Our 1920s Barn Wedding Video

Joe and I tied the knot on the 6th November 2016 at South Farm in Royston. And, we are so excited to finally share our wedding video with you all :). The lovely Tim Spatz filmed our special day and this is the final version that got sent to us. We really hope you enjoy watching it just as much as we did.

In other wedding related news, I'm currently doing a wedding planning series on my blog. You can read the first post here, this is all about our initial ideas. The second post is on bridal hair and make-up, which you can read here. And my latest one is on the stressful period with 8 weeks to go. I'm planning to do more wedding related blog posts in the new year.

Any who, hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas. Mine has been delightful! If you want to keep in touch and see what I'm up to daily, you can follow me on Instagram: @zoeyoliviablog or tweet me: @zoeyoliviablog. I'm forever responding and interacting on those platforms :). 

Wedding Planning #3 | The stressful period, 8 weeks to go!

If you follow me on social media, you may know that I'm already officially married, hooray! We tied the knot on the 6th November 2016. And, time has got away with us again... I can't quite believe it's almost Christmas. 

Today I thought I would re-visit my wedding planning series. In my previous posts I wrote about mine and Joe's initial ideas, my dress, the colour schemes, the cake, my hair and make-up and much much more. And, there's lots more that I want to share with you over the next coming months that you might find somewhat helpful if you're planning your wedding, planning your honeymoon, ideas for a hen do in London, or you're just interested in reading about my honest wedding experience.

In this blog post I want to discuss the planning stages with 8 weeks to go. So let's rewind a little bit. Let's go back to early September...

In this period, I had (in no particular order) my hen do, Joe's stag do, multiple dress fittings, deciding on my veil, my hair trial, a make-up trial with two of my bridesmaids, lots of bridesmaid enquires, ordered more bits and bobs for the wedding, final paperwork with our wedding venue and registar were due, a shiz load of payments were due, table plan was to be decided and planned, chasing up RVSP's, deciding on the music for the aisle, music after the ceremony, ideas for signage, booking and organising the honeymoon, ceremony and reception final touches, gyming twice a week and attempting a diet, family dramas, deciding on final final wedding make-up, deciding on wedding readings, ordered and had wedding rings made and going back and forth with chosen suppliers to discuss ideas. 

I'm sure there are a bunch of other things I've forgotten about, but you get the jist of things... it was pretty intense, especially if you work full-time and have a busy role.

When I look back, I barely had any time to think about my wedding whilst I was at work, likewise with Joe. So we conquered everything when we got home. Staying up till 1am or later almost every night was pretty awful, but all those late nights paid off.

Stay organised

You're ticking off about 1000 things (quite literally) off your to do list. I don't mean that in a scary frightening way. But, yes there is a lot to be done and everything needs to be perfect, and run smoothly... But just make sure you are keeping on top of things and ticking off bits and pieces every day, even if it's something small like ordering 'the bridal/bridesmaids hangers'. It's one thing completed out of many.

On the day, you do forget the stresses and enjoy the big day, well after the ceremony... That might just be my experience though. I'm sure there are brides out there who don't care too much about the little details and love the idea of the ceremony. But for me, it made me a nervous wreck. Walking down the aisle with everyone looking at me and having to read my vows for everyone to hear, it was lovely, but no thank-you. Not my cup of tea at all.

Anyway, sorry, I'm waffling... What I found really really helpful, was to print of a wedding checklist. I found this one really helpful to keep on top of things. But there are tons and tons of of checklists out there.
I also had a wedding planning diary that Joe's sister, Emily brought for me when we got engaged. It was this exact one from John Lewis which was really helpful too.

Joe's idea of keeping on top of things was creating lots of 'google sheets', the amount of spreadsheets he had was insane, but it did help us a lot. We had everything from a wedding budget sheet to a guest list sheet to a range of supplier options and things we liked or wanted, i.e: bubbles for the ceremony from Amazon or blocks of cheeses from Waitrose. There were many many tabs on that one!

So, the best bits of advice I can give on keeping on top of 'the wedding to-do list' is to be organised, plan in advance, delegate tasks (wish we had done more of this), do a task every day or every other day, even if it's small. And do print off that check list! 

What I also thought you might be interested in hearing about is my hen do, my dress fittings, my diet, my hair trial and last minute bow tie changes. So I'll go into more detail about them.
If you do what me to go into detail about anything else of the above mentioned, do let me know and I'll happily write about them in my next post, or I'll reply in the comments section below. 

My hen do.

My lovely bridesmaids surprised me with a weekend away in London. Only twenty minutes for us on the tube, but it was really nice to get away from my home town. 

We all met at Euston, dropped our bags off at a nearby hotel and went to this gorgeous pub called 'The Hourglass'. As we were running a bit later than expected, they had given our table away, however, the guy in charge arranged a table for us in no time. The food was stunning and I loved the quirky-ness of the pub.
It was a shame we were only there for a short amount of time and had to rush our food a little, but we enjoyed it none the less.
I actually want to go back and take Joe there!

After lunch, we headed to a 1920's inspired photoshoot, this was really cool and great fun for us girls. 

After that we headed to Piccadilly Circus for a private cocktail making class, this was so much fun! We got far too drunk in short period of time but was brilliant. 

Time got away with us a little bit, so we headed back to the hotel to get ready. We met up with a few of my other friends and headed out for dinner at 'Jamie's Italian'. After wards we went back to the club in Piccadilly and had a great time... although a few dramas occurred. But what's a hen do without drama, eh?!
We ended up wandering around London for about an hour, realising that no-one would let us in as it had gone past 3am, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

The next day, was fairly chilled and much much needed. We sat down for a few hours at Euston and didn't leave our spot. We met up with Joe's mum, and headed to 'The Shakesphere Globe', a place I had never heard of before. It was this gorgeous exhibition, artsy building with a restaurant called 'The Swan' attached to it. Near London Bridge way. It was beautiful.  

We enjoyed a Midsummers Night afternoon tea with my family and friends. It was really really lovely. And I highly highly recommend it to anyone.

My dress fittings and 'The diet'

Leading up to the wedding, I knew that I wanted to loose weight, not much but I knew that I wanted to be a size 8 again. So, I ordered a size 8 dress (at the time I was a 10) from Eliza Jane Howell, from a bridal shop, Morgan Davies in Hitchin.

I previously tried my dress on three times before deciding it was the 'one'. And I still to this day, absolutely made the right choice. At the time, I tried on the design in a 14 and it was super baggy, but I actually really liked the fit of it. I didn't quite realise how snug it was until the day it arrived. But that was ok, it just meant that I needed to consider underwear carefully, tone up a little bit and loose a bit more weight.

If there's one bit of advice that I will give for 'finding your perfect dress' is that when you know, you know. It might take a while and you feel like nothing suits you, but then you find something that fits you like a glove, so do be patient and wait.

Anyway, when my dress arrived, it was quite loose around certain areas and needed to be altered slightly. It needed to be taken in at the bottom, lifted at the top (near my shoulders). But overall fitted really really well. And was so beautiful and delicate.

The shop didn't do alterations, so I had to find a local seamstress which was surprisingly quite easy.

I visited my seamstress on several occasions, 3 weeks before my wedding, 2 weeks before and 2 days before. The process was really easy but we did have an accident on the 2nd dress fitting which I can laugh about now.

When I was trying on my dress, I noticed a pool of blood on the floor. I immediately panicked as it got on my dress and shoes!! What had happened was that I caught my foot on some of the beads on my shoes, sliced my foot open without realising and bled everywhere! Oh the dramas, only me eh! Luckily, the blood came out of the dress and shoes really easily. Otherwise let me tell you... I would not be laughing.

Moving swiftly on, by the 3rd fitting. I had lost a little bit more weight and my dress fitted perfectly, however, was a little gapey near the belly, but I didn't mind so much. I then took it away and hung it in my wardrobe away from Joe. The temptation not to get it out every five minutes was incredibly hard.  

Also, I know some of you may be keen to know, so I thought I'd mentioned my 'diet' on here.
I didn't do a hardcore diet by any means, but I had a lot of soup for lunch or dinner during the week. Ate fairly healthy, ate fish a fair bit and had the occasional salad too. I tried to avoid sugar, but couldn't resist on occasions. And, I did treat myself quite a bit at the weekend. Sometimes you just need a burger in your life, it's called balance. 

On the final week of the wedding, I was really good and did a juice diet, as well as eating soup and lots of fish. I also had a lot of coconut water which helped my skin 'glow' and look super hydrated.

The hair trial

I almost immediately knew what I wanted. 1920's soft curls, yes please.

My hair stylist was incredible, I cannot recommend and thank her enough, Denise from D&D Make-up. She's done lots of bridal hair in the past, and some amazing editorial styled photo-shoots for big brands such as M&S. 

I went to her house and she trialled my hair. She got it spot on first time round. And, I really enjoyed listening to her experiences in the fashion and beauty industry. What a hell of a job she had! Sounded like a dream. 

She also did my bridesmaids', my mum and nan's hair on the big day. Everyone's hair looked incredible.

I highly recommend booking a hair trial, I know it seems a little bit expensive, but believe me it's worth it! You could pay for a hair stylist package up front and absolutely hate it when she does the trial, so, it's good to be selective. And then again, you could get lucky like I did and flnd the perfect one.

Bow tie changes

This was a bit of an odd one, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
We found finding the right bow ties for our groomsmen so difficult. We originally wanted grey to match the bridesmaids, but it didn't pop and the bow tie sizes were either 'too large' or 'too small'. We must of ordered around 15 different styles of bowties and none of them were right, it was really frustrating.

Until one evening I popped into Brent Cross shopping centre, paid a visit to Hawes and Curtis and found the most gorgeous burgundy silk bow ties. They were pricey for sure, but after weeks of not knowing what to do, I decided it was worth paying a little bit extra to get this detail just right.

I don't know why burgundy hadn't crossed my mind before. It was perfect, autumnal and they went really well with the flowers. They looked awesome in photo's. 

Ok, so there we have it, the stressful period of 8 weeks to go! I hope this was at least helpful to one person or you enjoyed reading about our wedding experiences.

When I look back, the one thing I would have done differently was I wish we had delegated more tasks to family and friends. Me and Joe put a lot of pressure on ourselves as we are both perfectionists and like being a part of every single detail. But we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and stress before the big day.

And, it's true what they say, you really do feel like eloping in the last 2 or so months... but it was all worth it in the end. Our wedding day was beyond perfect and more than what we could of ever of hoped for.

As always feel free to follow me on Instagram: @zoeyoliviablog or tweet me: @zoeyoliviablog. I'm forever responding and interacting on those platforms :).

A Rustic & 1920's Wedding Haul

Happy bank holiday weekend all. It's been quite some time since I've sat down and filmed a haul video! This time, I've done something a little bit different... A Wedding Haul. Where I ramble on about my bridal accessories, reception decorations and more! 

If you are enjoying my wedding videos, please do let me know as I will continue to do more in the next three months or so. These could be more haul videos, bridal tutorials or maybe even a wedding planning series. Let me know your preference. 

Love, Zoey

Feel free to follow me on Instagram: @zoeyoliviablog or tweet me: @zoeyoliviablog. I'm forever responding and interacting on those platforms :).

Wedding Planning #1 - Our Ideas / The Inital Stages

I have been a little absent on my blog lately, and that's because I'm into serious wedding planning mode! I can't say that it's been easy, but that's something I'll go into detail a little later on...

Joe and I got engaged on my birthday last year, he proposed to me whilst we were on holiday in Turkey. And, since then, it's been go go go with the wedding (...literally)!

We were going to settle for a 2017 date, as it gave us a lot of time to save and prepare for the wedding. But, after a lot of consideration and because of family reasons, we decided to choose a date at the end of this year instead. 

I've been happily pinning away on my Pinterest board since November, of these big, beautiful and wonderful ideas that I would love to have. From the colour scheme, to decor, to my dress and so on.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss our wedding plans, our ideas and where we are now with our wedding plans. 

The Venue

Joe and I aren't religious at all and we both loved the idea of getting married in a barn. We started looking at venues from December onwards and settled on our dream one back in February.

We got really lucky with dates as a lot of couples had booked their venue two years in advance, and they had one or two ideal dates left!

It was also really hard to find the right venue because Joe's family are from Corby and mine are from Watford, so we needed to meet in the middle and find somewhere easy for everyone to get to. 

But oh my, it's perfect, absolutely perfect. I won't give away where it is for privacy reasons, so the pictures above and below are just to give you an idea of what we had in mind. I will of course share where it was after the wedding!

The Dress

After choosing our venue, the dress hunt was on. I must of tried at least 70 different styles on before finding the right one! It honestly felt like we went to every bridal boutique in Hertfordshire...

But I'm in love with it, it feels very me. 

Below I've picked four of my favourite dresses that I tried on.  I know my friends, family and Joe read my blog, so I don't want to spoil the surprise! 

I've also got my shoes! Initially, I really wanted one of Emmy's designs but they are way out of my price range. But I'm completely happy with the ones I picked! I won't tell you the exact ones that I bought, but I will tell you that they are a stunning pair of shoes designed by Rachel Simpson. 

Now that I've got my dress and shoes, I still need to get my veil, head-pieces, lingerie and bridal jewelry! 

Photographer and Videographer

While hunting for my perfect dress, came the huge task of selecting a Photographer and Videographer. These are both super duper expensive but I love my photography and videography, so it's something I was willing to spend a little extra on. 

Our photographer for the day, is the lovely Cat Lane. I just adore her work and I'm so excited for her to shoot the day. And, our videographer is Tim Spatz, who creates the most beautiful films.

Tip: If you are also planning you're wedding, I recommend booking these are soon as you find your venue. They get snapped up pretty quickly!

Colour Schemes and Bridesmaid Dresses

Our colour scheme is blue, grey and sliver. With a little bit of burgundy here and there.

Originally, I had my heart set on navy sequinned bridesmaid dresses but instead we've gone for some beautiful grey embellished dresses. Which they will pair with some strappy sliver heels.
We may consider a fur shawls for them to wear too.

Joe's suit is a dark cobalt blue and the groomsmen will be dressed in navy, with *hopefully* some braces. We're not sure if we are going to have grey ties or powder blue as of yet.

Invitations / RSVP's

Another huge job was doing the invitations! We have around 90 people coming to the day and 50 extra in the evening. So, we had around 100 invitations to send out.

I really wanted to make our invites special, so I designed and printed them. Hours upon hours of feeding paper through the printer to achieve the doublesided-ness... boy was that a workout. Then they were left to dry, and Joe finalised them by wrapping each individual one in twine. 

Whilst doing that, we collected our guests address' on an excel spreadsheet (one of many) and sent away. Chasing down some our RSVP's was a tad annoying, but I let Joe handle that part ;)!

Themes

For the reception and table plan, we love the idea of having a 'world/travel' theme of all the places we've visited in the world. Other than that, we're going for the rustic farm vibes, but in a classy way.

Decorations and Sweet table

The venue/barn itself is beautiful and to be honest, we don't need to do an awful lot of decorating to it.

I would love to have more lights across in the reception but it's costly and I don't know if it would be 'too much'. We may also have a bunting running across, but again to be decided.

At this stage, the only decorations that I know we would be splashing out on, are the table decorations. I vision tree log slices with kilner jars and floating candles in them. A jar filled with photo props. And maybe a globe on each table. Oooh and vintage suitcases!
I do also like the idea of having balloons near each table... but may look a bit out of place!

I would also like a lot of signage. Lots of cute quotes here, there and everywhere.

One of my must-haves is to have a sweet-table in the evening! I've been to various friends weddings where they've done this and it always goes down really well with the kids and adults, and well it looks super cute too.

I've been looking at vintage glass sweet jars on eBay, but may have to find some more affordable ones so it doesn't end up costing a bomb!

The Flowers

I don't know why, but I found choosing a florist one of the hardest and most frustrating things. One, because I didn't realise how expensive they are, two, because the majority I contacted weren't available and three, because I really couldn't make up my mind of what I wanted...
Luckily we found a supplier who had been recommend by our venue. She's really lovely, and I'm excited to see what she makes! 

We didn't want to spend a fortune, so we had a budget for £300 (seems like a lot... but believe me that's the bare minimum) which includes my bouquet, five bridesmaid bouquets, corsages and buttonholes for the groomsmen. And one table decoration on our main table. 

With colours, we decided to go down the burgundy route as I personally feel that it will compliment the greys and the blues. I also decided on having quite a lot of green foliage. And, the design will be a hand-tied bouquet with twine holding it together.

The cake

A family member of Joe's will be baking our wedding cake which we are super grateful for. It adds another personal touch to our wedding!

For the cake, we originally wanted a cheese tower wedding cake as it really fits in with the barn feel. But after seeing multiple pictures of naked tower cakes, I think our hearts are set on one of these instead. But we may be cheeky and have both...

I also really love these personalised cake toppers that I keep stumbling across, something like this would look perfect on our cake.

There are lots of other bits that I want to share with you all as we get further into planning the wedding... more decorations, food, the honey moon, bridal hair, make-up and so on. But I think I will leave it here, otherwise we will be here for years...

With less than four months to go, we're into the nitty gritty stages now. There's been ups and downs but I'm really excited to see everything come together!

I'd love to know what you think of our ideas so far, or any advice or tips you have for our wedding planning!

Zoey

Feel free to follow me on Instagram: @zoeyoliviablog or tweet me: @zoeyoliviablog. I'm forever responding and interacting on those platforms :).