Getting creative for the big day!

I'm on a cost saving mission, since we hugely overspent on the wedding.

Firstly, let me say that men are useless...and this was the cause of an argument on Tuesday! We've been planning our wedding for around 6 months now, and Des has kept telling me he will just turn up - he doesn't seem to have wanted to get involved in any of the planing.

Since I'm pretty organized, I've been constantly telling him what I've bought/ordered and how much things are, I've also been trying to drag him off to see the photographer, the baker, the suit hire place, the jewellers etc. His response to everything has been "Honey, if you want it, get it!" or "Yeah, that sounds good!".

Anyway, on Tuesday I dragged him to visit the lady that's making our cake so we could both have input on the what we did and didn't want, and all of that fun stuff. That's now all chosen, and sorted, and £300 later, all is fine.

In the evening we had an appointment with the photographer since Des is yet to meet him. We only have another 2 months to decide on which of the guys 'packages' we want to opt for. We were there approximately an hour, going through what each package is and how much it costs and how the photographer likes to work and of course, the timings of everything. Our photographer, Howarth, said "well, there's only 3 months now huh?! I bet you're both excited?!"...

On our way home Des started moaning at the cost of EVERYTHING! Seriously - I've never heard anything like it! We had a discussion, which turned into an argument in the car because after adding everything up, we've overspent by a whopping £2,000! He tried to blame me for not keeping on top of things, and I said it was also his fault for telling me it was fine to go ahead ond order stuff! By the time we got home everything was fine and we'd make up, but I've had to borrow some money from my parents, which they're happy with, but I feel really, really guilty.

So, I'm now on a cost saving mission so that we stay within our new budget. Even going over budget by £100 - £200 will not be an option!

I wanted to buy t-shirts for my hen party with personalized 'writing' on them. The writing being in diamantes. I also wanted everyone to have t-shirts for the morning of the wedding with their role on it, since they'd be nice to keep! Little did I know that each t-shirt is £20 (minimum), and the cheaper alternative to that is buying iron-on names...which didn't work out much cheaper when you factor in the cost of the t-shirts!

So off I went to eBay. I bought 6,000 diamante rhinestones, some transfer paper and it only cost me £21 including postage! Today I began making the transfers to iron onto t-shirts. I need the following:

- 20x "Claire's Hen Party"

- 1x Bride to Be

- 1x Maid of honor

- 1x Mother of the Bride

- 1x Mother of the Groom

- 1x Bridesmaid
- 3x Sexy sister in law

And those are just for the hen party! The wedding day ones total about 10 transfers I need to make.

I got started on the transfers today, and managed to make 2 "Claire's Hen Party" transfers, ready to be ironed onto t-shirts, and also I made "Bride to Be". Each transfer took me in excess of 4 hours, and each transfer used up 750-800 diamantes (apart from the 'bride to be' one). The word 'party' uses up 144 diamantes alone!

I've ordered about 10,000 more diamantes, which should arrive early next week, and in the meantime I'll use up the ones I've already bought this weekend!

I took some photographs of what I've made so far. The little white squares are bits of plain paper so I can hold the tape when I'm putting on the diamantes 1 at a time, using a pair of tweezers! Each diamante is 1.8mm, so they're really tiny! You also have to put the diamantes on face down, and the words are written backwards so they can be ironed on the correct way!