rule number one

(source)

I broke one of the only rules I ever set for myself the other day. At a party, someone said something nice about my appearance.

What did I do?

Absolutely categorically said no, no, I wasn't pretty, I was big and heavy and lumbering. Look at all these thin people - I feel like a monster next to them. Or in similar words, with a slightly tipsy bent.

What the hell was I doing? The one rule - the main rule of being a woman. One I realised around age 13, when after many years of really bad bullying (which little did I realise, wasn't quite over) said I would never give anyone any ammunition with which to judge me again.

Why not: "Why thank you. That's very sweet of you to say"? or "Haha - thank you. Not sure I agree, but thank you anyway"? Why instead: "No, you are wrong - I am a troll."

Not only did I humiliate myself a little by doing this, but I also basically told the person I was speaking to that she was wrong and her opinion invalid. Whether or not she honestly believed it, she felt moved enough to say it (apropos of nothing, by the way - it was not fished for).

How can I stop doing this? I don't know. Perhaps it's good to do it occasionally, to realise what a thoroughly twattish thing it is to do.

And that's not breaking the rule, incidentally. Sometimes I am a twat, but I hope that it's a temporary state. Unlike, say, the shape of my body (which though changing, will never be waif-like).

Ladies - learn from my mistake! Let's stop doing this to ourselves and recognise when we do it. It is WRONG. Good on you if you don't need this reminder. I think every woman I know does. Maybe you are all paragons of not doing yourself down. In which case - write to me and tell me how you do it.

do i need a new blog?

A genuine question, and one I can't quite make my mind up about. I do have another blog (indeed, a whole other online life) and that's why I blog here anonymously. I do love having this place, where I can write about things that have nothing to do with work, things that matter personally.

But I can't escape from the fact that this blog began as something about the wedding. The name of it limits it slightly in that. There is now so much else I want to write about, but 'cakes and bunting' doesn't really cover it. But then I've built up a whole community of friends with this blog. Do I need to change it? It would seem natural to cover the wedding and then move onto a new place. But is this necessary, helpful?

Thoughts?

so...

So I didn't blog about the wedding at the time, because I'd promised not to. Because, as you might remember, I won my dress. And so the kind and lovely people that gave me the dress really do have first dibs on pictures and things.

But it's really just dawned on me that this doesn't mean that I can't talk about other parts of the wedding - that don't just yet involve the big shiny pictures or the video.

And so I will. I'll tell you all about the eventful journey down, where Jon's mum and dad forgot the gallons of confetti and had to go back and get it, adding an unexpected three hours to their journey (they were a mere hour from London). I do love them but boy, they drive slowly.

The same journey where we realised that a major component of our ceremony - the seating - was missing, and where in the interests of not being perceived as a mad bridezilla I gave the phone to J and let him sort it . And thus, what in a girl would be 'mad bridezilla' in a boy became 'assertive and no-nonsense'. Gender bias, eh? God that car ride was fraught.

And the cake. The wonderful delicious cake that arrived the day before... well, it wouldn't be putting too fine a point on it to say "totally smashed". Yes. The cake that we weren't going to have, that we eventually decided to spend £250 on, and ended up spending £500 on, arrived largely destroyed. No one's fault - just a freak accident in the heat. And in the end, how it turned out fine.

I'm going to do all this and post the pics I can, but will try to make the posts useful, rather than just recaps. Things I learned, things that came in handy and things that we honestly could not have given a shit about on the day. Because then perhaps they will come in useful for you too.

I do feel a little sad that I haven't done this sooner but what with anticipating the photos going online for some time now, and holding off, and then having life hijacked by the move to Glasgow, my lovely 'wallowing in the wedding' time has been curtailed.

Realistically, I'll be making the next post from Glasgow. Eek.