Our wedding, the ceremony.

T H E   M I L L H O U S E    S K I D B Y    T W O   P M

Get ready for the second instalment of our wedding day! If you need to catch up on part 1, click here. This post is going to be even more mammoth than the last and I still feel like I've left things out!! I've written a post before about the process of finding our wedding venue, I'll link that here so I'm not repeating myself! Now the day has been and gone I really feel like I can stand by my views that it was our perfect venue. 

I loved seeing these pictures of our guests mingling (and Sam sipping pints bought by his uncles!) as we were driving around in our camper van. We had set off a little early in the end so we drove around the surrounding villages, chatting, laughing and dancing (again!). 

This was our ceremony room at the Millhouse, we both wanted something super simple, I'm not a fan of chair covers and since our venue had lovely chairs anyway I feel like they weren't missed. The S & J were a not on the high street find that moved into the wedding breakfast room and have now come to rest on our living room bookshelf!

A R R I V A L

Arriving at the venue was another of my favourite memories (who am I kidding, they're all my favourite) as I imagined all the guests and Sam stood inside knowing we were arriving, and the sense of anticipation I've had when I've been a wedding guest. It's a feeling like no other knowing that in such a short time youre going to be married to your best friend. 

The pictures above of me and my brother will always hold a funny memory for me as we were taking pictures holding hands then realised it may look like we were the ones getting married! I don't know who would think that since anyone seeing these pictures would know otherwise but maybe the nerves had caused us to be a bit hysterical and we snatched our hands away and couldn't stop laughing. 

I had to be comfy on my wedding day, I love my silver sparkly converse! 

 Sam and his brother Colin who was also his best man.

I love the candid shots Henry got of the crowd as even a few days after the wedding on our honeymoon Sam and I couldn't for the life of us remember where people were sat, and Sam had even been chatting to most people as they were awaiting my arrival! 

H E R E   C O M E S   T H E   B R I D E 

 This is the moment the song I walked down the aisle to began to play, the first time all morning I felt I was going to cry, I don't think I did but i certainly welled up. My bridesmaids preceded me to give me a bit of a chance to breathe and then it was our turn.

I could cry all over again looking at these pictures now. Everyone was shocked that my brother cried all the way down the aisle, although as I mentioned in my previous post, it became a theme for the day! My brother gave me away and despite not having a dad and knowing i wouldn't have a father of the bride to give me away its a tradition I wanted to uphold. Not because I think I'm property, I knew it was a memory I wanted to share with my brother and I also knew i'd need someone to hold me up! 

I can't remember exactly but I think the first thing Sam said to me as we got to the top of the aisle was something to do with how perfect my dress was, and I gave myself a slight pat on the back. 

R E A D I N G

 Sam's sister, Laura did a reading for us and it was so special to have her doing it. She read 'Blessing for a marriage' by James Dillet Freeman. It was a reading that really spoke to us as it talks of equality and being there for each other, although not from need.

The first picture of my very attractive 'you what?' face was when Sam pretended not to know which hand the ring went on. We had a few laughs throughout the ceremony which set the tone for the day how we wanted it. Relaxed and fun. I am still getting made fun of for my 'today, tomorrow and... always?!' blunder as I couldn't remember what the registrar had just said. Lot's of 'weren't you sure about the always part Jacq??' 

O F F I C I A L L Y    M A R R I E D ! 

The first footprint Sam managed to get on my dress and realised, wow, I really don't care because OMG WE'RE MARRIED!!!

O U T   W E   G O

We did actually do some confetti at this point although it was a slight fail as the staff only handed about half out, it was rectified later when we had another go after the wedding breakfast so I don't dwell on it! It was the one thing that went a teeny bit wrong on the day so I think we did well for that!  We had a few moments of mingling and hugging and me feeling like I was going to cry with every new person I spoke to before heading off for the family pictures while everyone got their drinks and mingled. 

We didn't want a whole heap of posed pictures so tried to stick to just family and bridal party, I kind of hate the whole idea of shepherding the whole wedding into place for pictures of everyone together where you can barely see peoples faces. I'm really pleased with these photos that we got as they're perfect for us and our families to keep and treasure. 

After this we went off for a few pictures alone and then it's on to the reception, and another post! Phew, I'm sure you're saying. This was quite a read!

 Just like our engagement shoot, Sam kept me laughing all the way through out pictures, I love this about him as obviously, not being a Kardashian, I'm not used to being photographed throughout my day!

Onto the reception, and some golden hour photographs of Sam and I that I think I'll cry over until I'm old and grey! See you in the next one! 

Life lately, in verbs part 2.

I can't believe it's April and I haven't written a blog post yet this year. I want to make this a catch up post but give it a bit of structure! I've done a life lately in verbs before and the original concept comes from Rosie :)

 

Feeling:: very strange. We are now just over one week out to ~the big day~ and in myself I haven't felt stressed however I've cried at work a few times and had some 'coming down with something' type symptoms for the past 2 weeks. I left quite a bit of the stuff I have to diy for this weekend and I would not recommend. Spread stuff out people. 

Writing:: an essay! What an idiot, this is a bit of an explanation for why I've been so absent. I decided to do a uni course with the exam and essay deadline in the same month as my wedding. I've been super fun to be around. 

Reading:: books by women, incidentally. I like to follow what I've been reading on Goodreads and bar one book so far this year I've been reading books exclusively by women. I've decided to try and maintain the trend. My fave so far has been Letters to my Fanny by Cherry Healey. 

Listening:: podcasts. I started off when everyone else did with podcasts by listening to Serial then kind of forgot about podcasts for a while. I can't remember what started it but I decided to start listening to the Woman's Hour podcast when walking Charlie and since then found a few that I've really enjoyed! It feels like I'm doing more for myself ~education wise~ than just listening to music. 

Eating:: bloody everything. I had my final dress fitting and then ate takeaway 3 times in one week. Normally I don't care about putting a bit of extra weight on around Christmas and easter etc as it usually balances out over the next few weeks. However this time, the wedding is single figures away and my goodness it feels strange to have such a snug fitting dress. You don't realise your clothes don't *fit* until you have something that is 100% fitted to your body. Strange concept. Don't worry, my dress will fit as everything people say about the stress keeping your weight stable/ making you accidentally lose weight in the weeks up to your wedding is true. Bodies are weird man. 

Buying:: bikinis! I have never in my life worn a bikini, isn't that a sad concept at 25 years old? I have been too self conscious to wear anything more revealing than the tankini I had at 10 years old until now. It feels stupid to say now and it makes me a bit sad but I've bought some killer bikinis for our Scottish mini moon (hello hot tub on the roof) and I'm looking forward to having some time alone to get used to wearing them before going full public with me bod. I say that like posting pics of myself in them on twitter isn't public ;) 

Yet again, ending a blog post with the whole 'hope I don't leave it so long next time' line again but I really don't. Thank you to Charlotte for giving me the kick up the bum I needed to get writing again. Unless there's a blog post between now and 26/04/2017 I reckon I'll have a pretty special day to update you on next time ;) 

Life Lately, in verbs.

The wonderful Rosie over at Cider With Rosie  (one of my all time favourites) does these posts called 'Life lately, in verbs' and I love them, I contacted Rosie a while ago to see if she minded me doing one of my own, she very kindly said she didn't.
In times when it feels like time won't slow down and I don't quite know how to document everything I feel like this is a way for me to step back and look at the big picture, whilst singling out the little things.

Listening to: Vinyl! I am now the ultimate hipster, my lovely fiancé Sam bought me a record player and my first vinyl this week and I LOVE it! I've wanted one for ages and always thought of reasons not to get it but vinyl shopping is my new favourite activity, we even have an independent vinyl shop in Carlisle!

Recovering: From wisdom teeth removal. I went in on Wednesday morning to have my top 2 wisdom teeth removed under sedation. In April my dentist tried for AN HOUR to remove them before giving up and referring on to the hospital. I thought the sedation hadn't worked because I could remember the whole procedure but in reality I thought I was in there 5 minutes and it was actually 30, so maybe it worked better than I thought.

Watching: Brooklyn 99. I love this show, we've now watched series 1 twice and I still laugh out loud a few times every episode. Would highly recommend (series 1 and 2 are on Netflix).

Eating: The new Italian range at Dominos! I tweeted about my fancy AF Domino's the other day and people were not as impressed as I was. My pizza came with a little pot of fresh rocket, goats cheese and a mini bottle of chill oil to drizzle! Swanky.

Buying: Plants on plants on plants. This week of leave that Sam and I had (despite the wisdom teeth bump in the middle) has been used to really get our little house how we want it. We bought and built furniture, we took a trip to Homebase and spent approx a squillion pounds (£50) on plants for every room in the house (2 for the bathroom that lucky devil). It's been hard to make this place truly our own because it was part furnished when we moved in and there's always that temporary feeling of a rental place but we love it here and a year down the line we figured we should really make it right.

Drinking: Green smoothies. Sorry to keep harping on about these bloody teeth but I really thought their removal and recovery was going to hinder my eating abilities more, so I panic bought green smoothie ingredients. My fave little combo has been :
a handful of strawberries,
a handful of frozen mango
as much spinach as will fit in the blender
coconut water (about 250ml)
a tsp of organic honey
It's probably the wrong time of year to begin enjoying green smoothies for breakfast again and I'll soon transition back onto porridge but for now myself and my tender mouth are enjoying the refreshment and nourishing factor of the old smoothie.

Feeling: Ridiculously excited about the wedding. I know, I've just been moaning all over twitter and here about wedding planning for the last however many weeks, let me live. We went with family and friends in tow (anything can be an excuse for a meet up when you live 200 miles apart) to our future wedding venue for a wedding fayre! It made me SO happy to see it all done up for a wedding since we'd only been there to eat and meet the wedding co-ordinator before. It also made me well up a little (on the inside) to see a few of our family members and friends get along so well and get so excited on our behalf. We're a lucky pair.

Reading: As much as I can! I had a realisation that I hadn't read a book for 2 whole months and I was so upset with myself. I always prided (??) myself on being a big reader, no matter what, I had a book on the go and I had let myself get so 'busy' that I didn't leave time to read. I've remedied that by reading 2 books in the last week. One was a complete trashy (no hate) chic-lit novel about weddings (set in the lead up to the royal wedding in 2011) that I LOVED. I eat that shit up honestly, give me a book about a strong female lead in a 'stereotypically female' conundrum with some drama in there and I'll devour it. No shame.

That's all I have for now, I'm back at work Monday after a very strange week off and I'm kind if looking forward to some normality again! Thanks for reading :)

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.

Little Loves #4.

Oh dear, I did it again! I keep forgetting/ feeling too busy for this little blog of mine. So I thought i'd come back with a bit of a favourites of late, I always find it quite easy to write these Little Loves posts since it's like speaking to a friend about what I've enjoyed recently!

Our trip to Newquay. 

If I had been on my blogging game this would have been a post all of it's own. Our trip to Newquay was just amazing. We went Monday to Friday in a random week off we had together but I wish it had been 2 weeks! We stayed in a glorious AirBnB, our first time doing so, and it was lovely! I would definitely use the site again to book somewhere. We stayed in a little campervan in someone's garden, they had 2 beautiful dogs and they really made us feel welcome. So many things were great but the main highlight for me was seeing Newton Faulkner at Lusty Glaze cove. It's a beautiful venue for music, on the beach! It rained none stop as you can see from the soggy second picture but I loved it. If you're a fan of Newton Faulkner I would highly recommend seeing him live, I think this was my 5th time and each one has been a new experience. 

PokemonGO. 

Are we fed up of this yet? Sam totally made me jump on the bandwagon, I kind of missed Pokemon the first time round which is odd because i was a *prime* candidate for the card obsession with my age etc. I think maybe we couldn't afford the cards and my mum worked her wizardry to make me realise I didn't want them. She's clever like that ;) Anyway, the game! I'm not majorly obsessed like some people *cough*Sam*cough* but i like the VR aspect of the game where you see the pokemon in your actual environment! Also, it gets you out the house and that so yeah, all good! 

Flavour by Ruby Tandoh. 

Is this the messiest picture I've ever posted on my blog? Maybe. I was so annoyed that I left the bloody butter there in the picture, the rest for me is justifiable mess when showing off a cookbook, but the butter? It can bob off. Aaaaanyway, Flavour, Ruby Tandoh, my new love. If you don't follow Ruby on twitter please do, then buy this book! She tweets a lot about the wellness trend which relates to this cookbook, basically in the term of eating what you love and not feeling guilty about it! She is far better at explaining than I, just know that this first recipe I tried from the list was 1) so bloody easy 2) easy to change up (I don't like egg so added falafel) and 3) so so tasty!! If you are so inclined I think Ruby estimated that around 70% of the book is veggie with a lot being vegan/ easy to make vegan too! 

Wedding stuff and bonus, snapchat! 

 

Wedding planning is becoming so so real now! It's just under 9 months until the big day and pretty much everything is booked! We bought my wedding ring the other day which Sam has subsequently hidden to stop me from trying it on, thanks bae. Time is already flying so I know the next 9 months isn't going to be any different. We wanted to get as much done as possible to have a while off from wedding planning over Christmas and it looks like we're going to succeed in our plan to do that, fingers crossed! This is why I need to update my blog more, I will be looking back in a year and wondering what I did with this time before the wedding, I just know it!

I think I'll stop now, I could keep rambling, I've been looking through my social media platforms for inspiration of things I've been loving and all it made me realise is that I need to bloody well blog more. How many times have I said bloody in this blog post? Who am I? Ron bloody Weasley. 

Okay, bye!