finally...the wedding. Part 1

Well it's taken long enough, really. We only got married, what, four months ago now.

(But there's a reason we had to wait. I had been told that someone wanted to blog the wedding. They told me they definitely wanted to do it. And out of decency, I waited. And then they didn't. So.)

Hard to know where to start, really. It felt so all consuming, for the whole time we were engaged. I threw myself into it so whole-heartedly. I created things and organised things and I loved it. Bloody loved it. I even look back on the attempts to print things in the week before with something approaching fondness (I did not feel fond of it at the time).

And what resulted? Truly one of the most amazing days of my life, done how we wanted. Happy guests who we know had a blast.

And what followed put it all into perspective. We got married, had a honeymoon and then we moved our lives 400 miles away. The wedding? Piece of cake compared with that.

So I'm going to try to keep this all fairly, relatively brief. I won't give you hour-by-hour recaps. And this is what I'm going to start with. A short 'trailer' video of our wedding. The video that almost wasn't, and was only decided upon two weeks before.

Why so late? A cameraman schoolfriend of mine set up a small company with a friend, making wedding and corporate vids. I had given them a huge project through work, and as a favour, they offered to do our vid for expenses only. A bargain. So we did it.

What this video centres on is our outdoor ceremony, performed by our friend. You will hear just a few lines of it (though if it would be helpful, I will post some of the detail). You finally get to see what I look like, the dress I won, the flowers I loved so much that I took them to the Outer Hebrides on honeymoon, and what J actually stands for (and indeed, what he looks like).

The company that my friend formed is called Make It Media and they are based in the midlands. Best wedding video company in the midlands/Nottingham/Coventry? I think so... ;)

Claire & Jon Wedding Montage from makeitmedia on Vimeo.

writing a secular ceremony

Well, if I thought deciding on a dress was hard, it was nothing compared to writing our ceremony. It's not done, but yesterday our friend who is doing the ceremony came round, and after much prevaricating over sushi and ramen and coffee and a walk in the park and four pots of tea, we decided to sit down with a pen and paper and actually do it.

For those who aren't aware: we are getting married on top of a hill by a friend. We aren't religious and so don't think we should go to church. so we're doing the legal bit in a register office first. But I think the law is an ass on the whole 'not letting you get married outside' thing, so we're working our way around this by having the ceremony we want, outside, on a hill, done by a wonderful friend.

T, our friend, was fantastic. I'd sent him some links (to A Cupcake Wedding and Wedding for Two's blog posts - ladies, what would we do without you?) and he'd done his own research, turning up with a rough outline of how he felt the ceremony should go.

So far, so simple. But then it gets harder. Here were some of the things that we found hard. If you're involved in your ceremony at all, you might find these things hard too. Or you might find something else we haven't thought of hard. Either way, please share in the comments. I need all the help I can get on this...

1. How do you want to involve your guests? We're not having any singing and possibly no live music - though we may have some sort of amp. So how do we involve those people who are there to support us? Hand fasting? Considered but ultimately rejected as a bit pagan for us - some relatives are already convinced we might as well have it at Stonehenge as on top of a hill. Passing rings around? A good idea but will it mean anything to people? I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a 'blessing' and what else would you call that? So we're going to have a 'We do' from the congregation. We will say our vows, and then T will ask if the congregation will support us. And they will hopefully answer, with a prompt: "we do".

2. Readings. These are full of pitfalls. That lovely poem you remember liking from years back? Yeah, it's probably going to have a line or word in it that's going to make you snigger. We went through hundreds of poems and readings, without exaggeration.We rejected some for lines that were suggestive of procreation - can't read those in front of elderly aunts. Others trigger words for getting the giggles ("shaft" - as in "of light" being one, and "sheath" being another - we're very mature people). Beautiful poems but if J hears the word 'shaft' and raises an eyebrow at me, I won't be able to hold it in.

Also - some poems you might feel you want to read to your partner - how would you feel if a friend read them? Do you want to do the reading yourself? Hmm. Is it too soppy? Maybe you need to pick a different poem. Also, I hate any poem with a trace of twee or awkwardness. Anything that said 'tis' was out, unless it was Shakespeare. Modern verse all the way for us. But in the interests of mixing it up, we are trying to find something traditional to break up the flow. TBC.

3. Who is doing the readings? You might love your friend Bob, but if Bob is the shyest man on the planet, would, and could he do a reading? How about bridesmaids? How do you pick one to read if you have several 'maids? Do you want to involve new people?

For us, we wanted to involve our friends that were outside of the 'inner circle' of bridesmaids and family etc. And we had to make sure we picked people that wouldn't be freaked out by the prospect and could stand up and do justice to the words.

4. The inclusion of any religious elements. One thing I have always loved about church weddings is the Corinthians reading - just the passage that starts: "Love is patient, love is kind". It's beautiful, and true and I agree with it. But I am not religious and I feel you cannot pick and choose what bits of religion you like, and excise the rest.

However, we are not dismissive of religion, and also recognise the truth in the words. One way around this that we discussed was the possibility of asking a friend, who is religious, to read this. However, we are currently leaning towards leaving it out.

Anyway. This post is very much unformed thoughts about the challenges we encoutered. I'm sure I'll be much more coherent next time.

the should haves

How naive I was to think I'd be immune from this. The 'should haves' have started and coming at the same time as a couple of other things, it's been a rather stressful week.

In a week when my tiny baby nephew was taken very ill indeed (as in - on a ventilator in intensive care ill - but he's ok now, almost ready to come home) I ended up getting the 'should haves' from people about the provision of savoury snackfoods at the wedding.

W. T. F.

To provide some background: by last weekend, it was clear that my little nephew was improving, about to come off the ventilator. We couldn't visit (200 miles away and visitors not really allowed - especially as I had a cold), but didn't fancy going out much - we were exhausted from work and the stress. So we finally, finally took a proper look at the budget. We also went for our cake tasting. And we worked out a plan for the day.

At this point, we realised that:

1. We were due to go over budget
2. We would be feeding people afternoon tea a mere two hours before dinner and then two hours later, cheese and cake. There would be too much food.
3. The cake would be amazing. We'd hate for it to be not really eaten at 10 o'clock at night when people were already stuffed and drinking and didn't really want it.

The new plan emerged: instead of afternoon tea, we'd serve the wedding cake in the afternoon with a glass of prosecco and that would tide people over until dinner. Trouble is we've already paid for part of the food, including the afternoon tea. Would it be too late to change plans?

Thankfully it wasn't officially too late to change. Though the lady at the wedding venue - who is amazing, btw - started the should haves first. Clearly losing several hundred pounds isn't good for her, but it's essential for us.

She told us we would need to tell our guests IN ADVANCE that they would not be eating until the evening. Our guests are arriving at about 1.30 - when I have arrived at weddings at that time, I certainly have not expected lunch and dinner. And they WOULD be eating - a great hunk of cake!

And then she said that people would expect a sweet option alongside the cheese later that night. Now since when did people expect anything of the sort? I've been to weddings. People aren't all that hungry in the evening most of the time unless they ate lunch or an early dinner at 4 or something. Anyway, we can justify an extra 20 portions of cake if we don't have afternoon tea - there will be leftovers. But also - people will be eating a huge meal with pudding. They might not want any cheese or cake at all.

And my mum, bless her, then did it too, suggesting that people may not want sweet things in the afternoon and we should have a savoury option. Which has resulted in us relenting and agreeing to have some bowls of crisps, nuts and maybe olives too, or some small savoury bits. But I really don't want people stuffed for dinner.

And then on top of everything, the friend doing our ceremony went AWOL. Well, not totally - we knew he was alive as he'd been on Facebook, but he didn't answer our calls or return our texts. We started to panic, thinking this was a repeat of the photographer situation - where he'd realised he couldn't do the ceremony but didn't know how to tell us. I spent yesterday morning with a knot in my stomach trying to think of what else we could do, or who else could do it, and getting really upset as it was so out of character for him.

Then, thank god, he emailed to say that he'd been moving flat at short notice and he'd had a deadline and it had all just come at once. And that he was really sorry, and that of course he'd still love to do the ceremony. PHEW.

writing the ceremony and the any campaign

Tis the season to neglect your blog, tra la la la laaa etc etc etc.

What can I say? It's almost-Christmas, and this means my early morning blog-writing slots have been taken up with planning parties, emailing friends regarding annual Christmas meet ups; buying invitation-making stationery items (helloo Martha Stewart paper punches) and investigating wedding cake options.

So today, we see our ceremony-conducting friend again, but this time not for a gig or dinner or at the pub. Tonight, we are having him round to ours for wine and takeaway and to talk about the wedding - ie, the ceremony, and what we might write.

It's at his instigation too - had he not suggested that it was probably time to do it, we might have procrastinated until we had a week to go. But he's got 'ideas' he says, and given that by the time Christmas and the New Year are over, we'll be just eight months away (HOLY CRAP), he's definitely right to make us start now. I don't think this will be sorted tonight.

We've got some suggestions from the various websites, but christ, is it hard to know where to begin. I like elements of the traditional ceremony and given that people think we're mad hippy pagans for holding the wedding on the top of a hill as it is, I think that having some of this structure will reassure some of those present.

We're also keen to avoid cringeyness - so we won't be inviting people to sing anything en masse I've not got experience of this ever properly working out. At least in a church people expect to have hymns but on a hill? Hmn. I don't think our guests are the type to burst out in spontaneous unaccompanied song. So some vague structure, no cringeing. That's all we have right now.

The ceremony presents logistical problems too. For example: music. We've got some songs in mind, but how do we get them played up on a hill with no electricity? Anyway, this is not Ceremony Friend's problem (it's the Best Man/Musical Director's. No, really! He's on the case.)

So here it goes. ACTUAL MARRIAGE STUFF is happening TONIGHT. Not cake, not make up, not bunting. Actual words that make us married. Well, not technically. This technically happens at 10.15am when most people will still be in bed, and we leg it off to the register office.

And on that subject, you may notice the lovely bluey-yellow button at the top right of this page. This is my indication of support for the Any Campaign.

This is a wonderful petition that highlights the madness that is English marriage law. Currently, you can't get married outside or in an unregistered building. Why? No one seems to be able to justify this ludicrous law. And it doesn't apply in Scotland, so it's clearly possible to get rid of it without the foundations of society crumbling away.

Anyway - go there, sign the petition and if you have a blog, pop the button on there and let them know. And maybe one day, your children will be able to have a mad hippy/pagan/traditional wedding on top of a beautiful hill.

urgent help needed

OK so it turns out the register office I formerly suggested was 'grotty' now only has two slots available, and even those are squeezing us in. And I checked it on Google Street View and it's not actually that grotty at all - or better than I remember.

I have to let them know today which is better (and neither is ideal):

10.15am, at which we get married in jeans and then go back to the venue and relax and get ready

11.45 am, at which we get married in wedding attire and then go back to the farm and wait for guests to arrive before we do the bit up on the hill

I need to let them know by 4pm. Help! Which is better? J still doesn't care if it's the day before but I do. Will I care if I do it in jeans? Help!

on asking your friend to marry you

So at the weekend (you may have seen the drunken tweet), we asked our friend to marry us. Not as in put rings on our fingers (duh!), but as in conduct our ceremony.

A friend who's never done anything like this before. For two people who dont' really know what they're doing but just have an inclination that this could be fun and mean something good.

But to begin the story proper, let's go back a few steps.

When we first got engagaed, J joked and said we should ask this friend to marry us. He's got the right sort of personality to manage a crowd, and once, years ago, as a sort of joke, got ordained on the internet (not that we're religious, it just seemed like a relevant daft detail to add in here). I agreed that he would be brilliant.

But I didn't like to ask a friend, and as you may have seen from previous posts, I thought we should get a humanist as a sort of middingly official option.

So we went and met the humanist. She was very nice. But J was not keen. Not keen at all.

"Why would we have a stranger do it? We might as well go to a church and have a vicar that doesn't know us as have someone else who doesn't know us."

Also, humanists weddings aren't cheap.

J was set on asking the friend from the start. I wanted to as well, but part of me felt bad asking a friend and thought a more formal option would go down better with our families.

As it turned out, I was wrong. We would ask our amazing friend.

So we met our friend at the pub. I'd asked J to let me be the one to ask him. We started drinking.

We drank some more.

Then we squeezed in another before going to the restaurant.

Then we tootled off for dinner. We drank an entire bottle of wine over starters. Then we got a second

J kept looking at me. I couldn't honestly conceive of how to broach the subject. So the second the friend mentioned the wedding (in passing, I may add), J leapt in.

"Actually, we needed to ask you something about that."

Cue me. Everyong looking at me.

"Ummm... Well. Umm."

Then altogether in a rush:

"Wellwhenwefirstgotengaged, Jsaidweshouldaskyoutomarryus, half-joking"

Then calmer:

"But then we thought about it, and it didn't seem like such a joke. We went to meet a humanist but it's not for us. We thought a friend could do it, maybe - but the only friend who we know could do the most amazing job, is you."

If I didn't know how to ask, then he didn't really know how to answer. He said yes immediately, though flustered and he kept saying it was the most amazing thing to ask and a complete honour."

We all hugged many times. By this time, however, we were red wine-happy, muddling our words, knocking bits of food on the floor and very nearly causing a red wine lake across the table. I think there might have been some slightly misty eyes. There were certainly some brilliant hangovers.

an idiot

This is me. I am an idiot.

Since when have I ever cared about 'properly'?

Lovely commenters, twitter people et al: you are right. A friend is the answer. I am half nuts to have even blogged about it.

Sometimes I am so glad that we've got over a year to go. Seriously, some things require a lot of thinking about.

I'm going to keep mulling on this, but I'm sure this is the right decision. Unless they legalise humanist weddings in England and open up a whole other can of worms...

a dilemma

It dawned on me the other day that so much about planning a wedding is trying to anticipate how you will feel, after the event, if you do - or don't - do things a certain way. Hence the emphasis on perfection, on spending money to do things 'right' so that you don't feel retrospectively disappointed a decade on from now.

What's brought this revelation on? The meeting with the Humanist. The bit that I thought was a formality has turned out to be actually a trigger to think about how exactly we want to do the 'i do' bit of the wedding, with an essential disagreement between BF and myself.

We know that we both want the same things: a nice ceremony, out in the open, up on the farm. Something personal and different. We'll have already done the legal bit in the register office that morning but we wanted something more meaningful to go alongside that.

So we met the Humanist, and she was lovely. I was convinced: BF remains un-so. The nub of our disagreement runs thus:

Me: the Humanist will do a proper job; run a beautiful ceremony and properly declare us married. A proper ceremony is important.

BF: the Humanist doesn't know us from Adam, and in the eyes of the law, she isn't really marrying us at all. We could get a friend to run us a ceremony up on the hill; he would do a sterling job and it wouldn't cost 500 quid for half an hour (Humanist weddings cost £400 this year, plus travelling expenses, and the cost will probably rise next year.) This would be more meaningful.

And this is pretty much where we still stand. I don't doubt that said friend would do an amazing job. He would completely. But I can't shake this sense of 'doing it properly'; worrying that in 10 years' time, I'll feel that something was missing. But at the same time, I recognise the essential truth in BF's feelings: in the eyes of the law, we're not more married by a Humanist than we are in the register office, and the Humanist ceremony is expensive.

I agree entirely with the Humanist principles and think they are a noble and lovely organisation. But when we're trying to keep things on a budget, £500 is a considerable cost. But is it a cost that's worth it?

So that leaves me, trying to second guess my future feelings on the issue and not making much progress right now.