Down The Aisle | 11 Weeks To Go

I haven’t done one of these for a couple of weeks, namely because I’ve been a little too stressed to talk about it. So we’ve only got 11 weeks until we walk down the aisle and it is flying by, I literally blink and a week has passed, although it doesn’t feel like it sometimes with the lack of sleep we’ve been having recently. I certainly feel like I’ve made progress since my last update but I’m now feeling the pressure to get as much done as I can so that I can take some of the stress away.

Our deadline for RSVPs is the 28th August, but since they all went out at the end of May, beginning of June, I had expected people to reply way before then. In fairness around half of them had replied but I felt like people just needed a gentle reminder, and that was pretty successful. I’m pretty annoyed with the fact that I had spent so much time trying to choose the perfect invitation and menu combo only for people to say that they’d misplaced it, lost it or had binned it so could I please remind them of the menu.

The other thing that has really annoyed me is that we spent a lot of time making sure our menu was all encompassing and relatively simple. The fact we went for tastings and took our time selecting meals that everyone would like, turned out to be a total waste of time. Adults have requested that they have choices from the kids menu, and others didn’t want anything. I think people tend to forget who is paying for their meal and that we’re not here to be dictated to. If I were to do it all again, I’d have one vegetarian choice, one meat choice and you’d get what you were given. It’s really annoying having to contact the venue to ask them if they can produce a kid’s meal for an adult. They’ll be lucky if they’re not sat at the kid’s table as well.

Anyway.. moving on to what we’ve actually managed to achieve in the four weeks since our last update.

• My dress. Oh my dress. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about dress stress and why I was so worried about it, but it came in a couple of weeks ago and I went for a fitting and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be – hurray! I have my first proper fitting for alterations on the 5th September, so hopefully by my birthday I’ll have a fully fitting wedding dress. My goal is to just look and feel like a princess when I’m walking that aisle. If Jamie doesn’t cry, I’m turning around and starting again.
• Suits. We’ve finally found some reasonably priced suits that fit Jamie’s legs. We were in York about 10 days ago and decided that before we went for our meal, we’d have a little look around the shops and popped into Next because the sale was on. Turns out their suit department is much better than ours and a suit he’d tried on earlier in the year that was only available in a slim fit, was now also available in a tailored fit. Winning! They’re now on order which is definitely one more thing off of our minds.
• My veil. Yes, despite the price tag, I’ve caved and had to buy it. I tried it on with my dress at the fitting a couple of weeks ago and it was just perfect. I tried on a few other veils but none compared to how that looked and felt with the dress, and I just know if i had another veil it wouldn’t do the dress justice and it’s only the biggest day of my life, right?
• Cake and macaron samples. We’ve finally had them and they are amazing. Although when she dropped them off she told me that she’s now doing Nutella macarons as well as salted caramel ones so obviously I now need those samples too. What would you choose? We’ve just tried raspberry ripple with white chocolate and then a cherry macaron with dark chocolate ganache. Oh my goodness, I’m turning into a macaron freak.
• Selfie props. My auntie had bagged me a bloody bargain to be honest. A big huge box of them for £30. Thank you Jodie! Ticked off the list.
• Flowers. The wholesaler was taking ages to get back to me as you know, and so I decided to approach a second one who got back to me really quickly. Funnily enough, the next day I had an email from the one I had originally contacted too. They’re like buses aren’t they? I now need to sit down and work out what I need and how much of each I need, as well as cost. Thank goodness there’s no pressure to do the bouquets, although I’m still very much on the hunt for succulents. Any ideas?
• Music list and ceremony readings. Gah, the music list is going on the back burner as I’m sure the DJ can manage with that a week before, right? The ceremony readings need to be done in about 2 weeks time so we need to get our bottoms into gear, that’s on the to do list for tonight.
• Still need to order chalkboards – sigh!
• I still ned to order my headpiece. I’m torn between two but even they seem so expensive for what is effectively some pretty fabric flowers stuck to a piece of string!
• Sweeties! We’ve decided on a sweetie bar so I just need to visit the cash ‘n’ carry to get an idea of what they stock and in what quantities so that I can work out, roughly, how much we’re going to need.
• The table plan. Totally undecided on whether to have a ladder, a big mirror or a chalkboard. Somebody help me!
• We’ve confirmed we can have confetti so I’m now looking into that.
• And we still need to sort out our back wall. I’m hoping that just something simple will do it but don’t want it to look cramped as we’re already have pom poms being strung from the ceiling.

Apart from all the other little bits and pieces that need doing, such as writing out place cards and starting to decide a table plan, that’s most of the main bits sorted, I think.

Fingers crossed I can keep up the momentum and get things done, all while blogging, working, living and looking after the kids. Is it over yet?