A Dream day......in Malta

We simply loved Villa Marija as soon as we saw it, it is a stunning venue and had the real mediterranean feel that we wanted from a wedding venue. However we needed to keep a clear head and so we followed Mark (in the absolutely awful weather....apparently it had never rained that much in over 15 years!!!) to the next venue.

This venue was Villa Arrigo. As we pulled up we could see it was a very grand venue and as much as it was beautiful we had immediate reaction that this one was not for us. The venue had beautiful grounds and really lovely decorated rooms inside including a very large ballroom. Looking round my husband and i felt our smaller wedding party (we were planning to invite 50 but realistically thought that only half would probably be able to go) would be swamped in this venue whereas Villa Marija had lots of smaller rooms and as large as it was felt it would not overwhelm a smaller group.

The next day we proceeded to drive round the area. One of the things we would definitely recommend to people going on holiday to Malta is to hire a car even if it is for a few days. We found ours invaluable and although the buses are regular and also fantastic looking, having a car means you get to have a tour round and means you can access some of the more rural parts and hidden coves that are simply beautiful,
We also began looking for some of the other venues we found off the internet wanting to ensure that Villa Marija was definitely the venue for us. We found castello zimmetello, castello de baroni, and Selmun palace. We also loooked at some of the hotels that dream days had previously suggested including westin dragonara and we also looked at the registry officve and the anglican church. Everywhere we looked was gorgeous and all would make ideal wedding venues in different ways but for us they simply reaffirmed the fact that Villa Marija was the venue for us,

I will return back to how great the photographer/photography is shortly and will also include some more pics but until then....the planning. When we returned to the UK we were able to continue with our planning, We requested Mark for the beautiful invites we saw at the wedding fair and he liaised with the florists to arrange for us to be able to have these. Dream Days continued to send us proofs of the wording/invites and when we finally received them we could not believe how beautiful they really were. We were so excited to spend the evening making them up and everyone who received an invite commented on how unique they were. Onto who we invited. We both have fairly large families and really as much as we have fantastic families we really wanted a more intimate wedding day, however we did not want to not involve other members of the family. We decided that for the wedding day in Malta we would invite only close friends and family (i.e. parents, siblings, grandparents and uncles and Aunts). Before we sent out the invites we discussed the wedding and date with our families and we received great response straight away, with those looking forward to being able to visit Malta (some had been previously and loved it, others were looking forward to visiting a new place and having an excuse to have holiday) The date was also very important and took a bit of adjusting. Initially we wanted March because of this being the month we met and then 2 years later got engaged, however we felt this would be a bit of a wait and also might not be great weather. We then considered October but when discussing with Mark he recommended September may be better for the weather especially when considering that the guests will also hope for good weather on their holidays. We then thought about school holidays and so on and finally decided on our date to be 10.09.09. We also discussed with our families about the possibility of having an evening do for when we returned when all the whole family and more friends could be invited to celebrate with us and we agreed on trying to find a local venue that was also reasonable.

Excitedly i chose my bridesmaids; my husbands sister and my niece and then my best friend to be my chief Bridesmaid. I did find it hard to pick Bridesmaids because i have two older sisters who i would have liked to have been bridesmaids but also 3 best friends and realistically i could have only picked one of them. When browsing through this forum it made me realise how I am very lucky that my friends and sisters were happy in my choices and they played different roles within the wedding- my sisters agreed to complete readings and one friend agreed to be a witness whereas the other helped with general running of the wedding including handing out confetti and flowers to all the guests prior to the wedding.

My husband picked his best man and we chose my nephew to be an usher whereas my brorther was our second witness.

We both planned a weekend where i would go off with my mum, husband's mum and sister, niece and best friend to hunt for bridesmaids dresses whereas he and his dad would go for an initial browse for suits.

Prior to the bridesmaid dress hunt i felt i had already seen my dress. There had been a wedding discount fair held in London held before we went to visit Malta and my mum had accompanied me to this. I very naively hoped to find an absolutely wonderful dress for very little money and thought i would find it on this day. Talking to some of the other brides there they had had horrible experiences of trying to find a dress but i hoped it would be different somehow for me. We queued for ages andeventually were allowed in. I had to be measured and was very upset to find out the size i would need for a wedding dress. They claimed it was one dress size above usual dress size but these measurements were two sizes up.....first heart sink of the day. However the sight of large rails filled with beautiful dresses kept me going. My mum and i grabbed a number of dresses in my size. A few stood out as beautiful however others were less obvious. We could take up to 5 dresses in with us and the last dress i grabbed haphazardly was a Caroline Castigliano dress.

After waiting again for some time to be able to try them on my worst nightmare was realised when we walked behind the curtains- there were no separate changing rooms and everyone had to get undressed in front of everyone- EEK!
the assistant was very helpful and willing to try and help to find my ideal dress. She discussed how i should have a theme in mind when i choose a dress and to consider what impact i would like to have on my day- whether as a princess, or more simple and striking. trying on the dresses i really didn't like the floaty, extra girly ones and then it came to trying on the Caroline Castigliano dress. It was so stunning and pulled all my lumps and bumps into a beautiful hour-glass shape.

As stunning as it was my mum sensibly brought me back to earth by asking the price. Although cheaper than instore it was approx £2500. PHEW!!!!!! As beautiful as it was, and as much as the dress suited and fit me well (it would not have needed any alterations) i could not justify spending that much on a dress- that would eat up most of the wedding budget. We gave our many thanks to the shop assistant and left, me feeling a little upset that my dream dress was at this moment in time just a dream.

talking to my husband he suggested for me to search on the net for it if i loved it so much to see if we could find it cheaper. I hunted for weeks and weeks trawling ebay, and online second hand wedding shops and online advertisements to try and find it and alas could never find one in my size.

On the weekend we went hunting for bridesmaids dresses we began looking in some bridal shops. The girls all encouraged me to begin looking for more dresses although after each shop began to feel less and less like i would find the dress for me. We also did not have much luck with the bridesmaids dresses. We tried high street shops, and bridalwear and could not find a dress in the colour scheme we wanted in the right style to suit all the bridesmaids, who are all different sizes and have different shades of hair and skin colour. At one stage i considered different colours for the bridesmaids dresses but one thing that helped to continue with the burgundy is that the colour flattered all of the bridesmaids and they all loved it.

At the end of a long but exciting day we only had two more wedding shops to try. The girls all encouraged me to try on any dresses as they felt i was being too fussy and not trying them on after making them try on lots of dresses! lol. I found one dress i liked and this was £400. We decided to try the last shop before making a decision and this last shop was pronuptia.

many people on this forum have discussed that they have received a poor service from this brand however i have nothing but positive comments to make. As we walked into the shop we had nothing but good service. We began to look at the discount rail and the assistant helped me to find the dresses in my size (not in the two sizes above as the designer assistant had suggested!!!). There were a few i tried on but last but not least was a simply beautiful dress made from a type of silk taffeta type material with thick straps and v neck line and ruffling which was very flattering on the bodice. it also had diamontes and a detachable flower and had a lovely train that was long but not too long!! As soon as i walked out and showed everyone they were all in agreement that this was the one. The assistant was fantastic and really helped to make this a very special moment. She got me to choose various accessories to add to the dress and even grabbed a bunch of flowers to help me imagine what it would be like on the day!! I bought that dress which was approx £295 (maybe even less can't remember the exact amount, but still huge difference from £2500!!! I also bought my veil from there, which was a tiered cathedral length veil and also had diamontes attached. the veil was fairly expensive in comparison with the dress but it fitted the dress perfectly and looking at my photographs now i wouldn't change it. I was very lucky that my sister kindly offered for me to borrow her gorgeous wedding tiara and so i didn't need to worry about that.