Happy Valentine’s Day! I actually don’t have any new projects lined up for this day as I’ve been busy, maybe I will come back to this later in the month.

I wonder if I’ve been building this up to be more hype than it actually is?

Anyway, I am actually being serious – I am getting married later this year! I got engaged at the end of 2024 actually, but I have been ramping up the planning recently.

How is it relevant? Well it is a big event in my life. In one way, it will take up most of my focus this year – I’ll be having to sort out the wedding planning, organising all the suppliers and events. All the boring but necessary admin stuff! So I might not have as much time to do my usual Atelier Ilyere stuff. I am still thinking up of new projects, but they are secondary, because…

I also want to try and DIY my way through my wedding, where possible of course! There will be a number of things I would never dream of handling myself, like baking the wedding cake… (I think I could do this, but the stress of storing it properly and making sure it’s ready on the day? I couldn’t do that to myself!) But there might be some things that I could try my hand at, like making the flowers and decorations for example?

Obviously it would be an absolute dream if I could manage every aspect of my wedding by myself, but I do have to be realistic here. I could make all the table decorations myself and buy all the storage and materials, but then I would need the space to keep them stored, let alone have the time required to set out everything to my specification…

Ever since the venue was booked, I have spent months scouring the internet and Instagram to get inspiration for what other people do at their weddings. I haven’t even spoken to my wedding co-ordinator yet (since I don’t have one assigned for some reason…) to find out if this is all even realistically achievable, but I’ve already started some bits just in case.

I still have to work a day job so I can only craft in evenings and on weekends, and I certainly would not have the time to do this in just a few compact months before the wedding. So if I seem to be more quiet than usual, it’s because of this!

I’m starting this short blog series so that I can share what I’ll be doing for my wedding – and maybe some of what I definitely won’t be doing. There will be sneak peeks and previews on things I’ll be working on – I can share snippets but I do want my guests to experience the surprise themselves. (They likely don’t follow my blog, but just in case…)

At this point of writing this, I have already completed a few tasks and started some – I have alluded to this over the past year or so when I have been talking about general origami decorations for the eagle-eyed followers! Can’t wait to continue with the task list and share some more soon!