three bags full + a wedding snippet

I couldn't resist, two things actually. 

One...sharing a snippet of our wedding day joy, made all the more joyful by our fabulous photographer Lou. Honestly, she is the bees knees. People gush about their wedding photographer and I think it's a bit ridiculous to be honest. But she nailed it. Thank you, amazing Lou. Thank you.

Copyright Louise Buma / sunny + scout photography

Secondly, I am already experiencing withdrawal from being a homebody. I love to nest. It's my thing. I bake, and sew, and ok I don't clean too well...but I love having a home. Now we don't. And it is slowly driving my creative mind mushy. I don't like creative mushy mind, so I decided to do something about it. Enter Three Bags Full. A new blog to release some of that creative energy, pent up and frustrated. Three Bags Full won't be a blog like Cinderella at Brindabella has been. There will be minimal, to none at all, photos taken by myself. It is about what inspires me, things I like, catches my eye. 

I can hear you from here though: "We've seen it all before." You'd be right too. There a million blogs out there sprouting about products they want to buy, 'wish lists' and Pinterest finds. All a bit self-indulgent and consumer-gone-mad isn't it? Well I truly am hoping Three Bags Full won't become one of those blogs. Also, I might not even have the time/energy/internet service to blog on Three Bags Full as well as The Happy Campers. We'll see.

If you'd like to, pop over to see what I'm up to over there. If not, that's fine also.

little mrs emma

We did it.

We're married.

Happily.

Finally.

Exhausted.

We are packing up Brindabella as I type, in an empty study, just my computer left. Surrounded by boxes and packing tape and newspaper and bubble-wrap. The moving truck comes tomorrow. And then we hit the road on the weekend. Just each other. The husband and the wife, chasing the sun and our dreams and our unknown future.

I will check back in soon, promise xxx

Image by Louise Buma for sunny + scout photography

one month

It is now officially less than one month until The Wedding.

Less than one month.

As you can imagine, things are all go here at the moment. Grass is growing on the marquee site and being mown every five days religiously, running sheets of how the day will run are being written, RSVP's are  coming in thick and fast, hens and bucks parties are being organised, wedding night accommodation is booked, ceremony booklets finalised, dresses fitted and hair and make-up bookings and trials confirmed.

In previous monthly countdowns I've shared with you my latest wedding inspirations from around the wedding blog scene - this month, as we get to the pointy end of it all, I'll share some snippets of real wedding 'stuff'. Actual wedding paraphernalia, which seems to be taking over and consuming our house/garden/shed. Snippets, of course, in a very controlled manner. Less is more, after all.

29 more sleeps...

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

burlap bunting tutorial

Hello there - apologies for the lack of blogging, as you can imagine I have lots going on in the lead up to the big day, not to mention all the things we have to tick off our list before we pack up our house and hit the road. 

If you would like a little dose of Cinderella at Brindabella country style I am a guest blogger over on Polka Dot Made today with an easy tutorial to make some cute wedding decor bunting. Speaking of which I need to go and heed my own advice and make some more...

Head over here if you'd like to make some yourself :)

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

on flowers

Last week I travelled down the highway, closer to Melbourne, to visit my florist. Yeah I have a florist. Well, for our wedding anyway. My rad mum has taken up her lifelong goal of doing floristry courses - and I mean some serious floristry, she started with one class and now is totally obsessed and comes home with this amazing creations. It all happens at a little country dairy, converted by the lovely Georgie into her floristry workshop where she holds classes. Georgie doesn't advertise to do weddings anymore, she used to be a big shot florist in the big smoke, but now just prefers to run her classes and do an occasional wedding for friends or through word of mouth. Here is a wedding she did recently featured on Style Me Pretty (and psssst she's doing Giann Rooney's wedding at the beautiful Euroa Butter Factory around the same time as our wedding!)

There was no question in who would 'do my florals' for our wedding - Georgie was totally my go-to woman. She lives in this cute federation cottage with daisy bushes and red brick paths, has two adorable fluffy Border Collies and surrounds herself in flowers, beautiful flowers, all day. And her workshop blew my mind, I wish I had taken my camera but I was super silly and didn't. Fail! But it is a barn conversion type configuration, she has gutted the old stone building other than the original beams which have been polished and rubbed. There's a giant big worktable where students sit around and make their arrangements, when I was there it was laden with Christmas goodies like lush green wreaths, glittered cherries and pears and branches of holly. It's gorgeous - nirvana for the diehard cottage country style like myself.

I digress...Georgie and I talked all things flowers. I'm not going to divulge too much (I am still working on that balancing act of sharing our wedding planning journey on my blog and revealing too much to actual guests!) But here is a snippet of what we brainstormed...

It's probably no surprises...but I'll let you know there are some examples in there that I actually don't like at all and have just thrown in there to throw you all off the scent ;) Yeah, I'm crazy like that. Others are exactly what I asked Georgie to replicate.

Can you guess which ones are which?

Basically, I wasn't all bridezilla on poor Georgie - I totally trust her, she gets me and what our vision is for our wedding. We've left a lot of room for movement and I have given Georgie fairly free reign to create what she thinks works. That was a big step for control freak bride!

I think I enjoyed the flower selecting and brainstorming ideas as much as the stationery...almost.

Image boards made by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella from my pins

our wedding invitations

I am a self-confessed super stationery and graphic design geek. I love nothing more than designing beautiful notes, prints, cards and what not. Hours of entertainment can be had by me in photoshop and some creative juices flowing. Some brides-to-be are most excited about the dress, some about the flowers. Me? For me it was the stationery.

One night about a year ago, just after becoming engaged, I had a severe case of insomnia. I was tossing and turning in bed in the cottage staring out the glass doors across the dam (oh how I miss you sweet little cottage). Ideas of vintage illustrations, cursive fonts and different paper weights swirled in my mind. I got up, padded softly through the cottage to my computer, careful not to wake a restful Mr M and a snoozing Tessa in her little kennel on the back porch. I switched on my mac and got designing what would become our wedding stationery, I sat there for hours just by the light of my screen until dawn broke.

So without further adieu, I give you our invitation suite...

As you will know, our wedding is a celebration of all things rural, natural, agriculture, nature, livestock, country charm and rustic elegance = us. 

We knew we would have to be including a few cards in with our invites - things like a map, a reply card for our guests to easily RSVP, some information about a brunch we wanted to hold the following morning and accommodation details, as well as a gift registry card. A pocketfold seemed the logical choice, but after searching high and low I could not find for the life of me a kraft card A5 version (although I did find very similar but they were more of just a beige/tan paper, not my much coveted recycled kraft card!) After ruling out using an ivory one I took it upon myself to make them. Why yes I am quite bananas - I made all 75 of them (plus extra ones and more extras for ones that I stuffed up). 

I wanted a thick, luxurious, yummy ivory card for the invites and inserts. I headed straight to my favourite paper shop in Melbourne, Paper Point on Church Street in Richmond. Once upon a time I frequented here when I lived in the city and designed lots of pretty little things for pretty little people. Armed with a few samples Mr M and I trialled lots of different settings on my trusty home printer until we were confident that we had the right weight and stipple of card. These photos, on my monitor at least, read a bit more white than they are in real life, they're really creeeammmy!

The illustrations were purchased from various sources, mostly istock.com though and mostly were black and white - I tweaked them all in photoshop to give a sepia feel to match our coffee coloured lettering. I made the little chapel and marquee illustrations used on our map myself. After a giant search for the perfect tree we found the old knotted oak with feathery leaves and fell in love. Our map sports a Hereford, our information card some stalks of wheat, our gift registry card a cute pig and our reply card a beautiful Border Collie just like my Lily. 

The fonts chosen were Centaur for the majority of text, in all capitals and widely spaced, with Kunstler Script for our names, our guests names and 'Brindabella'. The perfect mix of classic and easy to read with elegant calligraphy. I thought if you don't use a calligraphy font for a wedding, when will you? :)

Our pocketfolds are wrapped in stretch lace bands to close them, which slide off. I then tied all with twine in a little bow. I wanted to create a layered ivory on kraft on ivory on kraft look. The pretty lace a rough twine were the perfect mix of rustic and elegant.

* For privacy reasons I have blurred a lot of the information on the actual invitations and inserts, I hope you get the sense and feel for them though.

A3 kraft card used for pocketfolds: Papermarc, Burwood Road in Hawthorn

Invites and inserts thick card: Rives Design in cream, Paper Point, Church Street in Richmond

Stretch ivory lace: Mary not Martha on Etsy

Twine: local bargain store

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

point + shoot: two months

When I decided to DIY lots of little (and big!) details for our wedding I don't think I realised I was literally giving up all of my weekends, which are now devoted to spray painting chairs...

...folding, folding, scoring, slicing, folding, folding, gluing...

...wrangling rusty ringlock into light fixtures, inspired my Katrina and Amie's...

...hand stitching little ruffles...

...designing and printing...

...so. many. jars!

...as well as co-ordinating little outfits and becoming a professional hot-glue-gun-wielder.

Not to mention The Scrapbook #1 and #2 which are in constant evolution and varying states of disarray...

Two months to go today...

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella


P.S. Head over to Lou's place to play point + shoot just like me.

rain rain go away

In my mind our wedding day is on a warm summers evening where we can utilise the outdoor space that abounds us and have the photos I've been dreaming of in the paddocks of Brindabella and at our shearing shed. Guests will play bocce on the lawn and sip on champagne, my Golden Delights will run about under the gum trees and the two clear walls of the marquee will be flung open to have a dancefloor almost under the stars.

In reality, I am very aware that we live in Gippsland. The weather could be anything on December 10th (for the record last year I noted that it was overcast and about 20 degrees which I would be more than happy with!) But it could rain, and it is the one thing I have been dreading, but is also the one thing I can't do a thing about. Unless I employ the Chinese government to do some cloud seeing the week before the wedding...don't tempt me. As much as I am a control freak with my spreadsheets and endless to-do lists for every aspect of this wedding - the weather is one thing I have no control over. And it's kind of driving me nutty.

No matter - I am telling myself the key is to prepare, prepare, prepare. Our ceremony is already being held in the local church as I was fearful of rain if we had the ceremony outdoors on the farm. Our guests will move to Brindabella after the ceremony for our pre-dinner drinks and canapes hour/s whilst we are photographed. This part is all outdoors and in the open - if it rains I'm screwed! So I promptly upped the size of the marquee we ordered to accomodate our guests mingling inside in the event it does happen to rain and everyone would have to down pre-dinner drinks and eats in the big tent.

Photos would have to be...creative. There are loads of cool gumboots and umbrellas I looked at, just in case we needed them (everything is crossed that we don't though!) I thought about fun and quirky umbrellas, clear umbrellas, rainbow colours but kept coming back to the big classic black tall umbrellas with a crook handle. We are trying to create a wedding that is fairly classic and timeless, still with homemade touches and personality thrown in, but we don't want to look at our wedding photos in 10, 20, 30 years time and scratch our heads! What were we thinking?!

After scouring ebay I found some great options - some white ones, some black ones, even this one which I thought would be nice. Then I was in the local $2 shop the other day and saw these for $7.95...and promptly grabbed three!

I am thinking about going back and getting another two - then the bride and groom has one plus bridesmaid/groomsmen duo as well...or actually looking at that coffee-coloured one on ebay perhaps we could have that one and the bridesmaids/groomsmen could have black? Undecided!

The Bureau of Meterology website has also become my new best friend. I have learnt that last year on December 10th in west Gippsland there was 3.8mm of rain, it was 18.4 degrees, one of the coldest days in December and overcast. Hmmm...not really telling me much about how this year's December 10 will play out but now I know how to read big long meterology reports. Handy. Oh and this December there is 60-70% chance of it being wetter than average apparently. Awesome (not!) 

Did it rain on your wedding day? Did you have a wet weather plan or any fun splashing in puddles?  Is it really good luck or do they just tell you that so you won't cry?!

Images found via my pins and by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

a site for sore eyes

Upon further reflection (have we had enough already of the lengthy/wordy posts?!) I realised I haven't really shared with my lovely readers where it is exactly we will be holding our wedding reception. I know, how rude! Especially seeing as though almost a year ago I said a post would be coming with the possibilities for marquee sites. Bad blogger.

My initial reaction after getting engaged was that we needed (yes, needed) to have a big fat marquee wedding in the middle of an open paddock - I had just the paddock in mind on my grandparents farm, our original farm here in Thorpdale, 'Ballina Park'. Perfect - a sense of home, history and a killer view.

Upon closer inspection this site was determined far too steep, I had convinced myself in my mind it was flat...in Thorpdale. Ha! The site was also a good two paddock drive from any road, making access a nightmare, not to mention power, toilets and if it (heaven forbid) rains on our wedding day. To say I was crushed would be an understatement. Sad bridezilla.

Site possibility #2 was above our 'gum tree paddock' - it was certainly flatter than site possibility #1 but it would still need the help of an excavator and still had access, power and toilet issues. Ugh. We originally envisaged getting married under the gum trees, that was until I decided the threat of bad weather was too much for my brain to cope with (and we also wanted a more intimate ceremony indoors and with religious aspects) and headed to our local country chapel. The issue with site possibility #2 was that this paddock would be sown down to potatoes at the time of our wedding. Great! Was my first reaction, the idea of a marquee in the middle of a flowering potato patch sounded pretty amazing. Then the sensible Mr M pointed out to me the nightmare of no parking in the paddock for guests and the ground all being cultivated. Imagine if it rained - mud pit! 

Cue sad bridezilla again. Where oh where could we put our marquee which was flat, close to a road, not in a paddock with spuds in it so people could park and had access to power? We sat in our study one night earlier this year perplexed...until I looked out the window...

Admittedly it did NOT look like this at that point. It looked more like a demolition site full of rocks and sticks and roots and the remnants of 17 cypress trees and 39 stumps (go here to see it once we had removed all that, smudged it, ripped it, spent about three weekends straight picking up more rocks, sticks and roots and then finally sowed it). We had only just established the fence and the rest was dirt, no lawn, not even a patch of paddock grass beyond the fence due to the ripping out of the trees and machinery churning up the earth. But it had everything ticked - flat (relatively, or easy to make flat), next to a house so no trouble with power or toilets, the caterers could even use our kitchen. 

It had the big gum trees which were a must for us, a water view over the dam at sunset, the paddock across the dam would be in flower with potatoes in December and guests could park in the paddock surrounding the ramshackle farmhouse. Talk about a lightbulb moment!

So that is part of the reason we worked so hard on getting the new west wing of the garden (which used to be paddock) underway, flattened and sown down to beautiful flat lawn. And isn't our garden gate cute? It will be an access point from the marquee to the house for guests and the caterers (who are actually going to set up shop in our carport = perfect). 

The big bonfire needs to be burnt and cleared - it contains all the cypress trees we pushed over as well as ALL the plants/shrubs/trees that we pulled out of the jungle garden. The big logs we stacked there for firewood also have to be moved, as well as the old red bricks from the hothouse which we demolished. (Love me some old red bricks, we planned to do red brick paths around the farmhouse - obviously now those plans are no longer! So many plans are no longer...)

Mr M is going to mow the marquee site regularly in the weeks/months before the wedding and under the trees where our pre-dinner drinks and canapes will take place. We will probably fence it off from sheep also from now on, as the marquee site is essentially in a paddock outside our house yard.

So what do you think? Isn't it always the obvious solutions that are the best? Any lightbulb moments going on for you?

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

wordless wednesday: slice, score, fold, repeat

Playing along with Faith, Hope and a whole lotta Love.

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella