Get your top hats ready…

On the 7th of March 2017, after my best birthday, the love of my life proposed to me on Blackfriars Bridge.  I said yes, the people on the bridge said “awwwwww” and we rode off into the night on a horse drawn carriage. Ok it was a black cab to the station, and then we had to get the tube home but still. It was awesome.

The smuggest face I can pull.

Those who know me and Pete know this, but for any strangers reading – we’re a little bit odd. We have a reputation to uphold, so a normal wedding was never on the cards. We’ll still have all the staples. There will be a top table, there will be too much alcohol and most certainly will be a big old family fall out by the end of the night.

 

 

 

There will be a big difference though. I am a ‘goth’ My fiance is a steampunk. For those who don’t know what that is, it looks a bit like this:

The goggles are for when my eyebrows haven’t been done.

I’ve set up this blog to chronicle planning a steampunk/goth wedding. Wedding planning is stressful at the best of times, so hopefully keeping track of things on here will get rid of some tension. Either that or I’ll forget about this and have to update you retrospectively once we’re all married. Or we’ll break up between now and then…oh God what if something happens to one of us…No, no SHUT UP ANXIETY SHUT UP.

*Ahem*

Lets start blogging! I’m thinking I’ll start with a few posts about the big things like venue, catering, dresses, and as we go along I’ll move on to things like decorations, flowers. There will be a blog about guest list, unless its too traumatizing.

Are your goggles on? Is your eyeliner sharpened? Yes? Good. Here we go…..

Three months to go….

I’ve really been neglecting this blog haven’t I? I promise to get better in the next few months – there’s going to be a lot more to do, so I’ll have more to write about 🙂

Something super important that’s happening this month is I’m getting my dress adjusted. One of the huge plusses of getting my dress online is that I didn’t have to head off into a bridal shop and deal with super pushy sales people.

“You don’t want to spend £3k+ on a dress you’ll wear once? Has anyone told your future husband that YOU CLEARLY HATE HIM AND WANT YOUR MARRIAGE TO FAIL?”

One of the huge downsides of this is that the dress doesn’t fit as well as it would had I spent the extra thousands to get one tailored to me. Swings and roundabouts, as they say. For me, the extra work of getting the dress fitted is completely justified by avoiding the dress shopping experience. I get nervous going into the phone shop, I’d explode in a bridal one.

I’m trying to decide if I can justify having a second dress for the wedding reception. I can’t come to a decent conclusion, so here are my pros and cons lists.

Cons:
– Its and extra expense that we don’t really need. We’ve taken great pride in keeping this wedding almost £20k under the national average (booya). Unnecessary things like this might ruin that.
– This gives me less time to enjoy my ceremony dress. If I’m only wearing it once it may as well be for more than a few hours.
– Will I need to change my hair and make up to go with the second outfit? What about shoes? This is all more work on a day I should be focusing on all my loved ones.
– Speaking of shoes I don’t have a clue what I’m putting on my feet yet. I should really focus on that first.
– It takes me away from enjoying the evening event if I need to go and get changed. Who wants to spend a party in dressing room?
– No one cares what I’m wearing, they care that my and my husband are having an amazing day to start an amazing life.

Pros:
– Two pretty dresses for me.
– I don’t have to worry about messing up my ceremony dress. Anyone who has ever met me will tell you there is a real possibility everything I eat will end up down the front of me. I’m trying to leave being messy in my past, but I am who I am dammit!
– Not just once nice dress, but twooooooooooo
– If its too hot, I get to change into a cooler outfit.
– Two pretty dresses which I deserve. Because reasons.
– It gives me some ‘me time’ away from the party to recharge. We’re going to be on display all day, so its important to schedule in some time to get our breath back. That way I don’t have to go to bed by 11pm!
– I’ve seen a dress I want and I can’t think of anywhere else to wear it.

I’ll see how I feel once the dress is properly fitted. Who knows, I might be so smitten that I forget all about the other one.

What do you think? One dress or two?

Weird Wedding Dreams

Hello everyone!

So, over the last few months I’ve had a couple of strange wedding dreams. Typically in these dreams, it all goes wrong and the whole day is a disaster. Apparently this is quite common – if you think about a wedding all day, you’ll probably dream about it.

Here a couple of dreams I had recently. I’ll update this post if and when I have anymore that are interesting enough to share.

Dream the first – we forgot the whole thing…

This dream begins with me and my husband to be sitting on a coach, on our way back from a morning trip to the zoo. Quite why my brain decided to place me in this situation but not include any cute animals I will never know.

A few moments into said dream, my other half turns to me and says “Love, you know we’re getting married this afternoon right?”

From here on in, my dream became a panicked montage of things going wrong. As I had not been expecting a wedding today, the invites had not been sent out. We had no catering, my bridal party had no dresses and there was absolutely no booze.

As I was waiting around the woefully under decorated venue, my dress shows up. Except it is not my dress. It clearly used to be a dress, before the moths and mould got into it. What my unconscious had conjured up for me was a tattered black summer dress, complete with fuzzy green bits and frayed edges. There were no shoes so I had to wear my trainers, no make up artist and no hair stylist.

As the one or 2 guests who could come on short notice trickled in, my brain decides to cut me some slack.

“Hey! Subconscious brain! You don’t get married until August and it’s only bloody November.”

Thankfully I woke up at this point before any more stress could ruin my dreams.

Dream the second…I made the reverend cry

In this version of the big day, it is the morning of the big day. We are in what appears to be a mix between a library and a museum and I am just about ready to get married.

That is until, I see the reverend, sat on a chair, crying her eyes out. She is refusing to perform the wedding ceremony, on account of me being so awful to her the poor woman was reduced to tears. There was a gaggle of friends around the reverend, informing me that she never cries, so I must really be a terrible person. Despite my pleas and protestations, the wedding does not go ahead. This was weird for multiple reasons.

Firstly, we are atheists. There will be no reverends performing the ceremony.

Secondly, I’m a Catholic atheist. If we did have a change of heart, it would be a Catholic priest performing the ceremony or I’m fairly certain my mother would throw me in the bin.

Finally and most importantly, I am an absolute delight and haven’t made anyone cry for YEARS, on purpose or otherwise. I have no idea what subconscious me might have done to cause the crying. My dream failed to provide any context other than I must be a horrible person so no one wants to perform the ceremony. This is such a clear case of my anxiety brain taking over, it’s almost funny.

So far that’s been it, but I am expecting more things to happen as the next 6 months go. The way I see it, if I get all the bad luck out of the way in my sleep, the real wedding will be a breeze!

Planning a wedding when you’re broke as a joke…

Hello avid fan base – by that of course I mean hello mum and the other three people who read this.

Last Tuesday my fiancee and I attended the Halloween wedding of his sister and her long time partner. If you’re reading, congratulations guys! The day was unlike any other wedding I’d been to and was absolutely perfect because of that. It was wonderful to be surrounded by so much beauty, love and positive vibes. We were also on the table nearest the booze, which is a humongous plus, but mostly it was the positive vibes and love thing.

After this healthy dose of weddinspiration, prepare yourselves for the tidal wave of awesome that is – MY NEWEST BLOG POST. This week I wanted to have a think about keeping costs down. The average wedding in the UK costs £27,161, which if you’re any thing like me is entirely unrealistic. Here are the ways in which we’ve managed to keep out costs down while still planning the day that we want.

Tip the first – you do not need 20 bridesmaids

While it is nice to include your friends in the big day, someone can be close to you and not be in the bridal party. I was concerned at first that certain friends would expect to be asked and wind up getting offended.

But in the end, they will all still be there celebrating with us. You don’t need to be in matching dresses to come party!

You don’t need to mail out physical invitations

We’ve oped to email everyone rather than sending out invitations. Physical invites just end up in the bin (you know they do, don’t lie to yourself). When it comes to RSVPs, most people will email or text you anyway – why not keep the whole conversation in the digital realm? Plus it’s totally free. Might be an idea to make a wedding email for this, to make things easier to organise and keep your regular email from being overrun with wedding things.

Decorations don’t have to be extravagant

Something I really took from my soon to be sister in law’s wedding is that subtle decorations can work beautifully. We were quite lucky in that the venue it self is gorgeous . Adding too much in the way of decorations might take away from that beauty, as well as giving us more things to worry about setting up/clearing away/getting rid of once its all done.

I want to DIY most of our decorations. Generic wedding stuff you can buy doesn’t suit us at all – if you’re good at crafting, making your own decor can not only save money, but allows your personality to come through in all aspects of the day. This frees up money for food and drinks, which lets face it is all people care about in the end.

If your friends are as lovely looking as mine are, you won’t need decorations anyway. We decorate the room with our faces darling.

Go for a venue that lets you bring your own food and drink

Having the freedom to shop around for catering will bring your prices down significantly – our dinner bill went from £4k plus to less that £1k. We’re not really fancy three course meal people and I think our wedding dinner should reflect that. Plus, this leaves us more cash free for snacks!

If you can, it helps to have the wedding and the reception in the same building. hiring coaches for the 15 minute drive between venues is far more hassle than I’m willing to put up with.

Try not to mention it’s a wedding to anyone

I’ve become acquainted with the wedding tax in recent months. It is the worst thing ever.  For those who don’t know, the wedding tax is the ridiculous mark up people put on products when they find out its your wedding. Learn from my mistake and tell them its your birthday right up until the last minute.

DO THINGS ON YOUR OWN TERMS

Your wedding is not about appeasing everyone else in the world, it’s about you and your partner. Do not spend money on things you don’t want to impress anyone else. No one who cares about you wants you to get into debt, or stress yourself silly.

There are certain things I absolutely will not scrimp on. For example, the photographer is one place we haven’t tried to keep costs down. The dress I wanted thankfully wasn’t particularly expensive, but if it was I really think I’d have paid for it – its the only time in you’re life you can dress like a princess, don’t pass that up!

Just be yourself. If you want to spend £27k, more power to you – this is your day and if you have expensive tastes, go for it. A question we got a lot when people heard we were engaged was ‘how on earth can you afford to get married??’ It isn’t easy, but with a bit of self control this doesn’t have to drag you into debt. Just keep your expectations realistic.

9 months to go….

Thing’s I’m stressing about….

358 days to go! Less that a year! I am so excited – it feels like everything is really coming together 🙂

To celebrate all the excitement, I thought it’d be fun to share the crippling wedding day fears that are keeping me up at night (sounds weird when I say it like that). None of them have anything to do with the male. We are very much stomach turning-ly in love and will remain so forever. Nope, these fears are specific to the day itself and all the things that are expected of us. Fasten your seat belts kids, we’re going on a journey into my brain…

Fear the first – what if no one ‘gets it’?

What if everyone turns up looking ‘normal’ and are completely unimpressed at our theme? I have visions of taking pictures with our guests, looking like the sad goth kids at Christmas dinner,  feeling out of place and insisting that everyone call me ‘Ebony Raven Way’ because that’s my true self now.

Rationality to the rescue!

Of course not everyone will get it and not everyone has to. The only people who really have to be ‘on theme’ are the bride, groom, bridesmaids and groomsmen. Chill the eff out. Have a cider. Have two.

Fear the second – what if our reception turns into a mass migration to the smoking area?

Every time we go out, I end up following my friends outside and freezing my tits off while they smoke. I don’t smoke, I don’t get it, I don’t want to get it it tastes like poo and is way too expensive. We don’t end up ‘doing’ anything, I just pay for tickets to watch my friends smoke in new and exciting places. What if I end up dancing all aloney on my owney while  all the ‘cool kids’ go smoke outside in the parking lot? The photos are going to look like no one turned up. Or that they did turn up, took the free food and left. Or that my BO cleared the dance floor because no one could take it. On a serious note, this is one of the big ones for me. The hall is already pretty big, losing half the guests to the smoking area will not help the atmosphere AT ALL.

Rationality to the rescue!

This isn’t going to happen. People who are enough of a poo friend to leave me partying alone because smoking is more fun probably aren’t going to make the effort to turn up. Also, seriously, when have 50 odd people ever all migrated outside to smoke at the same time? It’ll be like a smoking relay. It will all be OK. Breathe. (Irony, cos smokers can’t really breathe. Geddit? Geddit?)

Fear the third – what if I do the right thing by everyone, but end up not enjoying it?

Top tables. Speeches. A three course meal that none of us would order of our own accord (and I most certainly wouldn’t agree to pay for). So many people in the bridal party that if we all jumped at once China would be in real trouble.

These things all make my chest hurt a little. I don’t understand top tables – surely it’d be more enjoyable to actually sit WITH your family and friends, rather than facing them from afar? It’s only for dinner I know, but still.

Speeches are going to be inappropriate. Of course they are, its tradition. My concern is that someone is going to mention something I really don’t want my family to know and my family really don’t want to know. My mother does not need to hear about that time I got so drunk I (REDACTED). ‘Hey Cat, remember that time you tried-” “Shut up shut up shut up shut up”

I hate to be a killjoy (JK I love being a killjoy) I just don’t want my family feeling uncomfortable, hearing stories about me they don’t want to hear. Is that such a bad thing? Also, why do other people get to make speeches? We’re getting married, only we get to talk ALL EYES ON US AT ALL TIMES UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.

Rationality to the rescue!

Literally no one cares about the top table. Its just for dinner. And as the most square human being that ever human’ed, I haven’t done anything THAT bad. The stories will be embarrassing, but no one will humiliate us past the point of no return. It’s just banter mate, innit? Speeches don’t have to be a horrible experience at all.

Fear the fourth – what if we do all the things we want to do, but other people end up hurt/offended?

If I don’t do a top table, will the people who were expecting to sit there ever speak to me again? Would my fiancee be OK with setting aside some of the more traditional things he was looking forward to? He is under no obligation to agree to that – this is of course not just my wedding day. This whole ‘it’s all about the bride’ thing is silly, it’s about the pair of you.

Are people expecting us to fork out for a three course sit down meal? Will they be morally outraged at the idea of a cash bar? (Seriously, you want us to pay for dinner and all your drinks? When even is my birthday? Go on, tell me.) If we don’t pay for all the drinks, will people stay sober and awkward? Say what you like about the terrible nature of alcohol, it gets a party started.

Rationality to the rescue!

I’LL ONLY SIT AT THE TABLES FOR DINNER I NEED TO CALM THE HELL DOWN.

Our friends are not that poor and we’re not that rich. We’ll find a middle ground with the bar. Also – stay sober? My friends? I really must stop saying silly things.

Fear the last…

We get to the venue. It’s be big day. Hair done, make up done, dressed to impress we are good to go. Floating up the stairs like a goddamn princess *swish, swish, swish*. Birds fly into trees, unable to take their eyes off of me. I get to the ceremony room. The door swings open of its own accord because this is an actual Disney film and –

“SURPRISE!”

There is no registrar. No one is in top hats. The football team are all there – pointing, laughing. A camera crew pops up out of no where.

This has all been an elaborate episode of the Candid Camera reboot. There is no Pete. Only an actor in a silicone mask. It was all, alas, a prank.

Rationality really can’t rescue me now. I have 358 days left of this please help me.

 

 

 

Finding a venue fit for a weirdo or two

Hello avid fan base! Or, you know, the three people who read this. Welcome to the next installment of…

CAT AND PETE’S WEDDING EXTRAVAGANZA!

This blog, we’re going to talk about the seemingly endless stress that is finding a venue. As those who have met me know, I do not deal with stress very well. It has a tendency to make me very ill and so it was important to me that this process be kept as simple and as low key as possible.

My first step was to visit hitched.com to view venues in West London. One problem that came up straight away was the price some places were charging. I naively thought that we might be able to keep costs to under £5k and still have the day that we wanted. I was a fool – a fool I tell you!  I can’t list all the ones we considered, so I’ll talk a bit about the ones we took a serious second glance at, or went to view.

Ealing Town Hall

What initially drew me to Ealing Town Hall was its size. I don’t have a small family, neither does Pete, so we were keen to find a place everyone could fit inside comfortably. It doesn’t hurt of course that the pictures look like this:

So magnificent…

Do you think they look majestic? I think they look majestic.

Being the wizard of organisation that I am, I emailed them about a week after we got engaged and asked for a brochure. The prices were more than reasonable – my -£5k wedding was in my sights. My massive party with all my cool party people was going to become a reality – *ahem* I mean our massive party. Yeah.

But of course nothing is every that easy. Upon further investigation I discovered that Ealing Town Hall was closing for refurbishment and would not be open in time for us to do the deed. Way to break my bloomin heart Ealing Council. Anyone would think the upkeep of a historical building for future generations was more important than our day??? (I’m kidding of course, great venue, you do a great job, please continue don’t sue me.) Upon hindsight this venue was not right for us. It was too close to home to really feel special. I think walking passed it all the time before and after the wedding would have ruined the magic somewhat. All things work out for the best in the end!

This brings us swiftly on to…

The Museum of Water and Steam

The Museum of Water on Steam is a lovely place full of lovely people. We went down for a viewing and were absolutely blown away by it all. It absolutely encapsulated for us what a Steampunk Wedding should be like.

Utterly feckin glorious

There were some snags of course. Due to the building being open to the public all day, we would only be allowed in for the party from 6pm until midnight. This is more than enough time for a reception of course, but once you factor in eating, clearing tables and setting up for dancing, we wouldn’t have a huge amount of time left to celebrate. Another issue was that we would need to pick from a list of catering companies that the museum works with. This is understandable of course – health and safety and all that –  it just ended up pushing the budget past what we were comfortable with. This, along with the other regulations that come with having a party in a listed building, meant we would end up making more than a few compromises on what we wanted. To their credit, the museum staff were absolutely brilliant and did anything to try and make this work for us. Alas – it just was not meant to be. Maybe for an anniversary party in future? It is worth noting that while the building encapsulated all things steampunk, I was hoping for a bit more *goth* on the big day. On to the next one…

Chiswick Town Hall

As we couldn’t say our vows in The Museum, we had looked at Chiswick Town Hall to do what I like to call the ‘Legal Doobery.’ The ceremony would take place in one of the smaller rooms, and we’d head off to the Museum for the party. Our plan B for catering was to have dinner in Chiswick and head to the museum for drinks and dancing. That was until:

“Pete…do you want to do just do this in the Town Hall?”

And that was that! The stress was over! This meant that we could have the catering that we wanted, hire our own bar staff, bring in our own beverages and most importantly spend more time celebrating with the people we love.

I’m not going to post any pictures of the venue on here, as I’d like some of the day to be a surprise. Let’s face it though, you have google, if you really wanted to you could find out what it looks like. What the hall does is it gives us a beautiful canvas to work with – the building fits the theme of what we want, its in a lovely location so our friends and family can get home safely or stay in a hotel.

Something we do lose however, is the 30 minute car journey from the ceremony venue to the reception. While this may sound like a plus, I suffer from anxiety, so was looking forward to that time to regroup a little before being *on* all night. I’m sure we’ll figure something out though, even if its just me and Pete heading into a side room for a glass of champagne or two before the party.

Here concludes our hunt for a venue. When all is said and done, the venue was not as important to me as I thought it would be. What really matters is being able to cram as many lovely people in a room to get completely tanked and dance with us all night. I’m sure our guest list is up to that 😉