I’ve never had any trouble filling these polka dot pages on my previous posts, but with only THREE MONTHS to go there’s just sooo much to tell you, I’m not sure where to start this week!

First things first, our invites are finally out – hurrah! Here’s a little peak of what they actually looked like once printed:

image courtesy of Melissa at Atheneum Creative.

Since my last post, Tom and I have completed our FINAL wedding planning trip to Brittany to tie up some major loose ends. Beforehand we took a couple of days off for ourselves in the Loire Valley to visit some chateaux and taste some wine (it’s a tough life). And frankly, I *highly* recommend every couple takes a couple of days of holiday from wedding planning when it all gets a bit too much. Before our holiday, our planning had descended occasionally into bickering – Tom had begun to feel overwhelmed by my constant flow of chitter-chatter, and I was becoming frustrated at his lack of interest in my ideas. At the end of the day, we were both tired and mis-communicating, and just a couple of ‘normal’ days off together gave us the energy to face wedding planning again as a team.

The chateau of Chenonceau in the Loire Valley.

Once we arrived in Brittany however, we got stuck in and, in the space of 3 days, we did all of this:

• Chose our flowers;
• Finalised ceremony plans with our priest (well, almost);
• Picked our Friday night rehearsal dinner menu
• Met our DJ
• Organised Sunday lunch plans at my parents’ house
• Chose and tasted our wedding menu (yum!)
• Had a (successful!) hair trial
• Bought wedding shoes

So it was a rather busy couple of days in France then…

I couldn’t possibly tell you about everything on that list without sending you to sleep, but here’s a little photo montage of to-do’s we accomplished:

From left to right: Les Terrasses de Bréhat, the restaurant for the Friday night rehearsal dinner; a candelabrum decorated by the florist; the ‘Harlow’ hairpiece by Polly Edwards that I want to wear in the evening; inspiration for my hair; wedding shoes by Mellow Yellow; Tom and I working hard on our ceremony plans; the delicious dessert tasting.

As the invites were sent and we went to meeting after meeting (and we had to make lots of decisions!), I started thinking a lot about the added layers involved with organising a ‘destination’ wedding that’s a multi-lingual and multi-cultural.

So as the resident ‘Delicious Destination’ RMW Real Bride, I thought it only right to take you through some of the added layers (I hope it all makes sense!) and in turn, I’d love to hear some of your stories as I know that there are lots of RMW readers out there facing some of the same issues.

Destination Nightmares

The most obvious problem with a far-away wedding is the distance between you and the ‘destination’. Not only is it impossible just to pop over whenever the fancy takes me, but all of our recent holidays have involved appointments left, right and centre – not very relaxing!! My mother has been absolutely invaluable in making things happen. But being a bit of a bossy boots, although I’ve delegated to my ever-patient mum, I can’t deny feeling somewhat removed from the process at times, which is frustrating.

My frustration (and anxiety) has actually started to manifest in a recurring nightmare (!!): I show up at the ceremony… and there are only 40 guests (of the planned 150!). And the others aren’t hiding waiting to surprise, they just haven’t come at all. Right. Not quite time for therapy, but we’re getting close.

During the day, I’ve oscillated between feeling perfectly confident (I mean, who doesn’t want to spend a weekend in La Belle France?!?) to feeling hugely guilty (flights are expensive after all, and I feel like I’m forcing 150 people to a teeny tiny village in the middle of nowhere France). At the end of the day, I know that we’ll be surrounded by family and friends and we’ll have an amazing day. But sticking to that (rather logical) state of mind has not been easy!

French, English, American… Huh?

Now, to add an extra layer of complication to the proceedings, Tom and I come from different countries. In fact, our slightly strange mish-mash of French, English and American cultures is probably what defines us most. After countless lost-in-translation moments, we’ve gradually merged them into something of our own (effectively just picking the best bits of each country!). Tom has even taken the step to learn French properly, which really is one of the nicest gifts he could possibly ever give me (and the only sure way to ensure our future children can’t outsmart him!).
From the beginning, we agreed we wanted a wedding that reflected our patchwork of cultures (easier said than done!). Between the rehearsal dinner, the procession to the church and our active encouragement for ladies to wear hats, I think we’re getting close to achieving the look we want! It hasn’t been easy to make it all flow together and sometimes I do wonder what our guests will think of our unique combination of bits and bobs. For example, I’m a bit worried that our foreign guests just won’t ‘get’ the procession from the town hall to the church and think we’re being somewhat silly! And let me tell you, I’m not looking forward to the table plan and seating people according to their language capabilities!

We’ve also encountered some challenges conveying our ideas to others, be it our family or our suppliers. A while back, I suggested to my parents that we could serve American-style cocktails (dirty martini is one my all-time favourites!) alongside champagne at the cocktail reception. I have never seen my father look so bewildered:

“Je ne comprends pas. Pourquoi voudrais-tu un martini alors que tu peux avoir du champagne?”

We quickly gave up on that idea.

We have also had to spend a little more time with some suppliers to explain certain things. For example, bridesmaids are not traditional in France so the florist had not thought about the bouquets for them when we met her. And we’ve had other suppliers turn their noses up at us for suggesting non-typically French ideas (unsurprisingly). For example, when looking for a rehearsal dinner venue, one restaurant criticised the whole concept, calling us ‘unusual’ (and not in a good way). Or just last week, our local church choir suddenly dropped out because they refused to learn an English hymn. They’ve definitely been a minority, but it’s always a little disappointing.

Actually, Tom and I are both really looking forward to mingling the two languages, particularly for our ceremony. Our priest is 100% French but he has taken a lot of time to suggest parts which could be in one language or another and even certain readings (such as psalms) which could have one verse in French and another version in English to help symbolise our union. It’s taking us a long time to come to a final order that we both like (the problem with adding cultures is that you also add extra options!) but I think it’s fair to say, it will be a real reflection of us! And somehow, I get the feeling that all our guests will be willing to try out their basic French/ English after a glass of champagne or two…

Well, I have rambled on for long enough I think! I promise there will be more pictures next time, but I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the post anyway… I would absolutely love to hear from all of the destination wedding/ multi-cultural brides out there about your stories.

And, in general, which parts of wedding planning have you found to be important yet hard to put together? Have you had any issues with suppliers not ‘getting’ you?

Céline xxx

Hello lovelies,

I can’t believe I’m writing my fifth blog post for RMW already – where has the time gone?!?
With less than 5 months to go, the pressure has definitely mounted and it feels like I’m carrying out wedding tasks every weekend (sometimes every day!). Some of it is really fun (shoe shopping!), but some of it has become tedious and tiring. Yep, I’m feeling a little wedding fatigued and am looking forward to it actually being the 21st July.

Nonetheless, there have of course been some great highlights this past month, mainly my mum finding a beautiful MOB outfit (we still have the hat and shoes to find, but one step at a time!), buying accessories to complete The Outfit and, last but not least, my toile fitting.
Just in case you were wondering, a toile is basically the dress but in a cheaper material. It is altered directly on you before being used to make The Dress. The ladies at Sassi Holford were a little amused (bewildered?) when I told them that I felt quite glamorous in my toile and black slip, but hey, how many other times in my life will I have a toile??? Plus I got to meet Sassi herself (who by the way is very relaxed and down-to-earth!) who made doubly sure it all fitted perfectly.

So, in terms of self-indulgent moments, I’d say that my hour spent prancing around in a corset is high up there and, despite some very mini-wobbles, I’m still massively in love with my dress!

Over the past month though, most of my energy has been dedicated to wedding invites and the bridesmaids’ dresses (and the gym!), so let me tell you all about my trials and tribulations (and successes!)…

Invites

I debated whether to post our invites since you’ll see them before our actual guests but honestly, I’m just too excited about them to keep them to myself (I’m generally terrible at keeping good surprises…)

They are being printed as we speak and I have to admit I’m really quite proud of them! Not that I had anything to do with the actual design of it… No, no. All the credit goes to Melissa and Amy from Atheneum Creative. Not only are they incredibly talented, they are also some of the most patient, flexible and understanding people ever!

So, let’s rewind a little here, and tell you how I found Atheneum Creative. After we sent our save-the-date postcards, Tom and I decided we wanted to keep the travel-theme running through our invites too. Google spurted out a whole plethora of invites at me, from the old-school letter style to the boarding pass and even to passport invites! In fact, I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to travel-themed wedding invitations…. Me, obsessed? No…

Sources: Smoke Proof Press Boarding Pass Lucky Luxe Hemingway Suite | Ditsy Chic Passport To Love suite.

In all of them, there was just something slightly missing: while they perfectly fitted a relaxed exotic destination wedding, they just weren’t quite formal enough for us. So we kept looking until I found the perfect invite on a blog called Nothing But Bonfires (which I recommend in general):

Source: Nothing But Bonfires invitation for Holly and Sean’s wedding.

A couple called Holly and Sean created this invite for their wedding in 2009 and, whilst I couldn’t copy it, I did study it in detail to narrow down what it was I really liked about travel-themed invites:

• Maps needed to be included
• he invite itself should be traditional with just a little bit of added flair

Nailing those two aspects actually really focused my research and it was only just a few days later that I came across Atheneum Creative’s take on map-themed invites on the US stationery blog called Oh So Beautiful Paper (yet another blog I recommend!):

And the rest is history.

Uhhh, well, actually, no.

This is where the real hard work started…. The first thing to do was have the map designed. I was tasked with sending Melissa an outline of the map we wanted illustrated, and a list and pictures of the places that had meaning to us. I had to seriously get my thinking caps on for that one! But look at how amazing the map looks now:

Map of the area around Paimpol, including my home! Source: Atheneum Creative | illustrated by Elizabeth Porcher Jones

The second task was combining French and English. For our save-the-dates, we kept the two languages completely separate but both of us wanted our invites to be bilingual, as that has become a strong part of our identity as a couple. I’ll spare you the details but this was definitely one of the hardest problems (I’m so not looking forward to planning the ceremony!!)!
Melissa and Amy remained cool as cucumbers when presented with this additional challenge and suggested having one side in English and one in French. To add a little colour to the whole design, we went for one side in pearl white with letterpress and the other side in pink digitally-printed.

The final task was choosing the green, the pink and the white. Up until now, I’ve been quite proud to call myself the ‘anti-matchy-matchy bride’ and I insisted that our wedding would be all sorts of pinks and greens and whites.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have fallen from my pedestal and the experience was painful (for everyone involved). I spent a week looking at different pinks: one was a little bit Barbie, but then the other one didn’t look quite romantic enough and the dark one just felt a little too modern. I was not a pretty sight and, after receiving about 40 emails, Tom banned me from sending him anymore that mentioned the word ‘pink’! And let’s be honest, will our guests really comment on the choice of pink?! Uhhhhhh…. Nope.

Anyhow, I made it out of this dark dark place and I’m really excited about seeing the result. Here’s a preview of what it will all look like:

Bridesmaids

The final big item I’ve been working on has been The Bridesmaids’ Dresses. This process is ongoing but I thought you might enjoy a little taster of where my mind has been wondering.

First things first, here are my four lovely ladies that have accepted the precarious task of getting me to the church on time and in one piece:

Bridesmaids: From left to right. Simone | Frances | me | Sophy | Alia.

Alia and I met on the first day of French sixth-form back in 2000 and have been besties ever since despite living in different countries for the past nine years. Frances, Simone and Sophy are, quite simply, my been-through-it-all and couldn’t-live-without university friends. All four have been amazing and really supportive so far, in particularly just listening to me ramble on and on and on about dresses and pinks.

So it’s only right that I find them fabulous frocks to show them off at their best on the big day. The question is though, which frock will they all rock?! Regardless of their different heights and skin tones, they all have very different personalities and styles, so this was always going to be a challenge.

I’m not a big shopper on my best of days, so I decided to make this effort a collaborative one (delegate, people, delegate!). In terms of likes, my own googling showed me that

1. I preferred cocktail/ tea-length to full-length gowns.
2. I really liked the traditional ivory/ white dresses with some sort of coloured sash or accessories, though I would be perfectly happy with pink dresses too.

With this in mind, we started out with Dessy, just because they have soooo many dresses! Well, it turns out that bridesmaids’ shops can be just as awkward as bridal shops… When we went for our appointment, not only were we left out in the cold (on the coldest day of the year) for 25 minutes, the sales assistants made no effort to advise or help us! Lucky for me, I have four very stubborn bridesmaids and they weren’t going to be easily deterred. So they went ahead and tried on every knee length dress available in the shop! The girls must have tried on about 20 dresses, and, fortunately, we finally came out with ONE winner:

Dessy D458 in champagne

As a general rule, though, I’m never satisfied with just one choice so I have continued searching high and low for dresses, and here is the current selection of favourite dresses:

Bridesmaids’ dresses: BHLDN | Vivien of Holloway.

For any one interested, the current favourites are all catalogued on a Pinterest board. Naturally.

I also have two more appointments lined up over the next month at The Dress Consultants and Maids to Measure (they literally didn’t have an available Saturday appointment until May!!!!). At this point, I’ll probably have too many choices to choose from and it’ll all start merging into one, but hopefully, the girls will all like one dress and that’ll be that.

I would be very curious to hear how you all got on with bridesmaids’ dresses. And if anyone has spotted some cool-looking dresses for me to check out, please let me know!

Well, as usual, I’ve rambled on for way too long. By the next post, we’ll have made our final trip to Brittany (via a romantic mini road trip in Loire Valley – woo-hoo!) and we should have a whole bunch of to-do’s completed…. At least that’s the plan.

Céline xxx