My Wedding Album - Made using Blurb Book Smart

Hi Guys, I want to share something with you today that I have been working on for aaages!

Since our wedding I have been planning to make a wedding album, but it seemed such a huge undertaking as we had over 600 photos, and I just didn't know where to start! In the end I managed to get a book made and delivered just before our 1 year anniversary, but it took a whole lot of effort! I thought I'd share my experience making the book with you, incase you are thinking of making your own wedding album, or any other album for that matter!

I wasn't sure what company to get the book printed with, so I did some research online and found that people were pleased with their Blurb books, and it looked the best option for what I wanted. I have to say, I was a little worried when I saw their page templates for the first time. The wedding album templates included a lot of text for some reason, and the boxes meant for pictures seemed to be strangely off centre and not in the dimensions I wanted. Fortunately Blub has a function whereby you can build your own template, and once I figured this out I was more than happy! I built the book using a program you can download from their website called 'Book Smart'.

I pretty much designed each page dependant upon the photos I had to go on it, which is one of the reasons it all took so long.  I think I was probably working on the book for about 4 months in total, as it was something I found I had to do a little bit at a time. 

As well as picking which photos were going where, I spent a lot of time making sure the boxes were even as well as the gaps in between and centralising the photos.

Once I had pretty much completed the album I found that to get the best quality the photos should be resized to the same dimensions as the box they were going into. Obviously this was another job that took a really long time, especially since nearly all of my pages were different, but I think it was worthwhile in the end.

The above and below pictures are two of my favourite layouts which I designed. I found it immensely satisfying when the pages finally 'came together', it did take rather a lot of trial and error in most cases!

On the back of the book I chose a picture of our confetti cones, which I think looks rather pretty!

I'd definitely recommend Blurb, and I'd say that the more time you put into it the better it will look! Picking the right photos to go together, and positioning them in a complementary way, as well as knowing when a picture deserves its own page, are all really important in creating a quality product.  I am really pleased with the way that my album turned out.

I chose the 'large square' sized book, as I wanted the pictures to be as big as possible! It has 116 pages in total (probably containing around 300 photos) and I chose one of the most expensive papers, as well as 'image wrap'. Since I had spent so much time on it I didn't mind spending a little bit extra to make it as high quality as possible.

This album would normally have cost me £100, but I managed to get a 30% discount from Voucher Codes. I probably would have ended up spending a few hundred if I had asked the photographers to do it, so I think that is pretty good!

Have you used Blurb or another site to create a photo book? What have your experiences been like?

Laura xXx

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Wedding Photos- The Wedding Breakfast and Speeches

Hi guys, I'm back to today to fill you in on the section of my wedding day which included something very important.. THE FOOD!… I mean THE SPEECHES!

First up I want to tell you a little about our table decor.  I knew early on that I wanted to have lots of wildflower style flower arrangements on the tables. Luckily we had one of my Mum's friends to put these together, and they turned out perfect! Each one was different which I really loved. My Dad was kind enough to gorge himself on baked beans so that we would have enough tins to go around.

I made little round emblems to decorate the front of the tins using homemade clay, which was a mixture of flour, water, salt and green food colouring. Once I had rolled them into balls I stamped them using our monogrammed wax seal stamp which I had used originally for the invites.  You can bake them at a low heat in the oven so they become hard!

Each table was given a fictional place name, they were all chosen from our favourite TV programs and Movies. Above you can see Rivendell, and you may be able to spot some others further down the page too.

I think my favourite part of the day was the speeches, Chris and his best man Ollie both nailed it. But in particular I loved my Dads speech, which included mention of a game we used to play when I was little called "Pretty Pretty Princess"The aim of the game was to be the first to collect and wear all of the princess jewellery, and the winner was given a crown and named "Pretty Pretty Princess". My Dad explained that however hard he tried to loose this game, he always seemed to win, and even when he would try to cheat to loose I would always notice and make sure he put his new piece of jewellery on. To demonstrate how the game worked, he had re-aquired the game for his speech, and both my Dad and Chris, as well as myself and my sister-in-law all ended up wearing the ridiculous jewellery for the entirety of the speeches. (I never expected to see my husband reading his wedding speech wearing a necklace, 2 clip on earrings, a bracelet, a ring and a very effeminate crown!)  At the end of the speech, he said that it was time to hand over his crown, as it was now Chris's turn to be my Pretty Pretty Princess. It was very funny and our guests were all talking about it for the rest of the night.

Instead of a traditional wedding breakfast, we opted for a picnic style lunch, with all the goodies being brought out in a crate for each table. It was a really good way to get people talking as they all had to get involved to dish out all the food. It was also a hell of a lot cheaper than than it would have been had we paid for caterers to cook a proper meal!

Here are some more pictures of the flowers on the table because I loved them so much!

Laura xXx

All photos were taken by my wonderful photographers Peach and Jo Photography!

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How to Survive Wedding Fever - The Book

Hi team, today I am in need of your help.

If you have followed my blog recently, you might just have noticed that in May I got married!  If not you can take a peek at the parts of the day I have already blogged about here.

I learnt SO much from planning my wedding, but at times it all felt completely overwhelming!   There were sleepless nights, sometimes I was so nervous I felt sick, and occasionally I'd break out into a cold sweat. Thats right, I had contracted wedding fever!

The stereotype is that all women LOVE to talk about weddings, especially their own. And to begin with I will admit it is certainly exciting. But what happens when the novelty of the idea wears off, and you are faced with tackling this mountain of a task? There is a huge amount of pressure these days for everything to be perfect, and I know that many women can end up feeling resentful and stressed out, and thats just not what planning a wedding should be about! IT SHOULD BE FUN!

When I looked back at all the things I had learnt on my journey, I realised that I didn't want it all to go to waste.  I wanted to impart my new found knowledge on other brides to be, and make their journey as easy and enjoyable as possible. So I decided I would write a book!

The working title at the moment is 'How to Survive Wedding Fever'. Here's a mock up of my front cover, it's still a work in progress but I'm getting there!

There is more information out there about weddings than I could shake a stick at, but what I found that I really needed was logical, chronological and detailed advice, and that seemed hard to come by.  This book is based on my experience of wedding planning, as well as what I have learnt working in the industry. The aim is to guide the reader through each stage in bite size chunks, meaning that each day they can pick the book up and complete another piece of 'homework' in a short amount of time. I'll help make sure you pick quality suppliers, but will also let you in on some secrets to save money.  The idea is to make sure you don't become overwhelmed on your journey to wedded bliss

I've tried to encompass everything a bride will need to know in the book, but of course every bride, and every wedding is different. So here's where you come in. I'm looking for wedding tips from brides to be, previous brides, or suppliers. If thats sounds like you then I'd love your help.  All you need to do is comment on this post, send me an email at wrappedupinrainbows@gmail.com or send a message on twitter to @laura_boutique. 

Let me know any tips that you know from experience and found particularly useful. It could literally be anything. I will have a chapter dedicated to these tips,  and if I choose to include yours I will of course credit you in the book, and I will also include you in a thank you blog post with links to any websites you may have.

Also, if you have any feedback on the title and cover, that would be greatly appreciated. Like I say, it is  still a work in progress, but it'd be good to get an idea if i'm going in the right sort of direction.

Laura xXx

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Wedding Photos - Arriving at the Venue

Here I am again for another instalment of our wedding! I can't believe how many photos I have!

We left the church in our VW camper Pip, with my Dad at the wheel.  We decided to stop off on the way to the venue and get some photos at one of my parents neighbours houses. (who just happened to also be very helpful wedding guests!)  I had spotted this perfectly shabby chic metal door on one of my earlier visits, and decided it would make a great background!

With the photos, I really wanted to make sure people weren't having to stand around being bored, hence why we only had a few at the church, and then at this point the guests were all arriving at the marquee getting their canapés and drinks. It was a tricky balance as the photos were very important to me, but I also didn't want to be away from our guests for too long. In the end I decided we would have a quick shoot here before we got the the venue, and then one later on after the meal. I think this worked really well and meant that the photos were much more natural and not rushed.

During this shoot chris decided to bite my head and blow a raspberry on my cheek (see below). Standard.

This beautiful cake was made by my Mum. I told her I wanted a simple cake with lots of flowers cascading down it (ok, not that simple, but she is really good at sugar flowers so I knew she wouldn't find it that difficult!)  I did also specify that I wanted it in 2 tall layers, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare for her. Apparently it doesn't seem that people really make them like this, or at least there's no information on the internet about how to do it, so she had to work it out herself.  Perhaps we'll share how she did it on a later post in case any of you fancy a tall 2 tiered cake for your wedding!

My Mum and Dad had sourced loads of awesome vintage style props. We had this 'old bell' sign outside our beer tent, as well as a big signpost which you can see in the background. We also had a tipi and two vintage tea tents.  My dad had bought some old barrels which we used as tables in the beer tent, and he even put a chandelier in it!

I'm not a huge fan of champagne, but I do have a bit of a sweet tooth, so as our welcome drinks we created elderflower and sloe gin fizz.  The elderflower cordial and the sloe gin were both homemade the year before. In fact, I posted about making the elderflower cordial here.

We also bought some pretty drinks dispensers so that people could help themselves to some non-alcoholic drinks.

All of our canapés were wheat free for Chris. We got them from a local caterer.  I only had a couple since I was so busy, but they were tasty!

For our order of the day my Dad found an old bit of rotten door behind his shed.  He managed to clean it up, and then I painted the words on the day before.

I spent absolutely ages on our table plan.  Each table was named after a fictional place in films and TV series's that we like, so I decided to make it look like a map.  From left to right going downwards you can see; Fhloston Paradise (Fifth Element), Santa Carla (Lost Boys), Neverland (Hook/Peter Pan) , Rivendell (Lord Of The Rings), Nostromo (Alien), Zubrowka (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Winterfell (Game of Thrones), The Goon Docks (The Goonies), Raccoon City (Resident Evil), Woodbury (Walking Dead), Endor (Star Wars), Arrakis (Dune) and Hill Valley (Back to The Future).

I painted images on each one to give people a clue to which film each one was from.  I'll tell you about the actual table place cards in the next wedding post, which will be about the meal and the speeches! 

Something which got everyone talking was the Alpaca farm in the field next door! They were also very interested to see us! But more on that later too!

Laura xXx

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