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The Week Before
01 September 2011
I think I was a fairly relaxed bride-to-be. I’ll bet that a lot of us think this, but to be honest our friends and family would probably tell a different story… however it’s me telling this particular story, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
I will, however, readily admit to turning into a bit of a stress-head in the week before the wedding...
The thing that tested my stress levels the most was the dress fitting I’d had recently. I’d chosen Francesca by Jenny Packham, and it had been about 9 months in the making. Now I may be slightly taller than average (about 5ft 8), but I wouldn’t describe myself as a giant. At no point in the run up to ordering the dress was anything said about my height, and I assumed that (as is usually the case) the dress would be a very long standard length. So I bought some pretty shoes with a 3-inch heel, and waited for the dress to arrive. Here’s the dress and the shoes I bought:
One rainy evening, I ventured off with excitement to have the first fitting of my dress. I took my shoes and accessories, and was thrilled to see my dress again. Once I tried it on, I was so pleased that it fit! With a big smile on my face I stepped into my shoes… low and behold the flaming dress was too short. Ugh.
I had several discussions with the dress shop owner (who was lovely about it to be fair) and discovered that if I’d have wanted a longer length it would have cost me an extra £300. Yep you read that right. It would also take another 9 months to order a longer one. Realising that a change of shoes was my only option, I began the hunt for some shoes with a heel of no more than 1 inch.
I’m really not a fan of most wedding shoes – I think they are expensive for what they are, and are often styles that no-one in their right mind would wear on any other day. With very limited time on my hands before the final fitting, I scoured the high street shops for something that I liked, but no matter where I looked I couldn’t find anything. In the end, I went with the wedding shoes they had in the shop. I hated them, but they were the perfect heel height and no one was going to see them anyway. They were meant to be £80, but the dress shop owner let me have the (nearly new) samples for £30 which happened to be in my size. Bargain. Our photographer actually managed to get some nice pictures of them:
Ok so they aren’t so bad, and for £30 I can’t complain. They were also extremely comfortable which was an added bonus!
We were getting married on a Saturday, and luckily the preceding week had a Bank Holiday Monday. I was in work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but took the Thursday and Friday off. As is always the case when you’re about to be out of the office for a few weeks, work was manic right up to the very last hour – as you can imagine, I was very relieved when Wednesday evening came along.
Thursday was spent having a couple of treatments at the Clarins Spa (House of Fraser, Manchester), including a facial and an all over fake tan. I’m a fan of the gradual moisturisers-with-tan, but I’ll confess I’ve never had a proper one done before in a salon. Looking back, it seems very risky not having a trial run – what if I’d ended up orange with just two days to go until the wedding?! Luckily it was fine, and no one actually realised it was fake. Result!
The rest of the week was spent sorting out all the little things that needed to be sorted. I made our table plan and card box from materials purchased from Paperchase, and I was really pleased with the end result (can't find a picture of the table plan unfortunately):
We were having a band in the evening, and decided against having a DJ for only an hour and a half. The only other thing I needed to sort before the wedding was various playlists as my iPod would be used throughout the day. We’d need soft background music for the post-ceremony drinks and during the meal, something for between the band’s sets, and music to play after the band had finished. No problem, I had plenty of time right?
I will, however, readily admit to turning into a bit of a stress-head in the week before the wedding...
The thing that tested my stress levels the most was the dress fitting I’d had recently. I’d chosen Francesca by Jenny Packham, and it had been about 9 months in the making. Now I may be slightly taller than average (about 5ft 8), but I wouldn’t describe myself as a giant. At no point in the run up to ordering the dress was anything said about my height, and I assumed that (as is usually the case) the dress would be a very long standard length. So I bought some pretty shoes with a 3-inch heel, and waited for the dress to arrive. Here’s the dress and the shoes I bought:
One rainy evening, I ventured off with excitement to have the first fitting of my dress. I took my shoes and accessories, and was thrilled to see my dress again. Once I tried it on, I was so pleased that it fit! With a big smile on my face I stepped into my shoes… low and behold the flaming dress was too short. Ugh.
I had several discussions with the dress shop owner (who was lovely about it to be fair) and discovered that if I’d have wanted a longer length it would have cost me an extra £300. Yep you read that right. It would also take another 9 months to order a longer one. Realising that a change of shoes was my only option, I began the hunt for some shoes with a heel of no more than 1 inch.
I’m really not a fan of most wedding shoes – I think they are expensive for what they are, and are often styles that no-one in their right mind would wear on any other day. With very limited time on my hands before the final fitting, I scoured the high street shops for something that I liked, but no matter where I looked I couldn’t find anything. In the end, I went with the wedding shoes they had in the shop. I hated them, but they were the perfect heel height and no one was going to see them anyway. They were meant to be £80, but the dress shop owner let me have the (nearly new) samples for £30 which happened to be in my size. Bargain. Our photographer actually managed to get some nice pictures of them:
Ok so they aren’t so bad, and for £30 I can’t complain. They were also extremely comfortable which was an added bonus!
We were getting married on a Saturday, and luckily the preceding week had a Bank Holiday Monday. I was in work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but took the Thursday and Friday off. As is always the case when you’re about to be out of the office for a few weeks, work was manic right up to the very last hour – as you can imagine, I was very relieved when Wednesday evening came along.
Thursday was spent having a couple of treatments at the Clarins Spa (House of Fraser, Manchester), including a facial and an all over fake tan. I’m a fan of the gradual moisturisers-with-tan, but I’ll confess I’ve never had a proper one done before in a salon. Looking back, it seems very risky not having a trial run – what if I’d ended up orange with just two days to go until the wedding?! Luckily it was fine, and no one actually realised it was fake. Result!
The rest of the week was spent sorting out all the little things that needed to be sorted. I made our table plan and card box from materials purchased from Paperchase, and I was really pleased with the end result (can't find a picture of the table plan unfortunately):
We were having a band in the evening, and decided against having a DJ for only an hour and a half. The only other thing I needed to sort before the wedding was various playlists as my iPod would be used throughout the day. We’d need soft background music for the post-ceremony drinks and during the meal, something for between the band’s sets, and music to play after the band had finished. No problem, I had plenty of time right?
