The Lovettes (Khiley ) – 143 Days To Go and Taking Giant Leaps Forward

Today marks 143 days until we get married. The wedding ball is officially rolling.  Now, I am notoriously disorganised in life. I am simply the worst at replying to any kind of correspondence and, unless it’s written in my diary, I never remember ANYTHING!! Sooooo, the idea of planning something as big as a wedding was pretty overwhelming. Eighteen months ago we found and booked our venue, and then…

Then we did nothing.  During this time of apparent ‘inactivity’, I was in fact gorging on Love My Dress, Pinterest and Instagram. I was practically drowning in inspiration. Dave describes this state of being as ‘option paralysis’, something he suffers acutely from whenever he enters a supermarket. The sheer volume of options leaves him utterly incapacitated and almost completely unable to make any kind of decision! In fact, he will only go shopping for one meal at a time and, only then, if he is armed with a list!

So, I had ‘option paralysis’ with an worryingly large side order of disorganised-itus.

Image of The Cake Store on Sydenham High street

My poor Mum was forced to sat back and watch on silently for over a year, going ever so slowly insane. Daily, she would ask “any new wedding plans?”, to which I would answer in a manner so laid back I may as well have been on Honeymoon already, “nothing solid, just gathering ideas. Anyway we’ve got AGES!”

Entering into April, and with just six months to go, something inside me shifted. I suddenly sprang into action. In the last month I have found my wedding dress, bought five bridesmaid dresses, the flower girl’s dress and have even found material for my ‘brides-man’s’ accessories. I have booked the flowers, the photographer and designed our wedding cake. I have built a wedding website and sent out all of our invitations. Yesterday we even booked the honeymoon! It’s been a torrent of activity and I have loved every single moment.

We currently live in South East London and I absolutely love it.  What I think is really special about Sydenham is that there is a genuine sense of community. Last year I decided to stop going to the big Supermarket and do all my shopping on the high street instead. I thought I would try it for a month, but it’s been over a year now and I haven’t been back to Sainsbury’s since! I just love the personal experience of being able to have a catch-up chat with my local Greengrocer or asking my butcher for recipe advice. I also like to know that my money is going to family business rather than a faceless conglomerate. This is what motivated me when looking for suppliers for the wedding. We wanted to work with people that had some kind of connection to us or where we grew up.

Our florists are the wonderful Eden Floral Design (based near my home town in Essex) and are a lovely Mum and daughter team. I went to meet them with my Mum (armed with reels of Pinterest screen shots!) and we immediately clicked with them. Their flowers are beautiful and Jade is so creative. She helped to interpret my ideas and somehow managed to turn my vague mental images into very real and beautiful floral designs! My band mate and dear friend Flo is also a floral genius, so she is going to set up and style the flowers on the day.

After years of drooling every time I walked past The Cake Store on Sydenham High street, we just knew that they would be the right people to make our wedding cake. In fact, we had our cake tasting today (see pictures!) and I’m on a total sugar high! We have settled on a lemon drizzle bottom layer, carrot cake in the centre and red velvet on top! They are even making us a bespoke cake topper of a ‘caveman’ groom and a ‘monster’ bride, inspired by our nicknames for each other.

Now that I’m officially riding the wave that is planning one’s own wedding, I’m getting more and more obsessed with making the details personal to us and our guests. I read a blog the other day where the bride had purchased a different second hand book and hand written a personal message inside for every guest. Gushing, I told Dave that’s what I desperately wanted to do. He sweetly pointed out that we had double the amount of guests than the afore-mentioned bride and half the time to do it in, so maybe it wasn’t the most practical idea! After sulking for a few days I had to admit he was totally right.

That would have been too big of a task! It’s exciting when we decide on something unusual and special for our big day, it feels a bit like our own little adventure!  At the moment, we are in the process of collecting wine corks for the place settings. Dave and I love a glass of red wine at the end of the day, so we thought this would be a nice touch.

A happy accident is that is that it has forced us to buy better wine for the corks rather than the usual screw tops! So, as I sit here sipping on a nice glass of Rioja, I can’t really complain!

Khiley x

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Our blogging bride and Lovettes member Khiley is due to marry her fiance David on 19th October at Hengrave Hall, Suffolk.  Their wedding will be photographed by Richard Payne. You can find Khiley on Instagram and you can also read Khiley’s previous Lovettes features here.  Khiley is also a member of all-girl singing band, The Tootsie Rollers.