A bit delayed, sorry! And I don't mean for the beginning of this to be a major downer, but it influenced our day in a big way.
The pics aren't watermarked, so as our photographer Deborah Stott is so amazing, please ask me if you want any of the pics and don't post them elsewhere - thanks!!
And also, its long... very long...
Bit of Background
10 days before the wedding my OH’s Auntie (his Mum’s sister) died from cancer. Her funeral was planned for a week or so after the wedding, so everyone was a bit in limbo around the time of the wedding. However, they were all looking forward to the wedding and saw it as an opportunity to have something to look forward to and take their mind off the funeral as it was quite a long time to wait (over three weeks after she died). Rob’s cousin originally wasn’t going to be able to make the wedding as she is a teacher and we had a mid-week term-time wedding, but she was now on compassionate leave, so while it was for the absolute worse reason, it was nice that she was there and she was there to support her dad (and to keep him from spiralling into despair at the wedding – she knew it would be good for him to be there).
Tuesday 20th March – 2 days before the wedding
The wedding was in Stoke – a good drive from where we live in Kent, so we had quite a few things to sort out before we left. OH’s parents had already gone up to Stoke and were staying in a cottage close to the venue for a week, and his brother and his family were going up the same day as us to stay in their cottage as well (we had our own booked). They were all our usual cat-sitters, so we had to put our two in the cattery for a few days – not something I was looking forward to as they’d only been in once before overnight and it didn’t go very well (that’s a whole different story)! It was heart-breaking leaving them because we could hear one of them crying for us as we left, but we just carried on and tried to put them out of our minds. We actually returned home at this point because I needed the loo and we couldn’t think where else to go! So, about half an hour after we originally left, we were finally on the road to our wedding!!!
We were on the road for about 5 minutes, driving along the road we drive along most weekends, aware of the speed cameras along there, but somehow OH seemed to take no notice and went through a 50mph camera at 56mph, and saw the camera flash in his rear view mirror – not a good start!! Thankfully the rest of the journey was fine and we arrived in Stoke about 2pm, unpacked our stuff into our cottage and then head up to his parent’s cottage. They had a hot-tub there so we took our stuff and lazed in there for a while which was quite relaxing. At that point OH’s brother turned up and announced that his 4-year old had tonsillitis since the weekend and they had considered not coming... why they hadn’t told us this before I have no idea! Anyway, OH’s parents made us all dinner and we head back to our cottage fairly early to get as much sleep as we could.
