The Wedding Preparation
It’s much easier to write about the organisation of a wedding after you have organised it.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I got engaged in July 2008 – get everything organised and sorted so that two months before the wedding in December 2009 I had nothing to do but visit health spas and get excited with my bridesmaids.
I had absolutely no idea what was to come!
I did get a lot of things done very early. My invitations- Â handmade by us, my four bridesmaids, my mum and a friend – were out six months before with a reply-by date of two months before the wedding. We needed to know our numbers to see whether we needed a marquee attached to the restaurant, which with only three no replies, we did.
By the time the day came so many people had pulled out we need not have had the marquee at all but so many cancellations were really late in the day that the early invites didn’t make any difference so I am glad I did it that way.
The main thing I had to learn was that most of the organising can only be done in the few weeks beforehand. Trying to do the table plan a month in advance meant I had to change it at least four times. Trying to personalise the tables with photocards of the guests meant every time people pulled out I had to re-order them – tasks I would not have had to do if I had left them until later on!
We sorted the cars, the bridesmaids outfits, the ushers and page boys suits, the gift list, the photographer and all the usual wedding must haves without incident.
But then, of course, you have to allow for the problems. We made a number of order of services with a certain type of card and ordered the rest two months before the wedding. The order never arrived. Four days before the wedding we placed an order on eBay for card and two days before the big day we made 80 orders of service in record time.
We made our own invites and orders of service to save money but it was extremely stressful and at times I wished I had just paid for someone to do it all for us and given the option again I think I would.
I had ordered my dress months before the wedding and launched myself into a health and fitness regime to make sure I looked good. The result was a dress that was miles too big for me just a few weeks before the wedding……
As the dress was a lace up it could be pulled tight across my back and I had a hook and eye put in the back to fold over some of the excess material in the skirt, but I wished I had thought of the dress when I decided to lose weight!
Our florist went to pick up the flowers the day before the wedding only to find the doors locked because the wholesalers had gone into liquidation…….luckily the mother of the groom decided not to tell us and when I arrived at the church they had done well and I was none the wiser!
But, despite the problems, I got to the church on time and we had an absolutely fantastic day. There were no problems on the day itself - at least none that I know of and it was worth all of the efforts we had made in the previous 18 months.