Don’t be fooled – it doesn’t matter how organised you think you are, you’ll realise that no amount of organisation prepares you for the last month before you get married.
It’s been absolutely hectic for me just recently, trying to juggle working full time along with finalising and co-ordinating the arrangements.
During this last fortnight alone, we’ve not had one evening spare.
We’ve been to see Kate, our photographer to discuss the times she’s going to arrive, what photos she’s going to take and to finalise the timings of the day, from the church to Bosworth Hall etc. In addition to the photographs we were having a chat about buying sweets for our sweetie buffet. I can’t believe how lucky we were – Kate knew a couple who ran the local sweet shop in Castle Donington. They had just decided to sell their sweet shop and might have a few sweets for sale. She contacted her friend for me and we went round to see him.
Honestly, I’ve never seen so many different types of sweets in one place. We didn’t know where to start and which to buy so we just bought loads of different ones. We did need a lot though as I’ve borrowed the sweetie jars that our friends had for their wedding and although I can’t remember there being that many jars on their buffet, I seem to have a bedroom full of jars! I just hope that our guests have got sweet teeth as I think we overdid it.
We also had an appointment to see our Wedding Co-ordinator, Finola at Bosworth Hall. As usual I went along with a whole page full of questions for her. I shouldn’t have bothered as she answered most of them whilst we were going through the final arrangements. Simon keeps saying that I need to calm down and stop worrying about things, but I can’t.
We went through the menu for the wedding breakfast and evening buffet, how I wanted the seating plan to look, the itinerary for the day and she took details of all our outside contractors so that she can contact them prior to the day to make sure everything is still ok without us having the worry about doing it. Finola is wonderful, and the staff at Bosworth Hall can’t do enough to help.
We met with our vicar, Reverend Perrett, and had a great time discussing the building blocks of marriage. We did a quiz to see how well we knew each other and I must say we didn’t do bad at that. He did shock us though with some scary wedding trivia about the percentage of first and second marriages that fail. I thought that people might have learned their lesson by the time they got round to a second marriage, but it seems that’s not the case. The number of failed second marriages is not much different to the number of failed first marriages.
Simon’s been on his stag weekend to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and by the sounds of it had a brilliant time with his brother, Jeremy; best man, Marcus and close friend, Jason. Whilst he was away, I was attending church on my own to hear our banns being read for the first time.
Banns are a legal requirement and have to be read out by the vicar three times for a church ceremony. It’s an opportunity to announce your intention to marry, and for anyone who may know of a reason for you not to be married to voice their concerns and to inform the vicar. For a register office wedding or civil ceremony, the registrar will publish the banns in the local Town Hall or Civic Centre.
I did have a great night out with my girlie friends for my hen night. We went for a meal and a few drinks at one of our local pubs. As it would turn out the band that we booked for the wedding reception were playing on the same night. They are a local band from Swadlincote called Mrs Miggins Pie Shoppe. They were absolutely brilliant – a good choice if I do say so myself.
Anyway, loads of other things have been happening but I’ll save all that for the next blog post. Hopefully this’ll help you get an idea about how busy the lead up to the wedding has been, and it’s only getting busier!
