a texan open house

so... here is the reason i flew all the way to america, for bryan and dominiques open house! after prepping with bryans mom and sister last night and the night before we had everything ready to go and just waited on people to arrive... which they did!

i was so excited to be here for the second part of the demke wedding and it was so fun to be with bryans familyand meet them all, laugh with them and get to know them... they are the loveliest! certainly makes knowing dominique will be living on the the other side of the planet a lot easier, with them around to love and support her!

bryans family made this gorgeous frame for the newlyweds, (complete with a slot in the top of the frame) for each person attending to write on a heart and give their "well wishes for the new mr & mrs" i love it!

so an open house... is where friends and family come to the family home to meet the newlyweds, pass on their regards and eat... i have never been to one before, but texan style involves a lot of food! smoked/seasoned/ roast meat, home made bread rolls (drooooooool), cowboy caviar (super yum) lots of veggies and some excellent desserts from bryans mom, peach cobbler (also yummmm!) and some contributions from me: chocolate truffles, choc chip cookies and brownies! what a spread!

and to top it off, root beer, home made by tims brother with dry ice. how fun that was to watch!

ladies and gentlemen... may i present mr and mrs demke. :)

and my favourite bit? oh my gosh, fireworks!!!! in texas they are totally legal with no restrictions (took me a while to get past this seeing as they are totally illegal in australia! i mean that's a given considering how dry it is here and the fact that the whole country could go up in smoke over the summer months. fire danger is constantly on high back home! but fireworks! those things are amazing. there was an entire table covered in them and we were setting them off in the backyard for hours much to my absolute delight!

about to start the afterparty with some big ass roman candles. i am in love with fireworks and loved every single second of this evening. if this is what america is all about, i have a feeling i am going to love it here! ♥

wedding cake!

so, this definitely deserves a blog post all of its own... bryan and dominiques amazing wedding cake! as soon as a date was set for the wedding, i contacted steph from mocha baby sweets in ellenbrook, (whose instagram page i had been following stalking for quite some time praying that i would one day have an excuse to call upon her for a cake... and woop there it is!) with a inconveniently short amount of notice... and thankfully she was not only willing to work with it, but seemed to be able to see exactly what i was describing to her.

fast forward a few weeks, a few more emails and this incredible cake was delivered to the valley view restaurant for the wedding reception. we were so thrilled with it and stephs excellent communication up until the day... and the best bit? it tasted just as good as it looked! the bottom tier was chocolate mud cake, covered with fondant, painted with a gold coat and the top was red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream icing. amazing!! 

seriously can't wait another excuse to use her, she is amazing!

d e m k e w e d d i n g

it's finally happened. after the last thirty-five days of crazy planning, we pulled it off and bryan and dominique got married today! who knew it was possible? but... to be honest, all it's done is make me realise what i am capable of if i have more than a month haha

dominique looked so beautiful in her dress and as you can see, was blissfully happy, so it made all the hard work worth it ♥

it is such a blessing to know that our marriages as members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints are for not only this life, but for the life to come and will last throughout the eternities. that being said, i'm glad that niques has made a good choice in marrying bryan. he is great fun and has fitted into our family perfectly, as though he has always been here, we kind of like him a lot.

the complete kendall family!

the best man and i, showing up to grace the wedding as the maid of honour. i love love love the suits and ties the boys ended up choosing (from roger david) and my dress was ordered from asos... i was so thrilled with it, took a chance on the size and it arrived during the peak christmas period from london, in just four days! hooray for asos!

my favourite father in law and husband

dominique and i. how lucky i felt to be beside her on the biggest day of her life. i love you girl!

niques and her mum. i love this photo, it made me crazy happy.

the pinkall crew outside the temple after the sealing. i love this shot too. there are some people that become family, and this right here, is family. ♥

it was the most perfect day for it, it had been so hot over the last few weeks, and then all of a sudden it died down today and after a disgusting start to the week, we had a beautiful 26 degrees!

my beautiful friend jamie-lee took over my camera and snapped these gorgeous pictures for me while i played bridesmaid, it was a nice change to being behind the camera for once.

our little family. how i love them!

and my little flowergirl, in a dress lovingly made for madeline by her insanely clever nanna. who also spent hours adding sleeves to dominiques dress. we are so lucky to have her.

such a beautiful girl, so glad her day was perfect!

we are waiting on professional pics, but will try to wait calmly while they are done... i will certainly report back once we have them, with pics of the decor and reception venue etc. but these will have to do for now. but it's done! she's married...

congratulations mr & mrs demke 

♥

final touches

wedding is tomorrow... and we are all sorted! we have just delivered this awesome seating chart to the venue, which i spent a few hours stamping names onto yesterday. it's a blackboard that hangs on our wall, which until last week still had the menu from my friends wedding printed onto it from the last time i loaned it out. with some chalkboard pegs attached with a little blu-tack and some pieces of scrap booking paper cut in half, we were ready to go. easy as!

a close up... simple yet effective!

and our "wishing well" or in this case, a bird cage to put cards for the love birds. as you'll see eventually, there are a lot of bird cages going to be used at the reception, so it fitted in perfectly with the theme.

i am so excited to see it all set up and ready to go... one more sleep and it is wedding time!

♥

wedding favours

warning, wedding sneak peek! if you are lucky enough to have been invited to the wedding of the year (haha) and don't want to know what the wedding favours are going to be, then look away now!

i wanted to make the place cards and the favours one thing, so had settled on these gorgeous natural card boxes available here, which were conveniently located locally, so we were able to collect them (a necessity with our short time frame!) and as we received each rsvp, i hand stamped them with my alphabet stamp set (available here) and tied them off with navy ribbon from spotlight. easy done!

only thing is, with just days to go until the wedding, my plan of making brownies and cutting a large piece for each box fell by the wayside, when i sat watching our household devour a box of coles ultimate white chocolate chip cookies, to which i suggested having those in the boxes might be a better idea? it was met with such enthusiasm that i called the local coles, who were only too happy to make us a bulk order, which we collected the next day and boxed up ready for the wedding. coles for the win!! seriously, our local is amazing!

so there you have it, favours complete, and the countdown is on! 

p.s. if you live in australia and haven't tried these cookies yet, do yourself a favour and get into coles asap and try them, you will not be disappointed!

wedding invitations ♥

now seems as good a time as ever to show off these amazing wedding invitations i managed to get for bryan and dominiques wedding, which is inching closer by the day! obviously we were on a pretty tight schedule time wise, so i needed to find something that was ready to go, could be personalised quickly and that we could print ourselves. dominique and i had a look on etsy in the hopes we ccould find something we were happy with and came across something that was absolutely perfect, right here. 

a few tweaks to make it exactly what we wanted and we had this by the following lunchtime, ready to print and send off! we were so thrilled with how quickly the girl was able to have them done for us.

as they were from an american etsy seller, they were set up to be printed front and back, with the invite and the striped page, but as things here don't work like that, i had an idea do them a little differently and print the striped page on sheer paper so that it was a top sheet... and it looked exactly how i hoped it would!

and as an awesome added bonus, we were able to have the rsvp cards changed to an invite to attend the temple . winner!

they are so perfect and we are so thrilled with them. long live etsy and officeworks with their print while you wait option!