Category Archives: Guest Posts

MISS JO BLACK’S TATTOOED TALES – ONE MONTH UNTIL THE BIG DAY

Oh my word! It’s so exciting!! After only hearing snippets of Jo’s antics since her last post in August, her next post is here with all the bits leading up to her and Leigh’s big day.. Which is just this month!! I’ll hand straight over shall I?

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Since the last time I posted we have arranged SO many things and the weeks have flown by with barely a second to spare a moment to ourselves! We booked our band, The Hammervilles who perform rocked up versions of classic songs everyone knows which should keep the mood boosted… we have arranged some performers including fire breathers, burlesque, contortionists and a drag act as well as the incredible poet and comedy performer “Muriel Lavender” who is going to act as out circus ringmaster for the entertainment portion of the evening!

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The biggest hiccup so far has been the caterer we booked. As well as being utterly useless at responding to messages and calls, After he saw our venue he declared that the terrace was ‘unsafe’ to serve food from and demanded his garish blue and white marquees be set up either side of the entrance to the venue. I couldn’t have that! The main reason we chose Cleeve House was for its beauty and the main approach down the drive has massive impact! As it turned out he just wanted maximum exposure for his business… so we sacked him. Or rather Leigh took great pleasure in sacking him!

Shortly after that we met with a chef called Peter Vaughn who had minor celebrity success with his own TV show a few years ago, he was so enthusiastic about creating a theatrical meal for our wedding by making posh kebabs and exciting finger foods people would enjoy experiencing as much as they would eating… he proposed dry ice and a theatrical presentation as well as the clincher for me… A CHEESE GROTTO TO FINISH! SOLD! As just over twice the price my incredible parents offered to help out and chip in for two thirds of the cost which meant we could afford to have Peter!

Around the same time, we also needed to get our official invites sent out, which I had been hand making for weeks… My computer had lost all its data and I lost our address list so we had to re-contact everyone and ask for addresses again! A bit of a ball ache but it came together easily.

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A close friend of mine was getting married on Halloween and she had asked me to be a bridesmaid so it has been really useful to see her approach to everything and how organised she has been throughout this process. She had found an app called Appy Couple and had used it to provide all the guests with info such as times, where to stay and how to find the venues. I had a look and it was amazing, I could create a personalised website for people to visit using our unique wedding code and find all the info they needed on there! I put info on hotels, travel, on our registry, the guest list, a bit of info on the days events and loads of useful things for guests to help things go smoothly!

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Trends For Wedding Planning From Zankyou – Part 2

It’s time to share with you an interesting infographic from Zankyou, the ultimate online wedding gift list. This time it’s about the most popular destinations and times for newly weds to honeymoon.

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MISS JO BLACK’S TATTOOED TALES – THE VENUE

So it’s been a while since we heard from Marry Me Ink’s blogging bride Jo.. She’s been uber busy at tattoo conventions (See her Instagram feed for it all!) and just general wedding planning. This edition is all about the venue!! (And oh my, it’s a good one!)

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It has been a while… For which I am sorry! Life kind of ran away with me and I struggled to find a moment to collect and organise my thoughts. Once I had organised my thoughts, my Macbook decided to spectacularly end it’s own life and I lost all of my (somewhat chaotic) ramblings for the second instalment of ‘Blogging Bride’.

However, I am here now. And I have some new stories to share with you.

Thinking back to when I wrote the first instalment and reading back over what I wrote, it seems aeons ago that I began this journey from single gal to bride to be.

I suppose it seems obvious to say that planning a wedding can seem an incredibly daunting task when absolutely nothing has been arranged yet. So I started with the most basic task of deciding where and when we would tie the knot. Knowing full well that neither of us worship the sun, in fact I am about as pale as they come, we decided that a winter wedding would not only provide the cosy warmth of a Christmas party in the country, but more importantly would almost halve the cost of our venue!

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We looked at Orchardleigh House near Frome, but to be honest it was a little grandiose for our needs and we wanted somewhere we could feel intimate with our guests.  A friend suggested that we visit Cleeve House, built in 1857 and just a stones throw from my parents home in Devizes, in the middle of beautiful countryside with rolling hills and gorgeous views it sounded perfect. 

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Leigh and myself drove over to meet my Mum at Cleeve House and instantly we fell in love with it. It was like looking at the fairytale castle of a gothic princess from the outside. Inside a fire roared in a gigantic fireplace in the ‘great hall’ and that cosy Christmas feeling was almost overwhelming. I think we took all of 3 seconds to decide and confirm.

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Miss Jo Black’s Tattooed Tales – The Proposal

She’s here! Marry Me Ink’s blogging bride of 2015 – Miss Jo Black! I’m a regular follower of @missjoblacktattoos and one day, I saw the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen appear in my feed. That’s where it all started. I contacted Jo and got her to enter her engagement story and Pinterest board to be Marry Me Ink’s new blogging bride. I’m SO glad she did – Jo and her fiance Leigh are due to get married at the end of the year with the most awesome theme I’ve heard of. This is where I now hand you over to Jo..

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I guess this is my hello to the world of internet blogs and my first post as a “Blogging Bride” for the lovely folk at Marry Me Ink!

So… I’m Jo Black, or JoJo to my fiancé Leigh, I own and tattoo at a studio called Black Inc. Tattoo in the sleepy countryside town of Frome, Somerset… and that is exactly where and how we met.

Leigh, my bearded babe, came into my studio on a sunny morning with his son Finn to book himself in for a large tattoo on his back. He must have prepped Finn for their visit to impress me and the other ladies in he shop because Finn repeatedly told Leigh how much he loved him and what a great dad he is… come on what woman doesn’t melt when they know a man is a good dad! But anyway, after some time chatting about what he wanted and where, he and Finn went for a wander around Frome, when he left me and the other girls in the shop Alison and Neko joked that he was gorgeous and one of us could end up marrying him, I believe Neko’s words were “He’s RED HOT”.  A while later I went to get a round of coffee for the shop I noticed them waiting in line for milkshakes, I went over and chatted some more… And that’s where it all began.

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For the next couple of weeks leading up to his tattoo we spoke almost every day, joking and chatting via text and Instagram.  When the weekend of the tattoo loomed we had come to the decision that we just wanted to spend a bit of time together and instead of doing the tattoo we went to the Frome World Food Festival and ate and drank and fell in love! It took me almost a year to actually get round to tattooing him at all and still to this day we haven’t done the one he booked back then!

Two years on and Leigh and I are living together in a flat in Frome, with our dogs Spike and Bobbie and more in love than ever. My family adore him, and would probably rather spend time with him than me! And I adore his family too, he has rather a lot of family!

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So, with being so happy and on track, when we went to watch Funeral For a Friend play in the local venue just before Christmas 2014 and he started acting very strangely, ducking out here and there, whispering to people, taking phone calls and texts in private… I started to think something was up… I actually said to a friend that evening ‘I reckon he wants me to think he’s going to propose tonight and then he won’t do it’. That friend, who knew what was going on, laughed at me.

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