini glass arrangements (one for each of the round tables), a four foot top table arrangement and a posy for the guestbook table. I asked for a mixture of ivory, blue and purple flowers as well as greenery and peacock feathers. I was so happy on the day when I saw the result. They were even better than I had imagined! 

My Wedding (Part 3) DIY Seating Plan (with free template!)

Welcome to the third part of a series of posts focusing on my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today I'll talk through my seating plan.

The seating plan was quite tricky to get right, because when three different families come together it's hard to make sure everyone is seated next to people they will get on with and talk to. At the end of the day, you have to remember this is your special day and you can't please everyone. Close family and friends can put aside any differences just for the day. We actually found there was a great atmosphere all day so the worrying was all for nothing!

My Wedding (Part 2) DIY Pocketfold Invites-with free templates!

Welcome to the second part of a series of posts focusing on my wedding, with ideas, tips, inspiration and downloadable resources. Today is all about invitations.

After looking around for wedding invites online, I found some lovely looking designs. I got lots of inspiration from Pinterest and Etsy. Pure Invitation is one of the sites I looked at as it lets you design your own invites exactly how you want them and then they make them up and ship them out to you, so it's a great option if you're pushed for time but still want a unique design. In the end we decided that due to our limited budget it would be better for us to make the invitations ourselves. So, inspired by the Pocketfold design I saw here, I decided to make my own template. 

My Wedding (Part 1) Best Day Ever!

I'm back! After four weeks of living in post-wedding bliss I'm now ready to start blogging again. It's been an amazing month.

[© A V Brown 2014]

My wedding day was absolutely perfect. After planning and worrying for the last two years everything finally came together and it couldn't have been any better. I stayed at the hotel the night before with my bridesmaids and a few friends and family members and we had a lovely dinner together. Then the next morning we had a full English breakfast (minus the meat for me of course) before the hairdresser and make-up lady arrived. It was a very relaxed and stress-free morning- apart from the awkward moment when I got stuck in the bathroom!

I'm Getting Married in the Morning!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to check in and say I'm sorry for missing the last three A-Z challenge posts. I've been really busy and stressed out this week preparing for my wedding tomorrow and something had to give-unfortunately it was this blog. I'm taking a brief hiatus over the weekend to enjoy my wedding and will hopefully be back next week with my belated X, Y and Z posts!

Wish me luck!