The ugly sides of wedding planning!

I want to preface this by saying I am SO excited to be married to my wonderful fiancé Sam, I have to say that here because I've made a few comments about eloping recently and he said it sounds like I'm not excited to marry him. Oops!  So yes, very in love, very excited to be husband and wife and all that heteronormative business.

Now onto the real juicy stuff. Wedding planning, probably 70% of the time I love it, the other 30% I want to email everyone I'm working with to plan it and tell them its off and we're going to Gretna Green (only 10 minutes from our house, so convenient!!). So these are some of the 'ugly sides' of wedding planning. I feel like you're really bombarded with posts and magazines that say wedding planning should be savoured and enjoyed in waves of champagne and cake tasting. Sometimes it's like that, sometimes it's shit and stressful and it is ALWAYS expensive.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder. 
Woah, straight in with the big guns. I am an anxious person, I have anxiety. This is a big factor in what makes wedding planning feel stressful for me I think! I have tweeted a few times about wedding anxiety dreams Ive had, these started before we had even booked the wedding! I wake up shaking from nightmares that awful things have happened on the wedding day, the most ridiculous being that our venue had ripped us off and booked 3 weddings on the same day then to apologise to us they had booked a motorcycle wall of death as entertainment, yeah. That's not all though it can be really awful things that I worry about such as that people arent going to turn up when they've RSVP'd yes or that they're going to be hospitalised before the wedding and they can't come! All of this obviously could happen and you take it all in your stride on the day I'm sure, GAD just makes it really hard to rationalise that.

Our matching flip flops because our shoes cut our feet to shreds. 

Some shopping experiences will be horrible. 
A few weeks ago my Mum and I went wedding dress shopping, can I be honest and say my dress is what I was most excited about getting for the day? So that's how giddy we were to go shopping. Our first shop was AMAZING, they made us feel at home, she was lovely and knew what dresses to pull for me from my random jumbled ideas of what I wanted. ("I want to be able to move, I mean I like lace but not too much lace, I just want to be comfortable, but I want to feel like a princess kind of.") So yeah, that's the shop I bought my dress from.
 After a large cheese filled meal and a good few cocktails we headed off to the next place and it. was. horrible. It started off nicely, it was a beautiful building, but then as soon as we were shown to our 'private dressing room' I started to have my doubts. It was just a bit shabby. The woman offered us prosecco, of course we said yes, and she brought us what me and my Mum can only ascertain was LAMBRINI! I am still shocked at the audacity to try and pull that off, it's hilarious honestly. The woman looking after us was just a bit rude she kept talking about 'girls of your size' (I'm a 16, the national average) and trying to make me up my already sizeable budget. She didn't help me pick out any dresses to try on, just left us to it, the only advice she gave was to 'avoid that wall over there, they're too expensive for you'.
When I was trying the dresses on she just hoiked me into them in front of my mum and then stood me in front of the mirror with a 'Well?'. It was just such a sharp contrast to the first place where she got me into the dress and brought me through to my mum, dressed me up with a veil and accessories to really see how the dresses looked. That made all the difference because, for me at least, I couldn't really see myself as a bride until I had the veil on and everything.
This is going to be the longest section but this lady also was sooooo pressurising for me to buy a dress I didn't even really like! She was trying to tell me it was being discontinued in a week so I really needed to order today, and I would need some of the shoes they sold here to go with it because then it wouldn't need any alteration. She scoffed and asked how tall Sam was when I said I would be wearing flats. Wow.
That was like some kind of bridal therapy getting all that off my chest!! I feel like I can't name the shop but if anyone is getting married and shopping for dresses in Carlisle, feel free to tweet me or something and I'll tell you the shop then to know where to avoid!

Money!! 
We all know that weddings are expensive, I'm not going to moan about that. What I am going to moan about is the perception from certain people that because you're not instantly booking/buying something it's because you can't afford it. So strange! It's not a perception I've come across before but it's happened a few times with shopping. The most notable was when we went looking for wedding rings, it was our first look so were just getting a feel for the rings. I said this to the woman after actually falling in love with a ring, just because I was trying to be sensible and not jump into things! She then said 'oh we offer finance if you don't have the money to buy it today'. It was maybe meant innocently but both Sam and I were shocked by the assumption that we couldn't afford it just because we didn't jump to buy. Very strange.

Hormones, yay!!!
I wasn't going to bother with this section as I know millions of people just put up with hormones and all those lady changes everyday however when you're wedding planning (for certain aspects) it feels like it really heightens things. For example, I went wedding dress shopping, then a few days later I went to order my dress and be measured etc, I was due for a visit from Aunt Flo and the dress I had previously tried on was now a whole size too small!! It's just crazy to me how much the body changes through the month. Another breakdown that I can only blame on hormones involves me counting the weeks and realising that if I became pregnant accidentally THIS EXACT WEEK then my due date would probably be the wedding date. Yeah, cut to me sat on the bathroom floor with a pregnancy test,   3 days before my period was due panicking because OMG we would have to cancel the wedding to have a baby! Nice.

Politics. 
The most political thing you will ever do is plan a wedding guest list. It feels like you're negotiating a deal between countries, neither of which you would ever dare to offend. I've had panic attacks about the fact that some people I'm not inviting will probably decide that it's me cut off when they're not invited. I know that some people will be offended that they're only invited to the evening. I almost lost it when I decided to have less bridesmaids than I had originally planned to save money on the budget. (Thankfully before they had been asked!) It's all difficult, thankfully, we are paying for it ourselves so our families kind of don't have pull on the whole 'why aren't you inviting this couple who knew you when you were 2 but are now kind of racist and problematic and you hate talking to them?' that's a bit satisfying to be able to say no, I'm not buying them 4 drinks and a 3 course meal plus hot evening buffet thanks Mum.

I am remembering the most important part, that we will be married after this. We love each other so much that we've decided to get the government involved. I am so excited for this lovely chap to be my husband, and I know we'll have magical day. I just want to show that if you're not particularly enjoying certain aspects of wedding planning, that is totally normal. Now let me get back to browsing Etsy and Not on the High Street for all the fun bits! Thanks for reading my ramble.

Our engagement shoot in Scarborough.

All photo credit to Henry Lowther. 

I had seen the idea of an engagement or couple's shoot floating around mostly Pinterest for a while now but it had never been something I considered. However, when we booked our wedding photographer he offered us one and we decided to take the opportunity to do it.

This is just a post for me to share some pictures from it, I think they're so beautiful and they've made me so happy that we chose our photographer. For me, the photography of our wedding has been at the  forefront of my mind when planning. It's probably the most important thing for me other than the fact that we are going to be married of course! I read somewhere that the only 2 tangible things you really keep from your wedding day are the rings and the photographs so pay attention to these.

 We chose Scarborough as the location for our shoot as it's the place where we first got engaged, we love it there even though it's got some of that seaside tackiness that all the best British seaside towns have, there are some beautiful areas and it will always hold a place in our hearts for sure!

 It's always a bonus when you get to munch on ice cream as you walk around, I think I was swiping some ice cream out of Sam's beard here #beardproblems.

 I think what was fascinating for me was seeing how a talented photographer really works, I mentioned to Sam the evening after the shoot that I was worried we wouldn't find all that many locations for the photos but it amazed me seeing how a true photographer worked and how Henry saw opportunities for photos that the untrained (untalented!) eye wouldn't.

We lucked out so much with the weather, for our whole week off work anyway not just the day of the shoot, we had the shoot in the evening and the golden light especially in this photo is just to die for.

 I'm wearing Benefit roller lash on my lashes just in case you wondered ;)

 My dress and cardigan are both from Fat Face and they're honestly some of the comfiest clothes I own, we both wanted to just look like ourselves and for the photos to be a real representation of us as a couple, albeit a slightly polished version! That's why I've got my wellies on! We were at the beach!

I think I managed to whittle that down to only 10 (maybe 11) of the photos Henry sent us! I absolutely loved them all and we're frantically trying to decide which ones we should get printed to hang in the house and find the balance between a few lovely pictures of us and being the most narcissistic couple ever.
If you're recently engaged and have the chance to do a shoot I would highly recommend it! I think as much as it means you've got some beautiful pictures of you as a couple pre-wedding which could be used for thank you cards after the wedding etc, you get to know your photographer and how they work and they get to know you and how to get the best picture out of you!
I was so nervous before this shoot because despite how many selfies you take you're probably not used to having a professional point a camera at you in public but I'd do it again 100x over! How do I get every part of my life documented beautifully by a talented photographer? Become a Kardashian?

Henry's links:

Instagram. 

Facebook. 

Website. 

Blog.

We're Engaged!

I'm sure if you follow me on any of my social media you'll know this already but on the 28th of January, Sam asked me to be his wife, and I said yes!

In a style so completely us that I don't think it could have been any more perfect, Sam asked me in our favourite hotel, that we were staying in as a birthday present for me (or so I thought!).

The day of the proposal on our blustery beach walk. 

I had just got out of the bath, make up less, damp hair and probably looking a bit pink. I found the ring hidden behind a very grown up love note (Jacq loves Sam 4eva and eva!) that I had written Sam earlier to thank him, in a silly way, for the hotel room. Upon finding the ring I completely froze and Sam, being the oh so cool person that he is said 'So, shall we get married then?' I'm not ashamed to say I cried before holding out a shaking hand for him to put the ring on. We had champagne on ice ready to pop (me not Sam, he's scared of it!) to toast our future.

The first sunrise we saw as an engaged couple. All firsts at the moment are feeling so special, and both Sam and I keep catching ourselves looking at that ring on my finger and thinking about everything it means. We couldn't be happier.