Thread: D*mn it, I ~DID~ fit in my dress!!!!! :o) I'm now married!! Report & pics included!

Phew, I'm back down to 10st 11.0lb!!!!! So those two pounds are gone again!!

I'm back off SS though, my blood sugars were ALL OVER THE PLACE yesterday (am very hopeful it means I'm pregnant again, fingers crossed!!) so have come back up to the 1000 plan.. Still lost 0.8lb yesterday so that's good!! Would love to lose another half a pound maybe by my dress fitting tomorrow - just so I'm lighter than when I last tried it on!!!!!

Went to church yesterday, was really strange to think that both those services (we have a morning eucharist and sung evensong) were the last I'd be going to as an unmarried woman, next time I'm in the church I'll be a the rehearsal for our wedding!! Considering I've sung there for HUNDREDS of weddings it's really lovely I'm finally going to my own!!!!!!

Everyone in the choir was really lovely, they're so looking forward to all the beautiful music we're going to be doing - and I am too, it's going to be amazing!!

We started trying to print off the Orders of Service last night, oh my life it's going to take AGES!!!! We did 50 covers and that took a couple of hours!!! Admittedly it probably took us 40 minutes of faffing to get everything lined up on the paper etc etc but even still, we've got 4 sides of paper/card to print and 250 OOS to make - we're going to be there for HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We also have discovered that the extra 100 cards we ordered this week were wrong - they certainly dont measure the same as the order says.. So I'm going to ring them today and ask them to send some others out and make sure they're here tomorrow - as that's the only day we can print them... Were gutted when we realised last night... But hey, am sure will all work out fine!!

Busy day today - off to the Town Hall in an hour and a half to go through all the seating plan again, we went there a couple of days ago and he needs more room for the ceilidh than first anticipated so we were having to dismantle 4 tables and not provide tables for the evening guests.. We think we might have found a way to move 3 tables and only dismantle one - so just wanted to check all that before making up the table plan - todays job!! I've also got to see the florist to confirm things there and give her all the ribbon she needs and I've got a physio appointment too at 10..

I'm also seeing my cdc this evening and (hopefully) seeing a friend to pick up a couple of boxes to make our wedding postboxes out of.. Will be making those tonight so need to get the materials for that too..

h2b is working a twilight tonight - starts at 6pm and finishes at 1.30.. Originally he was going to take the car in but I'm seeing my cdc at 6 so I'll need it - but by the sound of things I'll have enough to keep me busy til he finishes anyway!!!!! I'm actually glad I'm off work now as things are just beyond busy!! I need to get a Drs appointment to get a return to work cert for my knee and GOODNESS knows when I'm going to have the time to do it!!!!

FIVE DAYS TO GO, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

Ahhh, thank you lottie-kins! Going to be a bit mad over the next few days - but will be worth it in 5 days time!!!!


Ah, bless you PrincessL, that's really sweet of you! No, they've decided not to operate before the wedding now!! I'm really hopeful I might be able to get away with no surgery again, I have an appointment with the consultant this time when we get back from St Lucia for the final decision on whether I need the arthoscopy and then go on to have the repair! I'd rather not have either but will see what he thinks!!

Yeah, I know - it just hurt a little.. I think everyone gets a bit sensitive in the run up to their wedding - and I'm sure the guy who said it would be horrified to know it had upset me but when every pound matters (and really MATTERS) to be told I was being intense was a bit, well, insensitive.. To everybody else it wouldnt matter - but when you're putting on a big gold dress in a few days that was inches too small and you've finally got in it but you wont if you go up a couple of pounds type thing it was a bit aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!

hi sunflowerbride

Just a quick hello and goodluck for the weekend. It is going to be amazing im sure. Its my hen party on sat, so i will have a drink or two for you........





triciax

Ahh, thank you WW!!!

Sure, raise a glass for me!!!! Enjoy your hen night, I loved mine - was so good to see everyone and really got me in the wedding spirit!!!!

What are you doing?

ITS TODAY

I hope you have the most amazing day and enjoy every minute. I cant wait to see your pics and hear you report when you get back. Huge Congrats hun xxxx

good Luck, be thinking of you...cant wait to see your pic xxx

Well we had the most amazing couple of weeks!! The day itself was absolutely amazing - we wouldn't have changed a thing!! We also had the most wonderful time in St Lucia, the hotel was absolutely amazing!!

I've written a diary of the wedding and the honeymoon - you've got the day before, the wedding day and the day after below to read! I've had to put it into three entries as it's too big for one entry!!! Photos are at the bottom!!

I managed to gain A STONE (?!?!?!?!?!?!) while on honeymoon (and the wedding itself I guess too!) but not sure how accurate that was as I've lost 7lbs in the last 2 days if that's the case!!!! Back on SS for another week, I'm 11st 3.5 this morning and I was 10st 8 on the wedding day so will SS until I get to 11st then 790 until 10st 10 and then back on to the 1000 plan!!

Enjoy the diary - and you might want to grab a cuppa, it's a long one!!!

Friday 6th July 2007!

About 8.30 am we dropped flowers to church – we’d been growing all our own sunflowers and these were being used for the flower displays that week at the high alter and the trancept. My father and I then went in to Plymouth and I did some last minute shopping for clothes for the honeymoon then went to have my nails done whilst my father was getting the remote for his camcorder repaired.

We got back from Plymouth about 1pm and went down to see the cake to confirm where we wanted the toppers! I had a physio appointment which meant we couldn’t stay there very long as we were on a bit of a mad dash to Tavistock so we quickly sorted the toppers and confirmed when it was being delivered and dashed out!! Once I’d had my physio on my knee we went down to see how the Town Hall was getting on.. All the tables were laid out and laid up for the meal – it looked beautiful, a complete sea of yellow and white, particularly so because the (dark red) chairs hadn’t been put out then!!

I needed to check in to the hotel and make sure my dress was ok – I’d given it to my father a couple of hours earlier as he was going straight to the hotel from when he dropped me back home and asked that he could take the train out (at least) of the bag as soon as he got to Tavistock. I would then hang it up properly, along with my full length veil, in my room when I got there.. So I checked in, went to their room to find them not there, started walking down the stairs and saw them coming in the hotel.. “Right” says my father, “we can get your dress out of the car……” Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!! Turned out that when Dad got back Mum had gone out with the key, he found her in the Church but then had a little difficulty getting her out (he hadn’t, in fairness, mentioned my dress was in his car) – by this time 2 hours had gone by that it was in the bag.. The bottom was quite creased by then but I hung it up in my room and the creases soon dropped out overnight so no worries!!

By this point it was about 3pm and Paul and I were both starving so we grabbed a couple of paninis and took them back to the Town Hall to have a final run through of timings with the Manager there.. We added all the sunflowers in to their vases, Paul started to put the favour boxes out and I went to lay out the place name cards.. At this point we realised we were a box of things short - we’d left the place name cards at home! So we got back in our car, dashed back to Dousland to pick them up, calling in at Horrabridge on the way to give the cheque from my mother to pay the baker for the wedding cake.. On the way out of the bakers I had a phonecall from one of the ushers (Dave) to say he was safely back in England! This was a relief as I was, ever so slightly, dreading his flight being delayed and him missing the wedding! We hadn’t seen Dave for a few months as he now lives out in Australia and had flown in just for the weekend for the wedding.. That meant so much to me, I’ve known him for 21 years and he’s very much like a brother to me..

We picked up the place name cards (and also my Bridesmaid’s dress which I realised I’d left hanging up in the spare room, oops!!) and then drove back to Tavistock! An hour we could well have done without wasting!! I was so glad when I’d written the place name cards I’d put them in table order – it made it SO much easier on the day to put them out, especially as we were now a little pushed for time!! Paul was, at this point, quite pleased he had insisted that all the vegetarian favour boxes had had a v put on the bottom of them, he was quite right – when they got taken out of the box they had got muddled in as people were helping by this stage to get everything done! We were giving out Jelly Babies as favours (what else would a midwife give?!) and the vegetarians were given some mini chocolate truffles.

The kids packs all went out and all the thank you presents put in order to make it easier to hand them out during Paul’s speech.. It was surprising how long it all took actually – we were so glad we’d hired the Town Hall for an extra day, would have been very busy to have done all that on the morning of the wedding!

Whilst we were finishing off, the photographer arrived to take a few pictures of the hall now that it had been dressed, we’ve got some lovely ones of us actually from there.. Before we knew it, it was 6pm and we were due at the church for the rehearsal! When we got there both vicars were already there, one of the vicars is now the Arch-deacon of Totnes – he was the parish priest here for 15 years until a year or two ago so it was really important to us that he could be there and we are wholly grateful to the new vicar for being happy for that to happen! All the flowergirls and pageboys were there along with respective parents and also Dave as he did all our videoing on the day – cant wait to see it all!! (Although as we have 60GB (yup, not MB!) of video I think it might be a while as that would fill 15 dvds at the moment!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So maybe a little editing first?!!!)

We then had the rehearsal and it went just fine, I didn’t cry (was worried I would) and everyone knew what they had to do where and when! We were all going out for a meal that evening so Paul went to see one of the other ushers, Matt, to give him his kilt (and made sure it fitted, it did!) and I went back to the hotel to give Dave his suit (bride’s side of the family in morning suits with tartan ties and waistcoats and the groom’s side were all in Cornish tartan kilts!) which fitted just fine too! We got all the suits from Youngs and they looked just great!

Everyone met up at the restaurant at 8pm – this worked really well actually.. There were about 40 of us there – mostly people who had driven down to the wedding the night before.. It also gave everyone a chance to meet and get to know each other.. Given we had a lot of people travelling, I was so glad we organised something like this - everyone really enjoyed it, as Paul and I did too! We were seated on two long tables, it split quite well actually – all the older family and friends congregated on one table and all the younger ones congregated on our table! Considering the amount of people arriving almost at once they did really well getting all the food out, it took a while but no one honestly minded as everyone was so busy catching up and talking!

My Matron of Honour was staying with me in the hotel room so we left about 10.30 and went back to the room.. Neither of us were at all sleepy so we ran a bath and just sat in the bath talking for about 2 hours (we’ve known each other since we were young children, she’s an honourary sister to me!) About midnight we got out of the bath and suddenly realised it was my wedding day!!

I was a little apprehensive about my dress fitting from all the carbs I’d eaten that day so we quickly tried it on again – fitted like a dream!! (This wasn’t an entirely irrational paranoia, when I went for my final fitting 4 days before the wedding (which was this late because my dress hadn’t been sent to the dress makers when it should, I only found this out 11 days before the wedding so it was rapidly sent!) the dress makers had misunderstood the assistant’s instructions (Goodness knows how, Jackie had worked in bridal shops for over 10 years in Australia before coming here and she’s (luckily) a seamstress herself) and when I tried it on found that the seamstress had, inadvertently, taken an inch and a half off the bodice.. She had also only bustled the satin, not the lace so when my dress was bustled the lace billowed out behind, no use at all for a ceilidh! It looked dreadful.. When Jackie showed me what alterations she’d asked for it was so clear what she wanted it was untrue – goodness knows how the seamstress interpreted it how she had.. Considering when my dress arrived in the shop just under 4 months before the wedding it was 4-5 inches too small, I had worked very hard to lose weight to fit in it.. It had fitted me like a glove when I had my previous fitting so to find it an inch and a half too small left me in tears.. Jackie was wonderful though, closed the shop immediately and unpicked by hand all the seamstress had done. She then did all the alterations herself and added a (much better!) bustle, delivering it to me after work and then fitting it to me again! She was so kind and always went that extra mile for me! So, understandably, I was a little fidgety about my dress fitting!).

With me now reassured, we hung the dress back up on the end of the bed again but we were still not sleepy at all, so just laid in bed just talking about everything!!! We eventually drifted off about quarter past 2 which only happened because Ray realised if one of us didn’t shut up then we’d keep on talking!! She was right, as soon as we stopped replying to each other we got sleepy very quickly and were soon asleep!

Saturday 7th July 2007!


I woke up at 5.30am (yup, 3 hours sleep!!), lept out of bed and peeked out of the curtains – bright blue sky!!! Not a cloud in sight!! After all the torrential rain we’ve had on Dartmoor for the few weeks it was nice to see the sun!!I then tried to go back to sleep but failed miserably – was so excited just looking at my dress hanging on the end of the bed and thinking “wow, it’s finally here, I’m getting married!” Paul sent me a text at about 6am to say he was awake and I rang him as Ray was awake too by then.. He’d done much better at getting some sleep – he’d had a good 6-7 hours, lucky thing!

We then just mooched about for a while, starting to get ready as much as we could before breakfast at 8am. We met my parents on the way down for breakfast so joined them, my brother, girlfriend and nephew also joined us shortly after so that was nice..

About 9am we went back up to the room and took lots of petals off 4 bunches of yellow roses to put on the tables – they looked beautiful.. We were given a really useful tip by our florist there, we paid about £12 for all the roses and they looked amazing, lasted the day beautifully and were much cheaper than freeze dried ones!! So we were glad to get plucking on the day, they did look great later on the tables!

We then popped out in to Tavistock quickly, Ray wanted to get a couple of bits and I wanted to get some new (bright pink!) nail varnish as I’d forgotten to repaint my toes.. On the way back to the hotel we bumped in to Sean (Director of Music) going over to the church as two schools in the town, Kelly College and Mount House School, were both having their Founders Day services at 10 and 12pm. I then heard a really cheery “Happy Wedding Day” being called out of a window above me – when I looked up Molly was leaning out of the window!! We chatted briefly before Ray and I then went back up to our room. The only hitch of the day then happened – I was taking my nail varnish off my toes and, just completely not thinking, managed to wipe half of my French polish off!! So, 5 minutes before I was due at the hairdressers, I was running around Tavi trying to find a salon who would do my nails again!! I did and they actually looked a lot more natural than they had the day before, much better and much more me! So I was really pleased with them!!

By then I was about 20 minutes late for the hairdressers but she roared with laughter when I told her what I’d done so she didn’t mind!! She got going on my hair and made it absolutely beautiful – likewise with my bridesmaid.. We both had a couple of small sunflowers put in our hair too which looked really good! I had tried tiaras on when I was looking for my wedding dress but they never really suited me.. A lot of the theme for our wedding was quite rustic – so the idea dawned on me to wear flowers in my hair instead! They looked really lovely (and lots of people commented on them over the day too!). I was really, really pleased with my hair, she got it absolutely spot on! I was originally meant to be going to another hairdressers but, with 3 weeks to go before the wedding, I rang her to book my aunt in to have her hair done too to find that she was off sick with depression.. I thought long and hard but felt that I didn’t really want to take the risk of finding out a few days before the wedding that she was still off sick so set about trying to find another salon.. The first one I phoned (helpfully) told me that maybe I should have thought about booking a few months ago as it’s the busiest day of the year for weddings and they were fully booked weeks ago.. (She apologised when I explained why I was ringing…) The next two I phoned were also fully booked, when I rang the fourth one the manager felt so sorry at how I’d been treated (manager at first salon was dreadfully rude) and the situation I was in she said that, although that Saturday was her day off, she would come in especially to do my hair! It turned out that we knew her though – her son Jamie is one of barstaff at our local pub and is looking after our chickens while we’re away! We’d seen her in the pub a few times with Jamie’s dog, small world!

We then went to the Town Hall to put the petals on the table and have a look at the cake which had been delivered! We bumped in to so many people on the way there, my Uncle Douglas, Aunt Claudia and Cousin Tina.. Plus Megan and Gareth too! When we got to the Town Hall we suddenly seemed to lose an hour then, goodness knows what we were doing but we suddenly realised it was 1pm and I was meant to be back at the hotel having my makeup done by Paul’s sister!! So Ray went and grabbed a couple of jacket spuds with bean chilli and I went back to the room.. I had a text message from Paul just after I got back in the room saying they were parking in the hotel car-park so not to look out of the window – which of course I did!!! I peeked through the net curtain – he looked absolutely gorgeous, he had his kilt and fly plaid on and I hadn’t seen it all on before, there were a few of them there as he had his best man and ushers too – they all looked really handsome walking over to the church!

We then ate the jacket spuds and then Kathryn got started on my make up.. She did a wonderful job, I was really, really pleased with it! I ended up not wearing any eyeliner or mascara as I was really expecting to cry so we thought it safer not to wear any!! It actually gave it a really natural look though so I was glad we didn’t go for any in the end! By this time it was 2.15 and the photographer arrived! She took a few shots of the dress and the room and we were just about to start getting in my dress when there was a knock on the door and it was the lady from the bridal shop who had come over to help me in my dress!! This was a really nice surprise, it was lovely to see her! We got some fabulous shots of me getting in my dress!

It was really busy then – just as I’d got in my dress the florist arrived with all the flowers – they were ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL.. I loved them – my bouquet was a mix of Sunflowers and Sonjas (mini sunflowers), solidago and salal leaves and it was just beautiful! She’d really enjoyed doing all our flowers, she’d never used sunflowers for a wedding before and was so excited when I told her what we wanted! She got very creative and did an absolutely super job, not just with my bouquet but with the flower girl wands (of 3 sonjas, tied with raffia and tartan ribbon) and the two sunflower trees at the top of the aisle and the pew ends! She’s wonderfully talented and had, a couple of days previously, been awarded a Silver Award in the Florist of the Year Award, deservedly so!

We spent a few minutes chatting with her but then the photographer left to go to the church to take some of the lads, the florist left and the lady from the dress shop and all of a sudden it was just myself, my bridesmaid and my father.. We opened a bottle of champagne and I had half a glass – but time seemed to go really slowly then for a while.. Dad was reading through his speech and Ray and I were sat on the bed, both in our dresses, watching the tennis – so surreal!!!! It honestly didn’t seem real, was such a strange feeling! Dad then went just to sort a few bits out and the photographer arrived back again and suddenly reception rang to say the clergy and choir had arrived - it was time to go!!

I walked down the stairs and was met by the Parish Church Choir and the Clergy who had lined up in the hotel to process me across the road - they were all clapping and cheering! At this point my nerves hit me like a ton of bricks and I was absolutely shaking.. It finally felt real, I was getting married!! Both the clergy were lovely and did a wonderful job of trying to calm me down.. We then had a quick “vestry” prayer and then we were off! I walked out in to brilliant sunshine and was suddenly aware of all the people who were lining the street.. We even had a police escort to stop all the traffic for us all to cross the road!!! Everyone had come out of all the cafes too and were lining the path next to the church yard..

By this point I was beyond nervous!!! We got to the church to find that my bridesmaid’s page boy was desperately trying to take his kilt off and was in floods of tears – bless him.. Ray soon calmed him down – and then we were walking down the aisle to Charpentier’s Prelude to Te Deum! (Or Prelude to Te De as was in our Order of Service.. Unfortunately we only noticed when we had printed out all 250 and by that point I wasn’t changing it!! The thought did briefly go through my mind to get out my fountain pen and add the “um” on to the end of them all but it left as quickly as it entered my head!) I walked down last – so there was the choir, then clergy, then flowergirls, pageboys and bridesmaid and then, after a bit of a gap, my father and I. I remember saying hi to loads of people who I hadn’t seen in ages and then, when the choir and clergy got past Paul, seeing this big beaming smile staring back up the aisle, I was fine then!! I got to the top of the aisle and he dropped a kiss on my forehead and went “wow!” I almost forgot to hand my bouquet to my bridesmaid so the vicar reminded me, she then sorted out the bottom of my veil and train..

The new vicar did the preface and bidding prayers and then we were in to our first hymn.. The choir (of which I’ve been in for 21 years) were absolutely beaming at me and mouthing how beautiful I looked, I was just trying to take everything in.. It’s funny how it all passes you by – I have absolutely no recollection of how far in to the processional music I was when I got to the top of the aisle for example! The Archdeacon (John Rawlings) then took our Orders of Service and started the marriage, we had a couple of lovely readings, one read by a long friend of my mother (and, therefore, us too!) in the church and the other read by Paul’s sister. John then preached a beautiful sermon – very, very personal.. We then stood back up to do our vows.. I had to stop and compose myself entirely at one point, but the archdeacon was fabulous and just calmly repeated the vow I was stuck on until I’d calmed down enough to talk.. By this point though half the choir and congregation were crying for me! After our vows we walked up to the High Altar during the next hymn for the final prayers.. The choir sang a lovely blessing for us as an extra wedding gift, the words were perfect and they sang it beautifully.

We then went in to sign the registers, a friend of mine sang the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and she sounded amazing.. We are both really looking forward to seeing that on the video.. Sean then filled some time by playing background music on the organ while we were having the photos done and Paul and I then walked out to listen to the main anthem – I was Glad, by Parry! I got my shoe caught in a grate though when coming out of the vestry and we have some wonderful photos of my bridesmaid on her hands and knees trying to get my shoe out of this grate and back on my foot!!! The very end part of the heel had come off, I’ve never seen Ray put anything back together with such determination but she managed it! My shoe now back together (and on my foot) meant we could move to the Lady Chapel to listen to the anthem. The anthem sounded AMAZING, we were so glad we came out to listen to it.. The Choir worked so hard for us, I’m so grateful to them and Sean..

Then that was it! We walked back out of the church to Widor’s Tocatta and in to glorious sunshine!! Wow – welcome to paparazzi!!!! EVERYBODY was aiming a camera at us!! The choir arrived out (still robed!) shortly afterwards with the champagne we’d left out as a surprise for them and we’ve got a lovely photo with them.. We had loads of photos done, in hindsight we wish we had got our ushers to help our photographer more, some of ours were great but others weren’t, she would have appreciated a bit more help at times! We also have some wonderful confetti throwing shots too..

We then walked over to the Town Hall (cue more stopping of traffic!!) and up in to the reception room – as we were walking up the stairs we could hear the ceilidh band playing, sounded so magical! As much as we’d arranged for them to be playing background music during the meal etc I hadn’t anticipated for them to be playing when we arrived for some reason, when we were walking up the stairs and heard them it was such a lovely surprise!! Paul and I grabbed a drink and were immediately whisked off up stairs by the photographer to have photos taken in a studio she had set up.. This was great and we’ve got some really lovely shots from up there!! Someone brought us up some champagne and canapés too which was appreciated as we were quite hungry by then! The guests, at this point, were being served welcome drinks and canapés downstairs in the main hall.

Three quarters of an hour later we were called back down stairs by the Best Man. My brother was at the bottom of the stairs when we came down – he looked so proud of me which was lovely and gave me a huge hug.. The Best man then announced in to the room as Mr and Mrs Harris!! Everyone was clapping and cheering as we walked through the room! It was quite nice actually, the door we came through was at the bottom of the room, meaning we had to walk through all our guests to get to the top table! At this point our Vicar, the Reverend Michael Brierly, said a wonderful Grace for us, very funny and touching! We were all seated and started to have drinks poured for us..

Paul and I then got up to start working our way around tables – we didn’t have an official receiving line so wanted to go round personally thanking people for coming.. It was actually a much nicer way of doing it as we were able to chat at length with people – probably more so than in a receiving line.. Everyone also really appreciated us doing that too.. We had to do it in batches as we went back to eat our starter and then came back out to go round the rest of the tables in between that and the main course..

All the parents were really appreciative of the kids packs we’d done – they were quite simple ones, containing a colouring book, an activity book, some crayons, a toy, a pack of Disney snap cards, a curly straw and for the boys a toy car and an animal face mask and for the girls a Disney “tiara” and a pocket mirror.. They really worked well and we didn’t hear a peep out of the children all the way through the meal or speeches! The kids were all great actually, they all got on so well and were running around playing together like they’d known each other for ages! And they were ~all~ playing too, there wasn’t one single child left out which was lovely!

The meal flew by, I couldn’t eat much of it though.. For one I wasn’t very hungry after the canapes but also eating in your dress with a boned corset isn’t the easiest!!!! I got full VERY quickly! It was beautiful food though – and lots of it.. Pate to start with on a brioche and salad (lovely pate, everyone commented on it.. Almost mousse like rather than firm, was beautiful!), then lamb shank with sweet potato and parsnip mash, new potatoes, green beans wrapped in parma ham, carrots and broad beans.. Pudding was a trio of baileys profiterole, strawberry cheesecake and tarte a citron.. Yum, although I was so full I only had the profiterole!

The speeches were great, Dad’s was lovely - funny, kind and thoughtful, Paul’s was great and had the room in stitches and Simon really took it easy on Paul considering his wife is Paul’s sister so there was lots of room for interesting stories!!!!! I’m looking forward to watching those back again on video!! The cake was then cut (cue lots more people with cameras!!) and the room turned around for the ceilidh!

Paul and I stepped down in to the Square then just to cool down a little – on the way out of the room he trod on my train and there was the most HUGE ripping sound… I turned round to see the satin train and the lace at completely different lengths with Paul as white as a sheet as to what he’d done to my dress, bless him!!! Turned out all of the stitching of the lace to the dress had come apart – which meant when we bustled it the satin bustled but the lace didn’t.. A few safety pins later (I honestly didn’t care how many holes were being put in my dress - you become surprisingly unprecious when you need something mending in a hurry!!!) we had the lace bustled up too and we were ready for our first dance! Thank you Kathryn for thinking to bring safety pins with you!

Our first dance was a Scottish one that we’d had choreographed for us – the ceilidh band kindly learnt the music for us so they could play it which was great! Unfortunately though we couldn’t rehearse with them – so when we asked them to play it a little slower than the music is normally they started REALLY slowly!! A few gentle “speed up!” hand waves from us and we were soon at an ok tempo!! There was one moment that was a bit hairy – I span round and stood on my dress (as much as it was bustled, the back was still ever so slightly longer so I was having to hold the back of the dress up by lifting the hoop, thank goodness for metal hoops!!) so there was a bit of a scary slip and slide moment while I rebalanced!!! Luckily through I still knew what we were meant to be doing so we just fastforwarded to that part of the dance and off we went again! Can’t wait to see that on video – Dave was filming that from a balcony so should look great! My father is pleased it was videod as he hadn’t realised we were doing a first dance,as we were having a ceilidh, and had gone outside to cool down, he was quite disappointed to have missed it..

The ceilidh then got in full swing – they are WONDERFUL for weddings.. Everyone was up at some point and having a wonderful time – and those who were sitting for any particular dance were smiling away watching!! Very happy and fun!! I found it really hard doing it in my dress so only had a couple of dances – but I really enjoyed what I did! The children had a wonderful time here, one of the dances we did involved a couple dancing up through the two lines made by the rest of the couples in that set (4 couples in total). We however had two page boys to weave in and out of as well!!! One of them (my nephew, Ben) got completely lost in my dress at one point – how I didn’t fall over I don’t know!! We were soon untangled though and the caller was laughing so hard watching us that she could hardly talk to tell us where we should have been!!

After the first ceilidh set I then threw my bouquet (well, actually it was my matron of honour’s bouquet as they were, essentially, similar but hers had one less sunflower and a couple less sonjas!).. It was funny how my photographer had to really get people up for this, some people were up as soon as she said why she wanted people, other’s had to be shoe-horned out of their seats to instil some enthusiasm (or hide the embarrassment, one or the other!).. That is until I actually threw it – then, apparently, there was a mass dive that went on as everyone tried to grab it!!! The pageboys and flowergirls had decided to join in too and one poor pageboy almost went flying, bless him!!! In the end it was one of the choristers who caught my bouquet, a lovely 18 year old girl called Hannah.. It’s funny, out of the people who were there, there were 3 or 4 people who I would have ~loved~ to have caught it – and she was one of them!! Sean however then called her over to their table really sternly, took out a pen and piece of paper and went “Right.. Come on then.. Let’s sort out the music now!!!” The poor girl must have thought she was in trouble as she went pale to begin with until she realised!!! Will be interesting to see if she has a ring on her finger when we get back, she’s going out with a lovely guy (who is also a chorister, funnily enough) for a good couple of years now so will no doubt have had some very large amounts of teasing in the meanwhile!!

The evening buffet was served at 10 – but everyone was so full from the meal we threw three quarters of it away.. I’d said to the caterer I only wanted to cater for 50% due to having the meal not long before but she was so horrified she said with the “cheese cake” we were serving we could probably cater for only 85%.. She was so insistant – I wish we’d been equally as so now as we threw away over £400 of food.. The Cheese cake went down really, really well – people loved it!! When we served it people immediately wanted another cake cutting photo – our photographer was tied up in the studio at that point and, as she had worked so hard for us all day, we didn’t really want to disturb her.. Loads of people took photos of it though so hopefully someone will give us a copy, would be good to see what it all looked like! We had 6 “tiers” – a 10.5” Cornish Yarg on the bottom, then a Devon Sage, an Elmhirst, a Cornish Blue, a lovely mature Cheddar and finally a Vulscombe.. All decorated with draping cherry tomatoes on the vine, red grapes and apples.. It looked super! I know a couple of guests didn’t touch the evening buffet at all apart from having a big plate of cheese!! Annoyingly, all the lovely homemade chutneys we’d bought (about 14 jars…) got left in the fridge (why on earth they were in there goodness knows, think that was how we forgot them) so the next day we were apportioning jars of chutney around!

We then had one final ceilidh set which finished about 10.45 with a lovely “goodbye” dance where you danced in a circle and moved on one partner each time, therefore meaning you ended up dancing with every man there in that set!. My nephew, Ben, had decided by that point that he was quite a Michael Flatley and looked quite disappointed when the music ended.. So they played an upbeat jig, just for him, and he did a wonderful dance all on his own with no calling from Anne, completely improvised! The whole crowd erupted into cheers when he finished, I really hope we have that on video as will be wonderful to watch back later!

We left about 11 to lots of cheers and goodbyes and got in a taxi to go to our first night hotel… (Well, we almost left, I realised half way down the stairs I’d forgotten my bouquet so dashed back up to get it – to lots of laughs, cheers and “are you back already?!” type comments!!) The drive went quite quickly, we both realised how tired we were then and just wanted to curl up but we had the most talkative taxi driver known to man!!! It was only 7 miles though and we were soon winding down the long driveway to our first night hotel! It was so beautiful – they’d stayed up especially for us (usually it’s just a night porter after 11pm) and when we arrived, the hall you walk in to was lit solely by two roaring log fires and so, so many tea-lights.. It looked so beautiful.. There was also a bottle of champagne in the room and some amazing truffles.. This hotel was our one extravagance for the day – it’s £400 a night and we stayed 2 nights but oh my life it was worth every penny!!

One thing we did do though, which we were HIGHLY grateful for, was to provide two packed lunch type boxes to the caterer. When we left one was filled with cake and the other with evening buffet.. When we got to the hotel we suddenly realised how hungry we were and devoured the food – especially when I’d been unlaced from my tightness of my corset!!!! I was really pleased how well my knee had held up through the day – I’d slipped on a wet floor at work 3 months earlier and had been off sick pretty much until the wedding (apart from a couple of attempts to go back to work too soon!). I had been fully expecting to have to wear my brace for the whole wedding (a hip to ankle one, luckily it didn’t show through my dress!) but in the couple of weeks before the wedding it suddenly really started getting better due, in part, to the wonderful physio who had kept me on in the determination to help me be able to walk by the wedding.. (It had taken me 3 weeks to be able to walk on it at all when I first slipped!) I was able to get through the whole day without the brace on, admittedly I was rather sore and stiff by the time we got to Endsleigh but it was such a relief that it hadn’t collapsed or left me in vast amounts of pain!

We had a bath (which went a good way towards soothing my knee, good job – we’d forgotten painkillers!!!) and then sat in bed eating the buffet and reading through our guest book.. We had some lovely comments and drawings, we were really glad we’d got one and made sure it got handed round! We were both so tired (as it was by now about 1 am) that we both fell asleep in minutes!!



Sunday 8th July

We were treated to breakfast in bed, they normally only do continental breakfast in the room but we had full English as a treat! We then just lay in bed all morning opening cards and presents.. People are so generous, it was almost humbling… We actually took the laptop with us and it was really handy as we could write on the spreadsheet we had our guestlist on what people gave us as we opened them, which meant we didn’t need to be worried when writing thank you letters!!

Lunch was in a lovely village pub a couple of miles away in Horsebridge although neither of us were actually that hungry! We then came back to the hotel and relaxed in our room for a while before having high tea with both our parents… It was really nice to spend the afternoon catching up with them, especially as we hadn’t been able to talk the them on the day as much as we’d wanted – I know I had kept wishing I could spend more time talking to Paul’s father, Treve, every time he started trying to talk to me I was either being whisked off somewhere or someone came and grabbed me.. So was really nice to be able to spend some quality time talking to everyone and getting some feedback on the day.. It seems that everyone enjoyed the day as much as we did, which was nice to hear!

By the evening we were both exhausted – we fell asleep at 7.30! The reception rang to ask if a Wedding gift could be delivered to the room at 8.15 – another bottle (full size) of champagne and a large cheese platter full of all the cheeses we were too full to eat at the wedding (ironically!) as they came from the same shop! We were so tired we still couldn’t eat much of the cheese (again!) or drink the champagne so we ate what we could and saved the champagne – Paul suggested saving it for the birth of our first baby, bless!

Link to photos for those of you who have got this far!! - Helen & Paul click on the wedding photoshare page at the bottom!!


xxx

Wow - SunflowerBride you look totally and utterly amazing! I have read your full report and couldn't not post - you are stunning!! You must be so thrilled and delighted to have stuck with the plan for the big day and surely when you see photos like that it's all worth it!

You're a babe!!!

Congratulations, Mrs Harris

I agree your pictures are lovely, ( have a creak in my neck now tho lol )

loved your account of your big day, you told it soo well, felt I was there with you, you had me laughing out loud at some points, and my eyes filling up at others

Don't be worrying about the pounds you put on, some of it would prob have been water retention from your long flight as well, specially as you've dropped 7lbs already - great stuff

Wishing yourself and Paul a lifetime of happiness together

Mitten, awwww - thank you!!! Yeah, it did make all those moments of struggle with the diet worth it, the photos are amazing - and the day was too!! Keep on going babe, you'll get back in to your dress too!!

Geri - Hope the crick in your neck is better now!!!! I'm so glad we have that diary, it will be lovely to look back on in a few years time!! Surpisingly, quite a few members of our family have asked for a copy when I said I'd done it - so will be emailing it to quite a few people at this rate!! I hope they dont mind how long it is though!!!

I'm down to 11st 3lb this morning (was 11st 10.6 when we got back) so it's soon falling off me again!! I go back to work next wednesday so that's another 7 days yet, would love to be 10st 12 by the time I go back, 10st 10 would be amazing! Not expecting to be wedding weight though (10st 8!) by then, but would be nice the week after to be that!!

Another day, another tetra!!!

Yesterday was a good and bad day, I went to the cinema on wednesday morning to see the harry potter movie, I was so good and had water all the way through.. Hubby was going to work straight after so we went to pizza hut for lunch as we figured (ironically) it would be the easiest place for me to eat.. I was FREEZING in the cinema so knew I was back in ketosis.. He had the pizza buffet, I had salad from the buffet and some (what we were assurred) was plain chicken.. Only when he brought it out it had a marinade all over it.. So, I ignored it and just had the salad and bought some chicken at tesco on the way home.. However, I wasn't cold any more.. I'd had pespsi max at lunch - I guess it knocked me out of ketosis? I thought pepsi max was ok or I wouldn't have had it.. (Lesson learnt!).. So I was starting again with getting in to ketosis..

Yesterday I was hungry all day (as I am for the first day or two) but did well, stuck to my tetras and chicken salad.. Until we went to the pub in the evening.. I had a vodka and slimline tonic.. And another one.. And I was hungry so had some of hubby's crisps... (Why?!) and then had a monster chicken sarnie when I got home.. (I was really hungry...........)

Amazingly when I got on the scales this morning they're still saying 11st 3lb - so while it's great I haven't put on weight it's mildly annoying that I could well have been lighter if I hadn't munched out!!

Ahh well, am back on track - have had my hot choc tetra this morning!

Still making thank you cards - we'd written them all on honeymoon so am just making the cards up now, it's taking hours!!!! Want to get them all done today though!!

I've found the last few days really hard - hubbys been on nights and I always hate that.. So I've picked and picked and picked and been quite hard on myself for it.. Restarts are so blooming hard!!!

But, yesterday, it all seemed to drop back into place again and I was so good, drank all my water, had my tetras and chicken salad and didn't want to cheat once.. I even went to the pub with a friend in the evening who came to the wedding, she got married 6 weeks before us so it was lovely to be able to talk to someone who had been through it recently too!! We had a fab time looking through photos and reminiscing (sp?) about the day!! And I stuck to water!! When I got home hubby and I went to the pub, I had one vodka and slimline tonic but apart from that stuck to coke zero (which, bless them, the pub order especially for me!! I love village pubs!!!!!) and had NO CRISPS - so was really pleased with myself!!

I haven't actually had any tetras yet this morning, have drunk nearly 2l of water but will head off and have one soon.. Off out with friends this evening for a walk on the moors (quite short, prob only 6-8 miles) and then supper at a nearby pub - where I know I can get something 790ish, hence why we chose it!

I'm listening to the washing machine tentatively at the moment - my wedding dress was ABSOLUTELY FILTHY when we got it home.. I went to 4 drycleaners for quotes for it and, because it's priced on the value of your dress rather than (as you would have thought) the type or size of dress, it was going to cost about £200 to get it professionally cleaned. Rubbish!!!!

So I'd seen on a wedding forum I used to go on a thread in the newlywed section about putting the dress in the washing machine...

We have sunshine today - finally - so it can dry on the line afterwards..

I've "washed" the washing machine (empty with a 90 degree wash just to make sure there wasn't any colour left in there as we washed a load of new brightly coloured things we'd taken on honeymoon and I didn't want to turn my dress bright pink!!!)

The bottom of my dress has been COVERED with vanish stick...

And it's currently whirling it's way round the washing machine on a 30 degree hand wash cycle with a little cup of persil silk and wool liquid...


And I'm a bag of nerves - about as nervous as I was walking into the church!!!!!

So will let you know how it goes when I take it out!!!!

Oh - and meant to add, I weighed myself this morning and I'm no heavier.. So being good yesterday has undone any gain through the picking (or I didn't put any on..)

And I'm properly back on track to losing the rest of the weight!!

Have signed up to the August challenge, I want to lose 14lbs.. I'm 11st 3 at the moment which is 9lb heavier than I was on the wedding day so that will take me to 5lbs under the wedding day weight.. After that if I can lose another 3lb then that would be marvellous and take me to my target!!!!!


Right, off to get my first tetra of the day!