Signed, sealed, (nearly) delivered

Just over two months to the Big Day, and our wedding stationery is hot off the press!

Wedding stationery, hot off the press!

Of course, just in time, I stumbled across a calligraphy kit, 50% off. It was fate.

Guess who spent her weekend freshening up her old calligraphy skills?

Why spend my weekend preparing for my next interview when I could calligraph (yes, that's a verb) 50 invitations?

Calligraphed and sealed, our invitations are off to the post tomorrow first thing.

I may be utterly unprepared for Tuesday morning in Cambridge, but the blue envelopes hitting the post tomorrow are that much more charming for it.

Crisis averted

After utterly smooth sailing in this whole wedding planning affair, I hit my first snag today: the venue next door to the Royal Pavilion with which I'd been negotiating for the past three weeks to host a live-streaming of our ceremony for our overflow guests suddenly backed out, with less than a day for me to find something new before jetting off to Hamburg, then Cambridge, then the US for interviews and travel over the next three and a half weeks. Panic ensued. Thank goodness Nicolas was there to manage the conversation so I could excuse myself and freak out far away from the restaurant owner. (Please don't let this wedding turn me into a bridezilla!)

One step back: let me explain that our ceremony room can only hold up to 44 people, including us. If we get a good response rate, we could be looking at 15-20 guests who can't attend the ceremony, but who are very welcome in the private guided tour of the Royal Pavilion, which will begin promptly after the ceremony. We had to do something to allow all our guests to partake in the ceremony and to join us thereafter for the tour and group photos.

All Bar One (left) where our overflow guests can enjoy a drink while we livestream our ceremony, which will be taking place in the Royal Pavilion (right).

Luckily, an alternative was not out of sight, quite literally. Across the street from our intended venue sits a classy bar, All Bar One, which, while lacking a screen for the live-streaming, offers a charming setting with a perfect location for our overflow guests to promptly join us in the Royal Pavilion post-ceremony. It'll be a bit makeshift, but the bar staff found us a cozy corner overlooking the Royal Pavilion where we can set up a computer on a bar table. There will be drinks and snacks to go around, and I'm sure our guests will take it in stride. After all, how often do you get to sip on a beer and enjoy bar snacks while waiting for the bride and groom to finish saying "I do"?

Our own little corner of All Bar One overlooking the Royal Pavilion, where our guests can get cozy, have a beer and snacks on us, and watch us become a married couple via live-stream.

Hair fit for a princess, or at least a tiara

One of the (surprisingly few) downsides of having to plan an entire wedding in just three months is that I don't have the time to let me hair grow out a bit for a proper up-do. However, the internet has assured me that short hair doesn't mean you can't go all out. Who knew?

Hair inspiration: apparently all these do's were done to women with hair about my length. Can't wait to see what my stylist can pull off!

Now this is the kind of hair-do made to sport a tiara, which is precisely what I plan to do. I've found my hair inspiration and booked appointments (complete with a trial run!) for myself, my mom, and our maids of honor at House of Hair, a trendy Kemptown salon right near my flat and just a block away from the café where we'll launch our day with a family breakfast.

House of Hair, where we will make ourselves beautiful on the morning of the Big Day.

Check one more thing off my bridal to-do list. Should I be worried that everything for the wedding feels so under control with just over two months to go?

Wedding breakfast

One of the stranger features of our wedding is that our families will arrive in town as complete foreign entities. And we're not just talking extended cousins who haven't been introduced. With Nicolas's family based in France and Switzerland, and mine in the US, not even our parents have come face-to-face. Having visions of sitting in the ceremony and wondering which guests had raised the groom, my parents were insistent that something be done.

We decided to host a breakfast on our wedding day. Note: this is not a "wedding breakfast," which, in England, is also a thing. We found that out during our venue hunt, when hotel ballrooms kept offering us receptions including a "wedding breakfast." We could only imagine that meant the Brits partied so hard through the night that they traditionally wrapped up their wedding parties with a sunrise hangover meal. Seeing how the Brits drink and how their May Balls in Cambridge do indeed last until sunrise (including pancakes, sausages, and eggs to wrap it up), it seemed plausible. Google, however, cleared things up:

wedding breakfast

noun

BRITISH

1. a celebratory meal eaten just after a wedding (at any time of day) by the couple and their guests.

So we will be hosting a pre-wedding family breakfast, not a wedding breakfast. In delightfully English fashion, there will be scones, clotted cream with strawberries, eggs, English bacon (basically Canadian bacon), tea, and (how treacherous) coffee. Hopefully, we'll all get to know each other a bit better before Nicolas and I say, "I do."

The Antiques Cafe, the quaint Kemptown backdrop over which our families will get to know each other.

As for the venue, we've reserved the place I came to celebrate landing our dream apartment last July: the Antiques Cafe. It's an adorable antiques-shop-come-café in Kemptown, our neigborhood, where the décor is constantly changing and everything you see (and sit on) is for sale. A place already full of happy memories, to which we'll soon be adding more.

Dear Canva, it's been great...

A few weeks ago, I thought it would be wise to start hunting for free software to design our wedding stationery. After I few false starts, I discovered the limitless possibilities that come with Canva, a free online custom design software. It is the answer to the prayers of anyone trying to custom design her wedding stationery.

Canva, a truly remarkable free online custom designer software

Many, many hours after that fateful discovery, my typesetting is complete. Canva, I both love and despise the fantastic freedom you offer your users, all free of charge. Over 100 fonts, each adjustable to my every whim: color, character spacing, line spacing, size, position, you name it. I can add as many text boxes and images as I please. And let's not talk about all your free shapes and text art, all modifiable in size, color theme, font, etc. My files can be set to any size, including custom dimensions, and saved in multiple formats. You are the ultimate blank canvas of free wedding invitations.

Canva, you drive me crazy! Presenting limitless choices to an unemployed woman with seemingly limitless time? It's just not fair. From the moment my artwork came in from Vicky, I could hardly escape your window on my browser, ever present even as I tried to focus on the job hunt. Canva, it's been great, but I think we need a break.

Canva and I had some good times together, creating a very personal and unique set of wedding stationery pdf files that reflect us and our wedding theme. But with the endless possibilities, I nearly lost myself to this software!

At last, with the agonizing choice of paper past me (who knew there were so many shades of white??) and final designs completed for our UK invitation, US save-the-date, US invitation, wedding program, and thank you card, I am free! And not a moment too soon, with a few interviews to start preparing for this upcoming week. Wish me luck!

Patrons of the arts

Years ago, I'd had the pleasure of living vicariously through a friend's wedding blog. They were one of those couples who'd found the love of their lives in high school, and got to tie the knot before even hitting a quarter century. I've never forgotten how they commissioned an artist for their wedding invitations. What class! How personal! I tucked the idea away in the back of my head.

Fast-forward about 6 or 7 years to Brighton, a veritable mecca for artists, where I find myself finally planning my own wedding. We may be on a budget, but I simply had to see if this could fit in. Just imagine my delight when I discovered that Vicky Scott's prices were accessible. I was positively tickled to become a miniature patron of the arts with my very own commission.

As with everything wedding planning, Nicolas sat back and let me take the reins. I loved Vicky's 1st Anniversary piece, featuring a couple and iconic images of their city (London), but I was looking for more of a spring color scheme along the lines of Vicky's Wonderhill Craft Market flyer.

Inspirations for our commissioned wedding art: left, 1st Anniversary; right, Wonderhill Craft Market flyer. By Vicky Scott.

We (yes, Nicolas too!) wanted the artwork to reflect us and our lives here in Brighton. It had to include our names and the wedding year, ourselves in our wedding attire, the iconic images of our city, and our furry family members.Vicky got back to us fairly quickly with a pair of sketches.

Vicky Scott sketched out some ideas for our wedding commission.

Both are adorable, but our choice was easy: we went for the one on the left, which did wonders to highlight not just us but the city we love and hope to showcase to all our guests.

Next came the color mock-ups. After a bit of back and forth, we settled on this cheery layout. I just love how the giant yellow heart fills the sky like a sun I so hope will be shining down on us come April 15.

Vicky created paint mock-ups to help us settle on our preferred color scheme.

I spent the next couple of weeks on pins and needles waiting for Vicky's name to pop up in my inbox. At last, this past week, she had a collage draft to share.

The first draft of our wedding collage was finally ready last week!

After humoring my quibbling over what normal people call minor details, Vicky sent us our final commission tonight. (Yes, for this breaking news, I am blogging at midnight!) This picture makes me melt inside, and you know it's already the background image on my computer screen.

Emilienne and Nicolas, sitting in a tree... or standing under it, you get the idea. 😍

Now it's high time for this image to become paper and ink. Invitations are a go!