Just a quick note from me to say it brings me great pleasure to bring you the wedding of lovely real Bride Sarah this afternoon - she has brought lots of fun and debate to RMW (including epic posts on changing your surname and whether or not to have a wedding cake) and her wedding to Callum is a great example of doing things EXACTLY how you want to.

It's also Sarah's Mum's birthday today - so a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to her and a massive congratulations to Sarah and Callum

RMW Real Bride Sarah: Knowing where to start my other posts was SO much easier than this one! I have sat down about ten times and just starred at my computer screen not knowing how to start, which is saying something because I usually have quite a lot to say. Trying to get out words associated with our wedding evokes so many overwhelming emotions - where do you start describing the indescribable? I can hear you all shouting "get on with it love"...so here goes I guess...

One Big Party

Callum summed up our wedding day like this "I loved the fact our wedding was like one big party with our closest friends and family, it felt like everyone had known each other for years; we had so many laughs!" The day after our wedding, I summed it up like this (thank goodness for Facebook being able to timestamp my emotions) "O to the M to the Mother Friggin G, we cannot explain the happiness in our hearts"; mash those two together and you get the best day of our lives!

It still escapes me how seamless everything went over our wedding weekend (except the balloons but that's better left unsaid!) considering the international-ness of it all; NZ to NYC to Wales. Even when things looked like they might go wrong it didn't; when it rained, we were indoors and when we were outside, the sun shone bright! I still relish in the easy, loving, fun, relaxed nature of that day and I forever will. The first thing that struck me when I looked at our wedding pictures from friends, family and photographer, was we were always laughing, there are barely any serious snaps of us lovingly gazing into each others eyes, because we were always flashing our gnashers in a grin - that's us and that's what was captured; two 'queerdos'. It didn't necessarily start like that way the day before though...

The Nerves

I am a kid who doesn't really get nervous, I actually quite like job interviews, relishing the challenge it brings, but the day before our wedding, WOW-WOW-WEE-WOW! Complete indescribable nerves. I. WAS. A. MESS! I even had a few barfs. Don't ask me why or how, but those bridal nerves people tell you about, those ones I was convinced I wouldn't get, bloody debilitated me! I couldn't even relax at the spa whilst our W-day nails were being done, to the point I was convinced if the nerves didn't go away, they were going to ruin our wedding for me. Alas, they didn't last toooo long THAT day, because as soon as our friends and family started arriving for our BBQ on the eve of the wedding, I was consumed with so much happiness my nerves slowly waned...for a bit.

The Venue

Our wedding weekend was held at Gliffaes Country House Hotel, a place very special to my family. I grew up very near here and we spent many special occasions indulging in their fine food. When I took Callum to Gliffaes at Christmas 18 months before the wedding (remember that post - poor guy - 13 venues in 3 days!) it wasn't long before he was saying "this is it, this is where I want my family and friends from home to be with us". Done.

We had the venue to ourselves for the whole weekend, so all our international guests could stay and share every moment with us. We kicked the partying off as soon as we could with a BBQ; Callum got to wear his NZ flag bowtie and stubbies! Everyone from all parts of the globe, from all aspects of our lives came together to eat and drink on the terrace, overlooking the River Usk; a beautiful part of the Brecon Beacons and yes, that Welsh rain stayed away long enough for the guests to mingle and a few games to be played.

We played 'the shoe game', which involves the bride and groom sitting with their backs to each other and swapping one of their shoes with each other. They are then asked a series of questions from crass to serious like 'who brushes their teeth the least?' and the bride and groom lift the shoe to show who they believe is the culprit. If you are having a wedding with an international flare, where many people might not know each other, I really recommend doing something like this. It gives people a chance to giggle at your expense, laugh together and get an insight into the funny side of your relationship. By the next day, everyone was friends - awwww, share the love people!

Friends Like You Make me Pee My Pants

Feeling full of bridal beans, venison burgers and a few G&T's, I kissed my egg goodnight and the bridal gang and I spent my last night as a single lass, hauled up in the hotel room watching Will and Grace, wearing oxygen masks and eating chocolate, well, until my questionably large dosage of sleep inducing anti-histamine kicked in...shhhh...I was determined to be knocked out for a good night's sleep!! And that it did. I woke up and thought 'bloomin' heck, this is it and I'm NERVE-LESS'!

This made for such an awesome, blissful morning of our wedding; lots of laughs and gift sharing. I bought the girls and Dave gift bags filled with lots of wedding day essentials and treats including a pair of protea earrings each (Vera Wang after shave for Dave - of course!), a bottle of babycham to remind them of their bridesmaid boxes from my first RMW post and then the pièce de résistance...their caricatures. I wanted them to have a gift that would remind them of us and the day, yet be a little different, something that could be framed and bring giggles to lots of people as well as being a remembrance of our day.

I found Steph of Steph's Sketches on Google and she was fabulous; the graphics she created were so accurate yet comic. Callum and I wrote a note on the bottom of each image thanking them for being part of our day and they sure got some giggles. They were that awesome we decided to do the same for the groomsmen and best men.

The Tears

I balled a lot that morning, when someone opened their gift, I cried, when someone walked in, I cried when the flowers arrived, I BALLED! Our florist was Hilary's Floral Design and their Senior Floral Stylist, Charlotte, is a natural. I never had a meeting with her before the wedding (obviously hard being in NZ), so she was faced with a power point slide of what's in and what's out. No roses remember!

When Charlotte brought the flowers in I was blown away, I didn't think they would be everything I wanted and more. I had resigned myself to the fact that some things weren't going to be fabulous, as it was hard having meetings to discuss options from the other side of the world. I never should have worried, because Charlotte rocked it! Our flowers of choice were protea's, you can read the back story to this in one of my previous posts, they featured heavily in our day from, my engagement ring, my jewellery, our bouquets, place settings, table settings and the girls earrings.

Nice Wanger

If you are a regular on the blog, you must have been living on mars if you didn't know I wore Vera Wang on my wedding day so I won't bore you with (much) Wang love. It was a labour of love buying my Wang from NYC when we live in NZ and we got married in Wales, but it sure as hell added to the awesome experience of our engagement and wedding. It was worth every cent in airfares, because it was friggin epic (even if I do say so myself!).

From the moment I tried it on, I fell in love with the tulle, that feeling when you find something you don't ever want to take off, a bit like in the 90's when I discovered tartan doc martins - thank goodness fashion moves in trends! This was the third dress I tried on at VW on NYE 2012. It was four weeks post engagement and as I strolled up the stairs, passing the black wedding gowns my magpie eyes began beaming and tongue drooling at THE dress. My swooning was broken by bridesman Dave saying "you are not wearing black on your wedding day"...skip forward to the first two white dresses and me pulling lots of unsatisfied faces, coupled with my soft requests 'just let me see what it looks like' and the rest is history. The look on my face, the girls and Dave's said it all. I never intended to buy a dress from VW, but nothing else was going to compare, so from that day on, I worked for that Wang.

This is probably gleamingly obvious, but the dress set the tone for the wedding, despite blue being our favourite colour, that wasn't going to work was it? As I am mad for anything glittery and gold (who isn't?!) it wasn't long before I was picturing just that. Our wedding theme was therefore our heritage in pink, gold and black with sparkles, sparkles, sparkles! We had inflections of serious and funny wiwi-ness throughout our day; little bits of NZ in our little welsh venue, including for example, a giant inflatable jandal (flip flops to the brits), fittingly coloured pink and adorned with love hearts - thanks for that Havaianas!

The Accessories

To accompany my dress I had a Vera Wang chapel length veil, the same blush colour in my dress, with delicately hand embroidered black flowers. I introduced the gold into my outfit via Deborah Lippmann gold nail polish, gold leaf Freya Rose hair clips, gold leaf around my eyes and last but not least...a stonking pair of J Choo's!

From the start, I swore I wasn't going to Choo, but when we were in NYC picking the Wang up (two weeks before the wedding so talk about last minute purchase) Sophie and I walked into the Bleeker Street Jimmy Choo store, 'just to have a look', as I already had wedding shoes at this point, these beauties SCREAMED out "YOU WILL WEAR ME". They were perfect!

Black and gold glitter, effortlessly matching the girls and Dave's shoes - how could I not?! Sophie was urging the little Choo demon in my head 'buy them - you have too'. I obliged, taking back the Brian Attwood shoes I had bought 8 months earlier in NYC! To be honest, I never really loved the other shoes and they certainly didn't make my tootsies go a tip-tap-tapping like the Choo's. My last min shoe purchase worked a real treat, as they even matched our cake!

My grandfather passed away 12 months ago and I was given his gold chain as a special keepsake, he wore this every day and it was the first gift my grandmother gave him 60 plus years ago, so for me there was going to be no exceptions, I was going to be wearing it on W-day. Deciding on a pendant for the chain was pretty easy...can you guess? That's right, a protea! I took my design to kiwi jewellers Tory and Ko. and they did a fine job. We set the gold pendant with a teardrop smokey quartz to tie in with the champagne diamonds of my wedding band and to give it that extra bit of bling, adorned it with white and black diamonds to match my engagement ring. Fun fact...Princess Kate, clearly has style as she picked Tory and Ko. to make her jewellery for their tour of Australia and NZ this year - good styling Kate!

My earrings were a last minute purchase the day we left NYC. I hadn't found anything that took my fancy and against Callum's willingness for me not to enter Soho Gem, I left with a pair of champagne and white diamond studs.

Absolutely Spiffing

Callum wore Ted Baker for W-day, not so much VW, but good enough Keeping the colour of the dress from Callum was pretty easy as he hated black suits, so that was never an option. Because black would have looked awful with my dress, so grey it was for groomy and his groomsmen. He wanted to be different to the boys though, so he chose a grey check number. He paired this with a black Paul Smith shirt and Hugo Boss dress shoes. He was nervous about wearing a black shirt as a groom...at a wedding...but I think he looked spiffing!

Getting glitter to be worn by Callum was met with much aversion. I did try to get him in a pair of black glitter Jimmy Choo loafers, I asked that once though and never again haha! The gold appeared in his outfit via his pocket square and tie made my Mrs Bowtie - what an AWESOME vendor. We ended up ordering all the ties from them as their service and quality was impeccable. They made the most perfect bowties for the groomsmen; black with blush and pink floral detail. The boys scrubbed up a treat in their matching M&S grey suits and white shirts. Never underestimate a good M&S purchase!

The Wanger Gang

I knew from the start I didn't want the bridesmaid dresses to match, the girls have such different styles and personalities; I wanted that to be reflected in our pictures. One thing was for sure, they were going to be pink and black! Erika wore a cute little number from Coast, Kim wore a dress from Review and Jenny wore a dress from JS Collections. I released the night before the wedding I had never seen all these dresses together before - gulp! But, I hope you'll agree they looked fantastic together.

To give them that splash of required go-litz, they wore gold glitter Dotty P's pumps that I found on a whim for £15! As for my (second) main man, Dave, I wanted him to stand out from the bestmen, groomsmen and Callum. We suited and booted him in a grey River Island waistcoat and trousers, a pale pink shirt from ASOS and a custom Mrs Bowtie, skinny tie in the same pattern as the groomsmens. Que Elton moment! No way was I going to let him not have some glitter on his trotters to match the girls - hellooooo Jessica Buurman gold glitter loafers!

The Beauty

BOOM! It's 1pm and I am still not in my dress, my make-up and hair isn't finished, the guests are at the church and there's thunder and lightning...let's welcome those nerves back people. Those nerves meant I don't really remember any goosebumps associated with putting my dress on, but I did manage to steal a few moments to myself in the bathroom before we left for the church. I was more than happy with the scrubbage bestowed on me thanks to Vera, Louise Alway and Lucy Davis.

I looked at myself and thought 'sh*t that's really you in there?!' Callum once asked me if I would get married in my PJ's, so looking back at myself in the mirror, I was hoping he would be equally as pleased with the girls hard work. Louise and Lucy are fantastic at their occupation and adorable human beings, who joined in the laughs and fitted in as if they were two friends experiencing that morning with us. Plus how much do I love Lucy for putting gold leaf around my eyes!

Screw you nerves...!

As Dad and I rode the 15 miles to the church, which felt like 150 miles, not even holding my Dads hand kept me calm. Petrified I was about to spew on the Wang, I had to ask ol'driver to turn the air con on, wind every window down and drive a little slower. Being very helpful he did so, but then he proceeded to blare U2's 'with or without you' from the CD player, my "are you bloody serious?!" comment at first made him laugh, but my face might of just scared him as he kindly proceeded to shut it down. That drive took forever!

As we approached the church 25 mins late, seeing my uncle and cousin was the only thing that settled me. A few laughs with the vicar and we were off and all I wanted to do was see my egg. I suddenly felt like every girl wants to feel on her wedding day - freaking, bloomin', awesome.

The Ceremony

As I stood at the entrance to the church, my dad on one arm, my bessies behind me, I saw members of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir and my heart began to pound. Before granddad passed away, we had discussed with him about having the Treorchy Male Voice Choir at the wedding. It didn't seem right not to continue this for him. Knowing the songs we wanted in the church at the wedding, we also chose these to be played at his funeral, therefore as Calon Lân and Cwm Rhondda bellowed from those Brains beer filled lungs, I melted - as did my eye make-up. I worked hard to control my emotions so ugly-crying-girl-with-glitter-smeared face stayed away. So many emotions, so many faces looking at you and so much love and happiness. Seeing our friends and family beam at me, (some a little shell shocked at the dress) I began to ease; it was an amazing feeling.

The ceremony was a bit of a blur, but clearly, highly successful - I have a new surname, yes that's right girls, I changed it! So thank goodness for our AWESOME videographer who captured it; none other than the amazing Leanne Dodds of Blooming Lovely Films. She quite possibly is one of the loveliest people we have ever met. I actually felt guilty she was running around filming us rather than sat down as a guest enjoying a few bubbles. We weren't going to have a videographer and only contacted Leanne two months before the wedding when we had a change of heart and I am convinced it was fate that she was available (her last free weekend in June)!

If you are one of those couples on the fence about filming your wedding, my advice is if you can, just do it! I cry every time I watch our highlights. It is priceless and my recommendation for Leanne cannot come any higher; she was the best decision we made regarding the wedding (bare the Wang). Ok I'll admit it; I've got a girl crush.
Shame there was no video footage of the 'butt clench'. Callum's best man told him if he felt he might tear up to clench his butt cheeks together?! Try it you never know...One thing that shines through our photos is how emotional, yet relaxed and light hearted our take on a traditional welsh wedding ceremony was. We all got chance to have a giggle whether it was due to the vicars jokes or me giving Dave a rather obvious head nod to check he was still ok with this marriage when asked if anyone objected.

On with the show and as our gorgeous custom-made Naveya and Sloane wedding bands were placed on our pinkies and it was a done deal! I know Rachel, Creative director of Naveya and Sloane, through her amazing parents and how lucky I am that she has been with Callum and I along the whole journey of ring buying. She crafted my engagement ring and her effortless beauty and talent in everything she does is exceptional.

The Decor

Our church décor was simple, I mean who needs much in a beautiful 15th century Welsh church, but of course, there was some gold and glitter. The window ledges were decorated with glitter tealights in hand painted gold and gold glitter jars, along with large twigs that we had spray painted with glitter and gold. At the church, our ushers handed guests DIY flags and confetti. I made the confetti using glitter and gold/black crepe paper - yes I broke another trend, I had black confetti - and placed this in gold polka dot bags from Pop Roc Parties.

The flags were to match our theme of heritage and travel, something a bit different from just confetti to throw in the air and I am really pleased we did this as they look great in the pictures. I changed the standard colours of the Wales and NZ flags to gold glitter and black to match our theme.

Laughter, Sunshine and Doing the Beyoncé

Ol'Drive was much happier to see me in a relaxed glitter infused state after the ceremony and we could listen to his U2 with no fear of me vomming en route to the reception! Party time was about to begin! We had such a laugh taking the group snaps, me playing Queen B, whilst our guests enjoyed the mind-blowing tunes of Cat Wright, chowing on some welsh rarebit and other yummy treats. This was washed down with our signature cocktails 'Dragons Juice' and 'The All Black' with black gold and pink straws bought from Etsy. I designed the menus to match the rest of our signs and stationary of course.

The 'lolly table' (kiwis call sweets lollies...?!) was a huge pre-dinner success. I had sent mum and dad home from NZ, the previous February with a 30kg selection of NZ sweets, which were presented in NZ' North and South Island shaped bowls with cute little pink, gold and black labels. I made a lolly table sign in Photoshop, again, matching our stationery colour theme - it was a lot of fun to make, mostly because we got to buy heaps of chocolate for the 'photo-shoot' Other signage we had on display included a 'Queerdo poem' I had made as a take-off of a Dr. Seuss poem that had some significance to Callum and I; venue signs, church signs and little Welsh signs that could be found dotted around the venue from 'eat drink and be merry' to 'happily ever after'.

Denver the Last Dinosaur

The reception was a hoot. The food was amazing and the speeches were priceless. Our guests dined on gorgeous welsh fare including local produce such as goat's cheese, beef and chocolate found in the salted caramel terrine. The majority of my crafting surrounded our guests whilst they dined. We had black table linen, complimented by gold sequin table runners from Gilded Linens, gold plate chargers from Glamourpuss Weddings and to break up the edginess, we chose pink napkins to match the colourings in the centrepieces.

The centrepieces were made by our florist and were like mini versions of our bouquets encased in large bell jars. Another taller bell jar stood next to the centrepiece with a succulent inside which sat on gold and black doilies. Inside each succulent was a native NZ bird I had painted gold and then glittered. Around the neck of each bird was a gold glitter card that had an explanation of what it was and something unique about it.

The Details

The table plan was hard to find! Where was I going to get a black and gold world map without having to make it myself? I finally found an image on the internet and managed to buy it and have it shipped to NZ. To accompany the plan, I made the gold glitter table names in Photoshop and printed them on heavy card. The tables were named after streets from favourite places Callum and I have visited. I added to the sign a black silhouette of the state or country where the street is located and placed them inside heart number holders bought from The Wedding of My Dreams which were popped inside glass beer bottles that Mum, Callum and I spent two days 'twining'. I bought a variety of black, gold and cream twine from Etsy and used spray glue to 'lovingly' wrap the twine tightly around each bottle. They looked great and made awesome table name holders!

Each place setting had a menu, which I made in the same black, gold and pink stationery style as the other signage. On top of each menu lay a paper protea made lovingly by my mum and dad, placed inside was a New Zealand gold chocolate coin. There was an Instagram card alongside each menu, asking guests to use our W-day hashtag - this was brilliant as I have since made an awesome album using Artefact Uprising.

Instead of the standard guest-seating name, I placed a photo of myself and/or Callum with each guest, along with his or her name in a black frame. On the back of the frame I stamped our logo and hanging off each frame was one of those black and gold kiwis, ferns and dragons you may remember me making! I bought a mini stamp kit from Etsy and stamped thank you on the back of each one. Everyone loved their frames and took them home. The exception of place settings was Callum's and mine, instead of a protea I placed a bride and groom Lego figure inside a mini bell jar (there is a back story there - for another time).

The table was filled with lots of other treats and décor including black vintage globes from Home Sweet Home. I painted glass milk bottles black or gold and placed on the lid a painted black or gold kiwi bird. Inside each milk bottle were pink and gold sugared almonds - finding gold sugared almonds converted any non-sugared almond lover. Last but not least were gold and black painted hollow and solid wooden eggs. Inside the hollow eggs were little fun facts about Callum and I. On the solid eggs were quotes such as 'you crack me up', 'our love is no yolking matter' etc etc... Why eggs? Because that's one of our many nicknames for each other.

Our guest book pages were also placed on each table. I used Cerulean Press to letterpress in thick card (backed in gold, black and pink) our logo and wedding date. On the card I placed 6 envelopes with mini cards from Paper Draper and Knot and Bow, again in those lovely three colours and guests used gold and black pencils (also from Knot and Bow) to scribble a message in - note, best get your guests to do this before too much wine is consumed!

Getting Through Customs

As I write this I have no idea how a) I got through customs. I would love to have seen the customs officers face when they checked our cases through the states..."WTF? Why does this chick need 40 wooden eggs and dang I've never seen so much glitter" b) I actually did all that DIY OR c) how I didn't get charged an overweight fee. I'm so glad I did it though, everyone loved it and there is such satisfaction seeing your guests smile and giggle.

Instead of doing the speeches post meal, we did them between courses. They were all so good, lots of laughs and love with 'the butt clench' referred to often. I was paid a $1.05 to say this, but Callum's was by far the best speech, he even sang me a song to sum up some of his feelings...aww I hear you all say, don't get too excited, it went something like this "Denver the last dinosaur he's my friend and a whole lot more, Denver the last dinosaur showed me a world I've never seen before". Hence the additional hashtag for the remainder of the wedding being #Denver and me being crowned a new nickname!

Edible Glitter You Say?

Now for the cake! Remember I wasn't all that convinced about having a cake? Well I caved when I realised we could use our wedding logo as a cake topper and thank goodness we did. Three tiers of luscious-glitterness created by Kathleen at Little Black Cat Cakes (ironic seeing as I am not the world's biggest cat fan). We had three tiers; carrot cake, coconut and rose and pistachio, covered in black and gold glitter. Yum. Yum. Yum.

I hadn't really given much thought to what Kathleen was going to create from my brain-dump cake ideas, mainly because at the time it was the lowest priority on my wedding list - but WOW, imagine my delight when I saw the cake didn't just look fantastic, it ruddy matched my shoes! The cake topper looked amazing, nice and simple for what was a full on cake. It was laser cut from acrylic by Silhouette Weddings. Our logo ended up being featured heavily throughout our wedding; on our STD's, stickers, invites, stamped on the back of the favours, menus, signage and a guest even made us a ring pillow with it embroidered on.

Aint No Getting Over You

Even though I loved our cake, it was probably the least memorable moment of our wedding day and was done more for everyone else than us...for me, I just wanted to cut the damn cake and slam out the first dance. The Wang was a bit too much for our first dance so I changed into a white sparkly number from Moochi. I don't mind admitting I took a trip upstairs for a 'nip' of Welsh whiskey, gin and vodka to help bring out my dancing grooves. A friend of mine is a DJ in Auckland and he kindly mashed up some songs for us, we then worked with an amazing gal to learn a wee choreographed number to a mix of songs; Jimmy Soul "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life never make a pretty women your wife" (that got a few laughs!), David Guetta, Avicii and Fleetwood Mac; nobody expected it and everybody loved it, especially those thinking Callum had two left feet!

It was an awesome feeling to 'shine' as a newly married couple and a great way to start off our amazing evening celebrations courtesy of the Wedding Smashers. A highlight for both of us was 'shoulder dancing' as wife and hubby (thanks to Peter for enduring me on his shoulders) and yelling out some kiwi classics to the bewilderment of the Welshy's. We had a basket of jandal's labelled 'if your feet are tired and sore grab some jandal's and dance some more' for people to use when their tootsies were D-floor-sore.

Marry Me Marry My Friends

Everyone always tells you to 'make the most of your day 'together''. Well, that's all well and good doing that when you live near the majority of your guests, but as we don't, Callum and I made a pact, that our evening shindig, would be our time to party hard and mingle hard, with who we wanted, when we wanted. We didn't do what people say you should; 'make sure you stand in a corner and take it all in together', 'sneak away together for a bit'. Our guests had travelled miles to be with us, or the ones who travelled locally, we rarely see, so we enjoyed every single moment with them, after all Callum and I see each other everyday. So other than our first dance and a dance which was caught on camera, where I am rather tiddly saying "I'm his wife!', we barely saw each other! But we had THE BEST party! I swooned around with a massive kiwi milkshake cup, filled to the brim with Gin and I choo'ed the floor with those Jimmy's and my bestest buddies.

We woke up the next day with all guests having breakfast, laughing at the debauchery and sniggering at the face of the proprietor as he explained he had never sold so much Sambuca before; we felt utterly blissful. Such a warm, fuzzy happiness in our hearts at our mind blowing weekend and at how much of an enjoyable time our guests had.

What's Next for The Wang?

My last piece of advice on RMW...wear your wedding dress AS much as you can! I'm obviously joking (no I'm not, I was eating dinner in it the other night), my real piece of advice is plan your day your way. I said it before and its cliché but it's true. Make the tough decisions up front; no matter how controversial and you will thank yourself later for it. We did that and I organised the crap out of our day, but it meant I didn't care about a thing except enjoying every second of it, because I had done the best I could to make it the day it was. If you look back at your special day and there are little things that weren't 'just the way you wanted', you can't change it, it's done, so no looking back in anger!

That's it, all wrapped! I have had such a great time planning and prepping via Rock My Wedding. I wish you all the most magical weddings, or if you're already wedded, I wish you the happiest marriages, because being married rocks, don't let anyone tell you any different; it does and it's awesome.

Big love xxxxxx