Eloped (sort of)

For once I have a very good reason for not posting for a while. The OH and I got married!

We did it on our own in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. We did tell family and friends in advance so it technically isn't eloping, but I did it without informing readers of my blog, so for these purposes, we did elope.

The service was lovely and initmate. The mini-moon to the Napa Valley was fabulous (plenty of wine tastings and gorgeous scenery).

There is a slight downside to this story. We are now stranded in San Francisco due to this volcanic ash business. We should have left yesterday and at the moment the earliest flight available is 30th April, considerably extending the honeymoon. But I can think of worse things to happen - like actually going back to work, so we are making the best of it.

You Take the Low Road

and I'll take the train, and I'll be in Scotland before thee?

I'm off to Scotland for work today. I'm hoping I might see something beyond my hotel and the theatre foyer.

Then I'm heading south to the North which may be geographically impossible but makes sense to me. I'm there for my oldest friend's wedding, where once more I will a bridemaid.

2 down 1 to go (or 1 down 2 to go)

The first refers to the number of the summer weddings we’ve been to out of the three we are invited to.

The second is my mother’s perspective since her middle daughter out of three was married on Saturday.

The first wedding was two weekends ago. A countryside setting, with drinks in the parents’ garden, a marquee, a speech that name dropped Jacqueline du Pre and in sharp contrast, a DJ-set by my OH that involved a medley of Chas and Dave records.

The second wedding was my sister’s this weekend, which was a very different affair, but none the less still lovely. Despite being in the rain-soaked North, the weather was bright for most of the day. The little bridesmaids were cute, but proved the rule of “never working with animals and children”.

As the OH once said in a Best Man's Speech "Weddings are emotional occasions. Even the cake is in tiers". I came close to tears no fewer than three times during the day. The first was in the morning when we were all in our dresses ready for the photographer. I was banished to the kitchen to avoid setting my sister off, only to find that my other sister was already in there trying not the cry as well.

The second time was during the speeches, where my sister made the unconventional move of doing a speech, mainly with the purpose of thanking our mother for giving her away and how it was a shame our father wasn’t there to do it. The OH held my hand to see me through that, and luckily the Groom gave his hilarious speech next that cheered us up.

The third was when they did their first dance. My sister has a great love of show tunes, so it was “All Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera. Not a song I had any great love for, but again the tears started to fall. The Groom’s father was so overcome by this that he had to go outside.

The only bad point of the day was the Groom’s mother’s hair. For some reason known only to herself and the world’s worst hairdresser, her hair had been badly dyed purple for the occasion. It was so bad that on seeing from a distance, the Groom had asked why she was wearing a stupid hat! It really will be a blight on the photographs, but perhaps Photoshop can make it a normal colour.

We have a few weeks off now until the third wedding.

Dungeons and Depravity

Apart from associations with the-Ex who was living there when we split up and as far as I know, is still there now, York conjured up images of cobbled streets and tea shops, a refined, gentile place. This York was no where to be seen at the weekend. The York of this weekend was one of glittery 80s clubs, low quality champagne, Wetherspoon's pubs and feather boas that shed feathers at an alarming rate.

And a strip-a-gram who looked like Gavin Hensen made into a cube shape.

It was a lowest common denominator, cliche of an event. It wasn't my cup of tea and to commensate I took refuge in way too much of the cheap champagne because drinking is something I've had a certain amount of experience of, whilst standing on tables, showing my underwear was (and still is) outside of my realm of experience.

The one genuine (good clean fun as opposed to seedy fun?) part of the weekend was the visit to York Dungeon. We'd arranged to be the last tour in and have (yet more) champagne served to us in there. I'm not normally scared by this sort of thing, but even I was jumpy with nerves half way through it.

I love my friend and some of the other girls were great, but it did remind me why I'm more often, happier living in London than I would be in the North.

Still at least, I didn't bump into the-Ex.

Hen Dos and Don'ts

Hello. Apologies for the silence. I've been preoccupied with something and didn't feel like talking, even to myself on the internet, but I'm coaxing myself out of it and thought I'd post the overdue hen report. Actually there isn't really much to report, but I should write something.

The T-Shirt
At 6am in Newcastle airport, wearing a t-shirt printed with the slogan "Hen Do" was actually pretty subtle. There were girls in tutus, a large party dressed in what I hope was meant to be bad taste and several stags in silly garb. We also had to wear it for our "big" night out on the Saturday. Again, it was pretty tasteful compared with the hens in bondage, the stags as superheros and the cowgirls.

The Accommodation
It really wasn't as bad as my sister had feared, except (and this is probably a pretty big except) there was an overwhelming smell in the corridors that I can only describe as chemical fish. We never quite managed to work out what it was or where it was coming from, except it wasn't so bad on the day that the cleaners didn't come round, so we thought they might be using some fish-based detergent.

The Pool
Before I went I was on an excercising binge and it continued well into the first day of the trip when I swam loads and tried to start an aqua aerobics class in the pool. My plans to get up early for morning swim were scuppered not by too much alcohol, but by the policy of locking the gates to the pool until 10am.

There really wasn't any scandal or gossip. There weren't any fallings out although by the time I came home I was looking forward to some time to myself. I'm off on another one this weekend though, this time to York.

Vive España (Part 2)

Tomorrow I’m off to Spain. Not to congratulate the team in person on their football win, but for my sister’s hen do.

Our destination isn’t Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville or any other place that I’d have welcome the chance to go to. Our destination is the Costa del Sol.

Months ago when it was being planned, my sister’s opening line about it was “Now I know this won’t be your kind of thing but…” Of course, I was always going to go, although jokingly I did say that I couldn’t guarantee that I would enjoy myself.

I was looking forward to it (you’ll notice the use of the past tense here). A few days in the sun with my sisters (and a few complete strangers) sounded quite nice. Even on the Costa del Sol, I should be able to have sangria and tapas.

Then last week, my sister informs me that she has had some t-shirts printed with “D’s Hen Do 2008” and mine has the word “Bridesmaid” on the back. I questioned the need for the year on the t-shirt as it implied that it might be an annual event but they had already gone to print. Apparently we are all wearing our t-shirts on the journey. “At least you won’t get lost”, smirked the OH.

The Hitched Hitch

The wedding season is upon us again. I can tell because the stall near work that once sold fruit, then starting selling t-shirts, it now selling pashminas.


My summer is being dominated by weddings. The OH is best man at one in August. Then I'm bridesmaid for my sister and my oldest friend. With hen weekends and visits for dress fittings, its costing a scary amount - more than our week's holiday in San Francisco, in fact.


So I've been worrying about how I'm going to pay of it all, but reasoning that some of it at least should be fun.

Then I get an email from my sister, distraught.

The hotel she had booked to hold her reception has been sold to another company and is closing for refurbishment. She has had this venue booked for a year. Nobody there told her this was happening. She found out by chance because a friend went there for lunch and overheard staff talking about the takeover. Quite when they were planning to tell her if her friend hadn't stumbled upon this, we don't know.

Tomorrow she has a meeting with the venue to discuss what can be done. I hope some alternative can be found, otherwise its looking like all going back my mother's for the reception. And as much as my mother does put on a lovely a spread, that is certainly not what my sister wanted for a her big day.

Wedding Woes - the Jewellery

I need a simple bead necklace to go with my dress for the wedding. It should have been easy. It wasn't. I looked in every shop in the West End and no avail. You'd have thought a simple, elegant string of black beads would have been easy to find. But there were none to be had. Not without dancing plastic unicorns or disks the size of my hand attached to them. Not the graceful look I was aiming for.

I did used to have the right necklace but I fiddled with it too much and it snapped. Of course, I left it until the last day to try to find a replacement, but as I've said, I thought it would be easy. So now I've packed every necklace I own in the hope that one will pass muster tomorrow. Otherwise I will have to hope that my bare neck will pass as alluring, as if I'd done it on purpose, rather than been let down by shops again.

Wedding Woes - the Card

Its the first of my weddings tomorrow (as a guest that is). Today, I had to buy a card, so I went to Paperchase. It should have been easy. Paperchase has never let me down before, with its range of modern, tasteful and inoffensive designs. But not this time.

There was a woeful lack of choice - just 3 wedding cards. Traditional wedding cards have been squeezed out. They are now competing for shelf-space with same-sex marriage cards (Mr and Mr, To the Two Brides etc). Now I don't begrudge the civil ceremony partnerships (to give it the official title, not much used on the greeting cards though) and I can see why Hallmark et al must have been rubbing their hands in glee at the possibility of the whole new range of cards needed.

But that wasn't all.

There also wedding invite acceptance cards, wedding 'regret' cards (none of which had the honesty to say 'I'm not coming because I'm going broke with all these weddings') and a 'Thank You for being a great Flower Girl' card. Then worst of all was the 'Woo Hoo, the Divorce Came Through' card. Is there really a market for this? Would a 'card left blank for your own message' not suffice for this occasion?

Anniversaries however had twice as much space so perhaps I should have just waited and send them a card for their anniversary?

Dress Dilemma

When we moved and I looked at my clothes, I was shocked my how many I own and was convinced that I possibly didn't need to buy anything ever again as I had something appropriate for pretty much every occassion. However, I was wrong.

In July, we are going to weddings on two consecutive Saturdays, both for ex-colleagues of the OH so there will be quite an overlap of guests. Hence, the dress dilemma.

Last year, I bought this dress for my friend Jo's wedding. I loved it, it is hugely flattering (I don't think I've ever thought that before about anything on me) and I got loads of compliments. But it was bought from Warehouse just weeks before the event - i.e. a very popular high street shop - so I was in a bit of a panic that there would be someone else there in the same dress. Fortunately there wasn't, but I'm still very wary of it happening.

One of the weddings in in the Midlands which I thought was going to make it an expensive event and I was going to have to put my pride aside and make do with either the one dress or dig out something older. (I have a lovely apple green chiffon-y dress that has seen me through a few other ceremonies but it does have a few tiny stains, the result of running around a garden with children and a drink in hand - they are probably only noticeable to me and my drycleaning man who hates a stain and has tried his best on it twice).

However, before our invitation arrived the bride to be emailed to ask if we would like to stay in the wedding venue as they have a number of rooms available as part of their package and it is free to us! Of course, we accepted. The other thing is that the couple in question have said they don't want any proper gifts (he sold his company for quite a few million so money isn't an issue) but just wanted a gift from each guest's hometown. So the costs associated with attending this wedding have suddenly plummeted so I could definitely buy a new dress.

But, I am still scared of the doppleganger danger if I buy anything from the high street and I don't exactly have a designer budget. I'm also wary of buying something that I'll only wear this once - after this pair, the next wedding we'll probably go to is in the north in the autumn so it will be a much colder affair. But then I do feel I should make an effort for someone's big day.

So I'm on the look out for something that I might wear again, doesn't cost too much but isn't from a shop that is in every town, and if at all possible goes with shoes I already own.

Let the hunt begin.