Dress Inspiration

Photo from Sky Showbiz

I saw this photo of Ginnifer Goodwin today and thought that it was an amazingly beautiful dress which could provide either bride or bridesmaid inspiration. If you were having a chic city wedding how wonderful would this dress be for that, with a little bird cage veil and perhaps a bigger smile than Ginnifer is giving us here!

Clothes Swap

On Saturday my sister hosted a clothes swap party. It was a first for both of us and actually for the other girls who came too. And it was great fun!

We started with some wine and nibbles, to get us in the mood and getting to know each other a bit. Then we all displayed our wares... Which was quite fun, you feel like you want to sell your clothes as it would be sad to bring them all and then bring them all home again.

And then the fun began. The trying on. We all dived in and picked up pieces we liked, tried them, laughed or oohed and went on to the next piece. Gradually some pieces worked better on some people and piles grew of the clothes that were liked.

Once we had all finished going through everything we had what could be called an auction. Kind of. Each person in turn lifted up pieces they liked and on the whole they were uncontested. The couple of items that were contested were just agreed about by the people who wanted them. How much they wanted them how many other pieces they had etc.

I came away with a dress, two tops and a pair of shoes. I also got rid of a skirt and a couple of tops. So pretty even.

I would definitely do this again, when I have enough clothes to give away. I'm still trying to build up my wardrobe to contain enough stuff I love to be able to swap items!

Friday feelings

Cute Overload

It's Friday! Woohoo. And almost payday! Double woohoo! So I thought I would put up these penguins. J has been super busy at work for a while now and we're getting a night in together tonight. Hopefully I won't screw up our shoulder of Salt Marsh Lamb for dinner.

Enjoy the weekend x

"Choose your own award"

Okay okay, I'm kind of cheating. So the lovely Redframe/Model Mentality gave me this award for my London Bride blog. But then the equally lovely Rachel gave me the awards choice for this new blog. So I'm taking them for both! It's Wednesday and it already feels like a long week...

Here goes:The Uber Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites who:

- inspire you
- make you smile and laugh
- give you amazing information
- are a great read
- have an amazing design

The rules of this award are:

Put the logo on your blog or post

Nominate at least 5 blogs that for you are Uber Amazing!

Let them know that they have received this Uber Amazing award by commenting on their blog

Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great attitude and/or gratitude.
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received the award.

These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends.
They are not interested in self-aggrandizement.
Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated.
Please give more attention to these writers.
Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more
and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

And now my favourite bit of awards, sharing the love:

Getting the Party Started
Mother and Bride
The Un-Bride
Canadian Bride
The Cwtch
Indian Summers Jewellery
Start from where you are
Colour me Green
Little Miss Rachel
Bridechka and the Wedding
Veiled Vows

Enjoy the awards :)

Giving it away and paying it forward - Veiled Vows

For those of you interested in pretty things which are also free check out Veiled Vows blog where she is offering someone the opportunity to win a customised piece. Her blog and specifically the post I am talking about can be found here I would recommend you checking it out as it's a beautiful blog. She is also a bride to be so lots of wedding inspiration to be found there!

As further temptation to go visit below is one of her pieces...

Image from Auburn and Ivory on Etsy

Good luck!

Foccacia

Last weekend we had a couple round for dinner who we haven't seen in a while. So J and I got excited, especially as this was the first time we were having people round since getting all our wedding gifts! So we wanted to use all our fun new things. And use them we did! One of my favourite things J did was to make foccacia. I haven't made bread since I was little and I used to make it with my sisters and mum and I had forgotten how lovely it is to see bread being made, and to smell it!


The bread turned out yummy, although the salty wash the recipe told us to put on it was a little too salty... But next time we'll remember and adapt it.

Then this weekend we also had friends round, sorry for the lack of photos of any of the other dishes but I got carried away eating them and forgot to photograph them! Suffice to say it made me remember how much I truly enjoy spending time sharing food and wine with people who I really like.

Twickenham and popping my Rugby cherry

I've never been to see live Rugby before. In fact I've only ever been to live Cricket so any 'real life' sporting event is all a bit new for me. And it just so happened that on Thursday J was offered two tickets to Twickenham to see England v Scotland in the Six Nations. And he jumped at the chance, which was good for me! So on Saturday morning off we went to Twickenham.

It was great, the match was brilliant, England won and the atmosphere was friendly and quite thrilling. I was surprised by a few things, such as England and Scotland fans all being mixed and being allowed to drink in the stands. But it all made sense because there's no need to split fans or ban drinking. Plus the people sat around us were really friendly and helped us to enjoy the day even more.

Pretty packages

Yesterday I was having one of those days at work, and then at lunch time I went and met the lovely Indian Summers so I could receive my newly purchased earrings. Thankfully she only works around the corner from me so no waiting for packages to come in the post! They made me so very happy, pretty little dragonflys dangling from my ears. So I thought it apt to tell you lovely people about Indian Summers jewellery who can be found on her blog and on Etsy. Below are one of the beautiful pieces she has on her site, sorry there's no pictures of mine but I shall try and put one up, especially because the packaging was also just fabulous!

Photo from Indian Summers

And then this got me thinking that I shall resolve to try and buy all my jewellery and friend's gifts from Etsy and support all those people out there who are making such amazing things.

Netball in the city

I've been playing netball for a long time now, since I was at school so perhaps since I was 11 and it's been one of those things I have picked up and put down depending on budget time etc. But every time I pick it up again I remember how much I enjoy it and why I have always played it. For those of you unfamiliar with netball try this wikipedia article as it's probably better at explaining it than me!

Anyway, the point of this is that when I first graduated from university I stopped playing and assumed that there would be no where in London to play, we always struggled to get courts as a university team so I assumed there really were none. Then I stumbled across an old friend from uni who was playing in Pimlico and she asked me to fill in for their team. Eventually I plucked up the courage to join a random team and it was one of the best decisions I made. I've met so many wonderful people, had such fun and it's a great way to exercise without needing too much motivation. The organisation who sort out all our matches are called One Netball and I would recommend anyone interested in joining in to contact them.

Moving on from netball I'm struggling hugely with motivation to go to the gym at the moment, even with my monthly membership knocking a hole in my current account once a month! So I was thinking that maybe I should look at joining something else like netball where I have more reason to go. Any ideas?

Spring is coming!

Spring is on it's way! At last... It's so lovely to walk to work and see the crocuses and daffodils. I walk through St James Park on the way to work and thought I would share with you the loveliness I see each morning.


Hope you like it too! x

Before and after

Well it worked! She did a good job and I'm pleased with my slight change of hair. Although a slight change has perhaps made me want to go further! Not sure if the photos really show you the difference. The left one is before taken on our honeymoon in Burgundy.

Hair update

Off to get it highlighted... Who knows what will happen, especially because I'm going to a Vidal Sassoon academy in order to save money. Photos if I decide it's publishable!

x

Culture, Culture

Somehow, this weekend ended up being surprisingly cultural, in a lovely way though. On Friday I went with American Friend 1 (now AF1) and a couple of her friends to see Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Click here for more information.

Picture from V&A website.

I'm not a big one for museums, I like seeing them but not spending long in them. So I wasn't sure what to expect but this exhibition was superb. Small but not too small, and it still had plenty to see and marvel at. Some of the hats were amazing beautiful creations, others perhaps not quite so practical! But what it did make us all think was that people should wear more hats. For my wedding I asked all my girls to wear hats/fascinators if they could and they were superb. They looked so beautiful and it made it so much more of an occasion. So I'm now going to try and commit to wearing more hats. I can't wait to find one for my sister-in-law's wedding in August. More to come on this hopefully!

My second cultural event was a trip to the opera with the family. We went to see I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera House. Unfortunately the lead singer Anna Netrebko cancelled at the last minute so we had Eri Nakamura instead, who considering it was her first lead position did an amazing job. The opera was good, perhaps not one of my favourites, I wouldn't leap to go and see it again but it was an enjoyable evening. I love going to the opera, it's a great night out and the thrill of going to see a live performance is wonderful. I think I probably cry more at the curtain calls than the stories but it's all good!

So now I feel well and truly cultured which should last me for a while!

New Hair, perhaps?

I've been thinking about a new hairstyle ever since getting married. At first I was going to go for Gwyneth Paltrow style bob like Rachel did but then I started getting scared and thinking that maybe short wasn't for me. I have unruly wavy hair. So now I'm thinking of a fringe as in the style of Leighton Meister below...

Partly it's because I love Blair Waldorf, but I also love the idea of being able to update my look without losing the length I have taken so long to get! What do you think? Should I do it....

Centrepiece

I was looking through some photos on my desktop here at work and came across this one of a beautiful centrepiece. It was at friend's wedding we went to a while back, before we were engaged. I remember thinking that if I ever got married I'd like centrepieces like this! But I love the deep purple, the beautiful roses and the thistle. The rose was a nod to the groom from Yorkshire and the thistle a nod to the groom from Scotland. Just to explain it was a civil partnership, I'm not going mad!

Registry fun!

So one of the fun bits of getting married, apart from the wedding of course is the registry afterwards. We went for the John Lewis Gift List which suited us because they have a great range of kitchen things, mostly what we wanted :) It was great to go shopping without spending, although you can't help but feel a little guilty about this huge consumerist splurge you're going on without doing anything for it. Yes I know you're hosting a fabulous wedding but you know you haven't really done anything to deserve these gifts. Anyhow, more on that shortly, first to show you my boxes!


Then one of our favourite bits which is our new bookcase. We just love it. And you can also see the lovely decanter we were bought.

Finally our new bed linen. I really like this pattern.

Back onto gift lists, it's becoming more of a trend for young couples not to have a gift list. Partly because people already live together, have a house together and have all they need so a gift list no longer makes sense. Some people do honeymoon funds, which is a great idea. Others ask for cash, which is fine but for some reason I always feel a little dirty giving cash. I appreciate it makes sense but it just doesn't make me feel comfortable, I'd far rather get a gift. But then again I'd also rather get the couple something they want so wouldn't get a gift just because!

Anyhow, enough of my ramble, what did you do for your registry? What do you think about cash/honeymoon funds or other great ideas for wedding gifts.

Dress dreams

I've been dreaming of summer days and dresses since the wedding. And I've also been dreaming of shopping for those summer dresses, on my walk home last night I glanced into TopShop and saw this dress:

Which I happen to think is quite cute and would be perfect for that Spring to Summer transition. Perhaps I might just purchase it to cheer me up, I've been suffering a rather grotty cold these last few days and feel deserving. Hmmmm

In a new guise...

Hello there!

So now I'm a wedding graduate I thought it time that I moved on from talking about my wedding and started back on focusing on life after marriage. The wedding was amazing, and I am still hooked on looking at wedding shops and etsy for wedding details but slowly I must wean myself so I shall try and do that here.

Hope you come along for the ride and if you're also a new wedding graduate I would love to hear from you!

Wife in the City x x

PS In case you want to see my wedding and how I got there check out London Bride my wedding blog