A wedding shared is a wedding halved

We were blessed to have such brilliant maids to help us with our wedding plans, so many maids are relatives forced upon you who just turn up on the day, wear the frocks and that's about as much as they 'do'. Our maids were far from ornamental, they know us so well that if push came to shove, and we'd had a total melt down, they would have created and styled a day to do us all proud.

It wasn't easy to get the three of us together for wedding planning sessions; what with toddler bedtime randomness, new jobs, college and commitments we were (and still are) very busy girls. About six months before the big day I set up Wedding Belles, a private/secret face book group (now set to public view so you can take a look), as a way for us to share ideas, inspirations and general weddingy stuff in a quick and accessible way, without fear of Mr B our guests getting spoilers. That's the trouble with facebook, it's so instant that if you are someone who, like me, suffers from 'blabber mouth' it can really stuff things up!

I set the tone of the group page with this image, which I found on one of the many blog posts I was reading. I still stand by it summing up so much of what our day was to feel and look like.

 Then as certain aspects of the day were defined (dresses, decorations, catering) I invited these people/businesses into the group. It then started to act as a networking site and some harmonious links were forged, like our decorations designer  The North Pom and dresses designer Make Me A Dress hooked up their items in this lovely photo shoot (click to see full article)

Image courtesy of Make Me A Dress

The group, Wedding Belles, proved very useful. Looking at it now I realise it was where we chose our fabrics, designers, decorations, shoes, bags, jewellery, flowers.....the list just goes on and on. It also meant our real get togethers were much more productive having made so many decisions in cyber space. For example the maids Amy Butler fabric, was chosen and shipped from the states using the group chat facility.


Then friends (near and far) who'd offered help in making bits and bobs were also added to the group, so they could get a feel for what direction/style we were going in. For example we were able to show the decorations colour scheme (I truly hate that phrase and we didn't really have one in the end anyway) with this rather technical plan of our hanging pom poms. Oh yeah!

All in all the group worked a treat and I'd recommend using this format to other brides or maids to be, even if you all live locally and can meet up regularly it's still great to have an online group page to act like a mood board/shopping list/scrap book/rantings outlet!
I still enjoy looking at it now as a memento of the fun we had looking at so many beautiful things with such purpose.