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.

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.

Registering an Interest

I spent last week frantically working on getting envelopes addressed for the invitations, with the plan of getting them posted last weekend - I would be visiting home so could get some of them hand-delivered, saving on postage. Clearly the plan was ingenious, so I was flogging myself to get the ones finished for people who lived near my parents.

Until late Thursday night, when I sent a text to my mum chasing up the last few addresses. Her response was "Have you sealed the envelopes yet?"

Ummm, no, because I'm still writing the addresses. Why?

Apparently after our conversation the previous week about how Jon and I did not want to do a gift list, she has decided that it would be best for us to do a gift list. Hurrah.


So, Friday afternoon, Jon and I bunked off work and went to set up a gift list.


Near us there are really only two shops which can be used for making a gift list - John Lewis, or Debenhams. Whilst we have always appreciated browsing in John Lewis, the prices are pretty ridiculous there, as they tend to target the slightly more well-off shopper. Debenhams had always been where we went for the sensibly-priced alternative. So Debenhams was our first stop.

We found the wedding registry desk, and saw a member of staff nearby who was helping another customer. We loitered by the desk waiting for her to finish with this customer, or someone else to walk by, who could tell us who we needed to speak to, as the desk was very very empty.

And we waited.

And we waited.

 

Eventually, after about twenty minutes, the staff member finished with her customer and came over to me. Oh no, she wasn't the wedding registry lady, but if we went over to the tills they'd be able to tell me where she was.

I (by this point Jon had wandered off to be amused elsewhere) wandered over to the tills, and waited as the two slowest cashiers in the world took forever serving the two slowest customers in the world.

And I waited.

And I waited.

Finally, one of the customers was sent on her way, and I was able to ask about the lady who manned the registry service. Apparently this question was extremely unexpected, so the cashier had to disappear into the staff only area to try and find out what was happening.

And I waited.

And I waited.

At long last she returned and told me that the woman I needed was on lunch, and would not be back for another 10 minutes. No-one else was able to help me, but we could maybe look around and see if there was anything we liked.

By this point we had been standing and waiting for what felt like the whole afternoon but was probably in reality about 40 minutes - which is a long time when actually you just want to buy something. They wouldn't have had to work for it, we were standing there going "Please let us spend money with you!" and we were getting zip.

What was worse was that our time-killing browse of the items which we were looking to register for took approximately 90 seconds. There wasn't much there at all, which was disappointing.


So, our patience gone, even the promise of a £50 gift card from the store in return for registering with them didn't hold enough allure to keep us there, and we left, heading instead for John Lewis, the place of the £16 spatula.

It was the work of maybe 15 minutes to get our list all set up, by a very friendly and efficient lady, and we were handed both a barcode scanner and a voucher for a free hot drink and slice of cake each in the cafe, and we were off.

The barcode scanner was sadly a bit dicky, and kept randomly losing signal if I bent down too long to look at something, and the scanner part didn't work very well either, so we spent most of the afternoon attempting to scan things and then having to type in the product number ourselves using the stylus. This was tricky for the bigger and heavier objects which had the product numbers on low shelves, so we did a lot of squatting and bending and contorting whilst trying to both read and enter the numbers without losing signal.

Guys, I didn't realise how much weird and expensive household stuff there was in the world until I spent an afternoon painstakingly going through it all to try and work out if I wanted it or not.

Firstly, because I am a child, and this seemed a little bit rude:

Heeheehee tiddly pots.

I don't know what a 'Big love bowl' is that warrants something made that much of plastic being that expensive. Possibly it is some kind of totem for a religious ceremony of some sort? As a spoon is involved I can only assumed it is a ceremony that involves ice cream.

A mat made of cork fish! If the one made of 5 cork fish was too big for your needs, there was a smaller mat made out of 3 cork fish, so it can fit into just about every household seamlessly.

Perfect! Just what I needed to subtly store all those toothpicks I do not have. Classy, elegant, unobtrusive... And for just less than £20 looks nothing at all like the little plastic animals they used to give me ice cream in at chain pubs when I was a kid. Nothing at all.

Oh, you think, looking at this little silver cage, this is quite lovely, what is it? Why it is a tea strainer! The little bird is the strainer, and the little cage is where you rest it when you are finished with it so you don't get tea gunk dripping all over your table. Now, pretending for a moment that you at 100% behind this strange fascination for birdcages which seems to be gripping society at the moment, you take a look at the price tag...

What a bargain! Why, that is less than the cost of three of those stupid Big Love Bowls, surely you can't turn down that price?

You will note that the strainer, bowl and toothpick holder are all from the same high-value high-use brand, Alessi. I would not like to go round to their house, no sir, because that would be full of some crazy shit.

(This is not the first time I have had an appropriate use for this gif. Apparently it is more regularly suited to daily life than you would think.)

I can only assume this is for when I have 6 extremely picky, but not very hungry friends around for dinner at the same time.

Guess how much this chair costs. Go on, guess! I bet you can't guess! Have a go.

£224! For all those American sorts out there, that's $377. For a plastic chair. That is BRIGHT GREEN.

By this point, Jon and I were flagging heavily, to the point that Jon had spent five minutes flicking through a swatch book for a £2000 leather chair so he had an excuse to sit down for a bit. It was only sensible that we made our way to the cafe to make the use of the free drink-and-cake voucher.

However ridiculous the rest of the shop might have been, that GIANT piece of cake was an absolute work of art. Even if we did have to eat it with a soup spoon because Jon grabbed without looking and neither of us had the energy to go back and switch the cutlery.

the Conflict of Wedding Blogging

Wedding blogging is a strange beast.

The nature of blogging is such that you are encouraged to share every detail of things, to reveal yourself and all your plans. Such is the intent of wedding blogging, to show everyone who reads the real nitty-gritty of your planning and crafting, and to document both for public consumption and personal reflection the long journey to your wedding day.

However, this comes into conflict with what I view as the traditional view of wedding planning - the surprise element. That on the day people will appear with no knowledge of what to expect and be dazzled with wonder and delight at all beautiful amazements you have worked hard to create.

So where do you draw the line?

Naturally, the wedding dress is Top Secret - although I have seen pictures shared by people on instagram of their fittings, which seems like an extremely public forum, so I guess there are different standards for that nowadays. But I think everyone involved, including Jon, would have a fit if I let slip any images of my dress, so I have had to keep this secret since like last July, and I am not good at secrets.

But what of the bridesmaid attire? That is already spread further - between myself and the bridesmaids, and then their immediate family members. And also, in the case of one of my bridesmaids, all the women in her office (although they all have approved of the choice, so that's a relief).

And what of invitations? People will be seeing them anyway, I guess, but is it better to wait until they have been sent out before you share pictures of the details? And decorations, plans for music, plans for the ceremony...


I mean the basic impression I get is that the things that Must Not Be Shared are usually the things that people would be interested in hearing about beforehand, and the less secret a thing must be kept, the less interested people are in hearing about it. Which I suppose is natural - there is always something far more interesting about a thing you mustn't know about than a thing that it's totally okay for you to know about.

I guess the only thing I can do for now is play it on the safe side, and deal with vagaries in the blog until closer to the time. Sorry guys, instead of deets for now you get self-reflection and nonsense-musings.