We had a lovely Christmas with family and a great New Year's Eve with friends, and last weekend we spent another fantastic evening with friends in Lincoln for Matt's surprise birthday.


Now that's all out the way, the countdown to the wedding is really kicking off!  We've put together our (mammoth) list of everything to get done over the next few months, and this week we received our six-month planning portfolio from Spains Hall; there's so many questions to answer!


Matt's been working hard on planning the honeymoon and summermoon, of which I know very few details, and all my lunchtimes and train journeys to work have been spent researching things and making lists and designing things.  This weekend we're heading back to Essex as we've got a second meeting with the vicar, to discuss the hymns and readings we've chosen for the service.


In other news, Matt says thank you to everyone for all the birthday cards and messages, and we have placed our first advert in a magazine for Aqua Rose!  The Starting Twogether East Berkshire edition.  We are also shown on and linked to the www.startingtwogether.com website.  All very exciting!

Last weekend was a busy weekend of wedding planning!

We headed back to Essex with the Best Man Johno and his girlfriend Sam (who is doing a reading for us at the ceremony).  They met all my family properly and Sam and I went to my Auntie's choir concert to get us in the Christmas spirit.  We showed them the church and spied the reception venue from the road! 

Matt's chosen the suit that he wants all the men in the bridal party to wear, I ordered my dress and accessories and we also picked up the bridesmaid dresses that had come in early.  The girls will be coming round between Christmas and New Year for the first fitting of them, and it'll be the first time that Jess has seen hers now she's back from her travels!

Now it's so close to Christmas we'll try and have a break from wedding things and start it all again late January, at which time there'll only be six months to go!

Not too much more to update on at the moment, but there's still a few things we want to get sorted this side of Christmas!  I've booked a make-up artist to make myself and the girls look beautiful on the day, and in a couple of weeks we're heading back to Colchester with the Best Man to try on some suits.  I will be ordering my dress that weekend too, and I think that's when it will really hit home that I'm actually getting married!

The stag and hen parties have been set to take place on the weekend of Saturday 3rd - Sunday 4th July, and I think Johno and Anneka have already started to get in touch with everyone initially about the plans.

I know a lot of you have already booked accommodation, but all the info on recommended hotels and B&Bs will stay on this website until the big day, for those of you that haven't sorted anything yet.

My last bridesmaid comes back from Australia in a week or so and I can't wait as the last time I saw her was when we left for Peru before the engagement!  We've missed you, Jess!

Last weekend we met the bridesmaids in Colchester to get them measured and order the bridesmaid dresses.  Jessica is still travelling at the moment so had to email her measurements to me (I hope they're right!), but the rest of them all tried on the dress we've chosen and loved it.  We had a last minute change of colour, but the dresses are all ordered now, so there's no going back!

We've now also confirmed a photographer and hopefully a DJ too, so things have been moving along nicely this week!

So, I've finally got round to redesigning our website to show information about our upcoming wedding!  It was a bit sad changing the site from the Inca Trail information as it was such a memorable experience, but all the website pages we made for that can still be seen by clicking on the links at the top.

We booked the venue fairly soon after arriving back from Peru, and since then I think I've found 'the dress', and we've made some save the date fridge magnets, but that's about as far as we've got!  Having worked in the wedding industry for the last three years I've seen so many different weddings and wonderful ideas, that it's making it really hard to decide on exactly what we want on our own big day.

I'm hoping to keep this blog up to date, not necessarily with wedding updates, but generally with what we're getting up to during the run up to the wedding.  As most of you know Matt and I find it hard to sit still, what with the Peru experience, Matt completing the Three Peaks Challenge in August and now I've set my sights on doing the Coast2Coast Cycle Ride next May!  It means we don't have much time to fit in any wedding planning, and my days now consist of squeezing in time on the train and in lunchbreaks to browse wedding magazines and send out emails to the bridesmaids!

Hopefully the website will be completed in a week or so, so please come back soon to check it out!

Lots of love, Teri x