One ring to rule them all...

So Catherine and I have put it off of long enough. We both agreed months ago that we would go ring shopping for our wedding bands and never did until recently. So with 5 months to go and the wedding rings are ticked off the list. I will go into my decision and Catherine’s will be a later post.
First of all I had to find my ring size. I do not wear rings or any jewellery for that matter, my idea of accessories tends to be a sweet hat or scarf combo. I wasn’t even sure how a ring should sit on my finger. Too loose and I would live in fear of losing it. Too tight would leave me constantly uncomfortable. As it turns out that I am a size T.
Before I started actively looking I was of the belief that all rings are pretty much the same. Oh how wrong I was. The list of metals goes on and on gold, white gold, silver, sterling silver, titanium, platinum even adamantium. Even though I am a big fan of only fools and horses (not just because my Dad actually looks like Del boy) I can’t see myself wearing a gold band. Luckily for me there were a load of different options available.

I had no idea that they also come in flat, D shaped and curved. It wasn’t until we went to a shop and tried a few on that I had a clear idea of what I was after. I have quite large hands and went through a few different options of band width. I did do some internet research in my spare time and found a few very promising rings however as cool as it would have been I don’t think I would have lived with the decision the rest of my life.

This a ring made out of Dinosaur bone/meteorite - Seriously Cool!

This needs no explanation!

 Unfortunately Catherine wasn't as much of a fan of this as I was...

This was a definite maybe...

I ended up with a wedding band that is not too expensive that I won’t mind wearing to work and won’t mind a few scratches. It actually matches Catherine’s very well. The lesson I have taken away from the whole experience is that as long as you are happy with your choice and you have taken into consideration the future, you will be fine. When my ring arrived I of course tried it on, and I had the comforting “feels like it should always have been there” realisation. The wedding band is a symbol for our never ending love but, I don't need a ring to remind me of this.

I know Catherine is my soul mate and we fit together better than any ring on a finger.

Tired and a bit emotional...

I am currently sat in a hotel in Amsterdam watching one of the worse movies I have every seen, but I am too tired to even attempt to turn it over. This my friends is my excuse as to why this post will probably be terrible and will probably go nowhere.

Obviously with us taking a break from the post i've been thinking over what i wanted to write about. I have been so honoured to have had a few other brides to be to send me messages asking for advice and as well as keeping me up to date with their plans. I guess what the blog is all about is us doing the same thing as millions of other people are doing everyday, just in our own wee way.

I suppose what would be obvious to avoid is the thing that, I hear, everyone goes through.

The Fear…

Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to get married! I can't wait to share my life officially with my dream guy! I also can't wait to celebrate it with my friends and family. What scares me is the thought of walking up the aisle and people looking at me. I am not a centre of attention kind of girl. Although I get in front of camera with my work, and even talk at events, but I am not a fan of people directing attention at me. Add to this the fact that we are getting married in the Sacred Heart in Omagh, which I am pretty sure holds the record for the longest aisle in the world* (*may not actually be true but it feels like it) and I will be shaking in my fabulous shoes (which I have chosen, sqwweee!).

I brought this fear up with one of my fabulous bridesmaids Cathy. We were on our monthly dinner date this week and were talking through some of the wedding plans. I brought up my nervous feelings and Cathy sorted me right out. She gave me one of the best pieces of advice that absolutely made me feel a million times better straight away.
She said plain and simply; "It would be weird if you didn't feel that way". She talked me through exactly what i was feeling. And then she had me think through exactly what I'd be doing on the day. I would watch as all my favourite girls walked up the aisle, I would hold on to my Dad's arm and I would look up and see the love of my life waiting at the top of the aisle, ready to promise to spend the rest of our lives together. And I would smile.

Now every time I get a moment of the fear I think about what I will do when I walk into the Church on the biggest day of our lives.

So if you are getting the fears, I can only recommend you try this out.

The lion, the witch and the... cupboard?

This morning I was greeted at work with the normal banter until a mate tells me something he heard on the weekend. Two friends of his got engaged, my immediate thought was that’s great. He went on to say that they are getting married in 2 weeks. This blew my mind.

Being in wedding organisation mode I have convinced myself that I am an expert in the field now. My mind began to wonder how it can be done in 2 weeks. After about 10 minutes of thinking dresses, cakes and music. I came to the realisation that Catherine and I couldn’t do it in that time frame. At least in don’t tell the bride they get 3 weeks.

I have been working on a project for the better half of 3 months now, it is nearing completion however it is still a long way away. A full post will go into detail about what it is and everything but that’s for after the wedding. It is secret projects and little extras that at least for me and Catherine will make our day special for us and it is these that take all the time and effort.

Time is a major issue to deal with, not enough and I would expect you will not be able to have as personalised an occasion as you might hope for. Too much time leaves you feeling you need more and more that really is completely unnecessary and a bit overwhelming. I believe Catherine and I have struck a healthy balance. Any more time on our hands and I would be afraid of the ideas we would come up with.

There is a very important element to planning a wedding something that we had discovered and named over the weekend... ‘the wedding corner’. The wedding corner is a place in our house that is stuffed to the gills of wedding related items, which have to be kept safe but out of the way. It started simply enough to hide our barefoot wine so that we couldn’t get our hands on it. It has been tough but we do most of the time forget it is there. The wedding corner actually started in the cupboard underneath the stairs but has grown over the last five months out of the cupboard to engulf the entire area. It has been the dumping ground for all things wedding. It often catches my eye and I say to myself “ohh... completely forgot about those”.

From favours to centrepieces the wedding corner is a treasure trove of secrets and surprises for our guest at our wedding, it is unique to us and scanning over it fills me with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm for our big day. Be warned if you are planning a wedding or have just got engaged you will lose a portion of your home to the wedding corner.

And the Bride and Groom wore… White

My Dad got a quick dig in at me today,
Dad - "I see you're getting yourself a bit of a Catchphrase"
Me - "what do you mean"
Dad - "you're becoming known for saying 'sorry for being late with another post'…"

So yeah,  Sorry for being late with another post… Its been a crazy week yet again, last weekend we were non stop (I know I promised you that I'd give you an update this week but you will just have to be a bit more patient!).

This week James and I had a bit of a cosmetic lift… A few weeks ago I spotted a great deal on the Wellbeing Spa Facebook page that I couldn't say no to. So last Wednesday evening we headed down to Sion Mills and got our teeth whitened! I am not a big fan of my teeth, I was an odd teenager who really wanted braces, but the dentist said I didn't need them. I now have gappy teeth that up until Wednesday had seen the wrong side of too many coffees and teas.

I have to admit the spa was a surprise. From the outside it looks like a new build bungalow. But when I got inside it was just lovely. I hung out in the Rest Room until it was my turn to get my teeth done. 45 minutes and three cycles of the non-peroxide laser treatment later and I was happy lady!

One thing that I wasn't prepared for was the 48 hours afterwards that you can't eat or drink anything that has colour in it! I couldn't even eat my mixed veg soup that I had made! So all I had to eat over the next two days were crisp sandwiches and cheese toasties :(

Now, I don't quite have a Tom Cruise blinding white set of gnashers, but I am super happy with them! Its a great start to getting the teeth to go with what will be a massive smile on my Wedding day!

If you build it, they will come...

So Catherine and I are coming into the “6 months to go” stage of our 11 month engagement. We are just about half way there. We have the majority of the different elements of the wedding completed and all set in stone for the big day. There are a few stray items we have to take care of but for the most part we are there. The biggest worry for me is that everything comes together with as little stress as possible.

To be honest there was one thing I was really worrying about...
While driving back home from a weekend of wedding related activities (Catherine will go into detail in her post) we got to chatting. I thought, no better person than my future wife to bounce my worries off.

James: “Catherine...”

Catherine: “Yes James...”

James: “I was just thinking, what if nobody has fun at our wedding... or worse doesn’t GET IT”

Catherine: “...”

Catherine: “I know that it’s going to be a fantastic day for us, and hopefully everyone will have a good time.”

At this point I was thinking she’s right, as long as we have fun that's all that matters.

Catherine: “I don’t mind people thinking back on the wedding/reception and NOT thinking of it as the best one they have ever been too. I just want them to walk away thinking that was totally James and Catherine”

This dissolved any worry I had, as I felt the same way.

James: “Anyone can do a standard wedding but we are putting so much of ourselves into the day, they are totally going to think only James and Catherine could pull this off”

We chatted on about things and asked each other if we would do the TV show Four Weddings. We both said we would, but came to the conclusion that the guest list is so tight there would be no room for the other brides.

I should explain why this was such a worry for me in the first place a little.

I am a complete perfectionist so much that I plan most small details months in advance. Just like the Stag I organized I can’t stand people not having fun or not being entertained especially at a party or function I have had a hand in organizing.
The lesson I have taken away from this is that I can’t see myself without Catherine. She is the voice of reason in my head and I am sure I am hers too. Like the organizing of our wedding, it’s the small details that make everything wonderful. And it’s Catherine for me that make the small details worth doing.

The funny thing is that we take it weeks about to worry about different silly things but we both end up in the agreement that;

“As long as you are there and I am there, that’s all we need... Well a priest and some people but thats just the legal stuff”

shhhh… don't tell anyone...

So I have something to tell you all…
Some of you might have had an inkling for this already. In fact, there are a few of you that already know this because we have had the chat.

I can't keep secrets.

Like actually can't keep them. It has only been since we started arranging the wedding that i have realised that my dad and I are in fact the same person. My mum reckons its because we never had secrets in our house. I just haven't had the practice. The more we plan the more secrets I have to keep, and to be honest, I think I am getting on James's nerves.

Apparently I have been giving away way too much information. As I've never planned a wedding before, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to tell anyone the colour Bridesmaid dresses we were having, or that I shouldn't be showing people outside "the inner circle" (bridesmaids, groomsmen, parents) the invitations before their names were on them. According to James, these are all massive no-nos! Who Knew? ("Everyone" I hear you cry!)

The biggest secret that is causing me the most issue is everything me related at the wedding. The dress, the shoes, the hair, the makeup. The whole shabang. Now keeping it secret from other people I can do, but keeping it all from James is killing me. We live together, we tell each other everything but I can't tell him anything about the these massive things! It's getting really really difficult but I don't have any other option.

Anyway, I am doing my best to keep my mouth shut going forward, for fear of James calling the whole thing off - plus I want to see peoples faces on the day, enjoying all the special things we have put together. I mean… not that we have anything special organised…

All fun and games...

As follow up to my last post (not that I forgot to mention) one of the biggest obstacles I was faced with for Neil’s stag do was entertainment. It is all well and good organising accommodation and flights for a stag do but that simply wasn’t enough for me. At the time I thought ahead and tried to plan out the entire weekend. Yes there would be some pubs and nightclubs but there is a lot of time in-between that needed filling. Since we had the penthouse to have drinks in we would be spending quite some time there.

I searched the Google far and wide to help inspire me with ideas. Mostly they were drinking games but there were also a few gems.

Beer pong: This was the first game that sprang to mind, cheap and cheerful with an element of competition. A simple game easily thrown together with a few plastic pint glasses and a couple of ping pong balls. I’ve always considered it to be a very American thing and that it wouldn’t hold the attention of a bunch of rowdy lads. I was right. By the time I had set up the glasses and tried to explain the rules, the beer was drink and all attention was lost. The major drawback to this game is that it has rules. Too complicated for heads that had never played before and already has had a few.

 

Chaser: this game involves splitting the group in 2 and each team member has to down a pint. The person cannot start theirs until the person before finishes. The first team to finish wins. At this point I should mention that I had made plastic medals for the winning team. Unfortunately I didn’t anticipate one fella not begin able to down drinks so opted to pour the pint over his head. In hindsight we all should have thought something was up when he reached the table in just his boxers.

Fuzzy duck: this is one of the simplest games ever invented. Each person in rotation says “fuzzy duck” after each other until one person says “Does he?” the rotation changes and the phase changes to “Duck Fuzzy” this continues until a person messes up and has to drink. Loads of laughs are to be had with this game.

Lastly I had organised a bunch of dare / forfeit cards to be used on the day while we were hitting the pubs. Sadly we were having too much fun for these to be used by would have been hilarious.

 

 

All games aside when there is a group of lads that all know each other and are there to celebrate the same thing there is no need of silly games but it’s good to keep a few in mind to keep the craic going.

I can only hope I have as good a time at my own. That is for a later post.