#BBAREALBRIDE: WHY IT’S OK TO CHEAT ON YOUR WEDDING DAY…

(All photos by Devlin Photos)

It’s about time we had another update for our #BBaRealBride campaign and today we are throwing it back to Sophie’s (Crown & Glory) wedding which, can you believe it was 6 months ago! Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun!! There were flower crowns galore, sequins, stars and even a real life rainbow, basically everything you’d imagine the queen of sparkle to have on her wedding day. So, grab a cuppa and some left over Easter egg and settle down to read Sophie’s penultimate post because she has a confession to make…

Wow! Where does the time go? It’s been 6 months since our wedding and life hasn’t slowed down much since! Almost as quickly as the wedding came and went, Christmas came around, we were then splashed across the newsstands for the January edition of Rock n Roll Bride magazine and have been busy planning our honeymoon to Thailand in April. They say it’s good to keep busy to keep the post-wedding blues at bay, after all. But one thing that isn’t really talked about is just how stressful wedding planning can be, especially in the final few weeks.

Yes, it’s an excited stress. The sort of stress that you know is definitely going to be worthwhile in the end, and that comes from a place of wanting to make the day (or weekend, in our case!) the best of your life and super fun for your guests. No, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take its toll! The last 8 weeks before the wedding I employed several techniques to try and keep my stress levels at bay – I kept a notepad by the bed to jot down any late-night thoughts that crept into my dreams, seriously upped my running regime (endorphins are the best stress reliever, after all!) and the main thing – learnt when to let go.

As the big day got closer, it became more and more evident that there was no way the ever-growing list of tasks was going to get done. Usually this would send me into a spiral of panic, late-nights and burning the candle at both ends to meet my own ridiculous expectations, so I took a deep breath and took stock. What bits could I get help with? I roped in friends and family members (who were basically pleading to help at this stage), prioritized with the help of the Covey’s quadrant technique, and cut back on some of the DIY.

The final thing was the hardest. I’m a creative, I enjoy making things, but as I also run my own business, time is not something I have a lot of! So I’m not ashamed to say that some of the seemingly DIY elements in our wedding were, with the help of Zazzle fakes. My name is Sophie and I cheated on our wedding DIY! There, I’ve finally admitted it.

When I finally started looking at the decoration tasks I could outsource to Zazzle, I was really surprised at the level of choice on offer. Our custom wooden signage was printed by Zazzle. The painstakingly hand-painted backdrop I’d planned for the band and dance floor of the tipi? Printed onto vinyl banners by Zazzle, and actually looked better than I think I ever could’ve achieved by flicking paint over a bed sheet. We even managed to use the same print to buy bespoke woven blankets, something I wasn’t expecting to find on Zazzle I must admit and fulfilling one of the 3am worries I’d had a couple of weeks before about our guests getting cold in the evening. They’ve made a beautiful keepsake for after.

Seriously though, there is no shame in admitting you need help – whether that’s from friends or family, or with the help of a site like Zazzle to speed up some processes. A lot of the time, brides are DIY’ing to help save money, which I totally get. But once you work out how long those seemingly ‘thrown together ‘hand-painted, refurbished wooden signs cost in trips to the tip to find the perfect wood, the time it takes to nail the boards together and sand them down, lay out the design in pencil before painting, etc, you may actually find it’s cheaper to go the semi-DIY route. And hell, it’s definitely cheaper than the spa you’d need to check yourself into to finally relax afterwards! As ever, my experience with getting our final decor bits with Zazzle was brilliant; a super easy to use website, clear shipping options (that were actually much faster than estimated) and tracking for peace of mind and that feeling of ticking off a big chunk of my to-do list?… Priceless!