It's overload

So many of our friends took really wonderful photos of our wedding which they've sent us on CDs or posted on Flickr and Facebook. Plus we have our fabulous, terrific, handsome and sweet photographer Peter's photos (almost a thousand!)

It's wonderful to relive all the special moments and see all these people's different points of view on the day (or rather weekend). It's also pretty overwhelming in such huge numbers. I feel a bit like Mama did when she looked at all our flowers in buckets the day before the wedding - how on earth do we arrange all of this into something manageable and pretty and worth looking at?

(she totally did of course - with the help of some pretty special flower faeries!)

We took a stroll yesterday, my husband-to-be and I, to our polling station via the laundrette and under the almond trees that grow in what we locals refer to as "dog poo alley" (so twee no?)

The trees are now a lot less blossomy than they were a week ago.

After a moments silence:

him: Hon, I was just thinking about the, um, er ...

(cue frown and a weird sort of sweeping/batting arm wave motion)

me: election?
route?
wedding?
pub?
chilled west london vibe?
laundrette ticket?

him: no! (a bit annoyed at future wife trying to guess the end of every sentence)

him: you know - the um, stuff you throw ... confetti!

me: confetti? what about it?

him: don't you think we could collect some of this blossom to use at our wedding?

me: it is very confetti like

him: and there is loads of it!

me: (a moments thought - mostly how untypical a groom he is) I'm not really sold on having dogshit scented confetti ... but I like you're thinking.

him: perhaps we should have a tree like this in our garden

me: yes. perhaps we should.

Then we made some democratic Xs and went to the pub.

Molti Fiori

[originally written 25th June 2009]

So one of the tasks we've set ourselves on our trip out to Italy is to make a note of which plants and flowers are out and at their best at this time of year. As I mentioned in a previous post I've been pretty keen on using wild, seasonal and indigenous flowers for our wedding. Well of course at this time of year, before the burning heat of July and August, we're spoilt for choice.

It seems however we are not going to have a choice in the colour scheme. To my surprise it's not cornflower blue or Tuscan oranges and yellows that dominate but ... pink.
Soft, pretty blousy pink. I'm not against the colour - I quite like the paler shade's shabby vintage qualities. But I wrote it off for our wedding as way too girly and cute and not N's cup of tea at all. (Plus the brighter shades really do not suit my colouring at all.) But really, we honestly don't have a choice - it's everywhere! Climbing roses, hydrangeas, geraniums, oleander, and wild sweet peas by every road side. If you can't beat it ...

Spring is sprung flower love

[images via 1st row l>r: Martha Stewart, Saipua Flowers, MS;
2nd row: Jose Villa on Snippet and Ink, Leigh Miller photography, Style me Pretty;
3rd row: MS, Meg Smith Photography, Saipua Flowers]

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm drawn more and more to the idea of wild or native flowers in unarranged arrangements. I love mixing herbs, leaves and lots of different blossoms, putting some of them in jam jars and hopefully have lots growing all around us too. I made the above collage on mydeco.com - love the site but it was a real pain and took ages for it to be rendered and then made available for me to copy. But, hooray! Peacock Feathers recommended Picassa which I shall be using from now on. Get ready for lots more random collages of things I like - I'm planning on revelling in the possibilities of anything and everything until the day comes when I will have to start knuckling down and making some final decisions (not for ages, surely?!)

So on that note - here's a another collage, nothing to do with the wedding but everything to do with Springtime and my happy smiley mood.

[all images my own from my folks' lovely garden]

Weird Dreams

Every now and again I have strange wedding dreams - usually slightly anxious ones where something weird happens that seems like a huge crisis in my sleepy world. Last night however was a little different. It was my wedding day or the day before. As happens in dreams, I was somewhere that was supposed to be the house in Italy but sort of wasn't. We had everything still to organise and everything was very home made. Little sister was collecting an assortment of plates and anything you could sit on for the dinner (up turned buckets, a tree log.) Meanwhile I was writing a long list of things we still needed on a post-it for Papa who was about to go on a shopping trip to the local co-op. On the list were place cards and suddenly it occurred to me that the post-its would do perfectly. I remember wondering why I hadn’t thought of this before!
Mama and Papa were picking wild weeds and branches and sunflowers that were growing everywhere. Everything was very calm. I was a little worried that I didn't have a chuppah yet, but we just took a sheet from the house and decorated it with the branches and wild flowers and it looked perfect.

[image left via Arum Fleuriste, image right via nvhurr designs]

Weird, because although I am very interested in the Jewish faith and their pragmatic approach to life's celebrations and hurdles, I'm a Roman candle and have never even been to a proper Jewish wedding - maybe it was the long chat I had had earlier that day with a Belgian work-friend about her Passover celebrations that lingered in my brain. Anyway, when I woke up it slowly dawned on me that I couldn't really have a chuppah in a church and a vague feeling of disappointment followed me around all day.

[image via Bloomsbury]

I did like the scheme of the flowers being natural and simple, like bunches of wildflowers. Mmmm, save that one up for the idea’s board! (vetoing the post-its though – however colourful!)

[image via David Gunter on Flickr]