T-minus 50 Days

There's something amusing to me in the fact that my one post in August was about how September felt near... and suddenly September is upon us! In fact today (5th September) marks 50 days to go.

The reason for the sudden snowballing effect of the passage of time has, I've no doubt, got a lot to do with all the sudden things which have decided to converge with deadlines within the next month or so, all pre-wedding, all requiring urgent attention.

After my last post, we discovered that we would have to move house at the end of our tenancy. Unfortunately, our tenancy was due to expire on the 12th December - approximately 6 weeks after we came back from honeymoon. We hate moving, we hate house hunting. We made the decision to try and move before the wedding, if possible, because otherwise we'd spend our honeymoon and wedding stressing about potentially being homeless if we couldn't find somewhere in time.

What this means, however, is that our timetable for the next two months looks like this:

13th September - Jon's Stag
19th September - Final dress fitting
20th September - RSC Roaring Girl (we saw their production of Middleton's 'A Mad World My Masters' last year and it was amazing so we weren't going to pass up a chance for more Middleton)
27th September - Trip to Leeds for bridesmaid dress fittings
30th September - Jon due to submit thesis (thus making him basically unavailable for packing)
6th October - Get keys to new house and move
7th October - Meeting with photographer
11th October - All family converge for wedding rehearsal
13th October - return keys for old house and house inspection to get deposit back
19th October - Welcome to Night Vale Live (SO EXCITED we got tickets for this)
23rd October - Finish work and go approve cake
24th October - Pre-wedding prep
25th October - Wedding

ahahahahaha that looks really scary all written down like that. I need like 8 extra arms and the ability to stop time in order to get stuff done.

But yes unfortunately this has meant that the comic has started falling behind (later and later each week, le sigh), and that the blog has taken a hit. Mea culpa, guys, mea maxima culpa.

I'm sincerely hoping that the strip won't have to take a hiatus pre-wedding, although I probably won't get a chance to do any comics for whilst we're on honeymoon. This wasn't quite what I had hoped (best laid plans of Mice and Men and all that), but alas that's where we are.  The blog was (you may have noticed) the first to take a hit, and sadly now it is hitting the comic too.


For now, though, things may be a bit patchy. I'll do my best, but I'm afraid life is a bit insane right now.

Chin chin!

Autumnal Anticipation

Whilst I know we're only in August, and even then only barely so, I've started to notice a slight chill in the air of a morning and evening and it's starting to get me excited for Autumn. Not that I want Summer to rush away just yet - we've got a long weekend coming up after all - but I'm enjoying that tingle which is coming on the breeze and means Autumn isn't far behind.


I've always loved Autumn, it's always felt like a hugely exciting time of year for me. Something about the change in the air, the way the leaves turn, the changing temperatures... it makes me all tingly and happy and excited. I love the way the nights start getting darker, I love getting out my winter coat and bundling up, I love curling up inside under a blanket and staying warm when it's black and cold outside.

Autumn has always seemed like a very exciting time to me, and I wonder if part of that has something to do with the UK school calendar.

Okay, no, hear me out, I know that sounds random. But look at it this way - every September, from the ages of 3 to 21, something new happened. I went into a new class, I started a new school, I moved to a new home etc etc. September/October has thus seemed always like a time of year that is brimming full of potential, the possibilities of this new year were endless, and I was indestructible.

Add to that then the positive parade of different festivities which followed - Halloween, Bonfire Night, my birthday, Christmas... I barely have time to recover from the excitement of one before the next exciting thing has arrived. I'm basically a total mess of quivering anticipation and glee from 30th September until like 7th January. On the rare occasion there is pre-Christmas snow I basically just flip my shit.

Add to this the fact that when it gets too hot I become a hot, sweaty, useless mess of an excuse for a human being, it made sense to to move our wedding out of the Summer and into my favourite time of year.

What this means though is that my excitement for this Autumn has been dialled all the way up to 11. I'm constantly a little bit tingly and wound up, I have to keep giving myself a talking to to just calm the hell down and act like a normal person. There is SO MUCH coming up, and sometimes it seems really really far away, and then that slightly chill breeze will catch me, with the smell of September on it, and I just get excited all over again.

Was your wedding during your favourite time of year? Is it near any other events that you enjoy?

Let the Music Play

Now that we are rapidly closing in on the wedding (100 days today, eek!), Jon and I have to start thinking about the construction of the ceremony, the hymns and the music.

When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to walk down the aisle to 'Linus and Lucy', something upbeat and a bit fun.


 However, I was informed that classical music is required for church, so alas I've been researching that instead.

Pachelbel's Canon in D is one of the most popular songs for weddings - two of my cousins had it, and I think just about every wedding from Don't Tell the Bride either has it, or the BBC dubs it over. It's a beautiful song. However, a bit of googling around brought me to this:



I highly recommend watching this because it is funny and super, but TL:DR version - Pachelbel's Canon sucks for the poor old Cellist, because they only get 8 notes in the whole song, and it's super boring for them.

If there is one thing I love love love more than anything, it is people rearranging classical music and interpreting it in different styles. So imagine my delight when, after finding the rant above, I stumbled across this beauty:


And also this:



What has, predictably, now happened is that I am trapped in a black hole of classical music reinterpretations on youtube and I've in fact lost sight of my original goal. Which is always the way whenever I go on youtube. Oh welllllll.

The other kind of Registering

The marriage system in England is largely governed by a part of the government known as the General Register Office, part of HM Passport Services. They are responsible for the registration of births, deaths and marriages in England and Wales.

They are the gatekeepers of the legal part of the marriage.

And they are really goddamn anal about paperwork.

SO in order to be able to get legally married in England and Wales (please note, this isn't true of all of Great Britain - the marriage laws in Scotland and Ireland are independent, and I'm not aware of the full details for them) you have to give a minimum of three weeks notice of your intention to marry. To do this you have to go to the Registry Office in the parish you live in (or the nearest one if there isn't one in your immediate town), with proof of address from the last three months, a valid passport and £35 each for the privilege. If you want to get married in a church, you need to bring a letter from the vicar saying that it's all good.

THIS is where it gets complicated.

If you want to have a civil wedding - i.e. not religious at all, in a hotel or a golf club or a theatre etc. etc. that is absolutely fine, so long as the venue is licensed for weddings. You can go anywhere in the country, no-one will care from a legal perspective. You are fine and dandy.

If you want to have a Church of England wedding, you are also fine. If the church is outside the parish you live in, you simply have to prove some connection to the church - i.e. baptised there, grew up in the parish, have a family member who attends the church, and check that the vicar is okay to marry you. He or she will need to write a letter for you to take to the Registry office for you to give Notice of your Intention to Marry, but it's all golden otherwise.

However if you want to get married in a religious institution other than the Church of England outside of the parish you live in? Well. You can't. UNLESS it is your regular place of worship, or there isn't a place of worship for your religion within your parish.


Here's the thing - the church we are getting married in is a Catholic church. I grew up in the Parish. I was baptised there. My mum's a Eucharistic minister there. I attend mass there when I am home.

For the Registry Office, my only attending mass there when I am home would be absolutely fine for it to fall under my 'Regular Place of Worship', even if I only go at Christmas and Easter. Funnily enough, though, the church also requires me to attend mass regularly, and for some odd reason they feel that perhaps I should be going more often than twice a year for it to count as 'regular' worship.

So I have been attending the church around the corner from my office, every week, in order to meet the church requirements for regular attendance. But in doing so, I have then invalidated the legal perspective that the church I want to get married in is my regular place of attendance.

If it were a Church of England church, our getting married there would be no problem.

The laws which are causing all this kerfuffle? Were written in 1830 and haven't been changed since then. The registry office lady who we met the first time cheerfully told us that it was written by the churches, but lady, if it was 1830, the Catholics won't have had anything to do with writing that law. It would have all been written by the Church of England. Who are, oddly enough, the only religion exempt from that stupid law.

Anyway, this is what we discovered in our first visit. We regrouped. The priest wrote a letter stating that, by the Registry Office definition, the church we want to get married in is Jon's stable place of worship, because he doesn't go anywhere else. Which, you know, doesn't defeat the object of the exercise at all, but apparently counts because it follows the letter of the law, so whatever.


Once the paperwork hoop has been jumped through, you are then separated, and asked questions one at a time to make sure that this isn't a sham marriage.

Unfortunately this section didn't go so smoothly for Jon, who after being quizzed on whether or not 'PhD Student' could count as his occupation, then managed to forget the time and date of the wedding, and the address of the church. Apparently the woman got a little snippy with him, which caused him to get more flustered and forget more things.

I was in and out in five minutes - Jon was in there for at least twenty.

However, somehow we passed! Our intention to wed is listed on the Registry Office website in case anyone wants to make a legal objection to the marriage, and in 20 days we will be sent the forms which say 'YES YOU CAN BE MARRIED'.



Are things this complicated pre-wedding where you guys are from? I'd be interested to hear the different legal routes required in different places!

DIY Wedding Invitations

I am a bit of a stationery nerd. I love beautiful notebooks, I love exciting pens, and I love nice paper. I could have easily easily spent a lot of money on my wedding invitations, particularly when I discovered the gorgeousness of letterpress invites.

This is the 'Shelly' Design from Artcadia.co.uk.

I mean look. Just look at that.That gorgeous, thick, textured card stock, and the way everything is pressed into it, not just printed on it, giving this extra depth to the card. I cannot express to you how much I would have loved, LOVED, to have had beautiful letterpress invitations.

But we just couldn't justify the expense. Not with the knowledge that at best they would sit on someone's mantlepiece or fridge until the wedding, and then go straight into the bin. That's if they even made it to the mantlepiece, since I was recently told of someone's friend who had to fish the crumpled and battered invitation out from the bottom of their rucksack when questioned on what the date was, to the horror of the unfortunate bride who had lovingly commissioned them, getting a cartoon of herself and her groom done especially, and hand tied with lace and string. 

So, for both budgetary and pragmatic reasons, it was decided that making our own invitations would be the best way forwards.

I'd like to say we carefully planned what we would need and then sourced the most budget-friendly but high-quality materials, but actually what happened was that we got a bit overexcited in Hobbycraft and the Works Christmas sales, and then had to work out how to make the stuff we'd bought fit into a sensible design.

 We got the stamp at Hobbycraft, the craft leaves from The Works, and the gold ink and the cards from Amazon. Since we're having an Autumn wedding, gold and leaves seemed like a good way to go.

 

The tricky thing about the stamp was not smudging the ink as you stamped, particularly with the initial batch of cards, as the stamp was coming away more heavily coated in ink. I blotted as best as I could but they still took a bit of time to dry!

 

Once they were dried (I didn't do this with the initial batch, but did with later ones), I hairsprayed them, to hold the ink in place and try and prevent smudging. I just used my standard hairspray. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it meant that they didn't smudge all over the envelopes when I was putting the whole lot together. I think it would have stuck better had I not used a shimmery ink, as the shimmer came off when you rubbed your thumb over it, and that maybe contributed to a few smudges. Also perhaps the use of a more textured card stock might have helped grip the ink, although at the same time it might have made the smudging worse. You never know!


Next: Applying the leaves.

For this task, after contemplating with a dubious eye a sad-looking Pritt Stick, I remembered that I had, several years ago, bought a tiny glue gun and glue sticks in the vain hope that I might eventually start making my own cosplays and props (hahah yeah that didn't happen).

Every girl needs a tiny hot pink glue gun in her accessories case!

Ta-daa! The leaves glued carefully in place, not without learning that hot glue burns when you poke it (this is educational as well as entertaining, kids).

I ended up needing to make about 47 or so, but I did extras to compensate for smudging which had happened to some of them. Also spares to send off for alternative reasons, which I shall reveal later in the post!

The next step was to design the inserts - I ordered some lovely A6 postcards from PaperBox on Amazon, with a lovely texture to them. I designed the inserts in photoshop, using some free fonts gathered from pinterest and dafont.com, and then it was a case of some more glue gunning!

After that construction, it was a case of addressing the envelopes - which I had become a little nervous about since my post on the matter - however I realised that I could lightly pencil out the calligraphy first and then ink over the top. This actually worked as extra practice too, as I was making the shapes of the letters with the pencil, so my hand started to get used to the movements needed to achieve the desired effect.

 

I got these addresses from various blogs around the internet, which related that you could get a letter of congratulations from the Queen (only if you're British, I'm afraid), the President (possibly only if you're American, but no-one specified as most of the website are American) and the Pope. Plus it meant that I could show off my natty calligraphy without giving away the addresses of any of my friends and family.

To finish off, I made liberal use of some sealing wax I had kicking around the house, and the seal which came with the calligraphy kit.

Guys: Fiery wax also burns if you get it on your fingers. Just FYI.



And ta-daaa! That's it, my wedding invitations. Now just to wait for the RSVPs.

H is for....

Honeymoon! Or Hen Night. Both things which are on my mind right now.

Jon and I have booked our honeymoon - we are off to Berlin! I'm very excited, not least because I love German food (meaty, peppery things are really my jam), and I've never been to Germany before. And we've got a fancy suite and we're near the zoo and we're going to go see the Blue Man Group, and try out this fancy shooting range and it's going to be SO GREAT.

So that's actually pretty much sorted, and because it's just Jon and I to coordinate, the stress is minimal. We both know what we want to do, what we can afford, and when we can do it. Bish bosh done.

The Hen Night, on the other hand, requires coordination on a much larger scale. It's me, and my friends, and my relations, all trying to work out when we are free and how much we want to spend.


Problem the First: THE DATE
One of the first obstacles which you have to scramble over whilst dragging everyone with you, fussing and squabbling, is the selection of a mutually agreeable date.

This is made naturally trickier by the fact that, now you and your friends are all adults you now have to work around not just work schedules, but commitments to other family and friends, at weird times, in different countries, which are perhaps booked up months ahead.

Seriously, at one point I asked one of my friends when she was free and she said she had a spare weekend in September. This was in April. Now multiply that by however many people are coming to your event.

You spend ages sending  emails backwards and forwards slowly narrowing down a date, and then by the time you find a date, it is much closer than you initially realised and you now have four weeks to plan something that you were certain was six months away.


Problem the Second: THE LOCATION
Over the years, the Hen Night has gone from being a nice night with friends to a HEN NIGHT and even to a HEN WEEKEND. People seem to be regularly going further afield and for longer to celebrate this supposed last night of freedom (although what you would be able to do whilst you're engaged that you wouldn't do when you were married boggles the mind, surely the relationship commitment level is the  same in all but name?).

It seems like in the UK, places like Ibiza or Marbella are pretty popular for Hen Weekends (there's also a saying - "No Carbs, before Marbs", but screw you, The Only Way Is Essex, no-one comes between me and my bread), but mainly for people who want the sort of party where you just get noisily and thoroughly bladdered and sunburned, on cheap booze, surrounded by hundreds of Brits doing the exact same thing, and a few clever Spanish people who have realised they can make a hell of a lot of money selling that booze to these Brits.

The intention is to be drunk from the time you arrive at the airport on your way out, until you land back in the UK after the weekend, so that at no point during your sojourn out of the country are you ever sober. This is why most airports have branches of Wetherspoons in the departure lounge.

Now,  I am pretty certain that approximately no people on the invite list to my hen night would be interested in that sort of affair. We prefer something a bit more sedate and cultured - a nice meal, some museums, maybe a bit of tipsy laserquest. Who knows?

This didn't stop suggestions such as Edinburgh and Dublin being thrown out there which, whilst admittedly geographically closer than Marbella, probably cost more and take longer to get to. Plus, there are varied budgets within the group and some of them (mainly mine) would struggle to stretch so far, or at least allow me drink and eat as much as I plan to once I got there after fare was paid.

Eventually Liverpool was settled on - comparatively close for most people attending, major rail links for ease of access, and more than enough pubs and museums to go around (although disappointingly it appears no laserquest, unless we wish to hire packs and guns and just laserquest our way around the city centre, which would be pretty darned awesome, actually).


Problem the Third: THE ITINERARY
As mentioned above, the traditional Hen Party themes of Drinking, Drinking More, and Novelty Penis Items are not the sort of thing which anyone I know would be particularly interested in. Well, maybe some of them, but only ironically. And anything penis-related has been banned for the peace of mind of Jon's little sister, who is coming and who deserves to get through her life without getting any kind of information of that sort on her brother at all, and I deserve to get through my life without having to give it to her.

So it is important to work out what we can all do and enjoy doing, which will suitably make the use of the time we have in our destination. Liverpool is fortunately filled with an abundance of museums and galleries and entertainments to fill our time, and if we get really bored we can hop on a boat and experience a ferry across the Mersey first hand.

But getting the balance is key - whilst some people in the group are big Museum fans, I think others may prefer to limit the amount of time they spend in a museum, even if the Museum in question is the Tate Liverpool (or particularly if that Museum is the Tate Liverpool, depending on whether or not Tracy Emin has an exhibition on). Alternative, additional activities must be found. Don't worry guys - Jungle Rumble Crazy Golf is open until 10pm! (Although actually that really appeals to me, that might be actually really good fun, crazy golf is the best)


However as we are just at the point of booking hotels (i.e. the end of Problem the Second), I have not yet addressed Problem the Third yet. This will come in the next week or so I imagine!


What sort of stuff did you guys do for your Hen Night/Bachelorette? Did you find the coordination tricky?

DIY Distress

The one problem with deciding to make your own wedding invitations is the part where you realise that you have to send them out. And not just, you know, anonymously posted on the internet - you will be literally sending these things that you have spent months crafting, poured hours and hours of time into constructing, to every person you know and love.

Like that nightmare you had where you did something stupid in front of everyone you know and love.

When this realisation hits you - usually around the time you accidentally glue-gun one of the inserts slightly off-centre into one of the cards, or when you notice that the ink from the stamp has smudged a little around the edges, despite you hairspraying it twice for good measure - your stomach drops and you realise that maybe, maybe those things you've been working on since Christmas are in fact a little bit crap. And everyone knows you're making your own invitations because your mum has been telling everyone so proudly, but actually they're going to open the envelopes and see... these.

And it's too late to back out now because you'd never be able to get professional ones made in time, and of course because everyone knows you're making them yourself, they'll be really confused if they suddenly got non-homemade ones, so you'd have to answer questions about how it all went wrong, so it works out quicker if you just send out this trash and then people will be able to see just went wrong and will hopefully be British enough not to comment on it. Besides, it's not like there's anything you can do to fix it at this point.

Of course from there it starts to spiral.

What if nothing you've made for the wedding is any good? What if it's not just the invitations that suck, what if it all sucks?

And what if it's not just the stuff you made what if all the choices you have made, what if everything you picked for this wedding is going to look awful? What if once it's all put together it just looks like a hot mess of random colours and glue-gunned decorations, and everyone just sits there really awkwardly waiting until there's an appropriate point for them to leave so that they are no longer surrounded by all sorts of weird, poorly-coordinated things.

And then afterwards no-one will speak to you for a while, if ever again, because they've seen what's inside your mind and it wasn't nice for anyone.

And they're probably still all covered in glitter, even though you didn't use any glitter, but that's just the way these things always seem to turn out, with glitter stuck to people.

At this point you have to go and sit quietly somewhere and distract yourself in some non-alarming manner, possibly by watching a livestream of kittens, and take a lot of deep calming breaths.

After that you have to reaffirm yourself, it will be fine, people will like your things, and if they don't they will probably be too drunk to examine them too closely anyway, so it will work out either way.