Wedding season is nearly here! We met up with Catherine and Simon this weekend to talk about their day and check out The Kings Hotel in Christchurch where they’ll be getting married.

The hotel fronts onto one of the main streets but the hotel has handy use of the bowling green and ruins over the road. So after talking through our timings we went on a little wander to see what’s around.

The Bowling Club building is so pretty and we’re hoping we can twist the arm of whoever’s in charge of the match playing on the day to let us have a play on it during the drinks reception.

When we get boxes and albums back from the printers I tend to have a little bit of quiet time with them, give them a stroke and sniff their new papery smell before everything’s carefully wrapped up and passed over to clients. It’s pretty normal for me to forget to even show Ian before everything’s boxed up (ooops, sorry Ian!) and I always forget to get my camera out.

We got a lovely couple of new Portfolio Boxes through this morning and this time I did remember to take a shot of one of them. And that got me thinking… we’ve worked pretty hard this year to make sure all of our boxes, books and albums have been designed to suit each individual couple. Ian especially, has gone out of his way to make each design unique; sampling colours from bouquets and putting together new graphics and sourcing fonts to get just the right look for each couple. We’ve even snuck in some sneaky personal reference points in some of them (can you spot the Jolly Roger and waves on one of them?)

One of the bits I miss the most from my old job is putting together magazine covers. It was a right pain at the times and sometimes frantic and a bit stressful, but looking through my old collection of magazines now it makes me proud to see each and every one of them knowing how much work went into them all.

The contents of the boxes and books are ultra important of course, but when it’s on your shelf or your coffee table it’s the cover that catches your glance every day. Getting wedding products back from the printers now gives me a similar, excitable feeling I used to get seeing a shelf full of mags in WH Smiths.

I’ve dug out a few of my favourite book and box designs we’ve put together for our couples over the past year.

And I’ve made a personal pledge to take more photos every time the postman brings a new box in 2012:

We flippin’ cannot WAIT for Spring. I know it’s been a mild one but this winter feels like it’s gone on forever and the short days are relentless.

This is one of our last completely free weekends for a while and it’s been so lovely to be able to potter around the beach on sunny dusks. We’ve also been eating a hell of a lot of Swizzels Matlow, painting our hallway, watching Boardwalk Empire and Twin Peaks, wolfing down roast dinners at The Larder House and Pinning like there’s no tomorrow. I think I have a problem with the latter – I literally cannot stop.

Four more weekends until the clocks go forwards!

Photos taken on our Fujifilm X100

We ended 2011 with lots of Christmas sparkle. Melissa and Chris’s wedding was held just a few days before Christmas, with a ceremony at Bournemouth Town Hall (their last wedding before Christmas too) and a reception at The Three Tuns Inn in Bransgore, Dorset.

Mel and Chris really embraced the seasonal spirit with lots of magical decorations and cute attention to detail (we loved the mistletoe kiss during the ceremony and the beautiful ribbon on the cars).

Things started with me snapping up the bridal preps at Melissa and Chris’s beautiful cottage in Wimborne. The Christmas berries and mistletoes wreaths gave the florals a seasonal feel too, thanks to the handiwork of Arcade Flowers in Ringwood.

Just to keep things interesting bridal preps were interrupted at one point by the presence of a live Vole in the kitchen (a present from Cupcake the kitten). But just as Melissa seemed to ooze calm about her wedding day she disposed of it like a pro (simply picking it up and popping it into a jam jar glass).

A calm approach also worked wonders when one of the hired Morris Minors carrying the bridesmaids broke down en route to the Registry Office. Luckily the number for United Taxis is engrained into my brain (“double-five, double six, double seven!”) so Chris didn’t have to wait too long.

The ceremony was late in the day and as the nights were drawing in quick we only had about 20 minutes of daylight afterwards. But we loved how cosy and unique that made the day feel, especially as we got all our group shots snapped before the sun went down *air punch*…

Melissa and Chris’s Wedding Reception continues in Part Two