Wedding Forum - My planning ( after wedding update )...

I really can't wait to see pics of your day as it all sounds fab :)

Eeeeeek, so exciting Elinor! Can't imagine what I will be like when I'm in your position! Does it feel strange that it will all be over soon? xx

I'm not even thinking about it being over, because it doesn't seem like it will be. After the honeymoon there's the gifts to receive and thank people for, and the photos to pick for the album. Then once Christmas with the big nativity project that we're involved in us out of the way it'll be time to look at upsizing. It is strange just how close it is though, I can't get my head round the fact that this is really happening.

We've had a good night hunting through old photos. There's a big board at the church housing an organ which is awaiting funding to be assembled, so as we can't do anything about it we're making a feature of it and covering it with photos. We've worked out that we need about 400. We're currently raiding Facebook, and then we'll go the parents for all the cute/embarrassing childhood ones.

I know Dad's been doing a project since he retired to scan all the old photos into his computer, and organise them properly into books, as they're all falling out of the old scrap books. There is at least one family photo from every year since I was born, as Dad does a Christmas calendar every year with a family photo on it (generally taken in the summer now as it's more and more difficult to get everyone in one place.

Phew! Found a 16" half-moon cake tin on ebay.

This morning in church I said "My wedding is a week on Saturday" for the first time.

Eight days now. The final fitting is this afternoon and then I will take the dress home! Really looking forward to having it in my wardrobe.

One week to go. This time next week we'll be well into the evening do.

Last Sunday before the wedding, so last chance to catch up with church people. A few have said they're coming, and there may be more. I felt like a stuck record, the number of times I was having to say what's left to do and how close to ready we are. It was mentioned in the service which was nice, and I got a couple of cards. We have had a late drop out, not a majorly significant one, it's the partner of H2B's cousin. The reason given is that he has to stay with the dog, presumably they haven't managed to make other arrangements. However he's painfully shy and wouldn't know many people, so we suspect it's a get-out clause. We invited someone from the evening list to take his place and fortunately she agreed. The cousin herself is still coming with her daughter.

i bet your so excited :) hope your back feels better soon, have a nice hot bath that will ease it xx

We are still dealing with last minute drop outs. We knew she might drop out due to health reasons. We're doing last minute changes to favours, name places, and the table plan.

We're doing well. All of the reception things are now in the venue, and most are on the tables. There are a few things in the corner where the tables aren't laid yet. We've done a lot of setting up in the church too. Tomorrow we need to get some icing and collect the remaining layers of the wedding cake. My mum and her sister will go into the church and set up flowers. We also have to finish doing set up in the church, and buy loads of cake and bucks fizz for after the service. In theory, by seven o'clock tomorrow evening when we have the wedding rehearsal, everything should be finished.

Last night. Feeling really surreal. It really hasn't sunk in. That's probably a good thing as I'm not stressed. Apart from a couple of cake mishaps we're sorted. A word of advice, don't have friends make your cake.

Good luck for today! Hope you have an amazing day xxxx

Hope you had a fab day :)

Glad it went well for you, have a lovely honeymoon x

Big congrats and enjoy your honeymoon

So I'm back, and finally have chance to tell you all about it. I was awake about 8:00 and the hair and make-up people were coming at 9:00, so I sat in bed checking Facebook on my phone, and finding lots of messages saying congratulations and happy birthday. When I came down my MOH had continental breakfast ready, and I ate while my hair was done. Mum and Dad arrived at about 10:00, as did the photographer, so they got photos of the preparations. My dad opened the champagne while the bridesmaids got ready, and then they got me into my dress, and we had some photos, at least one of which one of the dogs posed beautifully for. I discovered that it was surprisingly difficult getting down the stairs in my hoop, so once I was back in the kitchen the bridesmaids kept getting sent upstairs for things from my room. The cars all arrived on time, and the neighbours came out to say good luck. We left early in case of traffic congestion, due to Cardiff having road closures for the NATO summit, but there was very little traffic and we ended up doing a detour to avoid arriving too early. My brothers who were ushers were waiting outside when I arrived along with the bridal party, and after the normal photos in the car I went round to the entrance. The wind kept blowing my veil about but once I got into the porch it was fine.

The walk in went perfectly, and as I got further down the aisle I kept seeing more and more people to smile at. The vicar made a comment about it being my birthday and how excited she was. The service went really smoothly, which was a relief given the number of people involved. The vicar and my church minister did the bulk of it, with the vicar doing anything legal, and my dad did the rings, which crucially meant he was in the right place to say " you may kiss the bride". He also did the blessing. We had some wonderful readers, and the sermon was preached by a vicar who we both knew as children at different times. Sadly he has liver cancer, and it doesn't look good, but a while ago we didn't think he would have seen last Christmas, and in actual fact he improved dramatically and was almost free of it. Unfortunately that is now not the case, and he knew that by the wedding, but we didn't. Knowing now makes it even more special that he preached for us. The choir sang during the signing of the register and were wonderful, and my mum did a reading from one of her own books. A former minister and vicar from the area who are husband and wife did the prayers. We walked out to the Hallelujah Chorus, and the choir remembered to split at the right point to allow us to walk through. When we got to the back we had planned just to stand at the back while the music finished and then go to the front for photos, but the vicar directed us out of the door. I thought it was because of what she has said before that the marriage isn't legal until you leave the church, but when she opened the door we found a guard of honour made up of people from the nativity project that we met through, all in costumes and throwing confetti. One girl had a star, and they re-enacted the water into wine story from the wedding in Canaan. Not only was it a wonderful surprise but I was grateful for the drink by then. The photos took a while, and our one regret was that some people from our congregations left before their photo, obviously not expecting to be in one as they were only there for the service. We should either have done them first or announced them in advance or both. Otherwise they went smoothly, apart from my husband's 2 year old nephew throwing a paddy because he had been woken up for his photo. We abandoned the idea of going to a park just the two of us for more photos as time was getting on and went straight to the reception. Unfortunately we forgot that the videographer was going to join us and they arrived at the reception very apologetic that they hadn't found us in the park. They were really good about it though. All the centrepieces at the reception were well appreciated, and the ones on the tables with kids quickly became toys, as we anticipated. The meal and speeches were great, but unfortunately the background music couldn't really be heard, and we did overrun, meaning that we cut some of the earlier music from the evening do. I threw the bouquet just before the first dance, having abandoned the idea of doing it at the church as too many people had left. I was aiming it at my new sister-in-law, who is disabled, as I thought it would be something she wouldn't normally be part of. However it would have been a near miracle if it had landed in her lap in the wheelchair. It was close, it landed by the wheel, but her carer was too slow off the mark and a little two year old got it. It made her day though. She and one other little boy kept calling me a princess, and she was delighted when she got to dance with me. The first dance went down brilliantly, and without any disasters, although Matthew did catch the dress once, and lots of people were up dancing in the evening. All in all a wonderful day.

Congrats! Sounds like you had a fabulous day, and the pics are beautiful! :)

The photos have apparently been uploaded now, so we can have a good time tonight starting to wade through them all. There's about 3000 apparently.

We spent well over an hour last night watching the slide show of the photos. In the end the photographer has uploaded just shy of 1000. Presumably there were a lot of duplicates. By and large we're happy with them, although in the big group photo it's a shame he didn't ask people in a couple of rows to bunch up and fill in the gaps. The other shame was the photos of the congregations from our respective churches; we should either have announced them in advance or done them first, as some people who weren't on the guest list assumed they wouldn't be on the photos and left before we got to them. Some weren't even on the first full photo, but I think they were largely elderly people who couldn't manage more than the service itself. We now have the job of selecting 100-150 to go in the album, and 5 for the thank you cards.

Anyone know if I can change the name of this thread? My Planning doesn't really seem to fit anymore.

glad you had a great day, everything looks amazing

It looks like you had a fantastic day! Congratulations hun! Xxx