The Journey To Our Wedding.....

Here's the plan for those of you who have asked, or for those who maybe interested! For obvious reasons (WE ARE GETTING MARRIED) this blog is going to be very quiet for the next few weeks but you can keep up to date on whats happening at:
https://www.facebook.com/Sarahpluslaura
or
We'll be tweeting from @SarahplusLaura
oh and Instagramming as always at: SARAHPLUSLAURA, you know how much we love our photos!

Thank you to those of you already following we love to read your comments and thank you so much for the love and support!

So the plan:

Mirage we are coming for you!

Saturday 21st June: We're on a jet plane heading to Vegas to arrive at 9pm local time! We have a party of 16 joining us so the fun starts here!

Sunday 22nd - Wednesday 25th June: Hanging out in Vegas, grabbing a limo, seeing Calvin Harris, making the most of American food and you know checking out Vegas! Also topping up the tan and starting to relax (hopefully). Plus Laura will be checking out ComicCon at some point #exciting!!!!

Wednesday 25th June: Next stop Boise, Idaho! Meeting up with family and friends who didn't join us in Vegas to see the sites of Laura's home town.

Thursday 26th - Friday 27th June: We also plan to float the Boise river, climb Table Rock to get the best vista of the city, show the non-American's the joy of Walmart and all you can eat diners and other American treats.
Also at this point we'll be fitting in a hair trial and other last minute wedding prep.

Friday 27th June (evening): Heading to our venue to set up our welcome BBQ ready for the rest of the guest to head up later that evening (GET SUPER EXCITED)

Sneak-peek of our Venue!

Saturday 28th June: AM: We get ready, most of our guests get taken to Idaho City for Frontier Day (Sarah's very jealous she loves a bit of live action history) but then........

WE GET MARRIED! THE WEDDING! THE SEALING OF THE DEAL! THE MOMENT WE HAVE BEEN DREAMING ABOUT, WISHED FOR and SPENT 18 MONTHS PLANNING!

Sunday 29th June: Throw ourselves and a fair amount of our guests down a river, white water rafting! The others are taking a leisurely trip on a trip in the mountains!

Hopefully we return with ALL the guests!

Monday 30th June: We say goodbye to most of our guests at the airport or wave goodbye as they head off in various different directions in the world

Tuesday 1st - Thursday 3rd July: Chill out in Boise, hang out with Laura's family - recover :)

Thursday 3rd July PM: Head back to a different area of the Idaho Mountains - McCall - for a traditional, all American 4th of July with Laura's family and some of our Aussie friends! Lots of food, hanging out on the lake and then fireworks - Sarah's first 4th of July!

Sunday 6th July: We fly to Seattle for two days on our own, seeing the sights and having some us time.

Wednesday 9th July: We land back in the UK!

Thursday 10th & Friday 11th July: Back to reality

Saturday 12th: Prepare the house for guests as Sunday the 13th is Sarah's Birthday!!!!

Monday 14th July: Okay we're done, it's over, back to the real world and starting our lives as Mrs & Mrs Smith!

See you when we get back!

All In Aide Of A WEDDING.....

We had heard about the all the crazy things that Brides do in preparation for their wedding and we agreed that while we want to be the best versions of ourselves for the day we don't want to miss out or look back and feel like the lead up to the wedding was one long diet. I mean Vegas on a diet - hells no!

So in order to get ourselves wedding ready we have undertaken a few activities and lifestyle changes that will hopefully have us looking our best for the big day. We therefore dedicate this blog post to the weird, wonderful and somewhat wacky prep we have so far completed:

1) The Keto Diet: This was started by Laura after seeing one of our friends have great success with it.The theory is that you get your body to enter a state of ketosis:

Info from: http://io9.com/what-you-should-know-about-the-low-carb-ketogenic-diet-489267213

A word of warning though - if you are interested in this read up on it, it's not for everyone! Oh and feel free to ask the lovely Laura about it, she's got some amazing keto friendly recipes to share!

2) The exercise; Everyone knows it's not just dieting that gets your body in shape it's also the moving around a bit too! You will know by now that neither of us are gym bunnies, in fact you are more likely to find us walking fast in the opposite direction to the gym that in it but we try. In fact we'd try anything to avoid paying to do exercise! So here is a low down on the top exercises we found that worked for us, fitted in with our hectic lives and weren't too bad to actually do.

Firstly Tae-bo: I (Sarah) have done Taebo on and off for years - like 16 years or something crazy. Billy Blanks has an 8 minute work out that I used to do before school, or work and it is a great stress reliever. I mean punching at pace while imaging the face of someone who just really annoyed you and keeping fit - brilliant! Here's the 8 minute work out:

Tone It Up: Well in particular the Tone It up Bikini Ready work outs, great for exercising all parts of your body and our favs were the all over body work outs or the arm workouts. These girls go hard but it's only for 15 minutes so it's manageable. This is our fav arm workout:

Then there is the inevitable cardio. I've been getting mine in by walking to the next tube stop - a distance of just over a mile, in fact from car to work I walk just over 2 miles. Then on the nice evening we head out for a half an hour jog, it has certainly helped increased our health even if the impact hasn't been massive.

3) Teeth Whitening: You may have seen the photos of this beauty treatment. We got a great deal on GroupOn and ended up in a beauty salon just down the road from my first London flat. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Laura sensibly kept her phone with her while I found myself with 45 minutes of staring at the ceiling while my teeth were blasted with ultraviolet light. Every 15 minutes the beautician would check we were okay but other than that it was as simple as lay back and relax - you know as much as you can with your mouth forced open! As were weren't getting our teeth bleached they warned us that they wouldn't be WHITE, just returned to their natural colour but we were happy with the results.


4) Tanning: It is fair to say while England has not provided the constant sun shining we'd have liked it has given us a few weekends to lay out in the garden and work on the tan but as time is of the essence we also splurged and bought ourselves Tanning Shop minutes and have been popping in on an adhoc basis for the last few weeks. well it's almost 40 degrees C in Vegas so we couldn't turn up white, we'd be fried!

5) Face Gym: Definitely the most random of our pre-wedding activities! The title is self explanatory though, it's a gym for your face. Thankfully we didn't have to do the work. In the middle of Selfridges we took a seat, laid back and had our faces prodded, massaged, stretched, rolled in fact check out the menu!

http://www.facegym.com/

6) Hair! A rather important part for us the hair. Between us we have a LOT of it, and as of yesterday we now have even more! Once again GroupOn came up trumps and I got an amazing deal at an amazing salon (Silverclips https://www.facebook.com/SilverClip) for my extensions. It took all of 90 minutes for me to walk out with the longest hair I have ever had. On the other side of London town my gorgeous fiancee was hooking up with her favourite gay hairdresser Adam to have her highlights done and once again become the blonde bombshell she likes to be. Check us out:

7) Boo Tea Detox: The other, and final, part of our wedding prep has been our teatox for the last two weeks. Again recommended by a friend who had lost more than a few pounds. The detox is actually really simple - drink tea! Well drink the daytime tea every morning and the nighttime tea every other night. However with our schedules, late nights and general manic-ness even the simple became difficult at times, but we made it through. The energy and appetite suppressor in the day time tea worked so well, I would honestly drink it without it being part of the teatox. The nighttime tea had the detox effects it was meant to have too so we would definitely recommend it if you want that final boost pre-holiday! The site we used was: http://www.bootea.com/
And we have a 20% off coupon we can share: http://friends.bootea.com/x/IvMBM6

There is probably a lot more that we've been doing but these are the highlights, turns out this wedding is bringing out the high maintenance in us both!

It's The Final Week!

OK - trying to do anything that isn't wedding related or talk about anything non-wedding is impossible! I am that person, we are that couple! It's the last week before we go and the wedding is literally EVERYTHING!

This is not to say that we are intentionally making this week all about us, but we are still running around like mad women and the wedding seems to be the main reason - that and the epic holiday we are about to embark on! Oh and the fact that we have 16 other people descending on Vegas with us and  57 coming to the wedding itself!

At any given point!

The last weekend was run with such efficiency injected with moments of madness that I am surprised we both made it in to work on Monday morning! We had to pack up in Birmingham and make the trip back to my parents' house in Reading, so this really was the weekend to finish packing, planning and being housewives (to be) - well of sorts :)

We arrived in Birmingham on Friday night after a car journey that consisted of creating and managing new and existing to-do lists. We almost planned every hour and for two people who don't like to have our weekends too defined this was not usual behaviour, but needs must.

Having arrived at our house by 10pm, we settled in on the couch to enjoy our melted Camembert, jam and bread and set to work. By bed that night, we had finalised our seating chart, played our every scenario that could make someone unhappy/uncomfortable and sent it over to our wedding planner. We also finished our programmes, thanks to the design genius that is Julia Green - one of our amazing bridesmaids and awesome artist!

The alarm was set for 10.30am so we could get a head start on the day, this all went very well until we discovered the new series of Awkward - well we had to have down time right?! We managed to find time to start and finish the pub quiz for our Friday night welcome BBQ - it was a task I felt more than at home sorting out! We also finished our request list for the DJ, assigned our first dance song (there was major debate between two of our favourite songs for this) and choose our song for our 'parent dance' - as my Dad isn't coming we awkwardly couldn't do a Father-Daughter dance, even though we wanted to for Laura's Dad.

L also surprised me with this gorgeous bear, I have always had a real soft spot for Me2You bears, ok, maybe I filled my whole bedroom with them at one point but seriously they are so cute and they are grey because, as the story tells us, the original bear was left out in the cold so his nose went blue and his fur went grey when all he wanted was to be loved.

Anyways that's beside the point, the bear is so cute, I cried, we got distracted and then we managed to refocus and finish the ceremony, our bridesmaid gifts and plans for the day. Our wedding planner found us a bartender so yay that's our day almost completely sorted. ALMOST!

The evening was swallowed up by the England game. I had somehow managed to book us tickets to see it on the largest screen in Birmingham - which sounded great. What I had failed to do was read the small print - we had to be at the venue for 8pm, and that the venue was a disused warehouse associated with raves! I have never been in a club situation where I've seen people openly snort cocaine, throw lit cigarettes into a crowd and smoke pot non-stop - it was an experience! Not one we will be looking to repeat anytime soon! But at least the screen was good!


We returned home at 1.14am, I know this because we left the rave/warehouse at 1.02am and were incredibly impressed it took 12 minutes to get home, in London the times we have wandered off piste and ended up in this situations it has taken us at least an hour to get home! Birmingham win!

For obvious reasons our Sunday start was slower and our schedule was delayed but we still managed to fit a LOT of wedding stuff in, and tidied all three floors of our house as we will have guests to take up with us the next time we are back as it'll be my BIRTHDAY! That's right, the fun keeps going!

Wedding activities included putting on our corsets and petticoats that we'll wear under our wedding dress and filming our first dance. We read somewhere that it was worth doing a test run and boy were we glad we did. The petticoat especially made it all seem more real, we tried and conquered a dip, we spun, we tried different holds and ultimately finished feeling better that we started. We also attempted the macarena, the Dougie, and the gyrating dance from that classic SNL skit with Jim Carrey to 'What is love?' by Haddaway. We also practised 'the kiss' - any excuse, right!!!!

The other wedding, or pre-wedding check we needed to do was with a projector Laura had saved from being thrown out at work. We wanted to use it to watch a film on the Friday night and it was AMAZING! We ended up having dinner sat on the floor watching Awkward play on a screen that fitted a whole wall. I was so excited I even set it up to show my Mum when we got in Sunday night at 1am!

And other than the car journey back to Reading where we wrote our BBQ shopping list and tried to figure out how much we recommend for spending money, that was our weekend.

Ah no I missed a bit......we also discovered a brand new, massive ASDA has opened up 15 minutes from our house - it's sad to admit but this is great news for us!

Right that really was it, I don't think we could have fitted anything else in if we tried but that still leaves us with a packed week, every evening with have something going on and we are still to practice our vows........5 days till we leave, who's panicking!!!!

Proud To Have FOMOS!

Up until yesterday I had never heard of FOMOS, or of having FOMOS but it’s strange how you can go through life until one day something someone says makes sense, they give a name to something that you knew you had but didn’t realise others were the same!

And no FOMOS isn’t another gay thing….. FOMOS suffer from fear of missing out on sunshine.

Yesterday I opened the Evening Standard (article) on my journey home and found an entire article about FOMOS. I have known I was suffering from my time at school, I was last in from any sunny lunch time, I would only sit in the sun and ‘not going out’ on a break was not an option.

Having said that, at the age of 14/15 I was not a fan of sunbathing it was more just the fact that a tan made me look healthy and the more I was out in the sun the more I was likely to tan.

However, it was after I graduated and entered the world of work that my FOMOS got bad. I was a social smoker-hanger-on just so I had a reason to be outside. My Manager at the time actually thought I smoked but no, I just stood outside, face to the sun.

And driving home, to maximise sun exposure I drove home in a bikini – no lie – and not my proudest moment but it’s true. Before leaving work I would put my bikini on and then head out dressed as I had been all day but ready to strip if the sun was hot enough! Hell, I did everything to avoid the FOMOS!

Meeting Laura was the first time I really had to acknowledge I suffered with FOMOS though. Up until that point I had gravitated towards other FOMOS suffers who felt like I did. We’d all be first out the door on a sunny day and I just thought that everyone else was odd. Did they not realise the sun is an unpredictable beast that disappears as quick as it arrives, that it constantly has to try to avoid clouds and give us our vitamin D?!

Laura was baffled by my behaviour every time I saw the sun. She had no concept of why I would happily spend my lunch breaks chasing any patch on sunshine I could find, or how quick I could de-robe to get my tan on. I think she even called me desperate! The cheek!

It wasn’t until we went to Australia to live that I managed to get my FOMOS under control, the desperation subsided and I could relax knowing that day after day I didn't need to chase the sun. It was amazing. 

Right now I think I have my FOMOS under control, that and Laura is now also a mild sufferer (after 6 years of not having a proper Idaho summer) so we are together in our need to get outside most of the time. You may have seen a few garden pics taken in the few hours of sunshine we were lucky enough to have!

In the article it mentions that FOMOS put life on hold as the sun comes out, this is so very true, I have rearranged catch ups that were booked at restaurants to avoid my FOMOS ruining dinner – there is nothing worse that me mournfully looking at the sun through a window!

I have also realised in announcing this that maybe my FOMOS is not that under control…it was only 2 days ago that I found myself stretched out on a ledge of the Bank of England catching rays, ignoring the fact that my hands were placed in dirt- dark grey pollution kind of dirt- just to get as much of my body in the sun as possible.

Oh and I recently found a office that reflects the sun so if I am talking to Laura on a lunch break I can stand in the prime position and catch up with two favourite things – Laura and the sun! J

So I have FOMOS, I don’t deny it but then I know I am not alone. In a city that averages 1481 hours (thats only 62 days) of sunshine a year I have to be or I’d miss it and return to being peely-wally (pale!)!!!! 

Two Weeks (& Three Weeks) To Go.....

It’s less than two weeks to go! That’s right, 2 weeks!!! Did we miss the last 18 months? I swear my life is just flying by - but when you have been waiting for something so long, it is amazing how long 2 weeks seems.

Right now, and I’m not sure either of us should admit this (what, with work and such still going on), it is hard to do anything but think of wedding stuff. Neither of us want to miss a moment and that means that we are distracted with thoughts of the wedding at pretty much ANY time. Seriously, people at work have stopped asking about the wedding now as they fear that they will be caught in a monologue about all the exciting things we've been doing!

But as you lovely blog readers know, that’s why we have this blog…..so we can waffle on about all the stuff we've done without a phone call interrupting us or work getting in the way! J

As anyone who follows us on Instagram will have seen, we PICKED UP DRESSES!!! We had our final fitting and brought our dresses home! The actual fitting was WAY more nerve racking than the first fitting – that fitting was the time to size the dress, realistically this fitting should have been called ‘you better hope you fit the dress!’ We both needed minor alterations that could be done on the spot but it was overwhelming knowing this is it!

So yes, we did see each other’s dresses - but to be honest it was a blur, we just can’t wait to see the finished look on the day! 19 days away!!!! We had Alison, one of our bridesmaids, with us to learn how to do my bustle and she was running about getting our veils so she could see the whole outfit! The excitement meant we worked up quite a hunger – all of us were like kids in a candy store and I am sure the fitters were glad when we bounded out laden with bags!

The other huge task we ticked off is the DJ list! This started out fun, got incredibly stressful and ended up with a list we hope will have the party rocking and the guests dancing all night. It is fair to say L and I have VERY different music tastes, in private we compromise and L and her brother have inducted me to rap while I have shared my love or all things cheese led by Britney Spears! But in public, neither of our ‘favourite playlists’ created the vibe we wanted so we went back to the drawing board. We got input from families, friends, we went through our ipods, the ‘best wedding songs’ lists and played almost all the party cd’s we could find – our poor neighbours!

Then we had to narrow the epic list down into 20 must play and 30 play if you can track lists to send to our DJ. Let’s hope we made the right choices –the tunes certainly span the decades from Chuck Berry to LMFAO to Elvis and Macklemore, bring on the dancing!!!!!

This weekend we also packed! Okay, yes this seems a bit premature, but bear in mind we have had over a year to find, buy,  plan and organise this so 2 weeks ahead is not THAT early J Also, most of our clothes are in Birmingham, so we only have one more weekend up there to put things together! Thankfully the packing was easy. We tried on EVERY outfit, found outfits we had forgotten about, realised we fitted into clothes we hadn’t worn in ages and finished up feeling like maybe we should get an earlier flight and start the wedding fun now! (If only J)

We had lunch with Laura's Nan for her 89th birthday, and asked her a very important question - would she be our Flower Nan? We saw it on a site and thought it'd be the perfect way to honour Laura's 'life of the party' grandmother. Luckily, she said YES so will be going down the aisle first!

In terms of wedding planning, we entered the 'buy everything' phase that my manager warned me would arrive. It is a very simple phase, it is a dangerous phase BUT it is so fun! You just say ‘Yep let’s get it’ to any idea that was on the ‘should we / shouldn’t we list’. Screw the budget! (but not really, don't worry Mum!) This week that include ‘Feyonce and Wifey’ shirts – we can’t wait to get them and show them off!

Oh and we finally finalised the Boise schedule. As with every trip to Boise, we are faced with a to-do list that can’t be fitted in our time frame, we had to limit restaurant choices and prioritise activities that would work together time wise. Thankfully a few favourites from my last trip to Boise have made it on! Chuckarama and floating the river here we come! And Cheesecake factory – that’ll be my last act of indulgence before getting into the wedding dress!

Boise we are almost Idahome!!!!!!

Continuing on from last week we will continue to tan, we are almost at the golden glow stage J and it is actually making my teeth whiter #bonus!

L also dyed my hair as she called it ‘the colour I’ll be getting married with’ – to be honest it’s very similar to my natural colour but richer and maybe a bit darker! It’s true though, this is THE hair colour!

Our Boo Tea-tox  is also in full flow, we will do a separate post detailing exactly what this is as a few of you have asked but in summary it’s a lot of TEA and it does amazing things.

There you have it, can you believe it? 2 weeks to go……

2014 Summer Bucket List!!

Inspired by our friends at More Than Words, who do an awesome Summer Bucket List every year, and by the worry in our heads about LAWP (life after wedding planning), we decided to make a list, and keep it focused on the REST of the summer, our first in our new home in Birmingham.

So, without further ado...

What is on your summer to-do list??

Things To Look Forward To!

We are sure you can guess by now that every post for at least the next month will be about our wedding. Hey have you heard we are getting married? Well, we have been looking forward for this for so long, and we are just SO excited, so sorry not sorry! :)

Right now I/we are in that awkward balance between getting so excited we could burst and getting on with reality, it’s hard to pick an emotion sometimes!

While reality isn’t too bad for either of us, the travelling to and from work is taking vital time away from what we really want to be doing – finalising details, making sure everything is organised, making sure everyone is organised and planning our outfits! Oh and exercising and eating healthy – that takes time and effort (and will power!!)! We are trying to stick to the to-do lists, finding logical ways through what needs to be done and playing to each other’s strengths when dividing the tasks but all we really want to do is stay home together and enjoy this time.

Don’t get me wrong, at this point this isn’t stressful, it’s just busy! We only plan on doing this once and want everything to be perfect, we don’t want to look back and think ‘if only we had more time’.

Our Mum’s have been amazing, having L’s stateside has been such a help. Like L she is so organised and I would trust her to organise this wedding without us. Not only is L’s Mum super helpful she also has the ‘art’ gene and as well as helping out with our bridesmaid boxes at the very start of this process she is also making all the signs we will have around the venue! We can’t wait to see her and thank her in person as the barrage of thank you messages must be filling up every inbox!

Then my Mum - living with my Mum during the week means we can sit down on Sunday night and plan out our week, all 3 of us then walk away with our to-do lists and guaranteed my Mum will have hers done first and will be helping us do ours. A really good strength is that my mum thinks of EVERYTHING, I mean when we think we have it covered my Mum will list off 3 of 4 key things that we would have forgotten and been screwed! She’s also big into kicking everyone else into action – getting ESTA’s, booking things etc! Oh and we can’t forget the ‘wedding traditions’ she has reminded of that we would have been sad to miss……something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new, etc!

On days when excitement is reaching fever pitch all we can do is ring each other and sound like kids at Christmas. We will have a call just to talk about what we are excited about – seeing everyone, the venue, the food, VEGAS!, the table decorations, everyone having a great time, the restaurants we plan to go to, hiring the limo in Vegas, white water rafting, wearing our new clothes, everyone seeing the dresses and our plans come together – okay you get the idea- EVERYTHING!

And the fact that we haven’t had a holiday since last September means we are long overdue for a break! So even the thought of getting on a plane is exciting!

All I need to do now is figure out how to stop crying! Every card, incredibly generous contribution to our house fund, thoughtful email, text, tweet, facebook message or song!!!!! gets me. I will cry because I so damn happy, I’ll cry because I can't do anything else, I’ll cry from feeling overwhelmed at the kindness, I will CRY! I am hoping this excessive crying means I will not have tears left on the day. I know we will have our make-up genius on hand but there’s nothing she can do if I have a constant waterfall and at this rate that’s all it will be!!!

With every evening pretty much booked out at hair appointments, facials, nail appointments, eye lash extension appointments, tanning, L’s Nan turning 89, seeing the Bodyguard courtesy of our lovely friend Jemma, fitting in exercise and one last Nando’s, we know these last couple of weeks will fly, I just hope we don’t miss them! I am both wishing my life away and trying to hold on to every moment, ah the conflicts J