This afternoon is all about getting to know WWW’s newest real bride Amy. Amy is a craft lover with her own Etsy shop and she has a vision of an eco friendly personal wedding. I cannot wait to get to know Amy better over the coming months. Please do give her a warm welcome :-) XOXO Lou

 

Hello!

I’m Amy and I’m very excited to be blogging for WWW! I live in Otley, a sleepy West Yorkshire market town, with my husband-to-be Dan, my beautiful 1 Year Old Rose, and our silly cat Sullivan. On 21st June next year I will be getting married to Dan and becoming Amy Wilson, I can’t wait. We’ll be getting married in the lovely historic Yorkshire town Saltaire, and all the big things are booked so now I can enjoy planning the all important details.

 

Dan and I met through work, at Waterstones, 4 years ago. I had a huge crush on him (I have repeatedly typed and then deleted his nickname but will just have to go with “him” from fear of the wedding being cancelled), and was overjoyed and shocked in equal measure to find that he liked me too – at the Christmas do, I’m sure that many a couple can thank a few festive drink with colleagues for their relationships! Months passed, Dan left Waterstones to become a psychiatric nurse, we moved in together, got a cat. I think that we realised early on that we’d found something special, and made the decision to start a family. Rose was born last July, and is absolutely perfect. I love her so much, and I love Dan more than ever – I’m so proud of what an amazing dad he is.

We had talked about marriage before we had Rose, but only as part of the plan to have a family – before I met Dan I really didn’t think that I was bothered about getting married at all, but it seems a really nice way of cementing our family unit. Plus Rose is a Wilson, so I want to join the gang! I know it’d be more traditional to get married PRE baby, but I felt so desperate to start a family that a wedding wasn’t a top priority, and it seemed silly to plan a wedding too soon after having Rose – I’d have had a big jelly belly and wanted to be in bed by 9 if we’d planned a wedding in the first year!

So it wasn’t a huge surprise when Dan proposed, plus we had chosen the ring together at a lovely antiques shop in York (while all the shop ladies coo-ed over baby Rose!) But the “when’s he gonna do it” was exciting! He popped the question at Edinburgh Zoo, on our first proper mini-break as a family at the beginning of March. We’d just seen the pandas (awww, as I type thing the lady panda still hasn’t given birth so fingers crossed for a healthy panda cub), and Rose had nodded off in her pram as we looked out over the whole zoo/city from a lookout spot at the top of the zoo. It was quite early in the morning, the zoo was really quiet, and it was a beautiful wintry day – it felt perfect. I was somehow completely surprised, I didn’t even notice he’d got down on one knee to start with, and getting the ring together had the plus of me loving the ring!

 

I like to think of myself as quite a creative type, I sew in my spare time (I’m smirking at the thought of spare time with a one-year-old, perhaps I should have typed “I sew by night”), and have a little craft business selling my hand sewn felt creations (www.etsy.com/shop/amypanda). So I’d love to make a lot of the little details for the wedding and have lots of ideas I hope to follow through on. I guess we’re planning what the world of wedding blogs might call a vintage style mis-matched eclectic affair (so the relatives asking to hear when we’ve decided a colour scheme will be disappointed to hear that there wont be one), so whatever I do or don’t get around to making doesn’t have to be perfect or matching, which I hope will make it easier. I’ve already started collecting “bits” from our amazing local car boot sale.

 

I don’t want to get carried away and forget about what I want our wedding to be, so please remind me if I get bogged down in schedules or shoes that all that really matters is…
1) ROSE. She’s my world, so why would this day be any different. I don’t want a wedding where children are banned or seen but not heard, and it never fails to make my eyes fill with tears to think of her as a bridesmaid all grown-up (she’ll almost be TWO! Practically an adult!)
2) It’s personal. My worst nightmare is buying some expensive wedding which is just like everyone else’s. Dan works so hard to support us as a family, so to blow a fortune on a wedding that doesn’t really mean anything is the opposite of what I want to do; sure the wedding is sort of “the bride’s day” but I also want it to be a massive thank you from me to Dan for how amazing he is.
3) Green. Not the colour. We want the wedding to reflect our own attempts to care about our eco-footprint. I feel uncomfortable with the whole super-consumerism that is the wedding industry, so hope to think green when making decisions about stuff like food, flowers and clothes. I’m really excited to tell you about a brilliant vegetarian caterer we’ve chosen, and my ideas about sourcing local flowers.
Well, that’s me. Look forward to sharing all of my wedding decisions and plans, hopefully writing them down will encourage me to realise when I’m getting carried away!

Amy x