Engagement ring cleaning at home

My engagement ring needed a clean, so I read through this vogue forum thread to see how other girls look after their rings at home.

First up - a close up of my dirty diamond - see all the specks!

I soaked it in a little tub of detergent and warm water for about 15 mins:

Then scrubbed it with a soft toothbrush, rinsed it in cold water (after putting the plug in the sink first!), then poured a little vodka over the diamond.. (apparently this gets rid of any left over soap residue??)

Finally, I dried it using a hairdryer.

The result:

No more specks!

And extra sparkle!

I'm not too sure how often I should be cleaning it.. I'm worried about dislodging the small diamonds down the side. I'm also not too convinced about using vodka - I can think of better uses for alcohol!

Wedding Crest

I'd love to have a wedding crest to use across all our wedding stationary. 

I'm planning to design it myself - at the moment I have this:

Luckily both J and my surnames begin with F, making the design easier to work with (and I'll be taking on J's surname anyway).

I think it's a bit too simple at the moment, definitely needs a lot more work.

Some beautiful wedding crests I've come across:

crest from here

crest from here

crest from here

crest from here

Let the planning begin...

We've decided that we'll get married in the Irish summer, 2013 and that we'll have roughly 120 guests.

That's about all we've decided on so far.

I'm determined to be an organised bride-to-be, so I went out and bought myself a wedding planner:

I chose it because it's a binder, so I can easily add plastic sleeves and paper under the relevant tabs:

The only downside is that the planner is HUGE, and kinda heavy - and that's before I even start filling it with paper, plans and pictures.

I'm also worried people will think I'm a bridezilla if I lug this folder around with me, so I also purchased some simple notebooks to bring around with me to meet vendors.

As half the guests will be coming from Australia, we wanted to give as much notice as possible in regards to the wedding date - so we started looking at venues last weekend.

I thought I was super-organised, looking at venues 2 years before the wedding... turns out, the venue we looked at over the weekend was already booked out the first 2 weekends in June, and the first week in July 2013 - crazy!

This has gotten me a little stressed, so I'm eager to see a few more venues as soon as possible, so I can book in a June/July date before they're all taken! (so much for not being a bridezilla...)