Hello lovelies,

I'm back with the second instalment of My Wedding Diary and this time I'll be talking about wedding invitations. Before I settled on my current invitations, I have browsed every possible UK website there is and some US ones too and have seen hundreds, maybe thousands of wedding invitations designs. I've seen many that I liked, few that I loved. Unfortunately I didn't fall in love with the price. We are doing our wedding on quite a small budget so I had to be very mindful of how much I spend on invitations. Because of our tight budget, I started to look further away from the UK, on some Asian websites. I remembered that I worked with Light In The Box in the past, reviewing some nail art products and that they offer wedding products as well. I shouldn't have looked...But I'm glad I did! They have some amazing stuff for weddings including beautiful invitations. That was exactly what I was looking for.

I'm going to be completely honest with you as always - I reached out to the Light In The Box representative I had contact on and offered to review some of their products in my wedding series if they send them to me as compensation. Cheeky? Yes! But I have dreamt up my wedding and I don't have money to pay for all of it so if I can get anything in exchange for review, great! Besides, I think this might help some future brides to discover their website where they can get MANY wedding items for fraction of the price they are sold for in the UK or US. Yes, some can be 'you get what you pay for' but with many I've been very pleasantly surprised how nice they are.

So let's get back to the invitations. Once I've had an approval, I checked out ALL of the wedding invitation at Light In The Box website...and there's a lot of them, over 300! I absolutely love the laser cut out type which can be more expensive to buy here in the UK. Here are some invitations that I loved and from which I have chosen the final one:

They all look beautiful, don't they? And compared to the prices of the similar invitations in the UK they can be a bargain! It was really hard to choose which one of these top six will be our final wedding invitation design but in the end I followed my gut and chose the one that I fell in love at first sight. Which one is it? This one...

They offer to print out the insert card as part of the deal but because they don't offer Czech language, I've decided to get just blank invitations and print them myself. That was the first plan anyway. My printer wasn't doing a great job at test prints so I ended up going to my local printers and have the insert cards printed for under £9. Not too bad. Then I managed to print the names and addresses on the envelopes myself.

I was very surprised how nicely the invitations were done, just like in the promotional pictures. That made me really happy and took a lot of stress off of my chest. The invitations are made of pearlescent cream paper and the floral cut out parts open up to reveal the printed insert card inside. Love it! To me, this invitation is not just a piece of paper to chuck out after a while but it's a nice keep sake where you can just replace the insert card and you have whole new use for it. I was also surprised that the envelopes have nice pearlescent inside, it's a lovely touch. The ONLY thing that was not a nice surprise was the smell of the invitations. They smelled like a paint thinner BUT after leaving them out overnight to air out (individually, not in a pile) the smell disappeared. I was so glad!

Overall, I'm very happy with the invitations and big thank you to people from Light In The Box for sending them to me and helping me with my dream wedding! These particular wedding invitations are available here.

So? What do you think of my choice? I hope you like them as much as I do and stay tuned for the next instalment of My Wedding Diary!

If you've missed the part 1 of My Wedding Diary, read it HERE.

Have a lovely day. Lucie x

*Invitations were provided in exchange for review

There were three options for our wedding in the beginning that we were considering - doing it in the UK, doing it in the Czech Republic or having a small civil ceremony in the UK and then do a celebration in the Czech Republic. We were considering third, split wedding option but in the end we've decided to do the whole wedding in the Czech Republic (not in Prague). The main reason was the cost - everything is so much cheaper there.

The Venue

One of the first thing I had to think about was the venue. That was a pretty easy choice for me since last year I attended my cousin's wedding who had it in the local hunters' lodge at the edge of a forest and I've decided the venue will do. Admittedly, it is nothing luxurious but our family has a history in there (my grandad is one of the hunters who takes care of the forest) and it will cost around £60 to hire it for three days! That's an absolute bargain compared to £1000 and more for venues in the UK. If you have a good budget then you could afford a beautiful wedding in one of the Czech castles!

The Decorations

I wanted to find a theme for our wedding and since I didn't want anything really specific (themed weddings are not usual in the CR) I settled on a cute crafted style. I have also decided that I don't want fresh flowers on my wedding. I know it's pretty unusual decision and to be honest my mother hates it and criticizes me for it a lot but that's just what I want. But also DIY decorations are much cheaper than fresh flower arrangements. I am currently working on my own floral table decorations but on that in another post ;)

The Dress

Yes, I know, the most important thing at the wedding is the wedding dress. Having a strict budget wasn't easy while buying a dress but I got quite lucky. I went to several bridal shops with my maid of honour to find the style of dress that will suit me the best. It was so hard not to fall in love with some of those dresses since they were usually all around £1000 mark. Once I knew what I was looking for I searched the internet for second hand wedding dresses hoping to find one I'll love. This option didn't work out for me in the end but if you're after reasonably priced wedding dress, buying a second hand one can sometimes work out great. Just make sure you look for some locally or within a distance you're willing to travel to because you really do need to try it on. I would never buy a wedding dress without trying it on first.

So where did I get my wedding dress in the end? My maid of honour and I made a trip to a Wedding Dress Factory Outlet in Bromley, London (now renamed to WED2B) and bought my dress there. All their dresses are under £500 which is awesome! It was super busy because it was Saturday and we waited almost two hours in line to try on my five chosen dresses. But in the end I found the ONE! I'm not going to tell or show you which one (of course!), for that you'll have to wait for some wedding photos ;)

to be contiued...

Have a lovely day! Lucie x