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It's almost over, I promise!! ?
The Reception
So after loads of smiling and posing it was time for the wedding breakfast; the room, the tables and flowers were fantastic:
The food was fabulous and I couldn't fault the serving staff… especially as they gave the top table extra crackling – they also didn’t seem to mind too much when a couple of guests mistakenly set light to the menus with the candles we had on our table (top tip: get deeper votives to avoid such drama!)
We made our way around to the tables and it was great to see everyone enjoying themselves and the food, plenty of wine was flowing so that really helped.
We decided to break the dinner up with the speeches just before the dessert. My Dad, who was only going to do a 30 second welcome and toast was up there for 5 mins and said some lovely things about us. OH was next and had left his speech at home so did it on the fly (I think he’d secretly been practising!) but he said some lovely things about me and thanked me for all the planning and the Best Man was incredibly nervous but was very funny and had the whole place laughing.
Next up were my Gushers. I’d been warned by our MC that some AV equipment had turned up but I wasn’t to worry about a thing. To put this into context one of my Gushers is in TV so this was a breeze for her and they loved pulling this together.
They had done a professional “This is Your Life” for me, together with the music, old pictures of me (and them), they did the voice over celebrating our 25 years of friendship… then came some footage, they had gone and interviewed our old primary school teacher, my drama teacher and another teacher that I had a little crush on… they were all really game and acted out the script the girls had given them which highlighted many indiscretions which we’d got up to in our younger years! It was fab! They then moved on and interviewed Roger Wright (he’s currently starring in Thriller and played Simba in The Lion King for years), before this he was a model (Bluewater – at the same time as Cassius/Malcolm fame!) and in a popgroup and when I was in Just 17 Magazine (a girly magazine for teens for those too young to remember!) we started a loose friendship and he’s just kept popping up in my life, again and again and again, so it was bizarre to see him record a piece . And the last bit was Ben Adams from A1 or some others may remember him from Celebrity Big Brother – he was on there as a joke as he is part of my most embarrassing story (being backstage at an awards ceremony and loads of girls outside screaming for him and me being facetious and shouting out the window that they may as well go home as he was my boyfriend, when, yep, you guessed it, he walked past me and heard everything I said!) , he was a great sport and it was hilarious, he started singing “Take on Me, Beccy” as they covered the A-ha classic. The whole thing was bl**dy brilliant, it was so well executed and so funny! The reason why I thought the gushers had been so disinterested was because they’d been so busy trying to get this whole thing together and were still doing the sound check 30 mins before the ceremony! I’ll try and upload it to Youtube when I get a mo… never done that before so bear with me!
Here's a couple of shots that show my reaction!
And my two Gushers finding their work hilarious!
So after all that excitement our fabulous magician had turned up and we scoffed our desserts and cut the cake
The DJ had already arrived and as we had a separate disco room everyone decamped for this. The MC helped me with my bustle and then it was time for the first dance which was Fallen by Lauren Wood. We’d not even practiced it or anything so it was more like a shuffle and after the first chorus OH invited everyone else in to dance. The words mean quite a lot to me so we were singing it to each other and being fairly vomit inducing… it was while we were doing this I could see one of my gushers over OH’s shoulder and she was motioning behind us… I turned around and saw a new guest, one of my favourite people in the whole world had turned up as a surprise! She lives in Canada and wasn’t able to fly over with her hubby as he was training to be a pilot and cash was limited. Turns out he qualified with Air Canada the beginning of that week so all associated privileges were invoked so she flew overnight, arrived on Saturday and flew out again on Sunday morning. It was the best present ever, our fabulous photographer had been told what was about to happen and caught the moments on camera.... I think these pictures say it all!!
We had such a ball, a mixture of dancing and drinking and it all went by in such a flash, I was convinced that we had another hour to go when I heard “Time of your Life” starting to play, and before we knew it we were surrounded by everyone and we were all belting it out!
Needless to say we were the last to leave as we didn't want it to end. We went back to the hotel and went for more drinks in the bar and then retired to our suite.
We opened the present OH had bought me and it was a commemorative bottle of champagne and glasses plus an album of our life together so far with lovely comments he had added, with plenty of space for our new life together. Bless him.
It seriously was the best day of our lives... so far. ?
If you’ve got this far then I applaud you and you definitely deserve some vino!
Here are my N&Ps:
Prettywild – For all your stationery dreams
Steph @ Wrap & Tie – for all the wonderful, bright, gorgeous flowers
Sarah Vivienne – Tog-tastic
All That Glitters, Wimbledon – for my lush sparkly dress
Pembroke Lodge – Fabulous venue and fabulous staff
Wedding Cabs – With added Jive Bunny
Teri @Murakami - classy boudoir, which he loved!!!!
