New kitchen 2

We scraped meals together for what felt like a long week. There was a little miscommunication with the plumber which resulted in me rushing home from work and then sitting waiting for 3 hours until the plumber who was allegedly “just round the corner” finally arrived. He then didn’t speak to me other than in grunts and complaints about the work he needed to do. Oh and he took away the sink which meant washing up in the bathroom. 
The electrician had a small heart attack when he saw the amount of work that we needed done. This was a team of people our joiner had put together and although we’d fully briefed him that hadn’t translated into telling the other tradesmen.


The weekend of the Royal Wedding. We jumped into the car and headed north for a wedding  with less hype but still an amazing day. We said a not too sad farewell to the sorry looking kitchen and wished the joiner well. Incredibly nervous about what might be waiting for us when we returned. We'd been seriously burned by bad tradesmen whilst getting our bathroom redone so we were over the moon relieved to come back to an almost complete and very soon finished kitchen.

It was then plastered and we painted, painted and painted some more.

I'd recommend getting your kitchen plastered before the brand new cupboards are put on the wall. We would have preferred to do it the correct way round but there wasn't a plasterer to be had for weeks and weeks. Thankfully our plasterers were uh-mazing. I think they left the kitchen tidier and cleaner after they'd finished than we did.

There has since been more paint applied to the walls, a floor laid and a splash back fitted. The boxes, crates and suitcase were all eventually unpacked. 

We love our new kitchen

New kitchen 1

When we got married all that time ago our guests were not only generous enough to give up their time, holidays and the expense of getting to our wedding and helping us celebrate they also gave us gifts. Our main request was a donation towards our new kitchen. It took us quite a while to finally get round to the kitchen, we still needed a little bit more savings. There were many, many weeks of angst over the design and how the layout was going to work. 

Eventually Easter weekend arrived as did my ever suffering parents, the kitchen was designed, the joiner was chosen - it was destruction time. We emptied the kitchen into an alarming number of boxes, crates and even a suitcase. Then we started stripping wallpaper layers upon layers upon layers of wallpaper. The previous owner of our flat was a heavy smoker and the steam from two wallpaper strippers meant that the tobacco and nicotine came dripping off the ceiling and walls – really truly disgusting. Under wall paper we discovered still live electrical sockets and other such dangerous mysteries. Over the weekend my parents and O and I got more and more weary. We were left with a sink and a cooker to keep us going for another week.

The living room was also emptied to allow room for the kitchen to be delivered and to give the joiners somewhere to work. 

Anniversary day out

We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo

How about you, you, you?

You should go too, too, too

We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo.

Ok so I changed the words slightly but you get the idea. 

We spent our very sunny one year wedding anniversary at Edinburgh Zoo

photos by me or O

You forgot?!

Our first anniversary fell on a Sunday and so I blamed there being no post delivery for the lack of cards. We opened the couple that had arrived the day before and received text messages from some friends and O's family.

There was no a whiff of a message or card from my family.

We went out for the day and I expected to come home to the answerphone full of messages from my family asking what we were doing to celebrate.........nothing.

I came home from work on Monday expecting cards thinking they'd just missed the Saturday post.........nothing (ok a bank statement).

MY FAMILY FORGOT OUR FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!

I sent a nudge, nudge email to my Mum and got a grovelling response. My nudge, nudge to #2 got a complete blank in response, she had no idea of the significance of the date. (#1 is in Spain on holiday, I'm letting her off)

What do you mean the date of the party of the decade is not etched into your brain forever? What do you mean you don't come over all emotional when that particular date is mentioned?

(Am I the only one that feels strange when people talk about events/meetings that happen to fall on my birthday? Yes, ok then.)

My Mum has asked how they will ever make it up to us. I floated the idea that they take us with them to the Caribbean later this year. Apparently forgetting your daughters first wedding anniversary does not mean you need to pay for her and her husband to tag along on your holiday. We're very disappointed.

Rawr

Happy Anniversary my Dinosaur

If you want to relive it all check out my recaps

(image)

We got an invite

(source) *

Not to the royal wedding**!

But we are heading north this weekend to go to a wedding. To the top of the country where we'll catch a boat that will take us further north to a collection of islands I've never visited.

Where we will whirl and burl and get sore feet.

Hope you all have lovely plans for the weekend

(**As we're spending the day driving I won't be able to watch. I'm sure I'll be able to catch up though)

*Of the huge amount of wedding memorabilia that I've seen I thought I'd be able to get behind Lego. But this just freaks me out - they've not got faces!)

Wedding bells

(source)

Wishing the lovely littlewifelittlemama an amazing wedding day.

All the happiness in the world on your wonderful day.

If you don't already go and read littlewifelittlemama's blog and follow on twitter.

Time flies...

...when you are having fun.

I can't quite believe it has been 6 months already.

(recaps)

Anna & Bean

Today is the day!

Lovely Anna is marrying lovely Bean

In true Anna style

eeekkkaaabbbllleeesss

(image 1, image 2, image 3)

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.

Dreams of lace

(image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4)

The amazing, fantastic, wonderful Rebecca is getting married today. I can't put into words how excited I am for her and James.

Wishing you both a day and future full of happiness

Enjoy your honeymoon but come back quick and tell me all about it. 

I'm going to miss you!

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. 

Details: Thank you Gifts

Thank you gifts were tough to decide on and I spent a long time trawling the internet. 

My Mum: We didn't give my Mum a gift the weekend of the wedding instead we promised to make her a photo album once we gathered the photos together. We have kept that promise and sent her a photobook made by BobBooks - which she seems to love.

My Dad: We got him a bottle of Macallan whisky - it is his favourite whisky and we hope he will enjoy it.

O's Mum and Dad: We bought them a bottle of brandy - sourced by my brother-in-law handy having a wine merchant in the family.

O's sister: For playing the fiddle while we signed the register and as a New House gift we bought her and her husband a Le Creuset pan.

O#s brother: For being our piper and for his New Home gift we bought him and his girlfriend a Le Creuset pan too.

Debenhams had a sale on Le Creuset at the time.

#1 and #2: We bought them jewellery from here

Niece: We bought her an initial necklace from here and a clothes hanger from here (please note that Anna warns that it takes 8 weeks and it really does.)

Nephew: We bought his scrabble cuff links in his initials - as he informed us he doesn't have any shirt that requires cuff links but hopefully once he is older he'll need them.

Cee: As a thank you for reading during our ceremony we bought her a notebook for her blog ideas (need to do a post on this soon).

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.

Details: Table Names

We named our tables after Scottish islands that we'd visited. 


The top table was named after the island where O proposed.


We were worried that we were going to have to name a table Mull. Our holiday to Mull was not the greatest. The moment we got off the ferry there was an almighty hail storm and things did not get much better after that. 


Luckily we remembered another island that we'd been to.


Our table names we displayed on roof slates with the names written on in chalk pen. 


Are you planning on naming your tables? (We came very close to just numbering them - because really it is just another bit of DIY to do.)
What did you name your tables after? 

Details: Jewellery

Jewellery was a real struggle for me. The wedding magazines seem to have a clear view of what 'wedding' jewellery is supposed to look like. Pearls and diamanté are just not me. They are also very expensive. I wasn't prepared to spend a large amount of money on a necklace that I knew I was only going to wear once. 

I finally decided to narrow it down to two options. The necklace that Rebecca kindly let me borrow and a necklace that my Mum lent me that I eventually, 2 days before the wedding, decided to wear. 

My something borrowed was this marcasite necklace that my Mum got for £5 from a car boot sale. I'm not sure if I've broken the 'something borrowed' rules but my Mum has now given me the necklace to keep (yay). I was bought a marcasite watch for my 16th birthday so I wore that too. Unfortunately I noticed too late that the battery had died - so I have no idea if I actually got to the ceremony on time. I hate not knowing what time it is so after the meal I changed to a working watch. 

Details: Internet friends are amazing

Not only did Rebecca from Daydreams in Lace make me this amazing hair slide

She also gave me a hanky embroidered with my name

and allowed me to keep hold of her beautiful pearl necklace while I hummed and hawed for MONTHS about what jewellery to wear and then I didn't even wear it!

(photo by Rebecca I presume

hope you don't mind me posting it)

Rebecca has less than a month to go until her wedding. I'm so excited for her and James and seeing all their details come together. I just wish I was able to repay her kindness.


scheduled post

Recaps: Almost done

So I think I might be almost done with the recaps*.


There are still a few details that I've to tell you about but on Tuesday we head off on holiday to Gozo - not sure why I'm not comfortable with calling it our honeymoon. Perhaps because we're planning on having more than one and we're not going for a single trip of a lifetime but several amazing trips. Technically it is just our first holiday as husband and wife. 


I cannot wait to laze by the pool, run sand through my fingers, read lots of good books, go snorkelling and eat a lot of food. 


When I get back** I've still to tell you about my jewellery, our table names and the mini moon. 


But what have I forgotten? Is there anything that you want to know about? Ask me questions.


*really I'm looking forward to write about something other than the wedding but I promised myself I'd get the recaps out of the way first. 
**unless I get chance to schedule some posts before we leave in which case you can read all about it while we are away. 

Recaps: Why does it have to end?

The rest of the evening went past in a blur of dancing and chatting. I completely lost track of time at one point I looked at my watch and wondered where the buffet was and why had we not been fed yet (all I could eat was cake). Only to realise that there was still an hour to go before the buffet was due to be served. Then after the buffet had been served the band seemed to immediately announce the last dance and I couldn’t believe that time had passed so quickly.

We have a great photo of the two of us, looking hideously sweaty and dishevelled (no I’m not going to post it!) – I love this photo because it highlights what I wanted the wedding to be all about, dancing and laughing and everyone having a good time.

Then it was last orders at the bar and people started drifting into taxis or up the stairs to their rooms. Finally, we decided, while O’s uncles were trying to persuade the barman to reopen the bar that it was time for us to retire. It was bliss to unlace the dress, unpin my hair and stand under the shower letting the emotions of the day wash over me.

I finally crawled into bed with my husband! Unfortunately the bar staff decided to have their own wee party and we could hear them chatting well into the small hours. We’d thought it was our guests until we realised that we couldn’t recognise any of the voices. However in reality we couldn’t sleep, we just kept saying “we’re married”, “did you speak to so and so?”, “did you dance with so and so”, “so and so said this”, “what a great day”, “do you think everyone enjoyed themselves”, “we’re married”, “we’re married”.