14 Days: Thank You gifts for my Bridesmaids

I have only been a bridesmaid once.  My cousins and I (ranging in age from 4-11) were bridesmaids for my Dad's sister Anne, the summer I turned 10. The wedding was in Cambridge and I felt so grown up being part of the wedding party, getting to walk up and down the aisle following the bride.  There are some gorgeous pictures of the day, but not being very photogenic, I'm screwing my face up in most of them!

As a Thank you gift for being a bridesmaid, Anne gave us gorgeous matching bracelets which we wore on the day.  I still love mine and it still fits!

When looking for the perfect gift to say 'Thank you' to my bridesmaids I wanted to find something, like this bracelet from my aunt, that would remind them of our wedding for years to come.  With this in mind I decided that jewellery was a good idea.

I'm a fan of the Pandora range and it immediate jumped into my head as an option. Two of my bestfriends bought me a white leather Pandora bracelet before I moved to Leicester and I love it!  I've been lucky enough to receive some charms as gifts from friends, family and Jim - most recently Jim bought me an Eiffel Tower charm when we were in Paris.

My Pandora Bracelet.

With Pandora bracelets as a possiblity I began my hunt to make sure there wasn't something out there I liked even more.

I really loved Kirstin Ash's bespoke charm pieces.  You can chose between a gold or silver necklace or bracelet length chain and then customise each piece with charms for your bridesmaid. Unfortunately the silver bracelet chain has been sold out for ages and I wasn't so keen on the gold for the girls.

Image Credit: Kirstin Ash Website

Right through our wedding planning I've spent a lot of time browsing on Not On The High Street.  There are some really fantastic brands featured on the site and I've purchased lots of lovely cards and gifts from it. I love this heart locket by Hurley Burley and thought it could be a lovely thank you gift for bridesmaids but I was more keen on a bracelet than a necklace.

Image Credit: Hurley Burley

While browsing in Highcross I notived that Thomas Sabo have started a new range called 'Karma Beads' similar to the idea of the Pandora bracelets. I love Thomas Sabo jewllery but don't like their bracelet chains as much as the Pandora ones but they do have some absolutely gorgeous rose gold beads.

Image Credit: Thomas Sabo website

After a lot of research I couldn't find anything I liked more than the Pandora Bracelets. As they don't have a specific bridesmaid charm (they would probably sell a lot of them if they did!) and their 'Super Sister' charm didn't jump out at me, I thought I'd pick something that they could wear on our wedding day with their bridesmaid dresses. I chose these gorgeous pink faceted Murano glass beads on a silver Pandora bracelet. I love that the girls can add beads to these bracelets to celebrate other special occasions or memories.  I hope they love them as much as I love mine.

Amy
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p.s. I gave the girls their gifts when we had afternoon tea at The Merchant over Easter as I wanted to make sure they were happy with them so I've not ruined any surprises here :)

119 Days: Bridesmaids - 1 : Irish Sea - 0

(Metanarrative: This has been an interesting post to write as I'm excited that we've chosen some beautiful Bridesmaids dresses, but as per ridiculous secretive wedding traditions, I am meant to keep colours and styles a surprise for guests on the day...  So this post will be somewhat cryptic and won't finish with a brilliant revelation, but it's been part of our journey so I'd love you to keep reading regardless.)

My hunt for bridesmaid dresses started slowly.

The problems began when I mistakenly dreamt up a colour which I could not find a name for!! After booking our venue I became fixated on finding a colour that wouldn't clash with the red detailing at Riverdale and also wanted something that was different to other bridesmaids' dress colours I'd seen at weddings of family and friends. After a bit more research (and realising the red at Riverdale wasn't going to dominate our photos and matching with it didn't really matter) I changed my mind and I have picked a completely different colour which I think will be much nicer.

I have two very beautiful bridesmaids who both, unlike me, have great style.  Trying to choose a dress for them was going to be tough so I decided very early on that I wanted Fiona and Jenny to be involved in the decision making.  They have been wonderful!  They've had ideas and opinions, and have been very supportive as I've flitted between colours and styles! Their guidance in what they'd be happy wearing has also been so useful.  We all thought long dresses would be best since my dress is floor length, and we had a similar idea on what style we thought would match well.

The Irish Sea has been the biggest obstacle in the hunt for bridesmaids' dresses. Unlike brides-to-be and bridesmaids who live the the same country, we weren't always able to pop to a dress shop on a Saturday afternoon or even meet up to flick through wedding magazines with bottle of vino. This meant our bridesmaids' dress shopping has been like a blockbuster casino heist: a long time in the planning and perfectly executed in minimum time! My visits home have been short and infrequent because of work but after a lot of online research we'd picked a few different shops we wanted to visit that stocked a selection of different designs for us to try.

The three shops we visited were Bridal Lounge, Ti Amo and Dream Weddings

Bridal Lounge
We chose to visit the Bridal Lounge because they had a particular Dessy dress that we'd all liked (which turned out not to be as nice on as it looked in pictures).  This was my first experience of the Dessy dresses.  If you haven't heard of Dessy and are hunting for bridesmaid dresses - check them out!!  They provide brides-to-be with a fantastic and varied range of dress styles and materials, all available in a huge selection of colours and shades. I had heard that in some cases the price of certain Dessy dresses wasn't reflected in the quality but the dresses we saw were lovely.

Ti Amo

After getting slightly lost in Limavady, we finally arrived with Adele, excited and aprehensive to try dresses.  By now it was January 2014, and Jim and I were getting married in less than 5 months so the pressure was on! We went to the appointment with no particular dress in mind and selected some floaty chiffony styles to try and Adele recommended a few as well.  I'm always keen to take recommendations because the dresses can look so different on a hanger. The girls each tried on a different dress and came out together to let me scrutinise them.  The first dress Fiona steped out it was absolutely gourgeous.  She looked so elegant!  I also loved Jenny's first dress,  a strapless number, which we'd pretty much decided against - but my eye was constantly drawn back to Fiona's.  As the girls came out again and again I kept comparing what I saw with the first 2 dresses, particulary Fiona's.  The combination of those two dresses was perfect.  The style of Fiona's was exactly the elegant shape I'd imagined for them, and Jenny's was the perfect colour.

Dream Weddings

I'd often walked past Dream Weddings before I was engaged and admired the dresses in the window and was looking forward to attending our appointment there.  They had a very different selection of dresses to the other two shops, which was great, and the girls tried on some beautiful dresses.  One in particular had the most beautiful lace detailing on the back, but unfortunately it wasn't as striking from the front and didn't come in a colour close enough to what I was looking for.  I think the lady in the shop was surprised at how quickly we worked through the dresses - but after all our research and the other appointments, we knew pretty quickly if a dress was a Yes, No or Maybe.

We took details of a couple of dresses and collapsed in a cafe to discuss what we'd seen.


The dresses we've selected are from Ti Amo. I think I can safely tell you that they are by Dessy  - they have hundreds of styles so our secret is safe ;)  Will you be surprised by the colour? Possibly. Possibly not! :) I love them and the girls will look as stunning as ever!!  I'm just excited now for the morning of the wedding and getting all dressed up together!!

Amy
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341 Days : My Bridesmaids

Celebrating with friends and family has been top of our wedding check list since Jim proposed.  We are both very lucky to be close to our families and to have some really amazing groups of friends. So when it came to choosing bridesmaids I had a task on my hands! I realised having a whole squad of bridesmaids was going to prove quite expensive so I decided that I wanted to have just family.  Jim has two sisters and I always knew I wanted to have them as my bridesmaids.  I don't have sisters of my own but having known them both for nearly eleven years they feel more like my sisters now, which I love!!

Fiona is just a couple of years younger than me and we used to go to lots of gigs together when we both lived at home.  When I moved to Belfast for Uni she'd sometimes come up to stay for the weekend, when we'd drink cider and blackcurrant and go to gigs in The Front Page (with the lovely Miss Baxter). In my second year of Uni, Fee and I shared a house with Charlotte & Siobhan - which became the infamous '40 Dunluce Avenue'. We had a lot of fun in that house!! Fiona had a gorgeous baby girl in January who we're very excited to have as our flower girl!

Jenny was quite young when Jim and I first met so I didn't get to know her as quickly, but I always saw her when I visited Jim at home and she came to visit Fiona and I a few times in Belfast .  Like Fiona, Jenny has always made me feel so welcome. She has a vast and enviable wardrobe (quite possibly only beaten in size by our niece) which she has often opened up, without question, to dress me for weddings and nights out!

I have very hilarious memories spanning a decade (!!) of the three of us: in Dublin causing havoc on an ice rink (unintentionally of course); various birthday parties in beach caves or in fancy dress nights! lol.  I also have a rather interesting collection of pictures from over the years. Like Jim, they are both great cooks.  Fiona arranged the food for our engagement party last year and Jenny baked amazing cupcakes. They got lots of compliments!  They are always there to listen to whatever I've got going on, they make me laugh, they are generous to a fault, and I know that we'd all look out for each other.  If I could have chosen sisters, I reckon I would have chosen them!

We're going to have so much fun arranging bits and pieces for the wedding.  So far they've been been great and very supportive with any dress ideas I've sent their way.  They both know how to organise a great party so I'm looking forward to whatever they organise for my Hen Party (with only slight worry - they've been told Strictly NO Strippers!!) 

You only get one chance to plan your dream wedding day and I'm so glad Fiona and Jenny will be beside me on the day as my new sisters but that's not neglecting how important my bestfriends are to me.

Some have been my best friends since school - they patiently let me bark orders at talent show rehearsals, they shared my stationery obsession, they joined me on extremely long Sunday afternoon walks and youth club trips, we shared H7 moments, they holidayed with me and my family.  These girls have known me for such a long time, and I love that we've grown up together and that they know me so well. I can always turn to them when I miss home, or have a problem.  When I was in hospital recently there wasn't a moment that went by when one of them wasn't Whats App-ing me to see how I was doing, or sending me THE CUTEST videos ever of their adorable kids to cheer me up!! I miss them dreadfully while I'm here in England, but the moment I get home for a visit it's like we've never been apart.

Other friends I met when I started uni.  It's as if Queen's Uni knew we'd all get on when they squeezed us into Chestnut Crescent, because nine years later the Camden Crew is still going strong.  We had some very fun times in 'Camden' - with Eason's bags, sunbathing in the garden, BBQs, paralyser, nights out in Newry, Red Bull fuelled 'study' sessions, Wednesday night dinners, girlie nights all squished in a single bed, LOTS of Dominos pizza, and most recently attending our first Camden wedding when our tallest member married his beautiful fiance. Having lived with me for two years this lot have seen me at my best and at my worst

Having these solid, loving friendships around me makes me feel invincible. I love all these guys with all my heart for so many reasons.  Having their smiling, supportive faces there as I walk up the aisle to marry Jim will be a crucial part of our dream Wedding day, just as they've played an integral part in my life since the day I was fortunate enough to meet them.

Amy

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