aha, there you are

So, my wedding mojo returned! It actually reappeared a couple of days before the wedding fair, when I got a couple of ideas from blogs - some lovely wooden place holders (see above) and then some hair ideas. I found myself ringing J to ask his opinion. And that's when it struck me...

If I like this, I can actually do it. This will really actually appear at our wedding - which is now just a few months away.

See, while I always wanted to get married, a wedding never crossed my mind. I came into this with no ideas whatsoever. Just a small guidance from J, who when asked what he wanted in a wedding, replied: "Hogroast. Beer - ale. Good music" and I thought: 'well, it'll probably be on a farm, then, if he wants a hogroast'. I'm love big country houses but never had a strong desire to get married in one. I like farms. That's all we had.

God knows how I have formed anything thus far. I just keep clipping out pictures and saving links and have this vague idea that somehow, it will just work itself out. I hope it does...

the timing

According to the wisdom of ages, it's 'all in the timing'. It's a useful little phrase, but one that is entirely useless, unless you know what 'the timing' is.

Luckily, when you get engaged, there are plenty of people willing to tell you the right time to do everything. But you know where this is going. Most of them tell you to chill out, as if booking a hairdresser with more than a year to go makes you an obsessed Bridezilla.

When we decided on a time to get married, there were plenty of people in shock that we'd got just over a year and a half to wait. Therefore the refrain of 'you've got AAAGES' was heard time and again. And I came to believe it myself. Friends had got married nine months after getting engaged. It could be done.

Forgive me if you know all this, or if you just don't care. I wanted to seem laid back, unflustered. So I waited.

It was something of a shock, therefore, when I tried to start booking people at what I'd been told was a reasonable length of time from the wedding (around a year to go) that many people were booked up (especially the cheap ones) and had been for months. Damn. And when I mentioned to people that I was having trouble finding a hairdresser who didn't want to charge me £250 to do something to my hair, they expressed the same sentiment: " Really? But you've got AGES to go!"

Similarly, when I had to change the registry office location, I had to literally beg the registrar to squeeze us in. Genuinely beg. There was nothing for us, and this was with 14 months to go. That's what happens when you get married in a rural location. Not many registry offices in the vicinity.

That was when I decided to stop listening to most people, unless they'd done this themselves. You are planning a big party - probably the biggest you'll ever throw. This is no time for creating stress. This is no time to be procrastinating over whether you're bothering a hairdresser 'too soon'. They don't care - they like to get bookings. It's good for business. Ditto everyone else you will deal with. Save it up because everyone tells you to and you will generate yourself a whole heap of stress.

Oh, and halfway through writing this post and as if to prove my point, the hairdresser I had triumphantly booked before I went on hols called to say she's decided to take a longer maternity leave and so had to cancel. Damn.

lists

Today shall henceforth be known as the day of the lists.

During my journey to work, I had no less than three moments of 'oh shit I can't forget that' wedding panic. On arriving at my desk, I started three separate lists ('add to guest list', 'buy for wedding' (list includes 'straws - yes, insane) and 'invitations') and started to plan what I would be buying in my lunch hour.

Is this what every day for the next year and a bit will be like? Damn. I'm going to be making a lot of lists.

the long engagement

So I just read this post from the lovely Cloggins.

In it, she asks: Is having a long engagement just an indulgence? Could we have done everything in a weekend, or three months?

For my money, the answer is undoubtedly yes. You will get as caught up or not in weddings as you want to be.

There are all sorts of factors that might mean you have a long engagement. We're having one because it means (a.) I can lose weight (I'd been trying for a while so it wasn't a snap decision) (b.) we can save money and (c.) we can get the cheap venue we like. Also, I don't like stress. I had anticipated that it would involve more than it currently seems to, and had wanted to leave enough time.

But really, though we have over a year to go, once we knew what we wanted, most stuff sorted itself out pretty quickly.

I'm lucky that the venue does the catering but really, if I did nothing else for a year bar buy insurance, a dress and some flowers, we'd be fine. Getting obsessed over invitations etc is fun if you like that sort of thing. But you can always phone or send an email. That's not to say I'm not getting involved - I intend to fully enjoy this time.

But if we'd had the money and I'd been happy on the weight front then we'd have done it asap.

If you want to let yourself be consumed by it and enjoy it, then you will. If you have a weekend, then you'll book it in a weekend.

I'm a strong believer that with this sort of thing, you only get as stressed out as you want to.

holiday

So, I've been on holiday. Hence all the quiet around here in the past few days.

After the making of the spreadsheet and the mild sweats and tremors that it induced (the figures weren't high for 'wedding land' but they were bloody high by my book) we decided to have another crack at a guest list and got it down by 20 people thanks to the imposition of a few sensible rules (I have a huge family. The rules are very necessary if it isn't to be 75 per cent my relatives).

I also had a night of utter panic when I thought the venue cost had increased by a grand. Seriously, utter panic: thinking of cancelling the lot and losing the deposit sort of utter panic. Sod it, let's just go to the pub and the register office utter panic. Needless to say, it was completely unfounded utter panic.

I also mentioned dresses again. I've let my liking of non-white dresses be known before. But it didn't really wash with bf. "Just for one day, can't you look like a bride?" Fairenuff.

a tiny shift

Here's a tiny thing that happened today.

I showed bf the Cox & Cox wedding catalogue. He did not recoil. He appeared to show genuine interest. On seeing some pretty bottles, he said: I like those. We could have something like that.

This follows him emailing me some little cake figures ('toppers'?) the other day. HIM sending them to ME. Let's just digest that for a moment. Not that I give a damn about cake toppers (famous last words?) but previously, I had been lead to believe he didn't give a damn about any of these bits. I'd had to drag him to meet the humanist, and that's a big, needs a lot of thinking about, thing.

I feel quite excited. It's summer: it's technically much more than a year away, but in a year's time, I would like to have done almost everything and be enjoying the lovely summer without too much stress.

I think this means I can start actual planning (not just wide-eyed staring at wedding blogs) with impunity. Yes, it's more than a year away, but now when I mention it to people, it doesn't get that shocked response. It's a respectable time frame for actually doing stuff.

Ready, set, go!

*fires starting pistol, runs off excitedly to look at cakes made of stilton*

too much, too soon?

So right now, it's one year and four months, or 484 days* until we get married.

I don't need to underline, I'm sure, what a helluva long way off that is.

One the one hand, I'm glad to have the luxury of time to think about and to do things. Surnames, ceremonies, savings and dieting all need wiggle room and a bit of time to get right.

But on the other hand, I know that some things won't take that long to sort at all. I can't shake the feeling that this isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Sure, some bits will be. But the logistics? I don't know. It seems very do-able, even if I had just 6 months to get it all done. Or even less: six weeks would be OK at a push, I think. Am I being massively unrealistic?

And on some, imaginary, third hand, I wonder there's such a thing as too much time to think. I find myself, more and more, feeling like I am pre-empting the excitment and potentially making the process less fun by soaking in wedding blogs and things every day at this point.

I worry that I've made my mind up about things too soon: the surname issue (for another post); the ceremony... what if I change my mind in six months time after having pinned my colours to the mast now? And doing it so publicly, on the blog and all.

I don't want to find myself with nothing to get excited about this time next year, having everything already sorted.

When we go out to meet friends, I have a variant on the following conversation many times a night with different people:

Them: [Excitedly] How's the wedding planning going?
Me: Well, we're not really doing much at the moment. It's a long way off. But we have met the humanist and we've just started thinking about x y and z.
Them: Woah, you don't want to get stressed out about it! It's ages away!
Me: But...I'm not... I was just answering your question....
Them: No no no, it's too early. Don't think about it yet, you'll get stressed out.
Me: Um....

My current thinking is to keep it low-key right now. Actively not think about it, except for monetary issues, dieting and planning how much booze to buy (fun). I think we could mark a point at which this thing can begin in earnest: perhaps one year to the day when we could have some friends round for dinner, or have a picnic in the park. Perhaps that might be nice.

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* yep, I joined the Knot just to find that out