Planning a wedding without a “save the date”

When you manage creative projects for a living it’s tricky to get excited about planning another one.

I learnt a new ball game on Sunday – you stand in a circle and choose someone to throw the ball to and then some else throws it to you. You continue until everyone has had a turn. You then remember the sequence! Easy! Yep! Then here’s the tricky part, you introduce another ball and that has a different sequence to it and you play with both at once. ⚽️ 🎱

The exercise is meant to switch your brain on and sharpen your reaction – it certainly does that and also reminds me if someone throws a ball at you when your pre-empting where you’re going to throw ball number one you get a ball in your face! 😂

This is exactly how I feel about planning a wedding! 😂

We’ve been engaged a fair few years. I’ve had thoughts around doing it and ideas but no capacity to actually enjoy putting my energy into organising it. We’ve written the guest list and the roles and responsibilities wish list and I’ve got a secret Pinterest board – that’s it!

In terms of environment,we do feel like we’ve narrowed it down to two options…

1. An autumnal festival in England surrounded by beautiful autumn colours and dramatic cooler skies. I did really fancy Alnwick Garden tree house but Dave doesn’t feel it’s special enough although if you saw Sean Elliot’s recent photos of the snowy wedding 🎩 👰 he might think again! Mulled cider, sand paintings and music and dancing under open skies all feature.

2. A holiday in a European destination – we’ve checked out a couple but haven’t found the one! We’re going to see another this year. I really like the idea of this for loads of reasons – I love the sun and feel like it would be easier to manage hen and stag parties in the same week too and have one big celebration of love with our nearest and dearest!

Thematically, I have curated ideas for both in my head; save the dates, invitations, flowers, my dress, shoes, jewellery, the bridal party, the chairs and tables, table centres, favours, party props.

There’d be an ice cream van for party time too! ✨🎈I’ve started the playlist and have a couple of performers in mind too! 🍦

I’m not that keen on speeches but I love poetry and other peoples words so I have a couple of different ideas of how to invite these in.

I’d love to shift the balance of everyone being there to watch and celebrate to everyone being there to participate and celebrate and I have so many ideas around this from wish trees to messages in bottles.

I love the idea of a festival feel but Dave is more comfortable with a smaller, shorter more intimate ‘do’ so there’s some working through that although he’s been very sweet and said he’ll go with whatever I’d most like to do. (He’s been married before and it was quite a grand event)

And that there’d be tonnes for the children to do…the little one loves a celebration and I very much plan for him to lead in the activities he wants for the other children there. If it’s autumnal there’ll be Building dens and on holiday it will be more ball games and pool parties I think.

I like the idea of re-writing vows – I’ve had a tricky relationship with ‘religion’ but We are very spiritually connected and we both want to celebrate that. We’ve discussed sorting out the legal part with a couple of witnesses and separating that out too.

So there we have it for now anyway! I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas of how you might have planned your own special day!💜💕💜