What’s been happening??

Yep… it’s been a while and boy am I glad to be back! As ever, new ideas popped up and new opportunities came my way and my little fledgling corner of the internet took a significant back seat. This is not me saying the past year has been a dull, boring struggle… far from it! But it has been a year where I have found the balanced life I want and have made steps to ensure that I also am doing what I love and loving what I do. That is the most important thing for me.

In the build-up to leaving my secondary school teacher career (totally haven’t looked back!). I was approaching the final stages of planning for my wedding. A lot of what I did was handmade for my own wedding and I can remember a cousin of mine saying goodbye at the end of the wedding and commenting that “everything is so instagramable” which made me SO happy. In these final stages I became a Real Blogging Bride for Smashing the Glass. I loved writing about where I got my ideas and how we put our stamp on our day and how we created a unique inter-faith wedding.

After the wedding I carried on a little helping out with the odd ‘how to’ post and popping up with bits of advice to other brides who wanted to DIY their own weddings in their online groups. Ideas began to hatch, and I began to set up a little business designing and making chuppahs or chuppot (can call it either) which are the wedding canopies that Jewish people marry under. Lovely idea…. I was very excited, very keen to get it right and knew I had the skills and vision to make it happen. However, this is a very niche market and I was wanting to jump in head first and get going. But I found it challenging to get people to trust a new business in the industry or were not willing to pay even the cost prices. Aside from this I felt a bit stifled creatively and missed all the other elements of a wedding that I had enjoyed preparing for my own day. I loved helping people come up with ideas for their weddings and get them thinking about how they can handmake certain element, but this didn’t sit well within the chuppah designing business. I was effectively telling people ‘use me, but you can also do it yourself if you prefer’ and I know I kind of wanted to do both.

So, my brain started tinkering away and I realised my little corner of the internet still existed and may be the perfect solution to all my concerns.

Now LaurenD Loves has a focus… a newer, better, more useful focus. I want to help you have the wedding YOU dream of having and be able to do as much of it yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to get up at the crack of dawn on your wedding day to go to the flower market and then make up all the flowers that morning… but I want to help you have control of your day and its build up and ensure that you can turn your pinterest board ideas into a reality with the most pinnable or instagramable wedding imaginable.

What can you expect from me? A never-ending resource of new ideas I hope! Think ‘How to recreate that ombre wedding cake’, ‘How to use an old wooden pallet to create a stand out sign’, ‘how to write your own wedding ceremony’. I seriously could go on, but don’t want to give everything away right now!

Aside from this I am offering myself up to help you plan, prepare or support you on your big day with a range of services. I’ll still be popping out those spectacular chuppahs for you all, but I will also be offering things like;

• On the day co-ordination or styling to ensure that your visions for your day are turned into reality with you not having to worry
• Props, sign and place cards designed to your very particular requests if you are struggling the time to take the time out to make it all
• Wedding ceremony planning support if you have no idea where to start

Lots more will be revelaled very soon!

In the meantime, please let me know what I can do to help you DIY the perfect day! I am so excited to get all these ideas out to you all (and carry on using up alllllll the crafty supplies in my office!)

Lauren x