Is this the most ridiculous photo ever taken of me? Probably.

Skirt: Coast, Boots: YRU

You know those parties that are so much fun you forget entirely to take photos? That’s kinda how our house warming was! I apologise in advance that this post is a bit light on pictures, but there was too much wine and good times happening to get the camera out.

We decided to have our house warming less than a week after we moved in. We wanted it to be a way to thank everyone who had helped us get the house but also for everyone to get the chance to see it in it’s ‘before’ state! This was actually our first time ever hosting a party (well, except our wedding I guess) so we were quite nervous about it! I think it was a hit in the end though (the vodka watermelon probably helped).

What started off as quite a casual get together ended up being a pink vs tropics vs unicorn themed bash for our nearest and dearest. Our invites, designed by my babe Shauna, were totally based on the Coast skirt that I’ve been so obsessed with since I bought it.

I had them printed at printed.com, which was very reasonably priced. I got them in 400gsm and it cost about £12 for 25 invites (although I did have to print them twice because the first batch had the wrong bloody date on them. Whoops!)

As a theme was starting to emerge I was inspired to pick up some palm leaf napkins from H&M, some cactus covered balloons from Paperchase (neither of which seem to be on their websites, sorry!) and on the day I kind of tried to artfully arrange my succulents and cacti collection around the place. This massive bunch of flowers from Wildabout Flowers also went perfectly with the colour scheme.

The unicorn addition came when Skye from Whimsical Cake Company contacted me and asked if I’d like some treats for the party. Of course I couldn’t possibly say no! She sent us unicorn cake pops, biscuits and pink marshmallows with adorable faces on them. My mum surprised us on the day by bringing along these perfectly matched homemade mini cupcakes (if anyone’s interested the edible rainbow and unicorn cupcake toppers on the cupcakes came from Lakeland!)

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Cardigan by Lazy Oaf

Gosh, thank you so much for all your lovely comments after my I Need to be Honest with You blog post a few weeks ago. I was so touched by how many of you reached out with love, support and compliments for the blog, it made my heart so happy! It’s really difficult when you work for yourself and don’t get much feedback. Sometimes it can feel like you’re just spinning on an endless hamster wheel with no end in sight, not even knowing if anyone bloody cares. It was so amazing to hear back from you all.

I was also OVERWHELMED by the response from other bloggers and people who run their own businesses, telling me they’d been feeling the exact same yet were too nervous to admit it (publicly or to themselves). I quickly realised that, honestly, it’s not a bad thing to finally say out loud “Yeah, actually I feel a bit shit”. It doesn’t mean you hate your business, it doesn’t mean you want to quit, it just means you’re feeling a bit burnt out.

I’m going to give myself a mental break for a bit. I need to take some time to focus on me and to re-find my wedding blogging mojo. I’m still very much obsessed with weddings, I still very much love blogging and sharing them online, I just need to give myself some time and realise that it’s normal (and perfectly OK) to not feel 100% all of the time.

I also REALLY want to get back into blogging FOR ME again. While I will always love sharing amazing weddings, it is a bit weird to only write about a subject that you’re a bit removed from. Although I never wanted to do it myself, I always envied my friends that were fashion and lifestyle bloggers in that respect. After all, I haven’t been a bride for a VERY long time and sometimes I just want to be able to share the cute shit I bought and call it a day!

Some of you may have seen on my various social media platforms that I promised you a house renovation blog. Well, I’ve decided that instead of starting another site right now, I’m going to test the waters with a weekly column on Rock n Roll Bride. Maybe it will morph into it’s own ‘thing’ eventually, or maybe you’ll all hate it and yell at me to JUST POST MORE GODDAMN WEDDINGS PLEASE (ha!) But as I said, I want to get back to blogging FOR ME, so I’m going to try this thing out.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to my new blog series: Rock n Renovation!

In case you don’t follow me on social media, and you have no idea what I’m talking about – we bought a house! And in the words of those troll things from Frozen, she’s a bit of a fixer upper (LOL). Every Sunday I’m going to share updates on the renovations, as well as probably a few personal stories AND I’M SO EXCITED. I’ll still be posting just as much wedding content, this will be an extra weekly post, so if you have no interest in our house or hearing about my life you are more than welcome to just skip right over it!

So I guess I should start from the beginning and tell the tale of how we found and bought the house because, oh boy, it is a doozy!

We bought our first home in 2007 so we’d been there for a decade and had outgrown it probably about five years ago. It was an end of terrace 1930s two bed, which although we loved and had completely made it our own, was way too small. Running a publishing empire from home and accumulating way too much stuff, meant we were bursting at the seams! By mid-2016 we’d finally got the business to the stage where we could not only afford to move to something bigger, but where we weren’t both working all hours of the day and night just to keep it going. The original plan was to officially start looking for a new house in January of this year but once we’d had this discussion I, of course, immediately become obsessed with Rightmove!

We always wanted an older house, and one we could put our own stamp on. While we’d never had to do any major works on the last place, Gareth had somewhat become obsessed with all those home renovation TV shows (Homes Under the Hammer and Grand Designs I’m looking at you!) over he past few years and so he, in particular, really wanted a big project.

Then, one day in November, we were driving home from a family wedding and I was casually browsing the app when I saw the house come up. I almost yelled at Gareth to STOP THE CAR so he could see it too! Once we pulled over at the services he looked at it and told me we should arrange a viewing. Built in 1906, it was like nothing else I’d seen available and was just within what we’d (estimated) we could probably afford.

We didn’t have our mortgage in place, we hadn’t researched the market properly or figured anything out, but we knew we had to go and see it.

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