Made some progress on the hair and beauty front as well today. I’m booked in for a trial session at the Bridgewater House Salon in Bath on 24th April, where myself and the lovely Wayne will be deciding on the hairstyle I shall be having on my wedding day.

I’d like to have most of my hair down, as I rarely put it up, but I will need some of it up to hold my veil – which I will be ordering at the same time!

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Quick update on the press releases, they’re going out any day now…

We have ordered the first of four bridesmaid dresses today. I went along with Lucy to see her try the dress on this morning and we both really liked it, so we ordered it there and then.

We went for the Dessy 6506 dress in ‘espresso’ with a ‘palomino’ sash – as seen below:

Well, we’ve reached that moment… we’re about to start publicising ‘My Affiliate Wedding’ to the world!

As I write this I’m in the process of creating our press releases with the help of Leanne from thegreatestday Wedding Planning. To begin with we’re focusing on local press and businesses in Yorkshire and Bath, as well as businesses in the affiliate industry.

I hope that alongside helping Darren and I to have the wedding of our dreams, that we can go one step further and help promote the affiliate industry in the UK. I think there are far too many people who don’t understand what affiliate marketing is and think that it’s not a serious form of advertising. I couldn’t disagree more, the individuals within the industry that I have had the pleasure of meeting are incredibly driven to make it a success. I’d like to take whatever opportunity I can to give something back and I hope that this will give me that chance!

Watch this space… I’ll upload the press release as soon as it’s finished!

A quick update to my previous post about my bridesmaids and their dresses.

I’ve just received an email from my lovely MoH (Maid of Honour) Emma, she and Claire have spotted another dress that they liked:

Again from Dessy, but this one feels slightly more formal that the other.

I’ve just spent the weekend with my lovely bridesmaids; Emma, Gemma, Claire and Lucy. We started our weekend of bridesmaids dress hunting on Saturday, when we stopped off at Clifton Brides to take a look at my wedding dress. Lucy and Gemma had yet to see it and I thought we could all do with a reminder before starting to look at dresses for the girls.

Our next stop was in Keynsham, at Special Day & Appletons to look at their vast collection of bridesmaids dresses. The only issue we found was trying to ignore the colour of the dresses and just focus on the style! But we found one that everyone seemed to like:

This is from Dessy, who have a huge range of dresses that you can order in any of their set colours. So if all the girls wanted to have different dresses, they could still have the same colour, which would be ideal. As it is, all of them seemed to like the above. We also liked the colour ‘Espresso’ and the slightly lighter ‘Latte’, causing me to dub them ‘My Coffee Girls’.

We headed into Bristol to grab some lunch and look round some of the larger department stores. We were slightly disappointed not to find anything we liked in either Debenhams or House of Fraser, I think they still had a lot of their winter styles in. On our way back home we stopped off at The Mall (in Cribbs Causeway) to look in Coast, they had a few dresses that we’re nice, but we didn’t see anything that we felt was better than the Dessy dress.

We finished the day with a meal at Las Iguanas (yum, yum, yum) and then danced the night away in Bath.

After a couple of months of not doing much in the way of wedding planning, I finally got back into it on Saturday.

I spent the day with two of my bridesmaids, meandering around Bath, researching florists and hairdressers. We had a delightful lunch and then retreated back home to get online and start organising the hen weekend!

We’ve chosen the last weekend in June as the date for the hen weekend, fairly early considering the actual wedding isn’t until August. But this means we get to avoid the school holidays and subsequent price increase that goes with it!

The chosen venue is… rather uniquely… Center Parcs.

Center Parcs was suggested originally as a possible destination for the hen weekend, but we thought it might be too expensive. However, after a bit of research the price didn’t appear to be as big an issue as we thought and we decided to go ahead.

We choose the Nottingham/Sherwood Forest location as it was the most convenient for everyone attending, I’m also hoping that Russell Crow might get lost while dressed as Robin Hood and accidently find his way to our villa… full of excited women… the poor man!

Back to the subject… we’ve now emailed everyone to let them know what the plan is. We’ve decided it’s best to book it as early as possible as the prices increase the closer we get, so d-day is set for the coming Saturday (30th). Once it’s all booked I’m relinquishing my organisational responsibilities and it’s then down to my bridesmaids to plan the activies and various ways to embarrass me

We have 8 confirmed guests as of this morning, so it all looks to be going well. I can’t wait!!!

I wanted to write a quick post to update everyone on my progress, I’m sorry I’ve been quiet for so long! I haven’t had much to report on the wedding planning front and with Christmas, various people getting sick and lots (and lots) of snow, I’ve been kept busy elsewhere.

I’ve spent my last Christmas and New Year as an unmarried women and with only 8 months to go till the wedding I have a lot of work ahead of me.

The first date in the diary is the weekend of the 20th & 21st Feb, where I’ll be joined by all my lovely bridesmaids to go dress shopping for them. I’m hoping to start work on the invitations soon, but the snow is currently getting in the way.

I’ll be back soon with more updates (hopefully positive), so until then, Happy New Year everyone!

Just a quick update to announce that I’ve found (and purchased) my wedding dress!

I went with two of my bridesmaid’s to visit Clifton Brides in Bath on Saturday. We had spotted their stand at the National Wedding Show and noticed that they had a sample sale on the 24/25th Oct.

I tried on a couple of dresses, then on the recommendation of the sales assitant I tried on a Beverly Lister dress that I wasn’t too sure about. But as soon as I looked at myself wearing it, I got the ‘buzz’.

So on the Sunday I dragged my Mum and Dad back to the store to view the dress. They liked it too – although my Dad looked a bit uncomfortable surrounded by wedding dresses

I’m really pleased with it, it’s very unusual, which I like. It was also 50% off, a bargain my bargainista friend (and bridesmaid) Claire would be proud of!

You can follow me on Twitter, where you can keep up-to-date with my wedding planning as I prepare for the big day. Then on the actual wedding day you can watch live updates/pictures as we get married and continue into the reception!

Now all I need to do is find someone that’s willing to be in charge of Twitter updating on the day

Back from the Expo, still tired and possibly still slightly hungover!

The two days we were there were great, very informative and wonderful networking opportunities. I spent a great deal of Monday evening ‘pitching’ the affiliate wedding idea – with some really positive responses. One idea that was suggested by Al Carlton was that we should have the day and the build-up to the day covered by Twitter.

I thought it sounded like a fab idea and the research I’ve done this morning suggests we’ll be one of the first people to do it. Possibly even the first in the UK?!

During the wedding and during the reception we will have someone updating the account with news and photos – so if you can’t attend the actual wedding, you can attend our Twitter wedding!

Think that’s it for now, I’ll post again when we have agreed on the name of our Twitter account

Helen