THE Dress

I really didn't want a traditional wedding dress, it just wouldn't fit with the whole relaxed vibe of the day, and there's no way that I'm prepared to spend a small fortune on a dress that I'm never going to be able to wear again. So I decided to ditch the white dress and go for something completely original and much more 'me'. I'm not going quite as far as a friend of mine who had a fancy dress theme at her wedding and hired her outfit from the costume shop (she had a fab day)!

I trawled around all of the major department stores and scoured various boutiques with no luck. Fortunately I eventually wandered into Michelle Oberdieck's shop in the Oxo Tower. Michelle is a textile designer and among other things she works with a dress maker (Lilly) to create stunning garments. Having already tried on a lot of different styles and had a dress fitting in a bridal shop, I knew roughly the style of the dress I was after, but was clueless about colour. It turns out that there's not a lot a textile designer doesn't know about shade and colour, and we were able to settle on blue and green silk for the dress. This is the first (and probably only) piece of clothing I've ever had made just for me, and it has been a really exciting and rewarding experience working with Michelle and the Lilly. Many fittings later my blue and green dress is almost finshed and looks fabulous, it's exactly what I wanted my wedding dress to be.

Coming up.... shoe shopping.....

THE Ring

A friend of mine doesn't have an engagement ring, instead she has a beautiful titanium engraved wedding band that she and her husband chose in the Netherlands. I've never seen anything like it in the UK, it's certainly more original and personal than the majority of them. But my engagement has lasted a year, and there's no way I could hold off getting a gorgeous ring that long. Being a huge jewellery fan and regular at Dazzle, I was really keen to find a contemporary craftsperson, so my HTB and I went along to Gabriel's Wharf on the Southbank in London. We bought a beautiful handmade 18ct yellow gold ring with brown diamond from Mikala Djorup. It's so refreshing to deal with someone that's friendly and helpful, customer service in London is often woefully poor. In fact we've been so pleased with the ring that Mikala has also made our wedding bands, can't recommend her highly enough!

Civil or not?

Well we're going for a civil ceremony because there's no way my HTB will enter a Church. Coming from Kiwi land where they have celebrants who will marry you just about anywhere, he had some fab ideas for locations for holding the ceremony. Sadly your options in England are somewhat more limited and therefore expensive (but of course).

Actually we have just discovered that we could have had a civil ceremony at our local registry office (the legal bit) and then had a humanist carry out a personal service of our design anywhere we fancied. If this sounds like your cup of tea, check out the British Humanist Association.

Giving Notice

So you've sorted out the documentation and got your certificate of approval (if you need it), what's next? It's time to give notice to your local designated register office, if you've no idea where this is, here's a link to the general register office with a handy search box. Obviously you need to have a date in mind for the wedding at this point, so get that diary out! Your notice will be on display for 15 days and is valid for 1 year. So many facts to impart and so little time! I've no idea how often requirements change, so it's best to check, my tips will one day be out of date.

Beau's not British

There are all sorts of complications involved in tying the knot in England, especially if like me you don't fancy the traditional approach and would prefer something a little more individual. Add to this the fact that my husband to be (HTB) is a Kiwi and you can just feel a headache coming on. So what do you need to do? Well my HTB has an ancestry visa, so he just needed to get a Home Office certificate of approval. It costs approx £295, here's a link to the information on the Home Office's website. Until we had this we couldn't do anything else, so sit back and relax for the 4 weeks it takes to arrive!

Beginning at the End

With only a few weeks to go until my wedding, it seems like the perfect time for a brain dump of all the wedding related bits of bobs I've amassed over the past year. So here goes....