Archive for November, 2008

Firstly I’d like to congratulate Mizz Calla Lily, who was married yesterday!

And secondly, here are our first twelve teaser pro pics from our photographer’s blog. Aren’t they gorgeous???

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Wedding theme? Color scheme? Flowers? and Food?As a bride questions like this make your head tick, everything has to be perfect; everything has to ‘blend’ in. For the groom though, all the planning decisions are not really his idea of fun and the excitement of the wedding seems to fade away a little. Now don’t get all huffy puffy about it, he is still very excited about marrying you but as far as the planning goes he would rather leave that in your capable hands.

Many brides do however want to get the groom involved in the planning, not only because it’s his day as well but because planning a wedding is a huge task for one person to tackle alone. The trick to getting your groom involved is to give him ‘tasks’ that will interest him. Ask him directly for his help with the wedding plans, let him know how important his input is to you, and that you can’t do without his help. Men like to be needed.

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Well, I’m back. Phuket was amazing, Hong Kong was a blur, and not one day has gone by since the 31st of October that I haven’t thought about the wedding. They say that you barely remember your wedding day because it all goes by so quickly – well, that has pretty much been the case for every day lately, so I’d better get those wedding thoughts down while I remember them!

My first piece of advice as a wedding-day-graduate: Start earlier. I can’t believe, knowing as I do that things ALWAYS take longer than expected, that I thought it was ok to have my hair appointment at 9am. If I could do this over I would make it 7:30 or even 7am, because by the time midday rolled around everything was starting to feel a bit rushed. I’m sure we needed more time for the “getting ready” photos, but there wasn’t enough because I had to be at the chapel on time (and, after all that, apparently I was 15-20 minutes late anyway. Mr Honeysuckle was getting very fidgety inside, I hear. Oh well, I didn’t have a watch on, so I was blissfully clueless).

The biggest surprise of the day for me (and for Mr HS and Best Man HS, who apparently placed bets) is that I didn’t cry during the ceremony. Seriously, I haven’t a clue how I did it, and I don’t think I could do it again if you paid me. Now you have to understand that I am a cryer. I will cry for anything. I don’t only cry at sad moments (funerals, sad films, someone almost dying on a soap I don’t even watch) or emotional ones (weddings, babies etc), or even happy ones, but at any kind of stressful situation. I even cried when I resigned from my old job, and not because I was sad I was leaving (though, actually, I did cry on my last day too), but just at the idea that I had to tell my boss. So the fact that this day – and especially the ceremony – was an amalgamation of a stressful moment, an emotional moment and a happy moment, meant that I was pretty much 100% guaranteed to cry. The bookies would have stopped taking bets on me because it was that obvious that it would happen. Except I reckoned without one thing; at least, I think this is what it must have been:

I had never been so happy and so excited in my entire life.

It’s the only explanation. I mean, I’m crying right now just thinking about walking down that aisle. But in that moment, on the day, I was so unbelievably overwhelmed with happiness that it blocked out the crying mechanism. Like that pain gateway thing: find a stronger emotion and it’ll take over the crying one. I really need to go back there and bottle that feeling. I’d make millions.

I did have a brief almost-sob moment when I neared the top of the aisle. The walk down the aisle was unequivocally, single-handedly THE best moment of the day, if not my entire life. The lovely staff at The Moon & Sixpence closed the doors after my bridesmaids walked in, and were ready and waiting to open them the moment I said “go”. I heard my music start (Choosing the Father of the Bride theme was the best choice I could have made; seriously, it’s just made for walking down an aisle. Go Alan Silvestri!), I told the guys to open, I paused as I waited for the right moment in the music to start, and we walked. I don’t even remember how fast I walked, I barely even remember my Dad being on my arm, all I remember is a sea of faces smiling at me, and trying to take them all in, and then giving up halfway because there were just too damn many of them, and focusing on on Mr Honeysuckle. It’s not even a long aisle, but in that sea of faces I really had to concentrate on finding his face at the other end. I think that’s when I had to stifle the near-sob. After that, all I know is I had a huge silly grin plastered on my face pretty much the rest of the ceremony. I learned later that we had a near-catastrophe because our officiant conveniently forgot that we had changed bits of his regular ceremony and added in stuff of our own, and therefore he hadn’t brought the right pages to read from (I am not impressed with him, I can tell you) but in a stroke of luck Mr HS’s parents had brought the print-outs from the rehearsal we’d had three days before, and he used that. Surprisingly well, I might add, because I didn’t notice a thing, and nor did anyone else, but forgetting our special ceremony was a huge mistake, so I’m not at all pleased with him.

My huge grin stuck with me the entire time; I’m pretty sure we even did some funny “turning around and winking at the audience” type stuff. I know they laughed when I took the bitter wine in our Chocolate & Wine Ceremony, and I overplayed my shudder of disgust on purpose for them. In a stroke of genius I had left tissues on the front seats for the family, and when I was supposed to be crying but grinning like a mad thing instead, I could hear my sister, mother and best friend all sniffling behind me. Mr HS did his vows first, and when I turned around to hand my bouquet to Best Friend HS so that I could take the cue cards (and by cue cards I mean the entire vows typed out on a little piece of cardboard), she was wiping her eyes and mouthed “Seriously??” at me, which I took to mean “Seriously, could your vows BE any more awesome and meaningful? Look, they made me cry.” :-)

I really want to wait for the pro photos to arrive so that I can do a whole series of posts on the rundown of the day (hint, hint, Tanja, if you’re reading this :-P), but I just have to say that the wonderfulness, the happiness and the excitement of everyone there made my own so much more special. I loved how all my details came together, and even the one or two things that weren’t as I expected honestly didn’t matter. I was so happy it was unbelievable. I keep looking at my wedding band in disbelief, because I am just so bowled over by the emotion that went along with getting it onto my finger, and I’m just so lucky and thrilled and amazed to be MRS Honeysuckle. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photos, taken by Best Friend HS. It’s our entrance into the reception (heralded by the RKO theme – at least, I think that’s what it is. It’s in the middle of “Rose Tint my World” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and we stopped and kissed in the middle of the dance floor.

I love what my veil is doing, I love the positioning of the bouquet, I love how happy I look, and I love how everyone in the background is smiling (if this is too small to see, take my word for it; they are). The man in the white shirt right behind my veil is my friend Stan from Classic Film Society. He is 73 years old, but this doesn’t matter because we both love classic musicals, Bette Davis and Oscar trivia. He told me as he was leaving that he hadn’t been to a wedding in forty years, and that mine was one of the best he’d ever been to. I cried. THEN I cried.

If you’re getting married in March or April 2009 enter our “Win a Photographer” competition and you could win a professional photographer for your wedding.

We know how expensive weddings get, that’s why wedding photographer, Yvette de Beer from Innovate Photo is giving away her wedding photographer services to one lucky Brides Buzzing couple.

To enter, please send an email to winphoto(at)bridesbuzzing.com with the following information:

- Brides Name
- Grooms Name
- Date of your wedding
- Your chosen venue
- Estimated starting time of ceremony
- Contact details (Telephone, Cellphone, Email Address, Physical & Postal Address)

Please note that incomplete or incorrectly submitted entries will be disqualified and only one entry per person/ couple. Multiple entries will be deleted and possibly disqualified if you are spamming.

This competition is open to all brides in South Africa, however because Yvette is based in Cape Town if you win and are based somewhere else in SA, you must be prepared to pay for her travel and accommodation costs for her as well as her assistant.

The competition closes on Thursday the 15th January 2009 at 5pm sharp. Winners will be notified before Friday the 30th January 2009, which will give you plenty of time to book another photographer should your name not be chosen.

After the closing date of the competition, Yvette will contact five finalists, who will be chosen by our judges, and the final decision will be based on ensuring that the winners do no already have a photographer booked.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY. The prize is not transferable for cash and does not include the actual photos. All images will be supplied in high resolution on compact disk, which you can then have processed at your own cost. The judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.