We're married!

I guess I had better write a wedding report. I don't have official pictures yet but I'll add some of my friends pictures. The official ones will go up when I get them back. Aliye said she's never taken so many pictures of a wedding before! I'm taking that as a good sign. My videographers had a sample video emailed to me before I was awake this morning, so I think that's another good sign!

Guests getting ready at Warwick Arms Hotel

Saturday until the ceremony

We had been up until 1:30am getting table stationery done, then I had to go back to my room, shower and wash my hair. I hardly slept and at 7am my daughter, who'd been sharing with me, and I woke up at the same time, looked at each other and smiled. I got my eldest to ring her dad’s room and ask for the car keys as we had no clothes and to tell him we were going for breakfast so wait for us before going down. He decided to come straight down for breakfast though! At 8:30am I went off to find somewhere to do my nails. One shop said they had time to just do a file and polish if I needed hands and feet and get back to the hotel for 10am. Getting calls all the time people worrying about one thing or another! I kept asking if anyone had sorted out bread and wine but didn’t seem to be getting very far! Asked Mum to do it, next thing I know OH has told her not to because he’ll sort it but he’s in the foyer making table markers and doesn’t really move other than to get dressed!

I got back to the hotel and my hair dresser has already done my niece as Mum asked if she could do her to and she’s doing my eldest. Spent the next three and a-bit hours in that room or moving to my room opposite. About 11am, I asked the photographer to take the ring box to the guys and get some pictures with them to cement in their heads that the rings were tied in that box and asked her to tell FOG to come and see me about 12:15. When he came I took him into my room so I could talk to him without anyone hearing. I showed him the ring box, took the rings out and gave them to him. I told him he needed to take them to someone called Gareth at the Hospital who was going to teach him how to catch an owl. He had the biggest grin on his face! I gave him our candles and Quaich and said to tell people he was just taking those over. He came back and said “All done, just got to go…” and tapped two fingers on his wrist which made me and the tog/ vog laugh because we knew what he was going on about.

At some point it suddenly dawned on me that I’d still not got music sorted out so my sister said to give her a list and she’d download it from YouTube and we could play off my laptop but when we left the first song was still downloading! So we had no entrance/ exit music and only our minister as a musician!

About 1pm I asked my tog to help me put my dress on and asked for my nephew to come and see me. When he arrived I said I needed everyone to leave the room, knelt down next to him and said “Do you know what this is?” he said “Yeah, it’s the ring box” so I said “Look…” and showed him it was empty, he looked about confused so I told him that his job was to hold onto that box and not let anyone have it, if anyone asks for it he’s to say “Aunty Claire said it’s my job to look after it” and only hand it over when I said “stop messing about and give it to him” we had some pictures where we high-fived; pretended to whisper to each other and where we did “shh” at each other. He didn’t let go of that box for about half an hour, passed it briefly to Mum so he could wipe his hands as he was getting hot and had it straight back. We did a bit of slow march practice in the salon, me and my sister hitched up our dresses so the children could see what we were doing.

About 1:15pm I had to tell them to send the guests over because I could see lots of people milling outside my room. About 10 min later Mum came to me and said “Message from the minister, hurry up, we’re late” I said I was waiting for the horse but it turned out that OH had said I didn’t need it to get over there(!) so they had to bring him down quickly and work out where to stop to get me on, was funny because it was the first time I’d mounted in my dress and I ended up with most of it gathered under my legs – later on I always mounted by completely exposing my leg. Mum rang FIL to say that we needed them and my brother’s children outside as everyone was now sat.

 
Rode across to the venue which felt fantastic, although the wind picked up whilst we were going and felt very windy up there! Everyone was waiting outside when we got there which I wasn’t happy about, I asked for people to be moved inside and the people I asked to be waiting outside. Had to explain about three times which order and what they were to do, in the end I lined people up outside the building! Had a little delay as my nephew ran for the toilet. We all entered in silence but it worked out ok anyway.