FINAL WEDDING UPDATE!!!

This time in a week, I’ll be sat with my hair in rollers getting ready to marry my soulmate.

HOW has it come round so fast?! I swear it feels like just yesterday I was going “Oh there’s still ages to go” – now I’m sitting here with most everything packed and sorted and I’m ready to go!

There’s still the small thing of being scared poo less of flying to get over, but that’s the only thing standing in my way haha! Once that flight is done, we are in full wedding prep mode!

So, I’m sorry for it being radio silent since Christmas – I had viral labyrinthitis before and during Christmas and then straight after it became super stressful getting last minute wedding stuff done. Somehow, we’ve pulled it off and everything is ready to go, but boy it’s been touch and go on a few things.

One thing I was super worried about? My Dad’s suit. He has said for years he wanted to get a suit tailor made for him and he was going to find someone…. this continued over the last 18 months, we gave him fabric to match 6 months ago, but he’s just been so flat out with work and being stressed out by imbeciles, he’s had no time to get a suit made. So, two weeks ago we were making a mad dash around a shopping centre half an hour before they closed holding a piece of fabric, trying to match the colour/style so that Dad could get a suit!

That was a drama in itself, but we finally found the right colour in a shop. Then they didn’t have his size, however, they did in central London and he wanted to meet us there one day. I was like “ermmmm… when am I going to find time for this?!”

However, another thing that went wrong, ended up being lucky: my nephew’s passport has taken 5 months to arrive and when it finally did? They had him as a female on it !!!!!!! I mean, I know babies can sometimes look kind of the same and it’s hard to tell whether they’re a boy or girl, but his birth certificate says boy and he very evidently has a boys name!!!

After speaking to one unhelpful person as the Passport Office, my brother’s girlfriend got through to someone slightly more helpful, although she still had to take a 6 month old all the way into central London to queue up at the Passport Office for them to rectify THEIR mistake. This meant she was a 15 minute walk away from the shop which had Dad’s suit, so while she was waiting she went and asked them and they had it!

We initially thought it was just the same colour, but it turns out it’s actually the exact same suit my brother and Mr AN have to wear as I sent the barcode to her and they were the same!

Very lucky!

Other than that, there have been no more dramas… ha! That’s more than enough for me. I bought Mr AN’s wedding gift just after Christmas and we pick his gift to me up on Saturday morning before we leave to go on holiday. We both bought each other watches because I promised him I would buy him a Tag Heuer for his birthday/wedding present and he’s also bought me the Tag I’ve wanted for about 10 years 🙂 We aren’t normally ones for lavish gifts for each other, but our wedding day is special and we both agreed it would be nice to have a watch swap on the morning of our wedding!

The rings are here, the bridesmaids dresses are here, everyone has a passport, we have boarding passes and itinerary for the holiday, activities are booked, the meal for after the wedding is booked, we have all our thermals and ski gear (I say ski gear, I won’t be skiing as I’m too clumsy, but I have warm clothing!)

What else? We’ve paid the rest of the venue here for the party, I’ve been busy making decorations, confetti, saving glass jars, buying helium, making table place cards…. I THINK we are pretty much done and ready!

I had to buy three different cans of spray paint to spray the decorations as they kept being the wrong shade of gold, but third time lucky, eh? The table numbers are now lovely and gold, the cork board for the guest book is done, we practiced the wedding cake last week and bought the stuff for the final go. It’s getting very exciting now! I can’t believe it’s one week TODAY!

I’ve had my dress altered and it fits beautifully. When I walked into the ladies house, I saw my dress and was like “Crikey, that looks so tiny, is that going to fit?” and then she was like “but you are tiny! Your dress is a size 8!”

Sometimes I still think I’m that fat kid I used to be and it’s weird to see a UK size 8/10 (US 4/6) thing on a mannequin and have it fit me.

I’ve also FINALLY decided on which eye shadow palettes I’m taking with me. I am somewhat of an eye shadow palette collector (Mr AN will say hoarder) and I was looking for so long for the perfect palette. I’ve managed to get it down to the Tarte Tartelette in Bloom palette with a few singles from Anastasia Beverly Hills and MAC. Because I’m so pale, so called crease colours are often too dark for me, so I have to take a few of my own!

I’m still pretty nervous about the day itself as I hate being centre of attention and I hate having my photo taken; those two things will definitely be happening on my wedding day, so that’s awkward, but I’ll have to deal with people looking at me all day… :/

We have looked at the weather and it’s looking cloudy, so we are reallllllly hoping the clouds clear up and the Northern Lights put on a show for us! That would be so magical on our wedding night. I can’t wait for the actual ceremony in so far as knowing we only have a handful of people we truly want there with us, but the fact I’m star of the show? I could pass on that!

Once we get back to the UK we have a week to get ready for the party; I’ve tried to get most things done before we even fly out, so we aren’t too stressed that week, but we have a lot of desserts to make on the Thursday/Friday of that week! And Costco runs to do to get soft drinks!

I imagine some people will be expecting me to wear my dress again at the party, but I’ve never been one to do things because they’re expected of me, so I’ll be wearing my sparkly sequin dress and gold trainers because I do things how I want to. We are going abroad to get away from people who we don’t want at our wedding, so they’re only going to see pictures of my dress.

OK, I’ll rephrase that, there are plenty of people who we’d love to be at our wedding, however, there are a select few we didn’t want there, so the best decision for us was to elope so we didn’t have to invite these people we didn’t want there. The party is for everyone to celebrate with us, but we’ll know we had the private, quiet ceremony we wanted for our actual big day.

I think that’s it for my last ever wedding update!! Next time you hear from me, I’ll be a married woman! I can’t wait to be a wife and spend the rest of my life with Mr AN! Once we’re back and settled, I’ll share photos (what I can, most people in my family aren’t comfortable having their photo shared with the internet) – I’ll try and get one of me on my own, so you can at least see my dress and I’ll try and get some of Lapland in general, because it’s going to be so beautiful!

Speak soon, and I promise I’ll have something tasty for you to make next time we speak!