Can somebody please tell me where the last two years have gone to? Time really does fly when you're having fun. Yesterday we celebrated {albeit a bit jet lagged} our second wedding anniversary and I'm shocked at just how long ago it feels already. Last year on our first anniversary I shared my favourite parts of our wedding day here, and talked about how it felt to be married here. 

We celebrated with cards we'd bought in California and although the tradition goes that you should buy a cotton themed present, Ben surprised me with a rose gold heart ring that I'd been swooning over for a while. It was bad timing this year with the house in the middle of works, with getting back from our trip to America with my family the day before so were pretty tired and after two weeks of lots of eating and drinking, didn't want to go out for a big lunch or dinner. So we ended up with an impromptu picnic in the glorious English sunshine, eating cherries and macaroons from M&S. The afternoon was spent on house stuff, trailing round shops for curtain poles and shelves - alll the glamour but we can't wait to have a house again! We watched our wedding video {pssst, password is Sterling if you're in a film watching mood} and looked over some photos.

We've booked a few days in France to belatedly celebrate on our own in a couple of weeks time. So despite the slight bad timing, here's to two years of being married, the best two years so far. To quote from our wedding day, 'To, have and to hold, let's go and grow old because our love is a wonderful thing ♥'

A few photos, but loads loads more here if you'd like to see and the whole wedding series with all the DIY bits and planning here. 

  

R <3 

Wedding/Anniversary smushiness over, back to regular posts soon! Happy Friday, have a lovely weekend all.

{Photos by Binky Nixon Photography}. 

This week, Ben and I will celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I wanted to write a couple of last posts about #TheBandRWedding, a final wrap up on this wedding section of the blog. I've shared most of the DIY parts and it's been blogged fully over on So You're Getting Married here. But this is from me personally, my favourite photos and moments from that incredibly special day, below. And then some thoughts about our first year of actually playing husband and wife to come over the next couple of days if you'll indulge me.. 

A whole year of being married, already!! It's flown by and I would do anything to go back to this time last year for that feeling of excitement with everything still to come. The old cliche says that it was the best day of our lives. But really I think it was the best month of our lives - I loved all the final dress fittings, the lovely ladies at Brides of Berkhamsted, getting photos sent through from the florist of all the blooms arriving, checking the weather on Countryfile on the Sunday night, everyone I saw getting excited and wishing us good luck, getting ready the day before with such a buzz as my Bridesmaids' arrived, the cards start arriving in the post, loading up the cars, getting our nails done, having a big dinner the night before talking about all the plans then tearfully saying goodbye to Ben as he left us at my parents house, waking up early and feeling sick with excitement {then calling Ben early to say 'We're getting married today!!}, seeing that the weatherman got it right with the hot blue sky forecast, the make up artist and hairdresser arrived in a blur and time just rushed by, then it was time to get my dress into the car {in a duvet cover!}, the rest of the day you can see in the photos below.

I can't remember what made us think of it or why Ben and I decide that we wanted a wedding sign post. Probably Pinterest, most things were inspired by Pinterest. Ben's Mum also has an old sign post in her garden that looks so pretty amongst the flowers so it was probably that, come to think of it that prompted us to make something unique for the day that we could keep in the garden afterwards. I wasn't going to do many more wedding posts on the blog, I figured you'd probably be bored of weddings by now? Especially after our wedding was featured on Phoebe's So You're Getting Married on Christmas Eve, the blog that I now work for, our wedding has been well and truly shared now. But after putting the sign post in our garden a few weeks ago, now that all the flowers have died back, and sharing a frosty photo of it on Instagram last week, a few of you were interested in our sign post , that Ben made for our wedding, so though it was probably worthy of a little blog post. 

I posted the above photo back in July when I was making thank-you cards and I promised a couple of you that I'd do a blog post about it. Sorry it's taken so long, I was trying to search for the photos. It's not a groundbreaking idea, I just decided to make my own thank-you cards after seeing how cheesy and overpriced ones on the web are. Plus, when guests have been so so generous, it's nice to spend a bit of time making cards to send back to them that they'll appreciate more than a glossy impersonal card ordered online. These are so easy to make:

You might have seen this post about our invites and save the dates and this about our table names and plan, this post is a kind of follow up with the stationery I made for our wedding day with, you've guessed it, more brown paper and red hearts. I'd love to share how I made our own order of services, menus and name tags and let you use them for your own day if you like the style. 

It's Bonfire Night! Did you see this post on Friday about it? Hope you enjoy some fireworks tonight. But as it's Wedding Wednesday I thought I'd share some floral prettiness and imagine it's summer and wedding season again. Or maybe you're planning your own wedding for next year. Favours are a funny thing at weddings, in essence they're a little token for guests to take something away from the wedding with them as a gift from the Bride and Groom. But some people choose not to have anything, or just donate to a charity instead. Personally I think they're fun and a little something extra to personalise your wedding day with. Our venue didn't allow any type of edible favour due to insurance reasons, I was thinking of having red heart cookies with each guest's initial at their place setting but when we heard we weren't allowed we scrapped that idea and came up with flowers to take home instead.

One of the things I'm so pleased I decided on for our wedding was these LOVE letter marquee lights. I'd seen them on Pinterest and various wedding blogs but never considered them for our wedding for some reason until about three weeks before the day. Everything else had been booked months, even years ahead of time but the LOVE letters were an impulse. I had to have them! I started googling companies to hire them from and emailed for some quotes. Before most companies had even had a chance to reply, Ben had been out to Wickes buying MDF and decided to make them instead.. 

From the start, one of my favourite parts of wedding planning was thinking of ways to personalise our day and have a couple of display tables in the entrance hall of our venue, Notley Abbey that reflected some of our favourite things and great loves. I'm a real faffer when it comes to displaying bits and bobs as you may have noticed by now, so I got great pleasure in planning all the pretty bits, where frames would sit amongst jam jars filled with flowers and a slightly vintage take on a guest book and card box.

If you ask Ben's 3 year old nephew what he remembers from our wedding day he'll say 'the balloon flew away'. I loved our heart balloon release, I think it's one of my favourite memories from the day, getting all of our guests together for something a bit different.

Ben and I love travel and from the start of our wedding planning progress, we wanted to incorporate this as part of the theme for the day with vintage suitcases and naming our tables after places we've visited together. I'd love to share some DIY ideas of how we made our table names and plan. 

When doing up our house and planning our extension, I had purposefully left a wall spare to display our wedding photos after we got married. I hadn't decided how I was going to do it to start with, waiting to get all our photos back from Binky our photographer. But as soon as we received them, I couldn't wait to choose some to put up on display.

My Mum's garden is full of gorgeous David Austin roses and last summer, seeing lots of petals on the ground we decided to start drying them as confetti for our wedding this year. I've always loved confetti in wedding photos. 

With the venue and date set, I couldn't wait to start wedding dress shopping! Back in the summer of 2012, a whole 2 years before our wedding I started visiting boutiques with my Mum and bridesmaids. Everywhere I went told me the same thing, that it would be a risk to buy something now in case I changed my mind in a year's time. But I know that when I find and like something, I stick with it. I wanted to be super organised as I knew I'd be busy with my law degree the following year and wanted everything to be stress free. Also I wanted an insurance of extra time in case I couldn't find anything I liked that season I still had a chance to look again next summer.