Sam is back and she only has 4 weeks until the big day… ekkk!! Sam tells us all about her hen do, and shares some sneak peeks of their wedding DIY. Excited! Sam needs your help. Do come share your pre wedding pamper plans in the comments box below :-) XOXO Lou

Hello everyone! I hope you are all well and good. Less than 4 weeks to go to ‘W’ day as a type this. All I can say is ahhhhhhh! I’ve never felt this bizarre before. I’m a complete mixture of emotions. One minute I am excited, then ridiculously nervous/anxious and then I get completely stressed and overwhelmed. Most of the big things are sorted and booked, just a case of praying they turn up on the day. Now its time to sweat the small stuff. Stuff I never even knew existed.

Last week we received an email from the registrar conducting our wedding… suddenly its all so real! I read the form we had to fill out about 3 times, but I was so stressed about it that I couldn’t make any sense of it. Simple questions like ‘Do you wish your father to give consent during the ceremony?’ and ‘Do you want your guests seated or standing during the ceremony?’ were baffling me. They wanted me to know what order my bridesmaids were coming down and which order they would be seated… who was to take my flowers… exactly what music we wanted playing… Needless to say my head was fried. I decided to stop freaking out and sleep on it… I’m still sleeping on it!

In more positive news… I am currently sat here still buzzing from the energy from my hen weekend. Wooop! Just got back a few hours ago and had such a good time. Fourteen of us booked to stay in a cluster of cottages in the countryside near Leeds, not really knowing what to expect. They were fab!

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Seeing as it’s Friday afternoon and many of you may be having your hen do this weekend, i thought i’d get you a little excited.

Photographer Elizabeth Armitage got in touch to see if i would like to feature this gorgeous hen shoot she organised for one of her brides based on Tiger Lily from Peter Pan. I so love the gorgeous bohemian styling, with feathers and tee pees, and two beautiful girls who clearly had a wonderful time getting dressed up.

Utterly charming.

Thanks so much to Elizabeth for sharing her images today, here is what she had to say about the shoot;

“The theme was based around the idea of Tiger Lily (from Peter Pan) with an emphasis on a romantic, storybook feel. There was meant to be the bride and two bridesmaids but unfortunately the bride’s sister’s flight from Ireland was cancelled. But the two of them had a great time with hair and make-up being done, and afternoon tea supplied by Tea in The City, and then a photo shoot against a “twig Sculpture” I commissioned a florist to make. Also some pictures outside after a little champagne ;)”

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This week the lovely Laura F shares her EPIC hen do with us. I won’t spoil the surprise but wow her girls spoilt her. How much fun she must have had :-) Do leave her some hen love, what are you planning for your hen or is it a surprise? Spill the beans Laura… hehe XOXO Lou

So, last time I blogged, things were all moving along very nicely. These last few weeks, as the wedding gets scarily closer (I still can’t quite believe our weekly countdown has hit single figures!), have been insane with wedding activity – there are lots of bills to pay, lots of final decisions to be made, and a million and one little bits that need sourcing/buying/decorating. Craziness. To be honest though, so far it’s been surprisingly drama-free and apart from a little wobble over our florist who has sadly had to pull out, things are coming together really well. We’re heading up to our venue for our last ‘planning’ meeting in a couple of weeks, and after that we will be in full on wedding countdown mode. Oh. My. God.

I did however, manage to find the time in my mental schedule to take a couple of days out of planning to celebrate my hen weekend – a couple of days away with some of my favourite people, the odd gin (or 8) and, erm… some sumo-wrestling?!

I had known absolutely nothing about what was in store for me which was exciting – but pretty scary – and was just instructed to get on a train home to Wiltshire one Friday morning. There I was greeted by my oldest friend in the station car park, wearing nothing but a wetsuit and a woolly hat – and was presented with a banana and a doughnut (apparently these were ‘clues’ but I was way to nervous/excited/slightly tipsy from a bottle of train wine to make much sense of it at this point…)

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Afternoon lovelies…. Laura has the most awesome post for you this afternoon, of her experience as a bride turned bridesmaid for her best friend Kelly’s wedding. I so love the images from the vintage styled hen do :-) Hen inspiration just for you girls…..

All Images (c) Laura Babb Photography

Hello everyone. I hope you’re enjoying the glorious sunshine? Let’s ignore the rumours of snow this week shall we?

This is probably going to be quite a long post with lots of pictures, so you might want to grab a cup of tea!

Instead of talking about my own wedding for a change I thought I’d talk to you about my best friend’s wedding and hen party as it’s been my main wedding focus over the last month.

Kelly and I have been friends for the best part of 15 years and she tied the knot on Friday! She has been engaged for getting on for two years and the wedding that seemed so very far away when she first started planning it finally happened this weekend, on a gloriously sunny day at Castle Headingham, in Essex.

But before I talk about the wedding, I’ll tell you about the hen party. Or parties. Yes there was more than one and I took pictures at both of them.

As head bridesmaid or Best Babb as I have been titled for the purpose of Kelly’s wedding – a title of which I wholeheartedly approve – planning the hen traditionally fell within my remit.

Luckily Kelly was after some classy (but not too classy) fun and that wouldn’t blow the budget, as she was conscious about keeping costs down for the people who would be attended (good girl, I say).

We decided that vintage inspired dress would be the order of the day and that we’d head to a 50s inspired American diner for dinner and cocktails and then we’d head off to Bourne and Hollingsworth for even more cocktails.

I’m quite good at backcombing and styling hair so when Kelly asked if she and the other bridesmaids could come to mine to get ready, I decided, in consultation with the other maids, to arrange a few surprises.

We asked the brilliant Elbie Van Eden to come along and do all of our hair and make-up and I threw a little tea party with cucumber sandwiches (sans crusts, naturally), cakes and enough bubbles to ensure we were all pretty tipsy by the time we left to head out for dinner and I also bought each of the bridesmaids a vintage brooch as ‘hen party favours’.

The raffia hearts and jars are things I’ve been crafting for my own wedding so it was really nice to see how they might actually look when put together.

And it was really nice to be able to photograph some of the hen party for Kelly (I didn’t photograph the latter part of the evening as I was busy drinking cocktails!) so that she has a record of how beautiful she looked all dressed up in her Vivien of Holloway dress.

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I have been waiting on the edge of my seat to see and hear all about Adeline’s Hen do in sunny Brighton. Adeline and her hen’s had a fantastic weekends, full of ideas you can steal for your do too :-) Take it away Adeline…. XOXO Lou

Here Come The Girls……

I feel that I am truly blessed to have a very close group of girlfriends that I rely on for everything! Don’t get me wrong, Andy is my rock and my best friend, but when you just need a natter, a gossip and a moan, no one beats turning to the ladies in your life!

I have lots of close friends and wanted them all to feel like they had a part in my wedding. I didn’t want to have lots of bridesmaids so I only chose 3, which were supposed to just be family members, but I changed those around slightly after upsetting one with our ‘no children’ rule…. whoops! I had 3 very special roles to fill, which I left to the other girls. It was fitting to have my friend Stacy as our witness because without her new years eve meddling 7 years ago, Andy and I may not have ended up together! I also needed someone to help me on the day, but didn’t want to stress my bridesmaids out with it, so asked an old school friend, Alice. She will help me get dressed on the day and make sure that everything runs smoothly!

This left one very important role to fill and one lovely lady to fulfil it….. To plan my HEN PARTY!!!! Step up Emma! The most organised person on the planet and a fellow bride-to-be! No one was going to be better equipped for this role than her!

I gave Emma some guidelines as to what was needed of her! I chose the weekend, let her know that it needed to be within half an hour of an airport (as myself and friend, Becs would be heading South from Edinburgh) and that she needed to find a weekend cottage for 12 of us to stay in!

I also sent her a link to a 50′s Mad Men hen party I found on Love My Dress that really caught my eye!

From it, Emma produced an amazing and fun filled weekend! She had input from my future sister-in-law, Sophie (who is the drinking/ice-breaker game expert) and Stacy (who knows everything about me!)

Firstly, Emma found a wonderful cottage that would sleep up to 14 people in Brighton! Not only was the location fabulous, but the cottage was a former sweet-shop that had been converted to a Kath Kidson style 50′s house! Perfect or what!

 Image source

During this girly night in, one of the girls, Stacy, produced 12 pairs of fluffy boots. This is something I used to wear regularly on a weekend when I was 17 with one of my bridesmaids, Emily. Something that I really wanted to leave in my past, but was fun to have everyone wear for the weekend! We even had t-shirts made by the talented Dolly, who produced all my wedding stationery, which had the French versions of all of our names on the back (as a nod to my French roots!)

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