WEDDING - Getting up and ready....

When i woke up in the morning the first thing i did 

was get one of my bridesmaids to look out the window and check the weather....

there was a tiny patch of blue sky to be seen!

All was well with the world!

In fact there was not a drop of rain the whole day

THANKYOU SCOTLAND!

We slowly showered and had breakfast.

I gave myself plenty of time to get dressed and ready.

Which i look back on and think was a good idea,

although at the time it felt a bit like,

'oh why did i tell everyone to come so early...'

but it meant i was super relaxed and had plenty of time

to chill and take my time over everything.

Georgia did my hair

(i had originally planned to have a hairdresser come,

but at our hairtrial i decided that i wanted it braided,

and to be honest Georgia was pretty good at braiding without any need to 

spend money on a fancy hairdresser)

Steven did my make up.

and him and Karl ended up steaming my veil in the bathroom

when the steamer stopped working.

(good thing Karl is a professional stylist and knew these fashion tips!)

and Alexis sewed me into my dress.

hehe...yes sewed me into it.

As a dancer i'm sewed into my costume many a time...

its the best way, so rather than worrying about how we were going to get it on and off.

She just sewed me into it

(which meant of course that she had to cut me out of it later in the evening!)

my sister Meghan was there to take photos

(these are not here photos these are from my mums iphone!)

i look forward to getting them.

She was very unobtrusive and for a person who doesnt 

feel comfortable posing in front of a camera without sticking 

my tongue out or pulling a funny face 

i think she did a great job....

the proof will be in the pictures....

And then it was time to get on my boat to go to our wedding on an island....

Wedding - My Bridesmaids.....

Let me take a moment to introduce my lovely Bridesmaids to you.

There was Nina My Maid Of Honour-

Nina is from Slovenia

and we danced together in the Slovene National Ballet.

She is one of the few people who know me and Tim as a couple,

and has been there from the start of our relationship and has 

been a constant listener to the ups and downs of it all 

and this was her first experience of a British Wedding,

never really having experienced a wedding with Bridesmaids at it was all new to her!

i'm not sure she would have agreed if she realised it would

 have meant carrying my dress around so it didnt get stuck in the mud all the time!

Georgia-

Georgia is my littlest sister

She also became my right hand man throughout the wedding planning.

Being far more artistic than myself]it was great to share ideas with her

and for her to bring them to fruitation...

with a lot of hard work may i add!

She also managed to put up with my stress head

 in the last few weeks leading up to the wedding,

being the only bridesmaid who was actually in close proximity!

Sarah-

Sarah is my oldest friend....

not that she is really old,

more that we've known each other since we were 12 years old.

As a person who is useless at keeping in touch with people its great that Sarah is one of those

people who even though we havent seen each other in years when we meet up

we know that we are Kindred Spirits.

In fact her comment on my dads speech in the evening

was that she could remember most of the stories that he told,

mainly because she was there for them all,

which i dont think anyone else in the room could claim to.

Sarah made me and all the bridesmaids some beautiful earrings for the wedding.

Steven-

Technically we called him a Bridesman....

I guess a male bridesmaid is not the norm,

Steven and i have been friends since i was 16.

And he's such a lovely guy,

 i meet up with him every year

when i m back in the Uk,

and although he is a busy guy with his glamour life

he always makes time for little old me 

 and its always and adventure!

Steven did my make up for the wedding...

i loved that each of my bridesmaids 

contributed to my wedding in different ways.

I had  a flowergirl as well.

Tim's half-sister Lara.

They've only met a couple of times but it was nice for us

to be able to include her as part of the family.

Originally i had wanted my bridesmaids in a bright bright yellow dress,

but after the disaster of having them made in Egypt....

i decided to go out shopping and see what was out there.

Turns out yellow is not the popular colour that i like to think it is!

I cam across these yellow polka dot dress in Joy.

I loved them!

I didnt want something to 'bridesmaidy'

i wanted a simple tea style dress.

I also love the mustard shade to them as opposed

 to the bright yellow i had originally imagined.

Steven wore the same kilt as the grooms wedding party,

but instead of the lavender button holes they had

 (should of had but thats a whole other story)

him and my dad had a sunflower button whole

to show that they were from my wedding party.

I loved the sunflower button holes!

I was worried they might look to big but i love the big vibrant colour they gave.

My poor bridesmaids, 

you can see in these pictures just how cold they are!

But they suffered in my summer tea dresses on an a sunny but cold Scottish day.

A break from wedding posts con....

Finally loaded my Belfast Pictures!

Swimming with the fishes

Shankill -
An predominantly Protestant area in Belfast where a lot of conflicts have arisen.
They also have a very friendly looking Doggie Barbers though.... 

Some of the murals in the Protestant Area

Gate that gets closed every night separating the two areas of Belfast

Writing on the Peace wall....we didnt want to...the tour guide us made us, we felt like vandals.
I'm not sure the peace wall is a good name for it as its been getting bigger and bigger over the years, taller and taller,
adding on more spikes and barbed wires to keep the other side out...doesnt sound too peaceful to me.

Catholic Memorial Garden

With our Cab 

Our tour guide hated Maggie Thatcher....still with a passion even though she has long been out of politics.
If you see that little picture of her on the left hand side it's a picture of Maggie Thatcher saying WANTED - for murder and torture of Irish Prisoners.

Entertaining Tim inside our Brothel Booth in the Crown Pub, Belfast

Cool architecture. The builder of the pub used to employ all the  tradesmen who  had been brought over from Italy to build the Catholic Cathedrals. There are little stain glass windows and beautiful handcarving everywhere.

Ready for the Ball. Seeing as our trip to the Ball was a little impromtu i didnt have a fancy Ball gown. I did on the other hand have a lovely little lace Vintage number that i had picked up in London that i had worn to leave my wedding.

Tim wore his wedding kilt. We weren't as glamarous as some people but we didnt feel too shabby either!

A break from Wedding Posts....

So your probably sick of wedding posts...

and i'm going to be really slow at writing them...

and in the meantime i have been doing loads of new and 

exciting things as part of my new life as Mrs. Reid!

Things like sailing across to Northern Ireland.

My first time.

We anchored just off a little town called Killyleagh.

When Tim and I finally made it to land it turned out 

our fancy big boat was quite the talk of the village!

We have let them come to the conclusion that we owned the boat

rather than just crewing it....

But it also turned out that we had arrived just in time for the big event of the year in the village...

The Grand Chocolate Ball!

Oh yes a Chocolate themed Ball...

oh and did i mention it was in a castle?

well it was....in a castle....

in this castle!

isnt it the most Princessy castle you have ever seen!

And my lovely husband bought us tickets

(after pretending to own the boat)

The locals were fantastic and we had a great time...

in fact we were the star guests of the ball...

we got our own introduction!

There wasnt as much chocolate as i would have liked,

and it was more eating than dancing...

but i managed to sneak in a couple of slow dances with my hubby,

it was so romantic!

We also went on a trip to Belfast.

(i have lots of pictures of all these things but i havent

downloaded them yet and i have to grab internet whilst i can0

My favourite thing was the Crown bar that we went to.

Its an old whorehouse that is now a respectable pub/restaurant.

The architecture was beautiful and we sat in our own little 

closed off booth to have our food.

The food was gggoooooodddd!

we also went on a Black Cab Tour of political Belfast.

Basically a taxi driver takes you to the Protestant and Catholic areas of the city,

there are lots of murals around depicting the tensions.

Also i never realised that the tensions there were still so high.

It was a definite eye opener,

especially to see the large gates that are closed every night between the 

Protestant and Catholic areas of the city.

It was very reminiscent of  Old Berlin....

Today we are in Wales....

but i'll get to that another day.

Wedding....the Day Before....

After a fairly busy day getting all the last minute organising 

done i popped round to see my sister who had 

brought the nearly finished dress up from London.

alexis putting on my dress on the wedding morning

I gave it a try on,

very exciting to finally have my dress looking how i had always dreamed it.

She made a few final adjustments and all was well!

I then headed out to dinner with my sisters and a couple of my bridesmaids.

It was nice just to get a chance to relax and chill, not too much wedding talk going on there

just catching up with old friends and family.

It was nice as well because i had made the decision to spend my wedding night at The Hawes Inn

as it was just opposite my Ceremony Venue, 

so that i could just walk across the road to get there in the morning.

It was a great decision as i felt completely stress free in the morning.

We rented out the big room and me and 3 of my 

bridesmaids spent the night there together.

Chillaxing a bit,

excited for my Big Day!!!!!

Wedding - The Day Before, Decoarating...

The day before the wedding was pretty busy.

We had  made the decision long ago when we first got engaged to 

pick a venue that we could decorate ourselves.

This was a lot more difficult to do that it sounds!

Most places want you to take their wedding package,

a list of 3 set meals that they provide and you pick your decorations from their stock.

I've been to weddings like this before and i find more often than not

they lack the personality of the Bride and Groom,

we wanted to be able to have our wedding reflect who we are,

not what some expert decorated has decided is fancy,

or to eat fancy food that i would never choose to eat

other than they gave it to me on a fancy list.

This obviously meant a lot more work,

but i think it also made it a lot of fun.

Here is a little idea of how we decorated our tables- 

our flowers were sunflowers and dried lavender

each table alternated with these.

The flowers were placed in antique glass bottles

that i had found at an anitques market,

along with a collection of vintage jars and glass bottles from my mother-in-laws

collection.

Each table had a centre piece of a board game that we liked to play -

for example -

Operation,

Mousetrap

Snakes and Ladders

Cluedo

My little sister Georgia hand made all the place cards for the guests reflecting their Game.

Georgia was also a trooper and went around sourcing 

vintage teacups which she then made into Lavender scented

 candles that were placed on some of the tables.

Other tables had jars with LED twinkle lights inside.

We gave each guest a Christmas Cracker to pull 

(i love Christmas Crackers)

and insisted on everyone wearing their paper party hats throughout the meal.

Back when i first got engaged people kept asking me what were my wedding colours,

apparently its a big thing.

I didnt know so i picked Navy Blue and white,

i figured it give us a nautical theme.

although to be fair i didnt use these colours anywhere other than having blue table cloths 

as opposed to white.

We were really glad to have found the 

Kirknewton Stables as our reception venue.

http://www.kirknewtonestate.co.uk/

The grounds and hall  were beautiful and the owner

 just let us do what we wanted with no interference.

My Wedding - The Week Before....

So the week before the wedding (maybe two) was pretty intense.

i became a quickfire ready to snap at anyone who got in my Bridezilla ways!

Tim who was away on the boat was getting phonecalls every few hours with 

wedding questions that he didnt really care about...

although i was sure he should be very interested

 in what colour the wedding programme paper was.

The biggest meltdown came when 9 days prior to the 

wedding i tried on my veil and headdress and the headdress snapped into two pieces.

I recall holding it in my hand and wondering why it 

was in two pieces...

before my brain could register that it had snapped into two.

Let me tell you this, i had found this headdress on the internet long before i met Tim!

It's been being eyeballed online many a time and within 

a week of having got engaged i had ordered it.

So seeing it in two pieces was not what i wanted,

 especially after it was hand made in the States.

But all was sorted fairly quickly when i managed to get in

 touch with the woman who made it and she Fed-Exed my out a

 replacement which thankfully arrived within 2 days of her posting it...

and i'm so glad because i love it so much! 

In the 5 days before the wedding we had 9 dropouts

 (2 who texted us mid-way through the wedding day!)....

thankfully most of them before we had finalised numbers with the caterer, and being in my home town my mum and dad were able to fill up the empty spots with some friends so nothing was wasted.

(i'm currently sailing the Irish Sea with only sporadic internet connection 

so it might take me a while to write this up but please bear with me 

cause i really want to!

Also, i dont have any fancy wedding photos yet...

just the ones from my mums facebook page....)

Married!

Sorry...

being busy getting married and honeymooning....

back to reality now.

i'll try and blog all about it soon!

Wet Weddings...

Getting married in Scotland

 i'm kind of resigned to the

 fact that there is a 90% chance of rain on my wedding day.

in fact one of the first things i did was buy a big umbrella

 and i have a pair of Wellie Boots on standby.

But at my friends wedding the other day she had the 

best weather that Scotland could offer.

Blue skys, not a hint of rain.

and then today it was miserable,

dark and gloomy and the kind of rain that only Scotland seems to provide....

not actual rain drops falling from the sky 

but just walking around you get soaked from the

wetness that is hanging around in the air....

and its the first time i've actually thought to myself,

i really hope the weather isnt like this...

like really really...

Blah!

I've been anxiously scouting out weather 

forecasts online for the past week....

i have a couple of websites that give more favourable forecasts than others...

i've also discovered that there is an average rainfall of

 16 days in the month of september in edinburgh,

so that basically means i've got 50/50 chance of rain...

Double Blah!

Dont Tell The Bride.....

i realised i havent blogged here about my recent obsession.

(along with wedding planning)

4 words-

'Dont Tell The Bride'

Don't tell the Bride, is a tv show that is being played on BBC 3.

its on its 6th season, but i've only just discovered it (why oh why!)

Basically the premise of it is that a couple are given 

12grand to pay for the wedding on one condition...

The Groom plans the whole event, 

location, dress, food, decor, bridesmaid dresses, shoes....the lot.

The Bride and Groom separate 3 weeks before the big

day and the Groom has those 3 weeks to plan the

wedding with only the help of his best man.

and it is AWESOME!

brides sky-diving to their wedding,
pride and prejudice themed weddings,
brides with no wedding shoes,
hideous dress melt downs!

trust me....

reality tv at its best 

(i think there is an american version but i cant vouch for its awesomeness)