The Purple Orchid: 9-Month Wedding Preparations Part 1

So where do I begin? Let's start at the beginning. I had just been proposed to, after a long month of night shifts at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, I was tired and had already planned to go to Finland for a few weeks. It was my birthday, Graeme proposed to me on the beach, and we had a lovely tea party with friends. And after the excitement and whirlwind of 'I can't believe I just got engaged!!', I left my fiancé to visit my family in Finland. While there my family asked me a million questions about what I wanted for my wedding, and I LITERALLY had no idea!! So thus starts the plans for my wedding 9-months later.

In Finland I went to a bookstore and found some lovely wedding books, which I found on Amazon for much cheaper. So I bought these thinking (hoping) it would help me to plan my wedding...

The next step was to find a location for the wedding. Graeme's brother-in-law could get us a discount if we wanted to get married in a castle :o So we went to check out Dollar Castle, which is a beautiful Campbell castle. We had lovely tour around the castle and the grounds, and then I had a meltdown. I was so confused with what I wanted, and I wanted to know what I wanted, and so I kept feeling worse and worse. This was one of the many times Graeme told me to calm down, relax, and tell him everything that was on my mind. And we worked out that I wanted a wedding on a beach ... in Scotland :O We then started brainstorming, and when we were finished we went for a swim in the Dollar Glen. It was magical!!!

For my first trip to find a wedding dress I went with Graeme and his mum. I know, controversial. But I knew that I wouldn't find my dress straight away. It also showed me that Graeme wanted me to wear exactly what I wanted to wear ;)

The dress I like most at my first dress shop

Oh, and backtracking abit, I knew exactly who I wanted my bridesmaids to be. That was the easiest part of planning the wedding!! All my closest friends :D So I asked them all, and they all agreed, and so I organised the first bridesmaids outing to find a dress.

Meeting up with the bridesmaids for lunch and tea before going to the bridal store to try on dresses :D

Inspiration (from Pinterest) for the dress I thought I wanted

My bridesmaids at the bridal store <3 Iulia, Steph, Danielle, Pamela and Morven

One of the many dresses I tried on. I loved the train!!

Nice top half, but the bottom half seemed mismatched

Lovely dress

Beautiful train!!

The final choice!! Apparently the only dress I said that I loved <3 I didn't think I had any pictures of this dress because it hadn't come out yet and this was the sample dress, but my cunning bridesmaids took sneaky photos ;)

Cheering on it!

Found my dress :D I remember feeling sooo exhausted at this point ;)

Colours I was thinking for the bridesmaids dresses

For the bridesmaids dresses I was thinking a range of colours they could choose from, but all long dresses. This was I was hoping that the dresses could be worn again :)

Inspiration for our marriage: "Spend more time planning for your marriage and less planning for your wedding. When it's all said and done, it's a lifetime versus one day."

Quick draft for the Save the Dates

More finalised version of the Save the Dates

We then started researching for more wedding venues!! We have decided against the castle, mainly because it is sooo expensive, and started researching in the area we wanted on Google maps. Graeme wanted the wedding venue for the reception to be a place to accommodate all our close family members, since they are all living so far away from each other it would be a good chance to spend time together (my family in Copenhagen, Finland and Cardiff at the time; and Graeme's family in Scotland).

Here we visited a large house that was an option as a reception venue.

Visiting an option for our venue: Greencraig House in Aberlady

We decided upon this venue above, since it was close to the church, next to the beach and large enough to hold us all in it. So we booked it for 11th of May, just before the golf season when it would become sooo much more expensive.

Guest book ideas

Table ornament ideas

I then started planning the invitations:

First idea: 3D printed card from America.

Second idea of invitation design

Third idea for invitation (half drawn in my Marketing lecture ;))

After these we asked our designer what her thoughts were, and after she drew out a better version, we decided to have a gated card with a dove and then the lupin design on the main page with text. I wanted to also get the text handwritten by a friend who does calligraphy.

It was coming up to Christmas, and so we went with Iulia to the Christmas markets.

Going on the Christmas Wheel with Graeme and Iulia

Graeme was coming with me for a week to Finland to spend time with my parents and Harri!! I was soo excited :D While we were there we finalised the Save the Dates and sent those off as well.

My parents, Graeme and I in-front of the Christmas markets in Helsinki, and my beloved white church <3

Graeme and I went swimming and sauna-ing at the sea pool in Helsinki. I wrote a blog post about that here: Day out in Helsinki with Graeme

Finalising the Save the Dates and emailing those off to everyone

Graeme then left for Scotland, and I stayed in Finland to celebrate Christmas with my family. After Christmas we found and ordered the rings and then my parents found a bolero that would look lovely with the dress.