OK this may be a record for quicket report ever, and possibly our first Hitched August 2012 report. Clearly I have far too much time on my hands! (jet lag means I am sitting around doing not much except typing)
Well where to begin? I promised myself I wouldn’t bother writing a detailed report and just do flashes instead, but it has been really nice reliving all the little details. Feel free to skim through for pics though, it is a bit flash heavy! Dave and I had an incredible wedding day, so many things went extremely smoothly which made up for the hectic week we had prior to the actual day!
Background
Dave and I had unknowingly lived around the corner from each other for many years, but as neither of us ventured into local pubs and so on we never really ran into each other socially. We actually met at our local Post Office, but didn’t officially ‘meet meet’ until I saw him on Match and sent him a message, but we still say the Post Office is where we first laid eyes on each other and have been known to sing along to the Rihanna song ‘We found love in a hopeless place’ but change it to ‘found love in a post office.’ I used to get sick of him holding up the queue with all his eBay parcels when I was trying to flog my old uni books on Amazon, and he apparently used to perve on my bum in my work trousers, but never dared speak to me – even after I had made polite conversation with him! We tried to incorporate a few Royal Mail-esque touches throughout the day such as our postbox and postcards to commemorate our meeting place.
We have had our ups and downs and we can both be very firey. Despite this we moved in together into our first rented house in May 2010 and on Christmas Day 2012 Dave proposed, and shortly after I became immersed in the wonderful world of Hitched! After we got the wedding more or less planned, we found a house to buy, got our kitties and life was more or less sorted.
The Run-Up
The weekend before was crazy… Neither of us had managed much sleep as Noisy Next Door folk went away and hired a team of builders in, ones that actually turned up and didn't just slack off all day. So every morning from about 7 they were hammering, drilling, unloading vans etc throughout the day and so on, all day right up until the evening. We were both running on empty, getting frazzled and having little annoyances crop up everywhere.
Then Dave’s granny went into hospital after going on an anti-gay rampage and upsetting herself, along with Dave’s gay sister, and knowing full well we were having a very gay-friendly wedding day. I was worried about her, but also worrying about the fact she was going on a religious mission to ‘convert’ our gay guests. She recovered quite quickly, luckily, but Dave was trying to deal with all that on his own. His dad (his business partner) and both sisters were on holiday at this point so he had been left to run the family business alone, as well as look after his granny. He spent Sunday night driving all over Manchester to get the men to try their suits on (only 2 out of the 5 were right) and back up to MRI to check on his gran.
Turns out his gran’s illness was not just stress after the hysterical family row, but an actual vomiting/diarrhoea virus. By Monday night, Dave also had it, along with anyone who had been in contact with his gran, her house (where the business is based) so in the end it affected all of Dave’s family and most of his colleagues, all of whom were our guests. Dave spent all of Monday night up until Wednesday suffering. Luckily I did not catch it, scrupulously scrubbing my hands after I had tidied up the bathroom when he had been ill, changing the sheets every day, and generally becoming totally OCD about the housework. Tuesday mum and I went to the venue to practice the aisle walk and see how the music fitted; I kept everything crossed that I wouldn't spread the virus germs to her or any of the venue staff!
By Thursday he was fully better, but it looked as if at least 10 of our guests would not be able to come due to illness. Around this point of the week I was past caring about the guest list and table plans, save for hoping they would soon feel better. (As it turned out, all of our day guests were better and made it and only 6 of our evening guests didn’t turn up, 2 of which was down to the virus). Mum and I had been to pick up my dress and found there were pin holes, loose beading and threads, and a few suspect orangey make-up looking stains. It fitted fine, which was all I cared about, and mum and I told ourselves nobody would notice the little flaws, not to worry, nothing could be done at this stage and so on. I decided I would deal with it after the wedding as I really didn’t want to give myself extra stress at this point.
By Friday afternoon our favours still had not arrived despite numerous promises from the company (they still haven’t though the company claim they have been delivered) so I annoyed over that. So many lovely Hitchers offered to come to my rescue, I was so touched. I can never thank the lovely ladies for the 2012 group enough for their generosity and kindness. In the morning my mum had called the dress shop back, they immediately said they knew how to solve the problems and to go back right away. Back to town again in mental traffic. In the 15 minutes it took for them to steam the holes closed and spot clean the stains I managed to sort out replacement favours from Thornton’s over the phone, pack Dave off to the Trafford Centre to collect them, and pick up ribbon from the craft shop next door to the dress shop so we could decorate the chocolate boxes. Job done! The dress was hung up in my mum’s spare room to allow any other creases to drop out.
Later on that day Dave and I dropped off the cats at the cattery and crashed out ready for an early start on Saturday to get to the venue, who were allowing us to set up behind screens hidden from that day’s wedding. Everything went fine with the set up, far easier than planned. Some of the linen was a bit creased or stained and the venue swapped everything until we were happy. Dave and I had a nice lunch together on the way back home, then he had to pack for the honeymoon. We had tea together then he left to stay at his grandmother’s place as it was important to him that we kept to that tradition (I wouldn't have minded us being together the whole time, but he wanted to be surprised when I walked down the aisle), my mum came round for a bit to keep me company. Earlier that day I had hidden her gifts in her bedroom, so when she got home from mine she found them and sat up til 2am reading her ‘Beautiful Mum’ journal! Dave was in his old bedroom doing the same with his ‘Gorgeous Groom’ one, so both of them were texting me til the early hours to say thank you - nobody got much sleep at all!
