2:14pm Friday 29th January 2010
By Jess Childs
I’VE just read my blog entries back to date and, if I’m honest, I’m not sure I was the ideal candidate to be writing a wedding blog - well not one that’s supposed to be helpful in a Mrs Beeton kind of way anyway.
You can more or less track the rise and, well, rise of pandemonium in our house throughout 2009 via the change in language as the months progress. Words like “creative” and “contingencies” that were bandied around last spring slowly give way to ones like “saga”, “perplexion” and the oft repeated “panic”.
Well, as 2010 ploughs on relentlessly, I have news for you all. I. Am. Calm. And do you know why? Because come January I finally let go. I let go of the honeymoon (all organised by the H2B and a fine job done too), I let go of the invites (designed and produced by my wonderful brother and due to be sent out later than they should be next week - but who cares?), I let go of the flowers (told a local florist with good reputation what I wanted to spend and what sort of look and let her decide the rest) and I let go of the bridesmaids gifts having to be the best thing ever and bought some beautiful things that got the job done just as well in the end. Of course this has come at a (monetary) price but not that much more to be honest. The key to retaining your sanity seems to be striking that balance between holding on to those things that you can feasibly do yourself (in our case sandwiches, some flowers, favours) and finding the best value for money services elsewhere in order to simply get the job done. I don’t want to miss the significance of it all because I’m caught up making bunting or chocolate truffles until midnight the day before (actually my Grandma has got the WI involved with the bunting so that’s all being taken care of by someone else now too).
You will need time for yourself during those pre-wedding months to fully absorb things and start making sure you are in tip-top condition, and you can only do this through delegation. Get that chief bridesmaid (or best mate) to organise your hen-do, for example. People are happy to help but you have to be prepared to ask, and supply them with what they need.
My next job is the order of service and after that, I will be drawing up a pre-wedding-week timetable and giving everyone from the a copy so they know exactly who is supposed to be doing what and when. One of my friends did this on her wedding day and I, quite wrongly, thought it was a bit OTT at the time. Now I realise it means once she’d farmed all those jobs out, all she had to do was enjoy her big day.
January has been a flurry of activity booking those final things but it has so been worth it. The list is slowly diminishing and, as a result, the excitement is slowly beginning to build.
Bring on the big day!
Month’s top find: I know it’s the classic for your wedding list but I have to say John Lewis have been second to none with the organisation of ours. We initially registered with another well-known department store but the service was pants from the off. It took me several very restrained phone calls to find out which store I had actually registered with (I signed up online due to our rural situation) and couldn’t get anyone to send me out the insert cards needed for the invites, then I discovered that the online stock was vastly different to that in store and, in some cases, unavailable so I struck it off in the end. Don’t be afraid to do the same - you won’t have time to mess around.
Also, was looking for pink envelopes as invites have been self-designed and guess what? eBay does it again!
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