Tag Archives: Swamps Posts

Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride – Swamps & Matt Got Married

View More: http://clairebasiuk.pass.us/bloor

It finally happened! Swamps & Matt got married! I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to share this with you all, and if you’ve been following Swamps’ Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride, then you’ll understand that it had to wait and be the first wedding on Marry Me Ink for 2014!

View More: http://clairebasiuk.pass.us/bloor

I’ve absolutely loved sharing Swamps’ journey with you all, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! Here’s the final instalment!

View More: http://clairebasiuk.pass.us/bloor

Firstly, I would like to apologise for how long it has taken me to share my pictures from our big day. I swear I have only just about gotten over my jet lag, and 24 hour fight from our honeymoon. So, now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the bit fat ‘W’. Wedding. Wife. That’s right. I am a WIFE! That is taking some serious getting used to.

When you first get wed, every body you see asks you “How’s married life treating you?” In all honesty, it is exactly the same as boyfriend/girlfriend life, only we are about 12k poorer. Nothing changes, and hey, why would you want it to? Things were great before, and they’re great now!

View More: http://clairebasiuk.pass.us/bloor Continue reading

SWAMPS’ POSTS: Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride – August

Today is a very sad day for Marry Me Ink & Swamps.. Today is the final instalment of Swamps’ posts until she gets married.. There will be tears shed here, be warned! This final edition of Swamps’ posts features all of her & Matt B’s trials & tribulations of planning, and coming into the final weeks and days of their big day.

SWAMPY

“Trials and Tribulations Of Your Big Day”

Hello you lovely lot. I hope you are all super duper. I feel like I have not spoken to you all for an ETERNITY! We have been very very busy. There has been lots of organising, making, rethinking and wait for it….stress! I would like to point out at this point that attempting to sell your house and buy a new one, all with 8 weeks to go until you wedding is 100% categorically a terrible idea. PLEASE if you take away zero pieces of information from my blog, make an exception for this one. However, I would recommend buying yourself a cute puppy to counter balance your stress levels, works a treat. 

IMG_0835

Meet Bettë. She’s currently 4 weeks old, about 10cms long and should be in prison for being illegal amounts of cute. Buying cute things really helps, trust me. We pick her up the day after our honeymoon too so we have something to look forward to when all of the build up to THE BIGGEST DAY OF OUR LIVES is over! Eeeeep.

In all of our stress we have also had moments of excitement, fear and anticipation, this is the theme that really sponsors the final run up to your big day. All I can really say is that you can’t really help the way that you feel, and you just need to do what you can do to manage this whirlwind of emotions. When you’re feeling high (not literally high; I would never encourage that, emotionally high of course) go forth, Star Trek style, find your husband or bride to be, and talk. Share your emotions and your excitement with each other, its all part of the experience. In a couple of hours you may be pulling your hair out because your wedding transports engine just blew up. Seriously, ‘these things happen’ and trust me, they fully do, and d’you know what- who cares? Book a taxi, I am going to! These little touches that you have probably spent months perfecting may actually fall apart before the big day but don’t sweat it, just sort it.

I was a bit stuck for what to write this month’s blog about, so with a little help from Rachael I’ve opted for a little bit of everything and it perfectly reflects what the run up is actually like. So point number 1. Write a list. For anyone who knows me in real life, not just in blog life, you will know that I am anally organised. I have an excel spread sheet for everything. Yes I really am THAT boring. If you aren’t stupidly organised then you need to learn! It is pivotal to not killing your future spouse in the lead up to the wedding, and they are REALLY integral to your wedding, so you don’t want to do that. A few months before, everything is done one thing at a time, no need to worry about a thing. Wait until 6 weeks before; you’ll have to do 18 things at once. You need to know who you need to see, pay and call all at the drop of a hat. Without organisation on your wedding day you may well never make it, and if you do, you’ll probs be bald from actual stress.  Continue reading

SWAMPS’ POSTS: Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride – July

July is an exciting edition for Swamps as the date of her & Matt’s wedding is getting closer! Swamps has has some more of her tattoo sleeve extended and is sharing it with you all today. Seriously, it’s super cool! I’ll let her tell you all about it.

Hello fellow bride folk. I hope that you have had a super lovely June. The sunshine is finally here and I am feeling like the wedding will be here before I know it. Scarily, after this blog I only have one more month before the wedding will actually be upon us – eeeeek! It is exactly 9 weeks until D-Day. Everything is coming together and its just finishing touches now.

 I must admit that throughout my whole blogging ‘experience’ as much as I have L.O.V.E.D sharing my wedding experience with you lot (and at times it has helped keep me sane) I have felt like a bit of a fraud. Being your resident ‘tattooed bride’ and all I feel like my posts have been lacking slightly on the tattooed front. It is like when you look at suicide girls and there’s some half naked chic (she’s probs fully naked but let’s not be vulgar haha) on their website and there isn’t a single strand of multicoloured hair, and shaved head or tattoo in sight! Ok, ok, it’s not quite that bad as I do have tattoos so I guess I’m not a complete impostor, but never the less some of you may be thinking “This chic isn’t really living up to her title here”. Well wait no more. This month I finally took the plunge again. To say I have had a bit of a tattoo draught would be an understatement. Tattoos certainly aren’t cheap and when you have to pay for your venue and registrar and all of the other ‘relatively’ important wedding elements, getting another tattoo end’s up taking a bit of a back seat. Now we are into double figures on my wedding countdown app – yes I am that person that annoyingly posts her countdown on her Instagram every month – soz! I decided that actually if I don’t want to look like a half finished drawing then I should probs just pull my finger out and book in and get some more work done. So alas my June has been very, erm, painful shall we say. 

I get tattooed by two separate guys, also both called Matt. I think I must have an attraction to all males called Matt. I blame my brother, also named Matt; he must have been good to me when I was a kid. Let’s not introduce another Matt into the situation though as I fear 4 Matt’s may get a little confusing. So for the purposes of less confusion to your wedding filled heads I shall refer to them by Surname and in one case nickname.

So the first guy I get tattooed by is called Webb. Coincidentally I went to school with Webb, back in the day. I say back in the day – it really wasn’t that long ago! Oh wait, it was 7 years ago when I left school. Cripes I don’t want to think about that too much. God knows what I have done in the last 7 years it all seems a bit of a blur.

So anyway, when we were in high school me and Webb had a little to do with each other but we weren’t best pals or anything. To be fair in the politics of being at school we filtered more in the ‘GREEB’ category so we know each other by way of association I guess. Now, all of the people who though we were ‘greebs’ are actually now also covered in tattoos – such is life! Webb is an absolutely fantastic tattoo artist. 

894968_547273328639009_2115930435_o

You can find more of his work here. He owns his own studio 72 Street Tattoo. The fantastic thing about Webb, besides his talent is that he is local to me. I don’t know if any of your have ever had the fortunate experience of visiting my hometown of Stoke on Trent, but it isn’t the most diverse of cities and so it is a little limited on good tattoo artists. Webb’s style would described more as traditional and he has done some absolutely incredible pieces. His work tends to use lots of bright colours and look really vibrant. The piece of the left is one that he has done recently and I think I am a little bit in love with it. I love the bright colours and the little teapot.

Continue reading

SWAMPS’ POSTS: Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride – June

Today on Swamps’ posts..

STATIONERY TIME!

I’m excited for today’s post – I love me some paper goods. I’ll hand straight over to her now!

Why hello guys. I hope you are enjoying the start of our lovely British summertime. If some of you have been as lucky as me and Matt Bee you will have had some of the most beaut weather over the last couple of weeks. I’m L.O.V.I.N.G it! We have also decided to buy a bigger house so we are all full of excitement. We are also obviously slightly mentally insane as I do believe planning a wedding and moving house are (apparently) two of the most stressful things you do in your life time, and we will be doing both in the next 3 and a half months.

Yes, Gasp, its 3 and a half months until the wedding. 14 weeks. 102 days, 18 hours and 10 minutes to be precise. T’s and C’s clause: This only applies whilst I’m writing this, and by the time you read this we may even be down to double figures. Eeeeeek!

So May has brought some military style wedding planning. We went to our penultimate meeting with our wedding co-ordinator. As I said when I very first started writing my blog for you lovely lot I feel excited but I also feel incredibly nervous. This is only getting worse the closer we get. In the car on the way I literally forgot how to breathe which ended up with my hyperventilating. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a paper bag in sight so I just had to ride it out! I genuinely think I’m going to have to go and see my doctor and get him to prescribe me something that will make me feel all floaty and fluffy for the big day, otherwise I might never make it down the isle. That would be seriously mean on Matt Bee. Failing that, one of my bridesmaids normally has a handbag full of what she calls ‘painkillers’. I however, do not believe they’re ‘painkillers’ for a moment and have seen how majorly chilled out she is when she takes them, so ill have what ever she’s having!

The meeting consisted of some seriously precise planning. I now know which order my bridesmaids will enter the building in. It’s just a shame that I don’t really care! I struggle to see the relevance of why this is remotely important but I guess ‘normal’ brides may be bothered by it. I’m too busy worrying about remembering to breathe so I don’t embarrassingly pass out in front of all of my friends and fam.

So, let’s get down to business. I have been waiting for this months post for aggggeeeeeeeees. As you all know Matt Bee is a super talented artist. He is an illustrator if we are being technical and a bloomin’ good one too. This leaves us in a very fortunate position from a wedding stationary point of view. We started with our save the dates. I swear ‘Save the Dates’ never existed before the last couple of years. They seem to have become super trendy. From a planning point of view they do come in handy though.  It buys you loads more time in which to actually pull your finger out and get your real invites out. People won’t book holidays and the likes so you can be more certain you lucky ‘chosen ones’ will be able to attend.

We decided quite early on that we wanted our theme to have a natural feel. Being the chilled out wedding planners that we are we decided not to really have colour scheme. Controversial I know. With this in mind we decided that we would bind the lack of theme together with things like brown paper and natural coloured string to give it some sort of connection throughout the day. 

To be honest I never even spoke to Matt Bee about what I had in mind. It was kind of his ‘baby’ so I just gave him the driving seat and sat back and watched loads of ‘Made in Chelsea’, also controversial I know ha! I am just obsessed with awkward silences and ultimate poshness. This means I fully can’t take any credit what so ever for his amazing handy work. He came up with this for our save the date..

savethedate1

Continue reading