Friday, April 30, 2010

Avenue.

The time has come.

Anyone who has been in the loop about the couches we want knows that it has been a titanic struggle of back-and-forward decisions... not about which couch to get, but what fabric we should get it in.

It's hard when you haven't lived in your own house before.. when you haven't developed your own sense of decor-style.. when you have 'warm neutral' on the wall, but you like soft grays, charcoals, bright white walls and rustic, weathered woods.

Yeah, try deciding on a couch colour with all that swirling around in your head! Zac would occasionally visit me in Freedom during my lunch break. We would flip through the fabric swatches and argue about what to get.

He didn't want a light-coloured couch. I was ok with white.

Leather or fabric? Fabric at the moment, although we prefer leather.

"What about Essence - Pepper?" he would say, "No, it is dark brown and has orange flecks in it. It's too tribal for me. Besides, the Malones and the Dineses have orange and brown decor." I would reply.

"Custom fabric from another range?" I would suggest, "No, it costs more and I don't like them anyway," he would reply.

So it went on like this for, oh, 8 months... by which time all my Freedom friends thought I was the most pedantic, silly girl when it came to couches.

But yesterday. Oh sweetest of days. We found a fabric.

Zac came in to drop me some lunch money (another story) and I whisked him off to the back of the store to show him some dining chairs that were covered in....

A dark charcoal fabric...

With...

A neutral-coloured fleck peeking through...

"Yep, I like that" he said.
"Really! Yay! I like it too!" she said.

(2 hours later over sms)
Clare: So you're cool if I buy those couches?
Zac: Sure. Go for it!

(10 minutes later)
Clare: we have couches!!


Here are the couches, the range is called 'avenue':

Both of us can sit side by side on that armchair! It's big :) Below is the 2.5 seater, which 3 or 4 people could fit on... it's also big!

Here is the fabric we chose:




Biggest furniture saga ever = over.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Here to Stay.

We love our jazz standards. In highschool I feel in love with Louis Armstrong and wished that I had been born a few decades earlier. Maybe 5 decades earlier! I always wanted to be with someone who appreciated Jazz.

What do ya know? I'm marrying a jazz music teacher. Funny how things work out...

We've chosen this song to play while we sign all our documents during the ceremony:

Ladies and Gentleman, Gershwin Bros by way of Billie Holiday:

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Glitches.


Not everything goes to plan when you're planning anything. What I mean by that poorly constructed sentence is that I love the little glitches that have happened during our planning - the change of venue, a photographer being booked out, Post not having the dress I liked in my size, not printing our invitations back in November.

Each time something has gone wrong, we've found something even better, that suited us more, that worked out better value, something that we absolutely love.

Not everything goes to plan and that's just fine by me!


ps. I have no idea where I got the above image. Let me know if you know where it's from, or if it's yours!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Young.

Earlier this week Zac mentioned that he saw an interview on Sunrise about young married couples. Koshie seemed to be a bit surprised that people would willingly and considerately choose to get married young.

I can relate to the couple in the interview - everybody's reaction to finding out that we are getting married and our age is always the same, "Oh my god!! But you guys are so young!" People have this general idea that getting married at a young age restricts your freedom, you'll never be able to travel, you won't be able to have a chance to get the career you want to have and you won't get to 'experience' life (whatever that means, I think how you choose to experience life is a highly personal thing!)

It's true, we are young compared to the national average and there are certain disadvantages to getting married young - life experience is at a minimum, Zac will still be studying full time for 6 months so only one us will be working full time. We haven't got established careers and we'll be moving out, getting married and living with someone new for the first time in our lives.

Not to mention babies. They just absolutely freak me out. How many methods of contraception can you use at any given point in time? I'll let you know.

That being said, we have been very careful about this decision, we knew we wanted to get married about 2.5 seconds into our first conversation but we waited 3 years because we knew that we wanted to be sure about this person, about how we worked together. We wanted to share a lot of views about all sorts of topics and we wanted to get past that 'honeymoon' phase in dating and have some real doozies of arguments so we could see how we would act under pressure.

We started working on our relationship, talking about topics we would never thought to have talked on before** expectations about what role we would take in a marriage/household management situation, discovering what we bring to our relationship and celebrating our differences rather than trying to make a copy of ourselves.

We have had pre-marital counseling, we discovered some things that we are very strong on, some things that aren't so strongly developed** and why. Talking with an complete stranger with whom we could be comfortable sharing everything, was so refreshing and hearing a different perspective (while it wasn't always right for us) was challenging and fun.

I think there are some very definite advantages to getting married young. I think it's great to move out together into a new house and develop patterns of living that involve another person - it helps that we aren't so independent and stuck in our preferred method of running a household, we get to make those sort of decisions together. Another thing is that we will have a combined income while we are still young. Sure, we might not make the wisest of financial decision but we'll save a heap too. Travelling together is something we're both looking forward to - I prefer to be with someone I know when I experience new things - no matter whether it's NYC or camping at Margaret River. I'm sure there are other benefits, but this is already a long post!

You can watch the interview here, don't worry - it's not very long and the psychologist makes such a funny face when she thinks the camera isn't recording ;)


**Obviously, we're talking about babies and parenting here. ugh.

Monday, April 19, 2010

This week.

We had the best time last Tuesday, I can't believe it has been a whole week since we celebrated! Time flies when you're having fun I guess :)

This week marks one of the major deadlines I had in my head. We had wanted to get all of our major planning done by the time Zac started his prac and guess what, that day was today! Which means it is 11 weeks until we go down south with our friends (separately, of course. Girls only at our place thanks!) and 11 weeks until we move houses, 11 weeks until my hair trial, 11 weeks until the last week of being single. It really doesn't feel far away now!

We have most of our stuff done, now it's just a few little things and Zac's suit. I know, I know we still don't have anything for him to wear on the day. Zac keeps joking that he could just wear his birthday suit, but yeah. Probably not the greatest idea, especially being Winter - haha!

We have booked an appointment with The Old Brewery to taste our menu - yum yum! We bought our wedding bands, and our paper arrived! It smells so good, there's nothing like the smell of good stock.

Chantelle has been a busy beaver designing, designing, designing and I am going to the printer on Friday with Ann and Chantelle to swap wisdom and be inspired by our mate Phil. We'll be dropping off the paper and designs so he can make plates. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can show you photos of our invitations being letterpressed!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Venues: Town Halls

On Fridays I am going to be posting about some venues in Western Australia. It is hard sifting through hundreds of different websites when you are looking for a wedding venue, so hopefully this will help someone out there! Let me know if you are hunting for something specific and I will try to help out.

This week we are looking at town halls! These venues are often underrated and with a little bit of sprucing up they can look magical. I think town halls suit a couple who want a very personalised wedding - let's face it, town halls are a bit of a blank canvas! The key to getting a town hall ready for an event is lighting, lighting, lighting - whether it's soft candlelight or a huge rig to light up a dance floor it doesn't matter, but fluorescent lights never did anyone any good! The best part about town halls is that they are generally cheap to hire.

North Perth Town Hall
This is a quaint town hall in the trendy area of North Perth. I have fond memories of a friend's 30th party here where she had one loooooooooong banquet table covered in butchers paper and candles, with a saxophone busker on the stage with a single spotlight on him as he played. Baileys, donuts, cigars and dessert were served, it was the last stop of a walking-multi-venue-party and it was amazing. My friends throw the best parties!

Via Google Maps

Website: http://www.vincent.wa.gov.au/1/6/1/facilities.pm

Leederville Town Hall
This town hall is another historic venue and much like North Perth, you can make it suit whatever style you want.


Cost: from $66/hour
Website: http://www.cambridge.wa.gov.au/content/Public/Leisure/What_can_I_do/Leederville_Town_Hall.aspx

Perth Town Hall
This venue is HUGE and has several areas fit for a party. I would love to see someone use one half of this space for a ceremony and then move into the second area for the reception.


Cost: 6am-6pm $130/hour, 6pm-12am $160/hour
Website: http://www.cityofperth.wa.gov.au/web/Living/Community-Services-and-Facilities/Perth-Town-Hall/Hiring-the-Perth-Town-Hall/

Guildford Town Hall
Gorgeous Art Deco building in Guildford that can hold 200 people.


Image 1 via, Image 2 via

website: http://www.swan.wa.gov.au/docs/documents/1214/Guildford_Town_Hall_421032.pdf

Fremantle Town Hall
Victorian-era hall with beautiful main area, foyer staircase and gallery seating. How cool would it be to have a gospel choir singing in the gallery as guests arrive?

Image 1 via, Image 2 and 3 via

Cost: 8am-5pm $80/hour, 5-2pm $140/hour, 8am-2am $1050
Website: http://www2.freofocus.com/services/html/halls_town_hall.cfm

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Happy 21st


Dear Zac,

You are the best a girl could hope for. I like that you play real-life where's wally with me when you wear the red and white t-shirt. You rock.

"there he is! Found him!"

Happy birthday :) :) :)

Love Clare

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Glass Vases.



We really want to emulate this table arrangement from Martha Stewart Weddings (spring 2008) but we weren't able to find any cheap, black, glass vases. One of my colleagues from Freedom suggested searching at Gone Bazaar (a knick-knack store) and getting something there.

They didn't have any black glass, but they had a plain vase that was roughly the same size/shape we wanted, so we bought one and I painted it the other day.

What we used:
Black opaque glass paint 50 ml, $2 from Art Attack (this was enough for 2 vases)
Vase, $5.95 from Gone Bazaar

Step one: Clean out the inside of the vase. Martha recommends doing this with rubbing alcohol, I used a, eerrrr, paper towel... Rubbing alcohol will get rid of grease and dirt, though. If you're doing this, probably best to go with the rubbing alcohol.



Step two: Pour copious amounts of black glass paint into the vase. I was worried about losing excess paint, but I figured that in the end I could just drip it all back into the pot - which is what I ended up doing. I kept adding more paint into the vase; it made it easier to do the next step.



Step three: Twist and swirl the jar around until every part of the inside of the vase is coated evenly. The lip of this vase was a bit tricky to get it covered without going onto the outside, but we got there eventually!



Step four: Let it dry. The glass paint pot said 3 days and it was touch dry within a couple of hours. I also turned the vase upside down every so often because I noticed the paint was slowly starting to gather at the bottom of the pot, it wasn't really noticeable but I am a perfectionist sometimes...


Voila! Black vases. Finally.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Exciting.

A little sneak peek of something special:



That is all :)

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Inspire me.

This week I'm loving:

This quote:

This Blackboard:

This idea:

This cupcake:

...And this cake:

Finally, these cheeky shadows:

Friday, April 9, 2010

Venues: Outdoors

On Fridays I am going to be posting about some venues in Western Australia. It is hard sifting through hundreds of different websites when you are looking for a wedding venue, so hopefully this will help someone out there! Let me know if you are hunting for something specific and I will try to help out.

This week we are looking at outdoor venues in Perth, we'll focus on gardens later on, so these are just venues for hire with a killer outdoor space.

Camelot Theatre
This is such a great art deco theatre in Mosman Park. It has a great outdoor cinema area that is lined by pencil pines and I always imagine a gatsby-style party here, with exposed light bulb string and champagne coupes flowing around. Maybe you could show some classic black and white films throughout your party... I think there are tonnes of options for this space.


Website: www://camelot.com.au


Quarry Amphitheatre
This Quarry is used for ballet and theatre performances and is in a central-ish location in City Beach. It has an inherent beauty and is such a unique and special venue! I can imagine the side rock lit up and a clear-span marquee at the bottom so you could admire the venue all night.

(1) via, (2) via, (3) via

Website: www.quarryamphitheatre.com.au


Point Walter Recreation
So there aren't many pictures of this venue, but it has the most incredible outlook over the river and beyond to the city. It's perched on top of some limestone cliffs (near where I used to jump off into the river as a kid). You can just see through the buildings to make out the river... I think this would suit a more casual wedding where you had people stay overnight or for a whole weekend of fun.


Website: www.dsr.wa.gov.au/pointwalter

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Paper Pretty.

Been loving these styles recently, they are providing inspiration for our own design which we are yet to see. Chantelle is designing them and we know that they will be lovely!

We love the calligraphy, borders, modern interpretations of old fashioned ideas, patterns, colours, unexpected details...


above: see the typeface we bought in action?


I love the envelopes in this suite, I wish I could buy them separately! Maybe Zac could buy me this desk set for my birthday?! Perhaps!?


Can't wait to see what our invitations will turn out to look like... I just love surprises!

Note to Self.

Dear Self,

Remember when you first started dating Zac and the fun in life was all you cared about, and you baked every 2nd night because it was just so darn fun and then you woke up about 200kg heavier one day?

Well, opening the book from hell and making MAPLE SYRUP CAKE WITH MAPLE MERINGUE AND PECAN ICING doesn't help your weight-loss endeavours because now you will want to eat the leftovers for breakfast.



Just saying.

Yours sincerely,
Self.


**UPDATE: I resisted until 3PM, when I had a piece with a cup of tea**

Friday, April 2, 2010

Venues: Wineries

On Fridays I am going to be posting about some venues in Western Australia. It is hard sifting through hundreds of different websites when you are looking for a wedding venue, so hopefully this will help someone out there! Let me know if you are hunting for something specific and I will try to help out.

Today we're going to look at some sweet wineries around the Perth metropolitan area. I have been trying to find another one that is more than a shed-with-vines, but it's too draining to trawl the internet - so without further ado:-

Sandalford Winery
Sandalford winery is HUGE and they have a few different options for wedding ceremonies and receptions. My favourite is the Oak Room, which has walls lined with oak barrels. I know in the US, there is a 'barn wedding' craze but we don't have many barns in Australia and I think this would make such a nice alternative for a rustic/chic wedding.

Photos via Sandalford Winery website and here.

The Sandalford website has 360 panoramic views of each of their spaces, so I won't double up -here are my top picks:

Durack Room: On the second level, with french doors, balcony and rustic styling. 80 seated guests.

Underground Cellar: Similar to the oak room, but less wood around the place - I could see a more modern celebration happening here. Seats up to 250 guests.

Of course, there are also the lawns (Merlot and Verdelho), so expansive and beautiful.

Website: www.sandalford.com.au


Millbrook Winery
Millbrook Winery has a gorgeous function room on their 2nd floor that has a deck overlooking their lake and vines. The function room can cater for 100 people (seated) or 150 (standing) and is decorated really nicely, wooden floors, stone detailing, high ceilings and a fireplace - really light and airy.

Photos from Millbrook Winery website and The Wedding Network.

Website: www.millbrookwinery.com.au