Kimono de Jack UK: 19 days left till December meetup at Birmingham!

If any of my followers like kimono then why not meet us up in Birmingham? Register your interest on the facebook event page and we will see you there.

Kimono de Jack UK: 19 days left till December meetup at Birmingham!: Only 19 more sleeps till that last KDJ UK meetup of 2011 so lets make it a fun one! Like last year, we will be visiting Birmingham Chri...

How to Plan a Wedding - Part Two - Discussion with the parents.

So you both know what you want from the wedding.

I suppose now you need to discuss it with your parents.

Now most parents are more then happy with whatever you want to do for the wedding but this is not always the case.  Maybe your parents would like it to be held at a particular location or maybe they would like to include an activity which is customary in their culture.  For example, my parents wanted a tea ceremony to be performed at the wedding.

Not the set that was used at my wedding but I don't have a picture of it.

Don't get upset by this and don't feel like they are going to take over your day.  It just means you have to accommodate their expectations.

And don't be afraid to mix cultures if you are in an inter-racial relationship.  There is always a way to add elements of one's culture in the big day, whether it is the way the venue is decorated or the food served.  These elements should be embraced on your big day because they will only make it more special and memorable.

So remember listen to what your parents have to say and make a note of what they would like you to do.

How to plan a Wedding - Part One - Decision making

So what is the secret to planning a stress-free wedding?

Did we follow a magically book which told us how to plan the wedding?

Did we hire a wedding planner?

Maybe I had a moogle to magic me the day?

(Unfortunately the final option was not possible but if only it was, wouldn't it be great!)

Nope the secret is planning.  No really, I'm not joking, if you want anything to go well then planning is the secret and don't be fooled by other people who say it was stressful.  Once you have planned and put everything in place, it should all fall into place.

And despite what people keep throwing at us, never did we panic or worry about our wedding.  In fact, we managed to annoyed people with our relaxed attitude.  However we could afforded to be relaxed because we had planned it to be this way.

Now no matter how spontaneous your wedding is, a degree of planning is needed and before we began to make any lists, budgets or announcing our engagement to our parents, we did the most important thing an engaged couple should do.

We both discussed what we want for the big day!

Yes we sat down and talked about what we would like.  No paper, no computer, nothing!  We just talked about how we both wanted a calm and relaxing day without too much pomp and for the ceremony itself to be as simple as possible.

This discussion proved to us that we both wanted the same thing out of our wedding and setup a nice solid foundation for all our plans.

So why not do the same?  It can be as formal as you want or you can just keep it casual.  How you do it isn't important but rather the outcome of the conversation that is key.

Wedding all over and finished!

I just looked at the date today and I have already been married a month and still haven't blogged about it.

How forgetful I have been these days.

It was a lovely day and apart from one slight hiccup, everything went according to plan!

The ceremony went smoothly and before my partner and I knew it, we were married!

If you are wondering what I am doing with my hand, I'm doing a maneki neko pose for my kimono friends.

And here we have my lovely husband walking me down the aisle as his wife.  We joked that we should running out of the hotel and hopping onto the first bus into town to avoid socialising but that would have been cruel.

The rest of the day was taking up by a tea ceremony.

and generally mingling around with the guest to make sure they got a chance to talk to us before having a nice three course lunch.

Yes it was a day to remember and now it is all over, it is time to return back into reality.

Strawberry Kimono: Lyuba's Guide to Starting a Kimono de Jack

As you may have noticed that I am a kimono fan or addict depending on how you see it and part of a kimono group where we create events to wear kimono at and we have lots of fun!

Have you always looks on with envy and wish you had a group nearby?  Well why not start one yourself?  My friend who started the one in UK has written up a guide for starting your very own Kimono de Jack.  It isn't hard at all and all you need is some kimono fans who are interested.

If you are interested then have a read below!

Strawberry Kimono: Lyuba's Guide to Starting a Kimono de Jack: Hello Everyone, Kimono de Jack is taking the world by storm. Well, at least the kimono world. Either way, when it started back in 2010, on...

Kimono de Jack UK Anniversary

It has been a year already since KDJ UK began!

Where did the time go?  Whatever the time there was only one way to celebrate and that is to visit the same location as we did one year ago which was Trafalgar Square.

Weather prediction said it was going to be a good weather for kimono which is under 20 Celsius and slightly overcast.  However you can never be too careful so we planned for the worse case scenario.

I arrived around noon due to my train and greeting me was the kimono de jack group with a new attendee! Her name is Stephanie and she happen to be visiting London at the same time as our anniversary and couldn't believe her luck that she was able to attend our Kimono de Jack.

After a few photos around Trafalgar Square we got on the bus to Nizumi. We got a little bit confused by the building numbers but we got there and had a lovely lunch!

I had a lovely Tendon.....

while the others had chicken katsu curry, teriyaki salmon, 

teriyaki beef bento box and fried chicken udon noodles.

All our lunches where very nice by the way.

After lunch we slowly walked back to Piccadilly Circus to look at the shops along the way.  We went into the M&M world but was disappointed by the lack of M&M!  :(  However they did have a nice elevator which we had to take a picture of.

After our disappointing discovery we went to our favourite wagashi shop, Minamoto Kitchoan!
   

They were holding a tea ceremony so we all had tea serve to us.  The lady was quite stern with us but liked the fact that we wore kimono.  She pointed out my mofuku obi but I explained that I understood what the black symbolised but I was dressed for Halloween.

Then off to japan centre so I could buy some onigiri for the journey home.  It was very busy but we fought our way round to get what we wanted.

It was only 16.30 and although my train didn't depart until 18.55, I wanted to get to the station because my feet were tired.  Also everybody else was tired after walking around London.

Our next planned kdj is in December at the Birmingham Christmas Market! November hasn't been scheduled because a lot of us are busy and need to save our pennies for Christmas time but we might organise some local meetups around where we live.  So keep following our facebook or tweets to see what is happening.

10 days left!

Yep you heard it only 10 days left of being a single girl and the final element of my wedding has arrived in the post.

My purple wedding dress is just as I imagine and when I put it on it was just what I wanted.  Part of me feels that I missed out on the whole wedding dress experience because although I visited a couple of bridal shops, I didn't try on any wedding dresses.  However I think I made the right choice and all that needs to be done now is get it the reception without any incident.  That should be fun!