End Of An Era – I’m Married
For me, it’s all over. I’m back from my honeymoon, which seems like a long time ago already, and have our two weddings under my belt. It’s odd. Really odd.
All of a sudden I can make plans to actually ‘do stuff’ in this thing called ‘free time’ I used to have before the wedding behemoth stole it all. Don’t get me wrong, the whole experience has been astoundingly good fun, but it has been tough juggling the planning with running my design studio and still trying to stay sane.
In fact, the only way I managed to stay sane in the last couple of months was to shift the balance from spending time on work to spending time on wedding plans. There are so many little details, all of which seem to creep up behind you and just keep poking you in the back of the head until you give them the attention they need. I was even making signs with my best man and ushers on the morning of the wedding – something I wouldn’t advise when you still have to get dressed and finish writing your speech…
This leads nicely into what I’m planning to do from here. I’m going to use hindsight. People always say it’s a wonderful thing. My hindsight is of no use to me, but it may as well benefit others. Nice, ain’t I? Plus, the sheer volume of truly great stuff I have to tell you justifies a whole bunch of articles, not just one garbled lump. From things to do, things not to do and things that, if you do them, make sure you don’t do them half or even three-quarter arsed.
Wedding aside for a sec, here’s an insight into what to expect after the big day that I didn’t anticipate. It’s not simply having free time again; being able to sit and watch ten minutes of Miss Marple at lunchtime or flick through a magazine that isn’t a wedding magazine, although this is a welcome return to norm. It’s something I’d never even contemplated before… the fact that nothing has changed. Sure, I’d thought about it, about life after the wedding day but it’s a totally new experience. It’s like that lull when you first get back from a holiday and you’re happy to be home, but sad it’s over. You’re back in your home but it seems a little unfamiliar. A bit tired and a bit jet-lagged. It’s like all of that but somehow bigger.
I think it might even feel a like bit of an anticlimax if we didn’t have so many lovely memories. Then it dawns on you that you’re about to start the rest of your lives together which is such a MASSIVE, exciting thing. But we haven’t started yet, so where do we begin? We’ve got a new kitchen to decide on and fit. The stairs need carpeting. Good God, we’ve got a absolute shitload of tidying to do in the aftermath. It feels a little like we’re in the eye of a storm with everything flying around as usual, we’re just in this slight period of limbo. Weird.
Within a day or so of being home we came back to earth with a bump though. Life kicks in pretty quick and there’s final payments to make – like our DJ, Jon Beck, who was very patient with me on the day as I forgot to pay him at various points but he still turned up and did us proud. Angie at The Old Rectory who was brave enough to entertain me and two of my ushers for the evening before the wedding – it’s best B&B I’ve ever stayed in.
Our wonderful humanist celebrant, Stuart Paterson, who worked with us in the run up to the wedding to ensure the celebration was exactly what we wanted, it really is an amazing and emotional way to get wed. And not forgetting Claire and Duncan at Weddings & Wellies who, without a shadow of a doubt, made the day totally amazing from start to finish – we know of one person already who is going to be getting in touch with them on the back of how much our guests enjoyed our wedding, so that’s a pretty good testament to how grand the day was.
We’ve also got a load of photos to go through – we created a dedicated Flickr account for the wedding and gave the login details to all of our guests, meaning they can all upload their photos from the day so everything’s in one place and everyone can view everyone’s shots. Great idea in principle, but not everyone has the ability to downsize their shots so we reached our free account upload limit pretty quick. I’d advise paying the 25 bucks straight off to avoid the faff of people not managing to get their shots up online. It’s been great to have everyone’s random photos suddenly appearing and there have actually been some pretty good shots considering it’s mainly happy-snap cameras.
Fortunately, our photographers, Greyeye Photography, have turned their shots round in good time and we now have a little cluster of select shots on their Facebook pages as well as a gallery on their main site and a couple of DVDs in the post. When we were looking for a photographer, we got in touch with Grey Eye not only because of their portfolio, but also I liked the fact they don’t try and stiff you and your guests for more money on prints by retaining the copyright on the shots. They hand the high resolution shots to you on DVD and it’s up to you what you do. They’ll happily help you organise albums (really quite beautiful albums, actually) and single prints, but they do it to add value to their service, as opposed to a hard sell to rake in the money.
We set up a meeting with Matt and Andy and just hit it off from the start – we really wanted a more reportage style of photography, as this lends itself far better to a wedding in a field, and we could just tell they were going to be good at that. They were dead easy to get on with and had a natural humour and likeability, something you need if you’re going to get the best out of the guests.
We didn’t have a very conventional wedding, but the guys at Grey Eye have captured it amazingly. Flicking through the shots, I know I get a real sense of what the day was about, the atmosphere of the day and the happiness everyone felt. I have a terrible memory – I’m famed for it in certain circles, although I can’t remember which circles they are. The shots from our day are exactly how I remember things looking – the important bits like people’s expressions, which are often the hardest for photographers to capture. So I’m fairly confident even I can look back on our day and remember how wonderful it was, how beautiful Liz looked – I’ve NEVER seen her smile that much or quite that widely.
And the really nice thing is, you know those little details I mentioned that creep up behind you and poke you in the head until you give them the attention they need? They’re still there. But now they’re happy memories that come back to you in waves of “Oh, yeah! That was a good bit too!”
Related Posts:
Awwwww…Liz looking like her face is going to break…BLESS!!!
Leave your response!