How’s married life?

If O and I could get a £1 for every time we’ve been asked, “how’s married life?” we’d be loaded!

I’m sure I was guilty of doing it and for that I sincerely apologise.

Option 1

How’s married life?
Great, amazing, we’re so happy, thanks for asking.
Aww you’re still in the honeymoon period that’ll pass :)
F**k you

Option2

How’s married life?
It’s ok, just the same as normal really
Aww passed the honeymoon period already? :(
F**k you 

So how's married life? It is great I love my husband but it isn’t that much different to life before we got married. We still have to go to work (staring lovingly into each others eyes isn’t going to pay the bills and I hate to admit it but it does get a little dull after a while). We have to cook dinner (well he does) we have to clean the bathroom (well I do).

Still to be married folk I have some really bad news for you. Time does not stand still. You have this momentous day, you make these life altering promises to each other and yet time keeps going. Your guests will go to work on Monday, the postman will still deliver your credit card bill. I'm telling you it was a shock to me. I was expecting there to be a pause. Also you don't look any different either (this is starting to sound like losing your virginity). When you go and pay for the petrol the guy behind the desk will not understand why you are grinning like a mad thing - he really just wants you to pay and leave already. 

Married life is life but with extra jewellery, an extra sense of relationship security, an extra glow in my heart that he is my husband (don’t tell him that). The every now and again "wow we're married". A whole lot of extra paperwork (should have stuck with my own name).  Learning a new terminology – he is my husband not my partner or boyfriend and I’m his wife.

I had a fear that getting married would change us and perhaps it will with time. However, really I didn’t want our relationship to change that much because I wouldn’t have married him if I wanted something or someone different.

All of that aside – what is the right answer? Or what answer (not involving swearing) will make them shut up and go away?

*I first drafted this post when we'd been married for three months, the intensity of the questioning has reduced some so I not quite so angry and bitter as it might sound above. 

Mini Moon 2

While we were driving back to Scotland from the Lake District, we had various thoughts about what we might want to do with the rest of our time off. O has less holiday allowance than me and it seemed a waste to spend the weekend and three days annual leave loafing about at home (not that there is anything wrong with loafing at home in fact I could be a professional). We also couldn’t afford to spend any more time at the Duck which is why the stay was short. We talked about heading up North to see his family, without the distraction of the wedding, so we could spend more time with our nephew who is growing and changing so rapidly. It turns out that people won’t allow you to hold babies while you are wearing a wedding dress they worry that they might puke on you – I was rather annoyed as I’d been looking forward to lots of baby cuddles. However when we got home we got some news from O’s family that meant that we wanted to be with them.

So Saturday morning it was back into the car and on the road up North. Our departure was slightly delayed by the fact that the DVDs with our professional photos on arrived just before we were about to leave so we HAD to stop and look at them. We had a lovely trip with lots of family time, even getting to see my parents who were on a tour of Scotland in their caravan. We took our nephew swimming (with his Mum and Dad) which was both lovely and terrifying. It is amazing to see his little limbs kicking about it the water but I was so scared that I might drop him or that he might swallow all the water, he was splashing everywhere. We were even given the privilege of baby sitting while his Mum and Dad went off for some couple time. At the time baby nephew hadn’t figured out how to crawl yet and moved around the floor doing seal flops. He was particularly determined in his mission to bang his head off the marble fireplace so it was a constant job to turn him round so he could seal flop off in a different direction.

We left on Tuesday afternoon, leaving my parents with O’s parents – a scary experience don’t really trust any of them to behave themselves without us acting as moderators. We spent Wednesday (my birthday) our final day of leave, after a long lie in, going to the different banks with our marriage certificate to get my name changed (living the high life).

Then it was back to reality and work.

I call upon these persons here present

I’ve been trying to compose this post in my head for about a week and it hasn’t gone well so we’ll see how it goes written down. I do have a point really so please be patient.

Wedding range in size from teeny tiny to grand swaths of people, however no matter what the size you need to have two people other than you and your partner to make the marriage legal. Someone has to witness the promises that you have made to each other.

In most traditional services the couple being wed stand with their backs to the guests. Bride on the left and groom on the right. The Bride’s friends and family then sit on the left and Groom’s friends and family are on the right (or vice versa if you are looking from the registrars point of view). This means that when the bride and groom turn to each other and when they are not staring lovingly into each other’s eyes and when the bride sneaks a nervous look behind her all she can see is the groom’s friends and family.

Now when we met with the registrar we had stated that we didn’t care where people sat. When I gave instructions to our usher (nephew) via #1 I again stated we don’t care where people sit let them sit anywhere. I do find that it is a bit of a popularity contest – the groom had more people on his side or the bride had more. However when I started walking down the aisle I noticed that we did indeed have a grooms side and a brides side.

We’d made ‘reserved’ signs to be placed on seats for Cee and her husband (there was a chance they might have been running late), the piper O's brother and my Dad. For some reason the reserved signs for Cee and her husband had been placed in the front two seats on O’s side (where his Mum and Dad really should have been sat). It was no great disaster and it meant that I had a friendly* face to look at as I made my small glimpses at all these people watching us publicly declare that we would love each other forever.

Are you still with me?

*Now friendly is really unfair to O’s side. I love his parent’s to pieces and it was lovely seeing them smile as they welcomed me into their family. I get on very well with his friends and seeing them helped me not to take things too seriously or get over emotional.

HOWEVER these are not MY people, I would have liked to see my friends and family – I want to know if my Mum cried (although perhaps we’d have both been in pieces). I’m sure there is some deep seated tradition about looking forward to the family you are joining and having your family behind you or some such nonsense.

But if you are still to be wed it is worth considering even planting one of your friendly faces within the groom’s side to pull funny faces at you (maybe it is just me).
If you have already been wed did you have a bride and a groom side and is it just me that thinks it is a bit unfair?

AND please have a word with your venue about how they lay out the seats (unless of course your seats are fixed). Our venue laid out rows of 3! Which is great for any single people but most of our guests were part of a couple and therefore had to split up and spread themselves out! An annoying little detail that there was nothing I could do about by the time I was at the top of the aisle.

Mini Moon 1

When we chose – were given – our July date we knew that we wouldn’t be going on honeymoon straightaway. O is a gardener and just couldn’t take a lot of time off in the height of the summer (ha! what summer?). I also knew that I take a long time to wind down after periods of stress. Plus O thought planning our honeymoon after the wedding would give me something to do and look forward to.

We were, however still determined to have a few days away and enjoy some luxury straight after the wedding. As is always the way we had so much choice of where to go it was very difficult to narrow down where to actually go. After lots of "I don’t mind", "I'll go anywhere" and "that looks ok" but no firm opinions given I was ready to tear my hair out. Thankfully around the time when I was really losing the plot Cee told me of a trip she was taking to the Lake District – more specifically to the Drunken Duck. She had a great stay and we thought it looked fab so to save having to look any further we decided on the Duck!

Tuesday after the wedding we threw stuff in the car and made our way South. Unfortunately we got stuck in a huge traffic jam because of a particularly nasty accident. By the time we got to the Lake District it was quite late in the afternoon. We stopped by at Castlerigg Stone Circle – but not for very long. Once we got to the Duck we were offered afternoon tea but chose against it not wanting to spoil our appetite. It is very important not to spoil your appetite because the food is AMAZING! So so delicious I could have eaten everything on the menu. You need to book a table well in advance because they were fully booked even during the week.

We were a little disappointed by our room it wasn’t huge – although the bed was. The problem being that the bed was huge because it was two beds pushed together and there was a tendency to fall down the gap in the middle.

Wednesday morning was a bit drizzly so we decided to go to the spa to which you get free access to. We enjoyed leisurely swims, time in the jacuzzi and a bake in the sauna and the steam room – I wasn’t brave enough to try the ice shower.  Once the weather had brightened up a bit we stopped in Ambleside to buy some lunch and headed to Coniston to hire a rowing boat – how romantic?! Until I turned into a complete wreck. I have no idea why or where the fear came from but I panicked that we were going to fall in the water, that all of our belongings were going to be ruined (camera, phones, car keys) and that we wouldn’t make it to shore. O being incredibly confident on the water thought this was hilarious and tried to show me how safe we were by rocking the boat. He stopped as soon as I burst into tears! I still don’t understand why I was such a wreck, I’m an ok swimmer and I'd have been able to swim to safety, there were lots of people out on the water so a passing boat would have helped. Once we were back on dry land I felt really bad because it should have been such a lovely jaunt out on the water with O playing the strong guy doing the rowing and I’d ruined it with my completely irrational hysterics. 

After I’d disgraced myself we headed back to the Duck for afternoon tea. We lazed about watching the tv and I had a long bath before dressing for dinner, there have been very few occasions in my life where I have felt the need to dress for dinner, that is of course unless I’m not already wearing clothes! We had another wonderful meal and fell asleep stuffed and a little fuzzy round the edges.

In planning our trip we'd had a look round to see what was on in the area and came across Ambleside Sports and that is where we headed on Thursday morning after checking out. I’ve never been to a Highland Games of anything like it and Ambleside Sports seemed to be the English equivalent. There was fell racing, grass track cycling, Cumberland wrestling (with costume competition) and hound trailing, which we'd never heard of. They scent a path using aniseed and then let a pack of hounds loose to follow the trail. The first hound back wins the race – this was the only event where there was bets being placed. I wasn't aware that you were allowed to let packs of dogs loose in the countryside.

After a long day of fresh air and some sunshine we began the long journey across country to Leeds where we were had a free nights accommodation courtesy of my parent's house. Then on Friday morning we headed back up to Scotland. 

Recaps: Married Day 1

After getting a few hours sleep – funny how it was completely different to the few hours sleep I had the night before – we woke and dressed for breakfast. I’d forgotten a sweater and O had forgotten his shoes (remember to pack for the next day too). Was quite tempted to put my dress back on but don’t think it’d have gone with the dragged back hair and clean face. We went down to the dining room for breakfast taking with us the thank-you gifts that we’d bought. We sat there for quite a while chatting with different family members drifting in and out as they came for breakfast or left to finish packing.

#1 and her family had to leave early to catch their flight and so the goodbyes began. After a while when everyone had at least started their breakfast we went back upstairs to start our own packing. The venue staff had gathered together a lot of the bits and pieces, table slates, table plan, left over order of services so that made things easier. All the vases of flowers had been placed in a back room so we invited guests to take as many of the flowers as they wanted and after taking plenty for ourselves left the rest at the venue for them to decorate their tables with during the week. If you are having flowers it is worth thinking about what to do with them afterwards – we didn’t.

Everyone was finally packed and putting bags into their cars so we said our final goodbyes and headed back to our flat. We’d let friends stay in our flat so caught up with them for a while. Finally it was just the two of us and we sat slightly dazed still surrounded by wedding stuff.

Today

 

 

Today is the day we get married.

Inspired by this lovely lady's post on this lovely lady's wedding day.

All images from here apart from the 10 which is from here.

(A scheduled post I'm not actually blogging on my wedding day!)

A big shout out to Stacy and Ryan over at You Can't Take it With You who are also getting married today.

See you on the other side

So lovely readers this is me signing off until after the wedding. Thank you for keeping me company on this crazy journey. 






I suspect I won’t be able to resist a hop on to twitter every now and again. (I'm only private on twitter to prevent spammers so just ask)

Excitement

Conversation about the wedding that happened around February time

“friend”: Are you excited yet?

Me: No

“friend”: why not? When are you going to get excited?

Me: What is there to get excited about? I’m excited to be married – is that not enough?

“friend”: No - you should be exciting, planning a wedding is exciting, weddings are exciting, my wedding was excited, I WAS excited about planning my wedding, why are you not EXCITED, it is EXCITING, there must be something wrong with you if you aren’t EXCITED.

Me: *ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH FUCK OFF*

Thoughts recently……………….

The invitations are out, the wedding notices are filed and my dress is being altered, the favours are made and we know in our heads, ok I know in my head, what is happening with the other details. Since the invitations went out everything has felt easier, more calm, there hasn't been the rush. I'm not deluding myself I'm well aware that there needs to be more rushing! But technically the wedding can happen without any of the other details. The rest of the stuff is just stuff and if I don’t want to do it I don’t have to. Ok so technically I didn’t have to DO any of it but the unspoken pressure was there. And I’m going to do the other stuff because I want to.

Now I’m feeling a whole heap of excitement, I can’t wait to get married, I can’t wait for our families to come together, I can’t wait for the evening when all our friends are dancing their behinds off. I can’t wait to see all the babies all dressed up and hearing them chatter and gurgle their nonsense. I can’t wait to be announced as husband and wife. I can’t wait to snuggle into my husband's chest at the end of the night and fall asleep knowing that forever looks like an amazing place to go together.

I’ve always been excited about being married but finally I’m excited about the wedding*.

Which is about bloody time because we only have two and a bit weeks to go!

*It does probably make me weird that I haven't found the process excited.
I'm slightly perplexed by the disappointed look I'm getting from people when they ask if I'm all organised or stressed out. Yes I'm organised and no I'm not stressed out and why is that disappointing for you? Really you'd prefer me to be tearing my hair out - that seems ungracious.

Making it legal

(image from here via here)

Today we took our marriage notice forms to the registrar*.

There was confetti on the floor outside.

I grinned quite a bit.

*we happened to be helped by the registrar who will marry us. That was a bizarre feeling - meeting the woman who will marry us, eek.

Love Stories - My Parents

(image from here via weheartit)

When it comes to marriage my parents are a huge inspiration to me. They had a horrible start to their marriage but they made it work and they are a true partnership.

My parents met very young, my Mum was 18 and Dad 19, they hadn’t been together very long when my Mum fell pregnant. (It is one of my Mum’s biggest parental achievements that she got her three daughters past 19 without being pregnant, we had safe sex drilled into us). My Dad immediately stepped up to the mark and was willing to stand by his woman – they’d made a mistake but he wasn’t going to run away. My Mum however didn’t want to pressure him into the marriage. She refused to get married and dug her heels in. Unfortunately my grandparents were of the old fashioned variety and kicked her out of the house. What she went through in those few months make my heart ache every time I hear about it (horrendous bed-sits and a very strange land lady). She eventually was just too exhausted and talked things through with my Dad and they agreed to marry. They agreed that they would divorce after one year and my Dad would have as much access to the baby as he wanted.

So at 19 years old and 6 months pregnant my Mum met my Dad at the registry office and they made it official. There are very few pictures of their wedding because it was such a horrid time for them both – they have only just started celebrating their wedding anniversary (and as they don't know about the blog I can't really ask them for photos). The pictures that there are shows my Mum in a bottle green skirt suit – and when I say skirt, only just. This was the late ‘60s and my Mum at 6 months pregnant wore a mini skirt to her wedding (to be fair she barely had any bump and she looked fantastic). During their first year of marriage my Dad worked 3 jobs while studying for a degree. My Mum tried to cope with a new baby and study for her own degree. I guess they never got round to getting a divorce. They are still together 42 years later, I think as time went on they fell in love, and their love has continued to grow. They have had some really tough times, when I left for university, leaving them with an empty nest I thought they would split up.

However what actually happened was that they suddenly started to enjoy each other a lot more. They holiday a lot, they both work from home (although they are both allegedly retired) they just seem to have a great time together. (My sisters and I joke about them spending our inheritance but we are all just happy that they are happy).

I want to have a marriage like my parents although O and I have had a significantly better start. What I want is the partnership that they have, the belief that you can go through some tough times and still come out the other side with a happier and stronger marriage.

Our Venue

So we have chosen our venue, booked a date and the registrar is organised. Not too much more to do right?

Anyway I promised to tell you about the venue. I’d rather not reveal the exact location so I’m going to try and describe it. I thought this would be easier than it is, I’ve spent ages trying to write this and it’s going no where fast.

We are getting married in a castle! It’s a bit of a shabby chic castle – not sure the owners would like to hear it described as shabby but what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t Disney perfect and therefore just right for us. It is a tiny little place with 10 bedrooms built on the side of big hill. We get exclusive use so it will all be ours – handy when both families are travelling over 200 miles. The dining room is beautiful for the ceremony and hopefully the meal. I say hopefully as we are trying to persuade them that we will all squeeze in or we will just have to invite less people. There is a big hall where we will have a kick-ass party with lots of dancing and where the meal will happen if we can’t decide who to cut off the guest list. Although there isn’t a huge amount of land or garden there are plenty of places for photos both inside and out. The management team are sarcastic and down to earth – which also makes it perfect for us. We have managed to forgive them for the date mix up although it is fun to watch them squirm every time we bring it up.

Apologies that this is such a poor description, all I keep thinking is – oh it’s our venue and it is so perfect for us!

We won't be having a religious ceremony

O and I are not religious, our parents are not religious and our grandparents were not really religious.

I have nothing against religion (ok that doesn’t sound right), what I’m trying to say (badly) is I believe what I believe, you should believe what you believe and perhaps one day we can have a discussion about it. Religion has always interested me; I have an A-Level in Religious Studies because I was interested in learning more (people frequently mistake my interest in religion for faith). I think knowledge about other people’s cultures and beliefs should be a basic level of general knowledge that we all have – how else are we supposed to function in a multi-cultural/faith/race society without some sort of basic knowledge of each others heritage and starting point.

Since we announced our engagement we have had a lot of people ask if we will be having a religious or a civil ceremony – and I’m not just talking about venue people. My own sisters have queried this with me, I thought they would have known our standpoint on religion, I would have definitely thought they would have known my standpoint even if they weren’t too sure about O’s.
Sorry I’m grappling with the point here. There are friends of mine who are married and I knew when they announced their engagement that they would have a religious ceremony. We had talked about their beliefs in general conversation and I knew that honouring their faith would be an important part of their day. There are those who I knew would not be having religion involved in their day. And then there are those who I didn’t have a clue about.
This has made me think about the attitude my peer group have to religion. Why is there this embarrassment to stand up and say I believe in this? Or I’m not sure I believe but I think I might, more than I think I don’t? Or simply I don’t believe.

Maybe the point of this post is – do people not know me (us)?

Or maybe it is be proud of what you believe?

Still not sure – see just another spare thought that was running around in my head and then I try to put it on paper and think I should have just kept it in my head ooops.

(Religion is a tricky subject and it is not my intention to offend anyone, my life is richer because I interact with people who have different opinions to me. I'm simply expressing my personal opinion.)

So what do you think?

Hi lovely readers,

I wanted to ask your opinion on something. I think we might have found our wedding venue. It was the third venue we saw on Saturday and we both really loved it. The thing is that the only date they have available when we are looking for is 11 September 2010. Should I be worried about the significance of the date? It bothers me, but only slightly. We're not American and we don't know anyone who was directly effected. What happened was tragic and I don't want to take away from the significance of that event. However should this stop me from having it as my wedding date? What do you think? Am I just being daft?

Thank you
R


edited after first publication

Weekend catch up

So Stobo was ridiculously expensive but the relaxation was worth it. Think we'll need to make a trip to the spa a regular occurrence.

Saturday we bought a huge beautiful handmade rug as an engagement present from O's parents. Covers a lot of our horrible living room carpet until we can save enough to buy new carpets.

Sunday we saw three wedding venues; first was ok but nothing special; second was sooooo expensive we ran away; third place definitely our favourite so far - actually got us quite excited. We are going to see more places but we have a front runner so far.

Hope you had a good one.

Hurray for sensible Grooms

This weekend we attended the fantastic marriage and celebration of G&M. (My arms and shoulders are in agony from an over enthusiastic orcadian strip the willow!)

I wanted to share a moment that practically had me out of my seat cheering. During G's (the groom) speech he said - (I'm paraphrasing here)...

.....they say that your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, and there is no denying I'm having a great time but I have to admit I'm looking forward to tomorrow when
a) I'm still married to my beautiful wife
b) We don't have a wedding to plan, order of services to print, bands to pay, kilts to hire etc etc.
c) We can relax and get on with living our lives together
I truly hope that we'll have plenty more happiest days to come in the future.......

And O did really well with his speech I was so proud

We're not having a Wedding

We're creating a marriage.

There have been lots of brilliant posts about not concentrating on one day, when you are creating a bond that will last the rest of your lives. I read them wanting to shout "hurray".

I don't particularly want a wedding, we've had a couple of friends get married with only their parents in attendance and it is sooo tempting. However I couldn't get married without my sisters and O’s brother and sister there and by the time all our family are there then what is a few friends for good measure and then the ball is rolling and it seems to get bigger and bigger.

Every time O and I talk about the wedding we get stressed and irritable, but when we talk about being married and our future we agree, smile and giggle.

So the word Wedding is banned from our house, we will have a marriage ceremony and hopefully a kick-ass party and then live happily ever after (or some other cheesy cliché).