<<– Part Two : Get Engaged
I’ve been meaning to write a blog about our wedding for quite some time. The problem that I’ve had before is that there’s so much I could write about, however most of it will be so detailed and personal that it will only be of interest to a very small group of people. So I’m going to try to just talk about the few most significant things about our big day.
Firstly, everyone says it’s the best day ever. I’m often reluctant to believe what everyone says about things. Everyone said that Napoleon Dynamite was great but that’s an hour and a half of my life that I’m not getting back. Everyone says that pineapple on pizza is wrong but it’s the best pizza topping by far. Everyone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. However in this instance, it turns out that everyone was actually correct.
The whole day was spent seeing our friends and family and they were all so happy for us (or just wanted a free meal). It’s just like having a massive birthday party for all of your birthdays at once. It truly is the best day ever. The main downside to this is that there is a limited time and if you’ve invited a large number of guests it won’t be possible to spend a lot of time with them all. It is important to not worry about this. Spend your day with who you want to spend it with – whether that is the people you see all the time, those that you don’t see because they live so far away or a combination of both of them. It is easy to get pulled in 100 different directions. One of the best bits of advice we got was to make sure we spent a bit of time together to enjoy the day. You could potentially spend most of the day barely seeing the person you’d just married so grab a moment or two together when you can.
Obviously the wedding day doesn’t just happen. The day involves a lot of build-up and preparation. I actually really enjoyed planning. I’m very much the planner. After the proposal Jo told me – “right, that’s my bit done. Now you need to plan it!”
In reality it was still shared. I came up with a couple of options and discussed with Jo who would then help to make a decision. One thing we were trying to do which I really recommend is to make it feel like your day. Make it feel as personal as possible. We had zombies, Lego, Jane Austen and rowing boats as these are the things that we enjoy (between us – please don’t take this as any endorsement of rowing on my part).
We were slightly worried that it wouldn’t all go together but as soon as I got there and it all looked awesome I relaxed. Everything just felt right. Not that I expected it to feel wrong, but we’d arranged lots of different things as separate decisions and had no idea what it would all look like when it was put together. I know it will be different for other people but that was what really helped me to settle into the day. All of the planning came together and there was nothing for me to worry about any longer. Getting married seemed really easy after that!
Another sign of the personalisation was the fact that ours was the only wedding I’ve been to where there was a mosh pit. We were very particular about the music. We had a DJ provided by the venue who had lots of suggestions about things he could do but we were very clear in our minds what we wanted. We gave him a playlist of songs that we knew our friends would dance to and let him improvise a little around that but we did have to reign him in a bit around other stuff. This is totally fine. Everyone realises that it’s your day and that it needs to be how you want it to be.
The day itself was not as much of a blur as I expected it to be. I’ve got a good memory of a lot of things about it.
Whilst I know the bride will be excited about getting ready and making themselves look amazing, they miss out on one of the bits that was most enjoyable for me, which was getting to greet everyone as they turned up. I also had to shout at some people for taking drinks into the wedding area. Apparently if that happens the wedding might get called off. I’d imagine that the official people don’t often follow through with that threat, but I wasn’t taking the chance.
Of all of the day, the ceremony is what I remember least about. That’s the only bit that seemed to go by really quickly, and that is possibly to do with it being the most important bit and me concentrating on doing all of our bits right. We had two friends pick awesome readings, which really suited the whole feeling of the day. We wrote our own vows. It seemed important to us that we told each other how we felt in front of a bunch of people. Public speaking is scary, but telling the person you love how you feel on your wedding day is surprisingly not so. We wrote our vows on a bit of card which I pulled out of my sporran to laughter. I’m not sure exactly where else I was supposed to have kept them. It was nice to later discover that a friend had filmed the whole thing on their phone which they sent to us and we were able to watch it through.
As I have written previously, we both changed our name upon marriage. As part of the signing process, we also signed deed poll forms. A few weeks later, Jo had to re-sign them as I had told her to sign in the wrong place. Oops. That’s all sorted now and we both have a new name.
After the ceremony, the rest of the day is basically socialising, which is quite easy when everyone is there to wish you a good time. The main structured bits after that involve everyone staring at you, and it is easy to get nervous about them. I was much more nervous when I was a best man at my brother’s wedding, however. I think there is a lot more pressure on the best man to be funny and/or entertaining. I returned the favour to my brother and he delivered an excellent best man speech complete with a PowerPoint presentation.
As we believe in equality, it was decided fairly early on that Jo was going to do a speech and hers was great and funny, and I was annoyed because I had to follow her! There is not much pressure on the groom’s speech, though as you’re supposed to be quite soppy and I was pretty good at that.
The most important things of all are a) we got married and b) it very much felt like our wedding day. We had managed to personalise it and the memories will stay in our heads forever.