DRESS EXCITEMENT

GUYS. OMG. GUYS.

I got an appointment for the Pronovias Sample Sale that is happening NEXT WEEK in London. OMG. YOU GUYS.

I COULD HAVE MY DRESS NEXT WEEK.



In non-capslocky fashion, this is a bit exciting/terrifying, for reasons thusly:

Exciting
- Buying my wedding dress OMG
- Massive saving = more money for other fun stuff
- Buying my WEDDING DRESS. AND THEN IMMA WEAR IT AND EAT PIE.

 (I am probably going to use this gif a LOT in this blog)

For serious though, this is quite exciting.


Terrifying
- What if I get down there and they don't have it in my size?
- What if I get down there and they only have one in my size and I have to fight for it?
- What if they have it but it is damaged?
- My wedding insurance only covers the dress for two months before the wedding.
- SO MANY UNKNOWN VARIABLES. CANNOT ADEQUATELY PLAN. MAKING FOR ANXIOUS.


I've never been to a sample sale before, but TV has led me to believe that they all end in women wrestling and screaming and pulling hair out.

But I'm sure that's an exaggeration, right? Right?

The consultant said it's going to be very busy, and I'm probably going to have to share with someone, which, whatever, I had to do that at the National Wedding Show so no biggy there. But that makes me wonder how strict they will be with appointment times. My appointment is at 3:00pm, but my train gets in at 12:30 - if I headed along straight from there, would they let me in? Can't hurt to try I suppose.

The only other downside of that is that my train home isn't until about 7:30pm (darn you cheap train ticket rules!), so I will potentially be having to lug my wedding dress around London with me until then.


I'd better get training.

I'll let you know what happened next week!

Lo! She returneth!

Apparently my initial promise to myself to try and update weekly was a little too optimistic. Sorry all! I need to get a better handle on my abilities.

The news thus far is this: We have a date.  We have booked the church. We have booked the reception venue.

25th October 2014. (536 days away - not that I'm counting. I got an app for it out of academic curiosity. Honest.)

Church:

 Reception Venue:

GIF to suitably express joy and/or make me laugh:

I also am pretty certain I know what my dress is. I have tried it on twice, there have been no other close contenders really. And I'm apparently at the point where I am having nightmares about buying the wrong dress, which I guess sort of proves it. The problem is, I'm waiting to buy. I figure the dress will be discontinued at the end of the year, so in the months before its discontinuation in December, the price will be discounted. This was the case with a near-identical dress from the same designer which I tried on last December.  The plan is to go to the same shop and try on this dress again in say, July or August, and just ask the assistant if that'll be happening and when.

Did anyone else play the Waiting Game with the dress, or did you just buy it when you knew you loved it?

Anyway, I'm trying to distract myself with other decisions. Photographer (apparently most difficult decision after venue) mainly, although the plan is to get that sorted in the next month or so. But I am really really really really really looking forward to doing the cake tasting. That is my plan for the summer. CAKE.

(Accumulating an extensive gif collection is another thing I have been doing to occupy my time. Because doing something productive like, say, tidying, would have been way too sensible.)

Eeeyyyy Rosacea!

Since I was in high school I have struggled with the colour of my face in photographs. I mean, the colour's there all the time, but it only bothers me in photographs because I can't see it the rest of the time.

The first exact memory and documented evidence is when I went to Disney World in Florida, when I was 17. After a week of beautifully warm and sunny weather, suddenly the weather turned and my friends and I were dropped into a cold situation with unsuitable clothing. We did our best, raiding the stores for hoodies, but it was still freezing.

Towards the end of the day, I got a photograph of myself with Cinderella's castle, all lit up at night. The photoguy commented how lucky I was - the photo had been timed during the light colours switching, so I had a two-tone castle behind me.

I also had a two-tone face.

My cheeks were like emergency becons glaring out at the camera. "It's cold! Save us!"

"Oh well," I thought, "just shows how cold it was that day."

And I didn't think much more of it, for a little while.

But when I was at University, I started noticing that more and more in the photos that were being taken, I was suffering from two-tone face syndrome again. I resembled the rosy-cheeked apple-sellers from Dickens adaptations. "Alright my luverrr, how about some luvverly apples!"

It was not a sexy look.

                                                                    A selection of my face's 'Greatest Hits'


I know what you're thinking - it's a comment I've heard a lot. "You just look healthy!"

But keep in mind that three of those photos were taken with makeup on (the top left is the only one that isn't) - this is through foundation, and, in the case of the photo on the bottom right, through the vivid green red-reducing primer cream applied liberally beneath my foundation, and powder over the top. Even that didn't work.

I began to despair. I assumed that I was just genetically unfortunate, cursed to forever resemble an extra from a Victorian market scene. If makeup wasn't even working to cover it, I didn't know what I could do, except only go out with a paper bag on my head, or become one of those people who demands that no photos be taken of them whatsoever on nights out, and thus I would fade into photographic obscurity and all historical records of my life would cease.


Nearly a year ago, however, I can across one of my friends on another blogging site mentioning that they had rosacea, and having never heard of it before I of course turned to our friend google. I got hit with lots of pictures like this:

(image from http://www.rosacea.org/)

(GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico An Old Man and His Grandson - currently on exhibition at the Louvre)

The more of the websites I read, the more I realised how closely the symptoms described matched my own. And the more I started to panic because they kept showing pictures of the noses. 

From the NHS page on Rosacea:

"Rosacea is a common but poorly understood long-term (chronic) skin condition that mainly affects the face. Symptoms begin with episodes of flushing (when the skin turns red). As rosacea progresses, other symptoms can develop such as:

• burning and stinging sensations
• permanent redness
• spots (papules and pustules)
• small blood vessels in the skin becoming visible

In the most severe cases, skin can thicken and enlarge, usually on and around the nose."

More information can be found here.


Thought the first - Papules and Pustules. Wow. I feel REALLY attractive right now.
Thought the second - That word 'permanent' right there? I don't like that word.
Thought the third - OH MY GOD MY NOSE.


Post-haste, I made an appointment with my doctor, and thus began the saga of getting treatment for my rosacea.


May 2012 - I went to see the doctor, and I was reassured that my skin wasn't thickening and my nose wasn't growing. I was given a leaflet, with more talk about 'papules and pustules', and also information about the treatment of skin  growth on the nose. It would need to be "trimmed back". This is not provided on the NHS.

I also got referred to a skin camouflage clinic, which would give me access to prescription-strength camouflage makeup.


August 2012 - I finally managed to get an appointment with the camouflage service. The topical cream did absolutely nothing for the redness, but by this point I had started to notice things which triggered it, and could often feel my face heat up as the redness hit. Things which triggered it, included:

- Red wine
- Hot weather
- Cold weather
- Stressful situations
- Excitement
- Exercise
- Curry

All the leaflets and websites recommended avoiding things which caused it to flare up. I took the stance that if I couldn't avoid the things I DIDN'T like on that list ("I'm sorry I can't come to work today, the stress is making my face too red!"), then I was darned if I was avoiding the things I DID like. So the curry and red wine stayed put.

But my appointment went well, and I was given a template prescription for the makeup and sealing powder. I was told to give this in at my GP's, and they would be able to write a proper prescription without an appointment.


September 2012 - I got a call from my GP, saying that I will need to make an appointment as they apparently won't prescribe this makeup for rosacea. This is a different GP from the one who referred me to the clinic in the first place. Sadly, I also got hit with another mystery illness, and couldn't follow this up immediately.


November 2012 - Finally feeling better, I managed to make an appointment to discuss my face. This GP wanted to know who told me it was rosacea, and he thought it might be acne. He refused to prescribe me the makeup, and instead gave me a 6-week course of antibiotics to take. Over Christmas. Fabby.


January 2013 - I returned to the GP, and the antibiotics had had no effect. Almost immediately we start the appointment, he told me that it's definitely rosacea. And also that I shouldn't have been on those antibiotics in the first place. BUT he still refused to prescribe the makeup. Instead, I went home and he called his dermatologist friend. About an hour later he called me back - apparently my kind of rosacea is only treatable by LASER.

And, like 'nose trimming', lasers are also not available on the NHS.

Begrudgingly, he agreed to write the prescription, although he kept asking me what to write, which, given as he was the one with the medical degree, threw me a little.

Then they had to order the makeup in specially at the chemist. So I finally got it last week.


As the debacle progressed, I'd become more and more worried about my rosacea, and more aware of it. In terms of wedding thoughts, I really did not want to look all 'cheeky' in my wedding pictures, so in terms of that, getting this makeup had become a priority so I could get the hang of it in good time.

Lo! The results:

On the left - my cheek as normal. On the right? The effect of the camouflage makeup. The difference it made was shocking. It covered so much more completely and effectively than any makeup I'd tried - even the Clinique makeup designed for rosacea hadn't done such a good job. And it lasted all day.


To say I'm relieved is an understatement. Now I can look forward to actually having half a chance of looking like a normal human being on my wedding day. One less worry off the list!

If the Shoe Fits

When I was in school, I hated shoe shopping. It was the most boring thing in the world to me. My mother had to bribe me with sweeties for the yearly School Shoes trip.

This is because I had learned at an early age that the pretty shoes would not fit me. Because I had fat feet. Short, fat feet. So those beautiful shoes with the unicorn on? Either too tight or too long. The ones with the secret garden trail in pink stitching and the pretty little sparkles? Would have mangled my feet if my mother had listened to me instead of watching the way I hobbled around the shop in agony.

So I wrote off shoe shopping for my entire school career, pretty much. And then I went to University, and discovered that in the decade-and-a-bit since my traumatic shoe shopping experiences as a child, shoes had changed! They fit me better! And were prettier!

I also discovered that I have quite frankly the most ridiculous taste in shoes ever. And also pretty expensive taste.

It started when I discovered Irregular Choice.

                                                                                                                            (personal picture)

I bought these beauties shortly after discovering them. They've got a Unicorn on the sole. A UNICORN. They're basically Crack in shoe form.

And it was a slippery slope from there for my bank balance and shoe collection.

So thusly, when it came to start looking for wedding shoes, it was almost a certainty that I would find something ridiculous and love it.


THE RULES:

- No peep toes. I don't like looking at my feet.
- No slingbacks. I need all the support I can get.
- No pointy toes. I do not want Witch-feet.
- Stiletto heels. Everything else makes me look clunky.

Most importantly:

No White Satin.

Satin stains, and I'm just the sort of person to manage to stain it. And when would I ever wear white satin shoes again? It would almost be like throwing money into a black hole. No, I want shoes that I will wear again and again, because otherwise why bother? I found T.L.C. Creations.

More specifically, I saw these shoes on their facebook page:

(images from T.L.C Creations)

The lace! The colour! The music script! I was in love!

And then I read the story behind them:

"The bride lost her father a few years ago. She said she wished she had something of her father's to send us to use in the design. I asked if there were any letters or cards that he might have given her with his personal message written in them. She had a few of them so we were able to include this expression from her father in the design of her shoes. It says "I am very proud of you, love Dad". Now she will have part of her father with her when she walks down the aisle."

Well, if I ever needed any more encouragement to buy from them, that was it. I was straight there!

Their website is full of whimsical designs, combining sparkle and lace with beautiful textures - they even have a range with the artwork from an early edition of Alice in Wonderland. They could customise! They could adapt! I was in a whirl of amazing shoe-possibilities - could I get some with some of the text from Pride and Prejudice on? Could I get some with illustrations from Winnie The Pooh? - until I looked at the prices and my dream was cut tragically short.

Shoes are tragically not playing a significant part in our budget. And quality and customisation come with a hefty price tag. So T.L.C were dropped from my mental wedding plan as quickly as they'd arrived in it.

But that doesn't stop me looking.


Do you have a pair of dream wedding shoes? Did you manage to get them, or did you have to compromise and get something else?

Things I Will Never Wear at the Gym

A t-shirt that says "Shedding for the Wedding"

Let's be realistic. You and I both know that the only reason I am going to the gym is so that when I am shoe-horned into a white dress, Greenpeace don't come and try to drag me out to deeper water because I look like Moby Dick's little sister. But people at the gym don't know that. Can't we all just at least pretend that I'm there for more substantial, less vain reasons? That I'm there to improve my way of life, so I stop getting out of breath climbing stairs. Maybe, MAYBE, people might even think I enjoy being there, and that I wouldn't rather be at home eating pie, drinking wine and watching a film where either Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling takes his shirt off.

And even worse, I would rather light myself on fire than wear a shirt that says "Sweating for the Wedding". Way to kill what little allure I'd managed to cling onto whilst doing my impersonation of Jabba the Hutt on the crosstrainer.

(image from RufflesWithLove on Etsy)

Other slogans I will not consider:
- EARN YOUR SHOWER
- WORKING IT FOR THE DRESS
- OPERATION: WEDDING DRESS
- NOT A BRIDEZILLA

Things I might consider:
- I'D RATHER BE SLEEPING
- PIES ARE GREAT
- THIS IS ONLY SO I CAN GET DRUNK TONIGHT AND NOT FEEL GUILTY

 (Image from Spreadshirt.com)

A teeny tiny tanktop and hotpants

Yes, skinny girl at the gym, I'm talking to you. Maybe you are fortunate enough that your thighs don't rub together when you run, but that doesn't mean I want a full unfiltered view of the underside of your arse as you spring merrily onto the treadmill in what is basically your underwear. If I turned up wearing that skimpy little camisole, with my bra showing, and those itty bitty shorts, I'm certain the result would be positively obscene. Also, it's freaking February. Go put some clothes on. What would your mother say if she saw you out of the house dressed like that?


Make-up

Honestly, my face feels gross enough underneath a load of makeup after a night out clubbing, and I get way more hot and sweaty at the gym. Because that's what you're supposed to do there. Surely when you get all sweaty the makeup gunks into your skin, and doesn't your mascara start to clump up or run? And if it doesn't then either you've got really expensive makeup, you're an android, or you're not exercising properly. I shouldn't feel underdressed when I go to the gym - and walking into the changing room often feels like walking into a very exclusive club and the doorman let me in by mistake.


Nothing

Much as I dislike feeling underdressed at the gym, I am profoundly uncomfortable feeling overdressed. My gym is a University gym, reserved entirely for staff and students. This means there is a chance you could be wandering around nekkid and bump into your Lecturer and/or Boss. This appears to not occur to or bother a lot of people at the gym, but frankly the idea of my boss even seeing my sports bra (which is a fairly substantial item of clothing in itself) gives me the wiggins.

Of course, this may be because for a short while after the gym opened, one of the senior members of my department seemed to keep leaping out at me from behind lockers in the changing rooms and scaring the beejeebus out of me. It was like a Monty Python sketch - "No-One expects Viola in her swimsuit!"

Totally aside from that, it's a bit of a sucker-punch to the self-esteem to walk through the door and suddenly be surrounded by tiny naked Chinese girls. It feels like a porny Gulliver's Travels, where I'm a giant and Lilliput is full of Asian Nudists.


My Engagement Ring

Or any jewellery actually. I see a lot of people on forums or on pinterest who have 'gym rings', but this would not work for me.

- Exercise makes me sweaty and gross, and I don't want to associate that feeling with my ring. I don't want my pretty 'tainted' with exercise and fitness and healthy things. I might start taking it off when I eat salads.

- When I get hot and sweaty, I take my jewellery off. I might not even pay attention when I'm doing it. And I've got form for leaving stuff in the cupholders around the gym when I swap equipment. Which, y'know, is bad enough when it's the key to your locker. I'd rather not test myself.



Do you have any Gym No-Nos?

The Proposal

Once upon a time - well, 15th September 2012 - I went out for the day.
I was at J-con, a day-long convention which I actually really enjoyed. My expectations had been pretty low, and it was an early morning and predicted to be a long day, so when I found myself chilling out and having a good time, I was pleasantly surprised. I also bought some art from the extremely talented Echosilver - two originals, and a gorgeous little print of a watercolour to go on my desk, for the princely sum of 14 of your English Pounds. I was very pleased.

Then I headed home - to the promise of a roast dinner cooked by Jon, because it was getting towards that time of year and we'd both been starting to think that it was time to head into Winter Mode (Roasts, PJs, Red Wine etc etc).

And I was greeted by this:

Yes, candles, candles we have had before, those were nice, but not the bit that got my attention. Focus on the important part.

Jon had tidied the dining room.

I was delighted. That place had been a shit-tip for weeks, because it's the first room you come into, and it's become a natural dumping ground for crap - coats, shoes, bags, stuff we need to take out of bags that we don't have time to put away right now, junk mail, real mail etc etc.

TIDY. <3

And the candles were pretty too. And scented, so the sort of dampish smell that we sometimes get from the laundry was all gone.

So Jon dished up the dinner (minted lamb - yummm!) but then scurried off to get drinks, and reappeared with a bottle of rose champagne.

HERE is where my alerts came on. I asked what this was all for, and he grinned. Then a look of horror and panic came over my face as he fumbled for whatever-it-was in his pocket, and that made him panic and thrust it towards me with

"It's a hat!"
This was not an inaccurate statement.

Inside the hat, however, was this:

Well. I rather felt like I'd had a comedy piano dropped on me. I said yes - there wasn't much else I really could say. And then I swore at him. And then we drank both bottles of sparkling wine and I swore at him some more.

He revealed that he had a dozen tiny cowboy hat jewellery boxes, because they could only be bought in bulk. He'd been researching rings for months - it's gold, tanzanite and diamond (and matches my Graduation Ring perfectly - also gold, tanzanite and diamond). And it nearly perfectly fits - he stole my Graduation Ring without me noticing to get my ring fitting - unfortunately, that goes on my middle finger and not my ring one. But it's near as dammit a perfect fit.

"It's your birthstone," he told me.

"Is it?" I said. "I thought my birthstone was Topaz."

"Well, there seem to be a couple for each month. But Tanzanite is definitely one of the birthstones for December."


...

"My birthday's in November."



Yeah, he swore a lot. And then he admitted that the flowers he bought - carnations - he'd thought were roses, and hadn't realised until he got home and read the label.

And then one of the candles which he'd put the used match in flared up and singed the cabinet we'd inherited from my Granny.
It wasn't a perfect proposal by any means, but that's what made it perfect for us. That, and a dozen tiny cowboy hats make anything okay.


Do any of you have funny proposal stories? Did you handle it well? Did anything go wrong?

In the Beginning...

Let's talk about how Jon and I met.

When I was 18, I trundled off to University, as many 18-year-olds do, bright-eyed and full of hope! After setting up my bedroom, my parents left and I wended my way down to the 'Welcome!' talk with another girl I'd found from my course, in the room next to me.

As we were sat at the front, another girl came over to us, two boys in tow. She briskly introduced herself, and announced that she, too, was studying English, as were her two companions. One, in a suede jacket with a slight twinge of an accent, introduced himself as Jon. I didn't see him again that evening, and he doesn't remember us even meeting then.

HE remembers us meeting the next morning when, on the advice of our Subwarden, I found myself leading a large group of people past the bus stop immediately outside of our Hall, and down to the other, quieter bus stop at the end of the road. HE spent the next week or so referring to me as "That Girl Who's Afraid Of Roads", as I was a little nervy when faced with the giant city-sized roads, which dwarfed my tiny hometown roads in comparison.

Somehow we ended up in the same group of friends. I was quite taken with him, and briefly worried that he fancied another girl more - and she'd got his phone number first! - until I found out she was a lesbian, so I could relax. Although at the time Jon did have quite long, fluffy hair, he wasn't really effeminate. Particularly not in any way that would have mattered!

You have to understand, at the time I considered myself not much of a catch. Having once sat on a bus back from a waitressing assignment and listened to two boys list the hottest girls in my school, without having realised that we knew each other at all during the 6-hour shift we'd just worked together, I think I was rather justified in assuming I was nigh-on invisible to the opposite sex. Aside from a few awkward near-encounters in high school with friends that had sent me into near-meltdown over the stress of it all.

That was another thing: I didn't know how to cope with the idea of Relationships. I wasn't by nature a socially anxious person, I've always been fairly gregarious. But the idea of that kind of Relationship was like a sucking black hole of terror, with a soundtrack of the teasing I'd occasionally get in high school if I even spoke to a boy. It was good-natured, from my friends, but always made me want to curl up into a little ball. In high school people knew I didn't do boyfriends, so attention was always immediately drawn to any interactions I had with boys.

But at University, no-one knew me! No-one knew I apparently had a crippling anxiety that sang the "Sittin' in a tree" song at me. This just left the one hurdle to overcome, which was knowing what the hell I did with myself now.

I figured he liked me back when we ended up doing a late-night group reading of some Edgar Allen Poe a couple of weeks into Uni. I'm still not sure why we were doing a reading, although I have a vague memory of it being because one of our friends hadn't done his reading for his seminar the next day, and somehow had managed to convince all of us to help him do it. This turned what should have taken half an hour to read into a two-hour long session as we passed the book round the circle and each read a paragraph, but it was fun anyway.

After that we sort of just... stumbled together rather ineptly and together we have stuck, with comparitively few meltdowns along the way. I had one briefly when I realised that all our friends knew we were in a relationship (oh hello, High School Anxieties, that's where you've been), and another when we got engaged, but otherwise we've done pretty well. We date our anniversary as 5th November, but we have no clue really, we never went on any dates (seemed pointless when to all intents and purposes we lived together). We picked the 5th for the simple reason that it meant we had a reason to go see the fireworks every year.

I've never written about this before. When we're asked how we met, we tend to say, "Same Halls, same course, same friends - it was just easier than avoiding each other!"

Which is true, but on a couple of different levels.


How did you and your SO meet?