We officially registered our intention to marry on the 1st of April (April Fools Day). It was tough going convincing the registrar that we were serious about having a wedding on the 13th at 13hr30. We are not superstitious. 

One of the earliest preparations we made after getting engaged was to book our dream honeymoon. We chose somewhere that we thought we wouldn't be able to do again for a long while. Somewhere with warm weather, exciting food and plenty to photograph. Then we kept it secret from the majority of our friends, which was great fun. 

I had a few certain ideas of what I wanted my dress to be like and it wasn't what was in the shops. I was after something that wasn't strapless, wasn't floor length and that I felt myself in. I always intended to buy one, but as the search was looking less and less likely to be successful we started to wonder about making it ourselves. And then, whilst shopping on my birthday with my sister, we came across this one. 

My Dad's rules for the dress where that you couldn't see my underwear and that I was happy in it, at this point I think he added that the colour should be white. Fear not Dunks: the dress wont be black with white spots when we walk down the aisle together!

We bought the dress from the fancy silk store, we'll the fabric anyway. It cost around £80 all in. And Nom's wonderful Mum did the rest of the magic.

Malc's Mum made our cake. She used their family's Christmas Cake Recipe, but multiplied the quantities generously- our top tier was the size of their annual celebration.

We asked Hana Kelly to draw the key decorative elements for our stationary, and she didn't disappoint. The stationary turned out to be one of my favourite things in the whole process. We digitised her pen work and added the typography and other essentials (such as the map). 

We spent an evening hand stamping the place cards with a two colour lino cut I made and wrote on our guests nicknames. We had a few left over cards to use as plant care labels to convert our phalaenopsis table centres into thank you gifts for a few special guests. 

We used a professional florist for our bouquets, button holes and church displays but bought the rest of our orchids from IKEA. We used them on the table centres and to decorate the cake. And now they have new homes, some with us and others with guests.

I embroidered a couple of hankies as gifts for the wedding morning, the yellow one was sent to Malc and the white one I gave to my Mum.

The finishing touches: I henna'ed my toes (the pattern was hidden by my wedding shoes) and packed the final items into my honeymoon suitcase.