A gorgeous vintage wedding and a little moan about the weather

I am a true English gal so I am going to start with a mini weather report.  It was appalling last week - not just rainy but extraordinarily windy too.  My carefully nurtured little seedlings have, for the most part, spent their first vulnerable weeks in the earth being battered by heavy rain and strong wind.  Every morning I've nipped outside in my jim-jams, anxiously checking for damage and tipping excess water out of the flooded vintage enamel trugs.

I am not enjoying this weather at all.  I am fed up with damp clothes drying all over the house, I am annoyed that I have to switch the lamps on before lunchtime and I generally just feel cross that flip flops, ice cream and heat rashes do not feature in my foreseeable future.  (Well, actually, that's a fib.  We've got a couple of holidays coming up, but you know what I mean.  I want sunshine at home! *wails*  In fact, I demand sunshine!  *stamps feet*)

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There is nothing quite like a forthcoming wedding to really ramp up the weather-related wobblies.  One of Andrew's oldest friends was getting married on Saturday and the wedding was one of the loveliest I've been to. (And there was no rain!)  I hardly took any photos because a) I was too caught up in the emotion of the day, b) the only camera I had with me was my iPhone and c) it was so windy that I had to hold down my dress to save flashing my [enormous tummy tucker] pants at passers by.  So I'm afraid that you will have to just take my word for it that the wedding was beautiful.  

Imagine a very slender and strikingly attractive bride in a creamy silk vintage sheath dress, her hand-span waist accentuated by a plain silk belt and diamante buckle.  She wore a little fur cape over her shoulders and just an embellished silk hairband to set off her thick blonde hair which was pulled into a low side ponytail.  She carried a posy of flowers that looked as though they had just been plucked from an old English garden and the shoebox-sized church was filled with peonies, roses and candles.  She and her husband (tall and handsome in a grey suit with bright pink socks) grinned from ear to ear all day.  It was such a treat to be part of their special day.

The reception was held in a black barn deep in the Suffolk countryside and a vintage double decker bus was hired to drive everyone there from the church. (They travelled separately in a chauffeur-driven pastel green classic VW camper van - so cool!).  Inside, the barn was gorgeous.  There were fairy lights and tea lights everywhere you looked, the table decorations were an electic mix of vases and old bottles filled with pale pink blowsy blooms.  If only the silver window vase on one of the tables had fitted in my clutch bag! :-)   We drank plenty of fizz, ate the biggest strawberries I've ever seen and washed down huge chunks of chocolate wedding cake with tea drunk from vintage china.  

The bride and groom have been together for ever having met in Australia when they were both on their travels.  When the groom, as part of his speech, thanked his parents for lending him the money to go to Australia, all those years ago, I felt a lump in my throat.  Aw!   

But every wedding needs a few minor incidents to make it memorable.  I will never forget the best man's speech which was shocking and hilarious in equal measure.  The entire wedding was translated into sign-language by a lovely jolly-looking grey-haired old chap and I still chuckle to myself now when I imagine how he interpreted some of the more 'blue' stories!

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So the jubilee bunting has been packed away and it's back to a full 5-day week at work for me this week.  Our spa membership is proving worthwhile so far - we've been a few times already.  In the evenings there are very few people and we often get the swimming pool entirely to ourselves.  RESULT!  The jacuzzi outside is uh-mazing and one of the other members told me last week that it's even lovelier out there when there's snow on the ground so I'm quite looking forward to that this winter.  I'm having my gym induction on Wednesday lunchtime and so don't expect to be fully mobile until the weekend afterwards.  I am ridiculously feeble in the gym.

Have a great week! 

Nicki 

x

Married bliss

Sunday night.  The most relaxing night of the week for us, I love it.  Let me set the scene for you: 

We are in the sitting room.  It's a chilly evening so the curtains are drawn and the woodburner has been lit.  It's a dark little room and the three small table lamps are providing just enough low light to make the room feel cosy.  The fairy lights are twinkling cheerily and the lantern in the fireplace brightens up a dark corner.  I'm sitting right next to the fire in my slippers with the dog snoozing at my feet and a glass of sherry beside me.

Sounds nice doesn't it. 

But it's not quite as civilised as it sounds.  

I do, indeed, have a glass of sherry.  I love a little nip of sherry, especially when it starts to get cold.  Andrew hasn't been keen previously but seems to have developed a taste for it this year.  I'm still sipping my first glass and he has just finished his third.  This is making me inexplicably cross.  I have been watching him out of the corner of my eye and I think he is downing it in one.  Like a shot of tequila.  I am only surprised that he hasn't banged the glass upside-down on the coffee table.  

We are sharing a bowl of crisps.  Well, I say 'sharing' but really it's more of a subtle scrap.  Survival of the fittest, if you will.  He is shovelling them into his mouth by the handful and I, consequently, am chomping each dainty mouthful as quickly as possible so that I can grab another.  The bowl has been refilled once already and I am seriously considering confiscating it whilst I'm blogging.  We will probably have a little bit of a bicker about it in a minute.  I'll complain that he's eating all of the crisps and he will look at me, bewildered.  It won't even occur to him that I'm sitting here struggling to keep up with his mammoth munching session.

It is always the same when we share food.  Andrew loves his food and can put away loads of it.  This is one of the [many] things I love about him, even though it drives me crazy.  Previous boyfriends have been too worried about their physique and subsequently have had smaller hips than me, which is never good for morale.

The TV is on too and the husband is glued to it.  Glued.  His football team played this afternoon and won.  He watched the match; cheered and whooped all the way through it.  He is now watching highlights of the very same match and laughing at the cheesy cartoons of the players.  Cheering at the goals.  Telling me to 'watch this one'.  I don't get it.  He knows what the score was, he knows exactly what happened, so how can he be fascinated by clips of the match?  It baffles me.  And it makes me a teeny bit cross every time he tells me to watch it.  I can't quite muster up the enthusiasm that he has.  I try to whoop too, but I can tell he thinks it's feeble.

I like to observe the way that we live our ordinary life.  The things that drive me crazy also make me smile.  I laugh every day - a lot.  Where I am right now, the life I am living, is everything I ever wanted and more.  I am so thankful for the people in my life and everything I have.  I am a lucky girl. 

It is our very first wedding anniversary next weekend and I've been thinking a lot about the wedding.  Remembering all the good stuff.  Little moments popping into my mind that I never want to forget.  I wish I had been blogging during the run up to my wedding.  I'd love to read back on it.  

The photo below is one of my favourites from the wedding album.  The day was bright and sunny for the most part but there was a spell of cloud and a slight smattering of rain. 

I think that we look like stars in a period drama. I love it.  We don't look like the sort of couple who spend their evenings sitting on the sofa in their slippers silently squabbling about a bowl of cheese and onion crisps, do we.

Nicki

x