Living a champagne lifestyle

Amazingly, it has now been a whole year since I got married. I don't know where the time has gone, it has just flown by. Saturday was our actual wedding anniversary, and we had a couple of nice things planned over the weekend which made it nice and special.

Our wine rack has been half full for the last year with bottles of champagne we were given as wedding presents (about five of them I think), and recently we were told that champage doesn't always stay at its best for more than a year or so. We therefore felt we had an obligation to start drinking it up, which in reality turned into us drinking four bottles of champagne in six days. It was actually really nice to do, as expensive champagne tastes very nice and is much better than the cheap stuff, and I was surprised to find how well it goes with a dinner of fish fingers, chips and beans. It is certainly a combination that I would try again.

On Friday we had a wedding reception to go to in the evening, for a couple who had attended our wedding last year. It was out on Pangdean Farm in Pyecombe, a very nice country venue with a converted barn with lots of wooden beams. I was particularly impressed with the unusual choice of wedding cake decoration:

and the bride's beautiful sort-of-French-style wedding dress that was made by her very talented mother:

A few friends of ours were there too, so we had a nice evening of dancing and feeling nostalgic about our own wedding.

Then on Saturday, our actual anniversary, we went for a lovely meal at Blanch House, a posh restaurant in Kemptown not very far from us. We'd never go there normally, it's a bit out of our usual price range, but Chris' Mum was treating us, and it was GREAT! It was lots of high class masterchef-type food like this:

and it was ever so yummy. It was also rather alcohol-fuelled, as we had champagne before we went, and then cocktails on arrival, and wine with dinner. It was all a bit of a blur by dessert I have to say, so we took a short detour home afterwards to sober up a little bit, and sat looking at our wedding photos together and feeling a bit gooey (that may have been the fault of the alcohol again though). And then we just had a couple more drinks in Vavoom before retiring for the evening.

I was pleased to find that I didn't have a hangover at all on Sunday, which I am going to attribute as well to the champagne being expensive, and to the six million calories I ate to soak it all up.

So that was it - one anniversary down, and only 49 more until our golden one. Hopefully they will all be as enjoyable as this one was (and I won't forget any of them, which is a very real possibility).

I'm back at work today, but am only doing three-day weeks through the summer, so hurrah only two days left until the weekend! It is Brighton Pride this weekend, and they are forecasting heavy rain for Saturday. Oh dear. Pride is really quite depressing and pointless in the rain, as it is meant to be a day of drinking in the sun and looking at topless boys (a microcosm of my entire life, in fact). If it rains like they're saying it will, I may not even bother going to the park during the day - I have mud at home I can squelch around in if I wish. And besides, I'll have more champagne to drink up.

San Francisco

Hmm, I'm not doing too well at catching up on this blog thing am I? I must try to power through, I'm only... erm... three and a half weeks behind. Damn it!

Anyway, off we flew to San Francisco, where we were staying at the second of my Trip Advisor-recommended hotels, the Chancellor on Union Square. It was lovely, I'm so glad I picked it! Although it is officially three star, it is actually really bloody good for three stars - marble floors in the reception, staff all dressed up in nice uniforms, little gold carts for putting your luggage in, etc etc. We were up on the twelfth floor which meant we had fantastic views over Union Square towards Macy's. I had repeated my "it's our honeymoon" casual commenting technique when I emailed the hotel about the booking, and this time it actually paid off - the man on reception congratulated us when we checked in, and we had a bottle of champagne and a present (a picture frame) waiting for us in the room. Which started me thinking you should probably always say you're on your honeymoon whenever you go abroad anywhere, just to see what you get...

Anyway, San Francisco was lovely, and so much nicer than New York. New York is definitely more buzzy, with more going on and more to see, and it's a very exciting place to be because you know it so well from the telly, but in terms of actual niceness San Francisco wins hands down. It was cleaner, less rushed, more spacious, and generally prettier. The only thing that would have made it nicer would have been for it to be a bit warmer - we only had one day of proper sun, and the rest had high fog blocking out most of the heat so it was really quite cold and you needed a coat on. But frankly after New York it was quite pleasant to be cold, at least for a few days.

Again, we did lots of touristy things, but it was generally less rushed as we had more time there and there is a bit less to do.

• On the one sunny day (the first day) we took a walk around Union Square where all the shops are, and then we went to Dolores Beach. Dolores Beach is not in fact a beach, but is instead part of a park, and it is where all the gay boys go on a sunny day to sit around in minimal clothing pretending to read and looking at each other. It was very pleasant, although San Francisco gay guys seemed to be generally older and/or beefier than my normal tastes of twinky blonds, but I'll take what I can get. I did unfortunately completely underestimate the sun and FRIED my shoulders and back, resulting in a good deal of pain, whinging, and hasty purchasing of after-sun for the rest of the week.
  
• We went to loads of shops, but bought relatively little as we're not that into designer labels anyway. I did buy some nice undies though.
  
• We went to Chinatown - MUCH nicer than New York's, which was a slum.
  
• We saw the wiggly Lombard Street, which was thronged with tourists taking photos and must be a nightmare to live on.
• We went to the Cartoon Art Museum, and fortuitously it was 'Pay what you like day' so we paid very little.
• We took a trip to Alcatraz, which was really interesting, and as it was the evening it was dead atmospheric and spooky.
• We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, and walked halfway across it before deciding it was too windy and then walking back.
• We saw Dark Knight (very good) and The Mummy III (not that good) at the cinema.

We also ate out LOADS and were completely stuffed for the whole week. No wonder Americans are so fat, their portions were ridiculous and we threw away criminal amounts of food and felt really bad. Highlights were the best BEST milkshakes ever in Lori's Diner, and a fantastic Japanese meal in a tucked away restaurant where we were the only non-Japanese in there.

We also went to quite a few bars on San Francisco's legendary gay scene. Again, I wasn't that impressed really... We visited Harvey's, Twin Peaks, Midnight Sun, The Mixer, and The Bar. They were generally OK, either a bit empty or hugely overcrowded, and very very few boys worth a second glance. We decided that we've been spoiled by living in Brighton about 3 minutes from 9 gay bars where they often play better music and at least some of the people know how to dress properly. I think we had the most fun at The Bar, where it transpired it was Ladies Night, which meant it was full of black and Hispanic lesbians and had great music on, so we danced lots amid the lesbians and I cared not that I was twice the height of most of them.

And then it was time to come home. I wasn't sorry really, as I was quite worn out after 10 days of madly photographing everything and trekking around, and I really wanted my own bed and not to eat another calorie for a fortnight.

The flight home was 10 hours, which was far too long, I couldn't sleep, and I was pretty exhausted by the time we finally got back, but overall it was a lovely, lovely trip and a marvelous honeymoon. It's not the kind of holiday we'd ever normally take either, so that made it quite special for us. And my bed was soooo comfortable when I crawled into it and slept for almost a whole weekend...!

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Post-wedding and off to New York

The lovely weather continued the day after the wedding, and as we knew lots of people would still be around we had booked one of the bar/restaurants on the beach for a late lunch. I'm glad we did actually, as it was really nice sitting out there in the sunshine, and it gave an extra opportunity to see some of the people we hadn't had much time to talk to the night before.

Mum and Dad left after lunch, having had two OK nights in the hotel but complaining that it had been noisy from the traffic on the road. Ha! They were lucky they had been at the front, the people at the back of the hotel hadn't had a wink of sleep because of the nightclub outside their window and the roadworks that started at 7am, so they should count their blessings. That was the main drawback of the hotel in the end - it's location is great in some ways, but it also means it's very noisy and you can't park within two miles of it very easily. But you're not really thinking about those things when you book it 18 months in advance, are you?? And nobody really complained to us, they just got on with it, which is good.

Sunday was our first day of proper rest and recovery, and we spent a nice couple of hours in the afternoon opening all our cards and presents. Oh. My. God. Everyone was SO generous, and we got given SO much money! We'd said "no presents" to people, because we didn't really want lots of toasters and we weren't actually that fussed about getting any presents, but everybody wants to give you something on your wedding day. So they all gave us money instead - a mixture of dollars for the honeymoon, and normal cash. I actually felt a bit guilty about how much we got in end... Well, not that guilty, but you know...

And on Monday we jetted off to New York! It was terribly exciting to be going somewhere so interesting, and that we'd never been to before. We had thought it might be worth mentioning at the airport when we checked in that it was our honeymoon, on the very slim hope that they might bump us up to first class. Alas, check-in was at an automated kiosk that didn't have a button for "We're on our honeymoon", and the lady at the bag drop looked thoroughly unimpressed when we tried it on her. So we flew normal class, but that was fine as Virgin Atlantic is quite good anyway.

We arrived late in New York, where we spent the first four nights of our honeymoon. The hotel was lovely, a little converted town house down in Chelsea that I'd found on Trip Advisor. Each room was named after a film star and there were cool movie posters everywhere, which was quite fun. We stayed in the Lee Remick room - I'd never heard of her, but apparently she's the Mum in The Omen, amongst other things.

The three days we had in New York were nice: mostly very busy, loads of walking around and doing touristy thing, and it was VERY hot. I think it was about 90 degrees, and it was a sticky humid heat with no wind. The temperature was exacerbated, and possibly caused by, the millions of air conditioning vents that constantly pump hot air out in the street from every building and subway line, so being out in the street generally wasn't that pleasant. Once you were inside on the good end of an air conditioner of course, it was all fine.

We did all the tourist things we could fit in in three days, namely:

• went up the Empire State Building
• walked around in Times Square and Broadway
• saw Madison Square Garden (from the outside anyway)
• saw Grand Central Terminal
• went to the UN headquarters
• went to Macy's
• walked around Central Park - nice, but just a park really
• went to the Natural History Museum and saw lots of dinosaurs and gemstones, and touched a REAL 30-tonne meteorite that had been in actual space
• went up the Rockefeller Center at night
• took the Staten Island Ferry to Staten Island and back, taking a million photos of the Statue of Liberty on the way
• saw Ground Zero - just a big building site now
• walked through Chinatown (quite shabby and horrible actually)
• rode the subway and caught yellow cabs

So lots of things really. The best bit was probably going up the Rockefeller Center at night. The views of the city lights were fantastic, you got to see the Empire State Building (which you obviously can't do when you're actually on the Empire State Building), and it was lovely and cool up there compared to ground level.

We also visited a few of the gay bars during the evenings - Sport Bar, Barracuda, View Bar, The Monster, and Pieces. They were... OK. Not amazing, I have to say, but Barracuda and Pieces were both lots of fun. The others were a bit of an older crowd, or were a bit empty, or didn't have any music on. We saw the best BEST karaoke ever at Barracuda, a girl who sang I'm Every Woman and who was every bit as good as Whitney Houston. And Pieces was fun because they had shag tags and beer pong (that's a game, not the smell of beer) and good music. They also had a hot barman who had much better dress sense than most Americans, who we sort of tried to flirt with but failed because I'm so bad at flirting.

And that was New York! Lovely, tiring, hot, and photo-filled. I photographed EVERYTHING I think. On Friday we got the subway to Jamaica (not the real Jamaica, it's in Queens) and the Air Train to JFK airport, where we spent a couple of hours in the crappiest terminal ever - JFK Terminal 3 is tiny and pathetic, due to it only servicing domestic flights with Delta.

But that didn't matter much because then we flew off to San Francisco for the second part of our honeymoon adventure...

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Four weeks later...

God, SO much time has passed and so much has happened since I last wrote on here that it's almost too daunting to want to start doing it again! But, having blogged the whole of the run-up to the wedding, I can hardly not blog the actual event, now can I? I think I'll have to try and be fairly frugal though, or we'll be here all day...

So I shall try to catch up by doing posts summarising all the wonderful and exhausting things that have happened since 25 July, namely:

• the wedding
• New York
• San Francisco
• Stuart and Helen's wedding in Wiltshire
• The epic adventure to get from Wiltshire to darkest Sweden in 16 hours (while also finding some time in there to sleep) for Rob and Emma's wedding

I think that amount of detail is about the most I can manage! And that'll more or less bring me back up to date. Phew! So let's start with post number 1...

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Ten, nine, eight...

OK we're not quite that close, but not far off. It is now 7.45pm the night before my wedding. I can't BELIEVE it's tomorrow. Where the hell did it come from?? You plan something for ages and then suddenly WHAM it's right there. I've a feeling it's going to flash past so fast.

Mum is down, she got here, which is great. She didn't think she was going to for a while, and she was hot and flustered and exhausted by the time she arrived, but could be worse. Dad had rubbed her up the wrong way in the morning, but to be honest anything he had done was likely to do that. He doesn't help himself though, he does do some stupid things sometimes (for example, trying to force her hat box into the cupboard in the hotel by turning it upside down and pushing it hard, when she's already said "Is my hat still alright?" ten times in half an hour). Anyway, so she's here, their room wasn't ready for 20 minutes after their arrival, which is annoying because I was told 2.30 so they arrived at 2.40, but eventually we got them in. They've been bumped up to a sea view too, which is great. It's a bit hot in there, no air conditioning in the rooms, only downstairs, but it's a nice room.

So anyway, that's one big hurdle out of the way, and she's so pleased to have made it. I'd got as far as having mild chest pains during the morning, I was that worried about it (another of my phantom pleurisy episodes, for those who've known me long enough to remember the last lot). I feel better now though.

Bit scared, can't believe it's tomorrow, but looking forward to it, and I know I'll miss not sleeping in the same bed as Chris tonight.

A much better day

OK, today has been a much better day than yesterday, and I'm feeling a lot more positive. I have done LOADS of wedding stuff, and it is starting to feel like it is all coming together. And so far, nothing I've done today has gone wrong or unearthed a problem. I have:

• checked my suit jacket fits OK - it does
• got the car ready for going up to Heathrow (washed and full of petrol)
• polished my smart shoes
• been into the music shop to check our booking is OK for Friday - it is
• called New York to check they still have our reserveration - they do, and I had a lovely chat with a man in the hotel about the best way to get there from the airport
• called San Francisco to check they also still have our reservation - they do
• tidied up the flat a bit and cleaned it lots in preparation for our house guests - including the horrible black mould that has been accumulating on the bedroom window for four years and that has resulted in us never opening the blind in there a) so we don't see how horrible it is, and b) so it doesn't try to ensnare and eat us

I have also spoken to Mum, and she is feeling quite a bit better today, and certainly sounded better. Her pills have kicked in that help stop her getting too anxious, thank GOD for prescription medication.

So all in all I have had a Productive and Good Day.

Two days to go

God, I've been so busy this last week that I haven't even had time to write on here. The wedding is now TWO days away, or 52 hours.

Mum has now kicked into major freak out mode and is stressing to the point that it's making her ill, so I spent quite a bit of time on the phone to her last night helping to get her grounded again. She's basically said she's not going to be at any of the reception now, and will have to eat in her room or something. That's probably a knee-jerk reaction, because she won't know how she feels until the actual day and time, but I think she's basically trying to set me up for a worst case scenario. I've already told her I don't mind, several times in fact, but she still needs constant reassurance. She's stressing about the journey, about what time to leave, about what food she'll want and be able to get when she's here, about the ceremony, about the reception, even about washing her hair before she comes. What can you say to that apart from make soothing noises and mostly useless things like "just try to do one bit at a time"? Her stress and anxiety contributes to her illness more than anything else half the time.

So anyway, that bummed me out last night and made me feel like I'm not looking forward to the wedding at all, which is really very sad when it's my wedding day and it's the only one I'm going to get. Probably, there's always divorce I suppose, he has got weird feet.

And then Chris and I had a chat about it, which upset me because I know I'm having an effect on him and his ability to enjoy it all. Although he's quite resilient and is likely just to say "well I'M going to enjoy myself". But I do feel like I'm letting him down. He basically tried to remind me that I need to step back from Mum for this, as hard and as unusual as that is for me - otherwise I won't be able to enjoy it, and I'll likely regret it. I need to trust my Dad and brother to look after her, but it's hard because I don't really trust anyone to do anything; I just want to do everything myself so I know it's done properly, and more importantly so that I know I've done all I can.

Oh well anyway. It's Wednesday now, not long to go at all. I'm off work now for two and a half weeks, which is nice, and I've been getting on with some of my initial chores from the last stage of wedding preparation. I've been to Moss Bros to check my suit fits OK (and in doing so, to check our suits are there and ready), and it does and they are. So that's good, my pigeon chest isn't well suited to off-the-peg clothes half the time. I might pop round to the music equipment shop in a minute to ask a couple of contrived and relatively unimportant questions, but which will also allow me to check they haven't forgotten our booking either. And then I need to blitz the flat so it's clean for Chris' cousins, and phone the two hotels in America to make sure they've still got our reservations too. So much to do already, and today is meant to be the "slow build up" day!

One week remaining

This time in a week, I should be dancing around my wedding reception. I hope that it'll be at the end of a nice day where the sun has shone and everyone has arrived on time and it has all generally gone well.

I'm feeling just about OK about everything at the moment, we've done pretty much all we can do this far in advance. Chris is finishing off the music playlist as I'm typing this - I think it should be really good, we've got loads of good songs on there. I was surprised how quickly 5 hours gets filled up with relatively few songs, we ended up having to cut loads of stuff out just to keep it down to the amount of time we'll have. I don't know yet if I'm actually going to get to dance to all the songs I'll want to dance to (basically all of them) - I'll have to choose: either talk to guests, and miss the dancing; or dance and be a bit antisocial. I think Chris has already said to everyone that he's not planning on talking to people so don't expect him to, he wants to dance. Which is fine in a way because we'll hopefully be seeing quite a few people the following day anyway for additional food, drinks and maybe clubbing, so hopefully we can talk to them then.

Other than the music, there's really not that many things we can do now. We've just got to wait until Wednesday and Thursday when we can start doing things for the actual day. I'm only at work on Monday and Tuesday this week, which is good, but I think I'm going to have a hard time concentrating on my work - I just want to get on with the wedding now.

And I really ought to start doing some stuff for America now - it's so unlike me to have thought so little about a holiday when it's only a week and a bit away! Thank god for the eight hour flight on Monday... I think that'll be the first time I get to relax from about the previous Wednesday!

9 days remaining, people

I'm feeling moderately less stressed than I have been at the moment. Chris and I sat down and decided what tasks are going to need doing and when, and then who is going to do what, and that made me feel quite a bit better. I have trouble accepting that I don't actually need to do everything myself, but once Chris said "well I'm going to do that, and that, and the bridesmaids are doing that bit", I started to realise that I haven't actually got loads to do.

My key tasks are to help set up the room on the day before, sort out our flat for Chris' cousins to stay in, meet Chris' cousins and my brother on the day and help them get parked, and help to collect the music equipment. So the only thing I'm doing on the day of the wedding is meeting people and going to the music equipment shop, and then getting myself ready. So that shouldn't be too bad, surely I can manage that without freaking out??

I'm a bit worried that I'm going to burst into tears the minute I see Chris at the registry office though... And he's worried that he's going to laugh hysterically throughout the whole thing, so we're going to look like a right pair - me crying, and him laughing at my pain.

I spoke to Mum last night, and she is obviously getting a little more worried as the day gets closer. She's worried about the journey down here, and about having enough time to recover from the journey before the ceremony, and then coping with the ceremony, dinner, reception etc. after that. She's dropped a couple of hints about how she'll maybe not be at much of the dinner or reception - it's going to be too noisy and she'll be worn out from the ceremony. I've told her that's OK, and I guess it is, although obviously in an ideal world where she weren't ill she'd be there with me for all of it. I'll be happy if she actually comes at all though, so I'm not setting my sights any higher than that. I just hope that, if she does slip off after the ceremony, she's not also going to be distraught that she's missed it all. If she's upset, I'll get upset, and I just can't deal with that.

That's life I suppose... things are never simple or perfect, you just have to make the most of it.

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Trying not to count the days

I am trying to avoid reminding myself how many days are now left until the wedding, as I'm not sure it is entirely helpful. But it's eleven anyway, ELEVEN days, gaaaar!!! That's nearly into the single digits!

I would say most stuff is now done, which is good. We bought the gifts for our families at the weekend, and I'm really pleased with what we found for them. I'm not quite sure why they get gifts actually, but apparently they do so they are. They've all given us money towards the wedding anyway, so they deserve them just for that.

I don't think we're getting presents for the bridesmaids any more, we didn't know what to get them anyway. But our best woman deserves something, so we're hoping to buy something in America as a special thank you. I hope no-one notices we're not giving them anything on the day though... I'm sure they won't stand up and demand to know where their presents are.

Other than buying gifts, we had a nice weekend generally. On Friday we went for leaving drinks with Zac, who is moving to Cambodia in a couple of weeks. It's sad he's going actually, particularly as Rob moved away to Sweden last year, it starts to break up some of your circles of friends a bit. I suppose we'll just have to make an effort to continue to see the friends that we would often only see when we're out with Rob or Zac or both, you can't let laziness be the reason that you fall out of touch with people. There was also vague talk in the pub of maybe trying to go to Cambodia next year to visit Zac - I'm not sure if that was just pub talk or if it might actually happen. It would be really exciting to visit somewhere like that, and I suppose having someone to visit makes it more likely than us just randomly going there. We'll have to see though. What jabs do you need to go to Cambodia anyway??

And then we also had a nice lunch out on Sunday at the Brunswick, to celebrate the engagement of two more of our friends. Honestly, EVERYONE is getting married. We've got three weddings this year (including ours), plus these other friends who are now engaged too. It makes me feel quite old - we are now 'at that age' where people settle down and start having babies and things. Still, it's quite nice really, and I like other people's babies. Chris' brother might want children soon after they get married in August, and then I'll be an uncle, that'd be quite nice.

So, things remaining to do for the wedding are:

• sort out the music playlist
• get some suitable music to play during dinner (classical violin type stuff maybe?)
• decide who is doing what in terms of setting up the room, collecting hire suits, and all that sort of stuff
• turn up
• get married
  

So not bad really, that sounds very do-able. Unless I've forgotten something huge...

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Wedding stress, 2 weeks 2 days tic toc tic toc

I am starting to get well stressy about the wedding now. It's only two weeks away and suddenly it seems very very real and very very close. I don't think I'm stressed about any one thing in particular, it's more a general worry about the overall event and everything going right and everyone finding their way there and enjoying themselves.

And my Mum of course, she's a big source of stress for me at the moment. I'm still slightly concerned that she won't actually make it, because that's always a possibility with her with any event. She hasn't said anything of course, we're both just assuming she'll get down here and it'll be OK, but I think we both know it's a possibility. And even once she is here, she'll be knackered from the journey, and then the next day she's got to manage the whole wedding. So I'm worried that the walk to the Town Hall will be too far, that she'll feel ill in the ceremony, that if the one baby that's coming cries through the whole thing it'll throw her into a tizzy, and even after all that she's got to pose for photos and walk back to the hotel. And I'm not even meant to be worrying about her, I'm meant to be enjoying the day! I can't really talk to Chris about it any more, because he usually says something like "you can't be fussing over her all day, we've got a whole wedding you need to pay attention to". Which is true, and Mum has said that as well, but it doesn't stop me worrying. I've asked my brother to try to look after her on the day so I don't have to, I suppose I'll just have to hope that works out OK.

But what if she doesn't end up coming? How crappy would that be? I've got very little family coming as it is... I assume Dad would probably come still if she didn't, unless he didn't want to abandon her at home on her own. So I'll end up with my only family being my Dad, brother and sister-in-law, or maybe even just the latter two. And everyone will be going "where's Simon's Mum?" all day. God... well, she'll probably just force herself to come, I can't see her wanting to miss it any more than I would want her to.

I also tried, initially unsuccessfully, to look up some tips on the internet on coping with wedding stress. And they were all about bloody women! Things like "play soothing music in the car on the way to the ceremony, keep the air conditioning on so you don't feel hot, but don't open the window because it'll mess your hair up". Well, we aren't having cars, our car doesn't have air conditioning anyway, and my hair is generally gelled and impervious to all forms of attack. So that was useless! But I have just now found a few better tips about not getting yourself worked up with negative self-talk, e.g. this blog post, and JUST SAYING NO. When people say "are you doing this? are we having that?", instead of thinking "shit we need to do that now", the answer should be "NO WE ARE NOT". Perhaps followed by a glare, and/or a punch in the kidneys. I feel better already.

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Dress stress, money less

We've had a small amount of dress stress, now that everyone has tried theirs on. Most of them were too long, and will need adjusting in the neck strap and in the length of the skirt part, but that's not serious and is quite easy to do apparently. However, one of them is significantly shorter and tighter than its designated bridesmaid. Something must have gone awry with the measurements there, which I suppose was always a risk seeing as they all measured themselves separately and probably all did it in slightly different ways. We're lucky that most of them fit in the waist and bust as well as they do.

So anyway, we had a bit of a panic when we realised that. You can take dresses up or in, but not very easily down or out because... well, you can't make material where there is none. But, having had our chief bridesmaid and dress organiser-extraordinaire contact the Chinese dress lady, it is hopefully not as bad as we first thought. We are told that, for this very reason, the dressmakers cleverly build in extra fabric sewn into the sides and the hem, so that there is scope for increasing the size if need be. How clever is that? I've had a feel of the dress, and I can't feel any hidden fabric, but I hope what she said is true. So hopefully we'll be able to find a good dress alterer and, even if it doesn't end up quite as long as the others, we'll end up with something acceptable.

In other wedding news, we went to the hotel last night to firm up final details. The wedding man asked lots of questions like do we want everyone to be seated for the meal and then him announce our entry, which hadn't even occurred to me as an option. I suppose I've seen other people do that. But anyway, we thought about it and decided we'd be too embarrassed so we'll just sit down when everyone else sits down. It's not a formal affair really.

And having carefully transferred money around in order to pay our bill by the 28-days-before deadline, he didn't actually want the money in the end anyway! He said "oh don't worry about that, just a week before or whenever". So we have managed to avoid being punched in the bank balance to the tune of several thousand pounds for a little while longer.

This weekend will probably be a quiet one as Chris is off at Rob's stag do for all of it. So I am footloose and fancy free, what's a boy to do? I can't wash my hair ALL weekend.

I bet I end up watching Bridget Jones, drinking wine, and dancing round my living room on my own. I am SO cool...

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Dresses and photography

I'm rather excited because I heard yesterday that our bridesmaids dresses have now arrived in the UK from China. They are at the factory-owner-lady's house in Swansea, and at some point are either going to be posted to us or to our chief bridesmaid Jennie. I hope they look good, the prototype they made up and sent over looked really nice.

They're a total bargain too, as they've been handmade to order, which presumably would cost quite a lot of money over here. They had to make them based on measurements the girls took themselves, so there's a chance they might need altering, but at least they've arrived five weeks before the event so there is time to sort that out if need be.

I hope that the girls don't end up looking better than we do... Although I suppose we're fortunate it will be less directly comparable than a bride with bridesmaids, and so we haven't needed to sabotage the bridesmaids by sticking them in tartan or whatever. Our hire suits are nice, but obviously not tailor made or anything. We have the upside that our suits don't belong to us, and are insured for accidental damage, so we don't need to worry about random spillages or whatever. If the girls want to keep their dresses for anything else, they're going to have to behave in them!

I'm also quite excited about the new camera I bought at the weekend. It's a point and shoot digital one, not an SLR one or anything, but it's really good and it lets you control loads of the aperture and exposure settings and things. I've been saying for a while that I might like to get "into photography" but that I'd need a better camera to do so. So now I've got one I guess I should start taking some pictures! I might see if I can find a nice book that explains about light and composition and things, and also what the different settings on a camera actually do for you.

I'm not quite sure what it is exactly that I want to photograph in my new-found and possibly short-lived interest in photography, but I expect I'll start off with some interesting macro shots and sunsets and things.

We had a semi-controversial photography competition in the office recently, to choose photos that people had taken to go up on our walls. It very quickly became apparent that people can have quite different opinions on what makes a nice photo, in the same way I suppose as people like different types of art. It did at least give me the chance to see lots of photos taken by other people though, to build up an idea of what I like.

And, for the record and in case it hasn't been made clear enough, no I do not like photos of dead rabbits with glassy staring eyes. I don't have a particular problem with the killing of rabbits if it's necessary to keep numbers down, but I don't think that it makes a nice photo. The same as I wouldn't poison loads of rats and then go around photographing their corpses.

I will try to put some of my photographic efforts up here from time to time. Dead animals are unlikely to feature.

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5 weeks 3 days til M-Day

I haven't been on here for a while as I've been ill AGAIN. Honestly, it can't be normal for someone to catch viruses quite as often as I do. I was ill at the start of April, a bit ill at the start of May, and now again in the middle of June. It should not be a monthly occurrence! I'm starting to suspect that it's actually the same virus, and I'm never getting rid of it properly. I've read that can happen, it just goes into hibernation somewhere in your body, and then when you get particularly stressed or run down it pops up again. I'm not quite sure what I can do about it either, as doctors can't do a lot for a virus apart from tell you to rest, take paracetamol and drink lots of fluids.

So anyway, I was off for two days last week, afflicted with horrible all-over aching, and a massive gland in my neck that meant I couldn't turn my head or lay on that side. Nice. Thankfully it's gone away now, until next time at least. My current pattern of illness every six weeks is concerning me slightly though, because it means I'll be due again either at the wedding or during the honeymoon. Hmmm... maybe I should eat LOADS of oranges between now and then or something.

My wedding stress about the rooms as been assuaged somewhat, as the nice man at our hotel has said they can have some, if not all, the rooms ready at 1pm for us. Much better. Or at the very least he said they'll have somewhere where people can change, but I'm pinning my hopes on getting a couple of rooms because I'm sure people will want a bathroom etc too.

There are only a few bits and bobs left to do for the wedding now really. People are asking about it lots again, I can't remember what we used to talk about with our friends before we got engaged. The seating plan is all done and made, which is good because it took a while, but annoying if anyone wants to drop out or add guests or whatever. So we're having to be firm and say no more changes - I think that's fair given it's only a few weeks away now. And hopefully the dresses will arrive from the Chinese sweatshop soon. We're seeing the man at the hotel next week to confirm final numbers and pay our invoice, eek! So that'll be several thousand pounds, which is a bit harsh. You wouldn't think it would be so expensive to have dinner and a bit of music and dancing would you?

Mum is stressing out a little more now about how she'll cope with the day. I'm stressing a bit about it too, because I know she's going to find it hard, and her being stressed will just make her feel more ill. She's said she "doesn't want me worrying about her on the day, I'll be busy enough as it is", which is fair enough because I really can't be focusing on her the whole time. But it's going to be a bit hard for me not to... Well anyway, she'll go for a rest after the ceremony, and then she'll probably not stay that long after the dinner either as long as she's being sensible. So then she won't be around for me to worry about anyway, so I'll have no choice. I just hope Dad and Dave do a good job of keeping an eye on her.

Arrgh I still can't believe it's been booked for 18 months and now it's five weeks away!!! Where does the time go?? I'm getting so OLD!! It's been five years since graduation now, that's longer than the whole degree course was, and everyone at Boogaloo these days is practically a child. I'm sure they look at us suspiciously and wonder why such old people are there... I've been going there since they were about 11 years old! Some of them still look about that age actually.

I'm still cool anyway. Sort of. We still go out clubbing, and I don't feel old. Plus I've got loads more money than the 11 year olds, and a nice flat and a car, so I guess I'm doing alright...

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6 weeks 3 days til M-Day

The wedding is creeping up really fast now, only six and a half weeks to go (M-Day stood for marriage day, by the way, and was also a vague reference to X-Men comics for all you geeks out there).

Things are progressing fairly well I suppose, but I'm still getting more and more stressed about it. And I haven't helped myself by looking on Trip Advisor just now for reviews of the hotel we're having the reception at and where our families are staying. Now, don't get me wrong, I take reviews on that site a little with a pinch of salt, as usually only people who've had a really bad experience care enough to write on it, and everyone else has a perfectly fine time and never writes anything. BUT, there were some very bad reviews to be found, particularly around the noise levels. Which is not unexpected I suppose, given where it is - on the seafront, with one side facing East Street where there are several bars and a club. And I'm sort of hoping that most of us who will be staying there will be going to bed fairly late anyway, so the impact will be fairly minimal.

That will not, however, apply to my mother, who I fully expect to have retired upstairs by 9pm at the latest. So I've asked more than once in an OCD-checking kind of way that they be allocated a quiet room, AWAY from East Street. Which they've said they'll do, to be fair, so I'm hoping it'll be OK. I cannot deal with her having a paddy because she's had no sleep, or even worse saying she doesn't feel well enough to come to the ceremony/reception because of lack of sleep. I'll just be stressing out the whole time.

A further little problem I've just found out about, which I'm a bit afraid to tell Chris because I know his Dad's been asking in a keen sort of way, is that for the guests staying overnight there, you can't check in before 2.30pm. And the ceremony is at 3pm. Why is nothing simple??? Why is it so late?? I know they've got a lot of rooms to clean etc etc but that's going to be really unhelpful, as I was hoping we could get ready at the hotel. Mum and Dad'll be alright as they're arriving the day before, but most are arriving on the day. Oh bollocks, and I've just remembered that we'll have hire suits for our brothers and Dads, so where are they going to get changed? I was thinking "oh they'll just have to get ready before they come to Brighton, drive down and come to the ceremony, and check in later" but they can't if they haven't got their suits! Damn damn damn!

And it's not like six people can get dressed in my parent's room, not with my Mum 'needing to rest', and even our flat is going to be a problem because Chris' cousins are staying there!! Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! OK maybe we should just cancel. Or move the whole wedding to a nice quiet hotel in the country where there's parking and the rooms are available from 12pm. Although then all the non-resident guests have to figure out how to get home so that doesn't work either. How do people ever manage to get married??

Oh god this is going to be well annoying to sort out... And parking's going to be a problem, I can't even think about that at the moment.

Oh fuck it, I don't even want a wedding any more. 

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Weddingmania

I had such a busy weekend doing various wedding chores, the most fun of which was going to Moss Bros to be fitted for our wedding suits by the cute (and clearly gay) young man who works there. He spent ages measuring us up and making sure our nice outfits fitted correctly, and then was even kind enough to give me a 25% student discount on my suit despite the fact that I'm not a student! Having a university email address clearly pays dividends, as that's what made him ask if I was a student, and then he just gave me the discount anyway when I said I only work here. I'm going to assume he either fancied me or was just in a very good mood, but the former is obviously far more likely (have you seen me?)

We also did the seating plan for the reception which was a nightmare and took HOURS because you always end up with people sitting on their own or people sitting too close to other people they can't sit near, or one weird table full of randoms who don't fit anywhere else. But I think the way we've done it looks good, I'm just hoping no-one upsets the apple cart by developing sudden feuds or too many acquiring new partners.

I'm getting a bit nervous about the actual day now, and making sure everything goes according to plan. I keep thinking if it were just a party it would be so simple, because you just book a room with a bar and some music in it. But for weddings there's a million other things like decorating the room, table favours, cake mountains, photographs, outfits, speeches, accommodation, parking, weather contingencies,  etc etc etc. Thank god we booked it 18 months in advance, I think I would have had a breakdown if we'd done it in less time.

Today I am enjoying the nice view of an attractive young dark-haired boy trying to look interested during a PowerPoint presentation on traction and hypertension. There haven't been any seminars going on for a while, I was getting rather sick of my view of an empty room with a plastic skeleton in it. It's a shame there probably won't be any classes during the summer, as I always find people look much cuter in tight summer t-shirts than they do in chunky winter jumpers. I suppose I shall just have to venture outside at lunchtimes for my eye candy.

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So many little jobs

Well the weekend whizzed by and left me thoroughly depressed and now I'm back at work. The only time I got at home was a few hours on Sunday night, just enough time to be annoyed by an episode of Skins (Cassie was being a whiney twat, god get over it love and have a doughnut) and then watch the first bit of Shipwrecked 2008. There were a couple of cute boys, quite posh and country-types but I don't mind that, so I can look forward to several weeks of them wandering around topless and tanned on T4.

As always with trips home, lots of the talk revolved around our wedding and Stuart and Helen's wedding this summer, and it made me realise quite how many things we've still got to do! I thought we were well on top of everything, but now there are only 3.5 months left and we've got to:

invite evening guests, book music equipment, book balloons, sort out table favours, get measured for suit hire, get my Dad and brother measured for suit hire, do the seating plan, get the bridesmaids dresses, do our music playlist, and meet up with our photographer again for a 2-months-before briefing. Ack so much to do. Hopefully Chris will get a few bits done while he's off this week, and I suppose 3 months is quite a lot of time to sort all those things out.

Honestly though, arranging a wedding is SUCH a faff. If it were just a party you'd only need to hire a room and get some music and invite people. Weddings have a million other things you're supposed to do or are traditional, and they all seem to cost several hundred pounds! And there's still the honeymoon trip afterwards to plan and pack for. At least the flights and hotels are booked.

So anyway, I guess I'd better get on with some of these things! Or rather, email Chris and tell him to do them, that's a much better idea.

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