Time to be more me: Wedding Saga continues

Organising, Personal Experience, Wedding

I think, maybe I am learning that when is comes to the world of weddings that people including myself get swept up into being a bride. Bridal this, wedding that. The ideal wedding and the perfect bride.

Every bride looks beautiful and that is because they are happy. Happiness makes everyone radiant. It shine through them and make you smile.

A lesson to us all.

Matchy matchy poo poo

Everything that is not me.

I am constantly striving for this bridal perfection when it isn’t nessesary. If it’s not me then why am I entertaining it.

I think that it is easy to become a bride instead of just being you! Maybe a perfect version of you, in the photos. I am not saying that you have to look like yourself if you don’t want to. I am just saying it easy to get sucked into a theme or a look just because everyone is doing something.

Social media has a lot to answer for but at the end of the day it’s you making the decisions and you paying the bills. Pinterest made me do it is a common theme.

I keep looking at nail varnish! How silly am I. Pale nudey shades that are are really pretty and delicate but not me. I am a bright colourful person trying to pale myself down.

Not any more.

I know I agreed to the white dress even though I would prefer to be dressed in this beautiful creation but it was a request from the groom. Plus I never had ever had the budget for couture!

Ellie Saab dress

I love my dress

It suits me to a tea.

It isn’t the Ellie Saab dress I love but it is wonderful.

I won’t be having pretty nice nude nails. I am having a lovely plummy lavender for my legal ceremony and a pinky coral which is my absolute favourite colour for the wedding.

Obviously I may change my mind but I hope I don’t.

The wedding look

I will never understand why people strive to look the same and have the same feel of a wedding that they have seen a hundred times before. Don’t get me wrong I am totally inspired by other people’s weddings, I just want our day to represent us! So if our nieces and nephews want to dress up as ewoks so be it!

There are so many wedding trends that I do not understand. Prosecco walls? Surely someone has to stand there and fill them up no? Is this person not a waiter? Could they not just pass around the drinks and make sure everyone gets one?

Difficulties

It is hard when your family and friends have perceptions of what a wedding should be.

Bridesmaids in the same dress.

Just men doing speeches.

But I think explaining your look and vibe and including them in it helps. It also stops confusion.

I love a wedding, everything about it! The bride and groom then walking down the isle. The ceremony which is my favourite bit!

Confetti, oh how I love a smiling bride and confetti!

Food, drink and then dancing the night away with people I care about.

The wedding saga has to end, it will in four months!

It’s time to be more me.

Idle hands are the devils online shopping subscription

Beauty, confidence, Make Up, Wedding Budget

I have signed up to too many beauty / home websites. This pay day I had a ridiculous amount of emails offering me money off discounts, free postage ahhh. I want it all. my idle hands are shopping as soon as the subscription emails roll in.

My account looks healthy and my fingers start emptying it again.

I went on Cult Beauty filling up my basket with Zoeva brushes and Charlotte Tilbury makeup. When I got to a £100 of products I took a step back. What am I doing?

Stop the splurge

Yes I want to buy a lot of gorgeous things for my home but right now I don’t need them. I am not a shopaholic but there is something about a pay check that makes me want to spend money That has literally just entered my account!

I need to save

It’s not long till the wedding! This month has been all about paying for wedding deposits and payments. Blah blah blah. My savings are looking pretty empty.

Time for less outings

More walking ( bus fares add up)

Definitely no beauty, I have enough. I don’t wear much makeup so why am putting all this makeup into my basket? I am too susceptible to advertising and influencers. I do use all my skincare products but everything else is just money I could have spent on the wedding!

Idle hands

Luckily I also need to watch my diet! Which means less takeouts and premade meals.

As it’s a big sunnier I do want to eat better food with more veg and in the evenings I need to keep busy.

Idle hands are the devils online shopping subscription. They sit and wait for my pennies to roll in then they send me what I have always wanted but have absolutely no need for.

Yes I want velvet cushions with embroidered bees on, yes I need more plants! I just topped up my rather sad makeup collection with my Boots points. It really is the bare minimum and didn’t cost me anything however did I need it?

Plan

I need to be busier without exhausting myself like I did over Christmas.

I have so much to do so rather than spending my weekends completing tasks I am going to complete them in the weeknights instead. I will still schedule nights where I can just cuddle my best friend the sofa ( I wrote a blog on my lack of energy)

I will still relax when I need to, I won’t even look at my subscriptions this month unless Elizabeth Arden has an amazing deal on ( never going to happen).

I won’t delete them because I do have enough will power to stop buying them. This month will be a no buy month!

No spending on silly things

No make up

No skincare ( Cult Beauty I already miss you)

Do you have the same problem with pay day offers?

So obviously I bought the new Birchbox because Rock My Wedding sent me a naughty email and I wanted to try out half the items in it! It arrived within two days and I will try out the bits tomorrow when I go shopping with mum.

On Sunday I got a call from my mum suggesting that I had, HAD to buy the new Gatineau tanning accelerator.

“You don’t want to be a pale bride darling”

So thank you QVC for your special offers! I look forward to looking like a bronze goddess at our wedding.

So I failed!

But a few treats here and now are important to me not going insane with all the wedding planning.

Or so I tell myself.

What’s in your bag? My super unsexy backpack tour.

Personal Experience

Day 9, what’s in your bag, 30 day blog challenge

So firstly this isn’t my bag! It’s my good friend Abi’s bag. My rucksack is crap. When I used to run home it would always come unzipped. Once I was running and these things started flapping round my head, it was my jeans and half my cloths were strewn across the market place.

Nightmare.

Perfect half inched bag

Abi was moving to Australia and was going to through out her beloved bag pack that had gone everywhere with her. She was planning on throwing it away, I said I would look after it for her but it is the best backpack.

I will give it back I just need to find a replacement!

Anatomy of a rucksack

So starting with the front pocket I normally have my keys and head phones. Can’t do public transport without blocking out the noise of everyone else. Plus I have 30 blogs to write and the bus is the only time I have to write my first draft.

In my next pocket I have some essentials like my first aid kit! Hand sanitizers a few pens and my wallet.

So exciting hu!

Planning with planners

Then my main compartment I have my two bullet journals… my wedding one and my day to day one.

My pencil case, no idea why I have pens at the bottom of my bag. It has pretty much everything in it. I may do a mini blog on my favourite stationery and what’s in my case. You should understand that even though my case says Gryfindor I am a firm Hufflepuffion!

Warm clothes

It’s cold at the moment and my big curly hair doesn’t like hair dryers but to dry naturally so I have my blue snowboarding hat in it. So when I walk to the bus stop it doesn’t drip down my back.

I also have packed a jumper in there! I wear it to work but I get too hot on my way to work and also on the walk home. This is actually Gavs jumper and I am wearing it, I do love men’s clothes.

Makeup bag

I don’t wear a lot of makeup most days I wear just sunscreen. But if I go out or if I look like the absolute worst then I have my makeup bag. This is actually a pencil case from Primark. I can’t tell you how great it is. It opens out so you can see everything and I just love the colours.

My last makeup bag was a silver Elemis one. I have had it for about six years and it was just starting to fall apart. I hope my new one lasts as long!

Reuse

The last thing I have in my bag is a spare shopping bag well two. A plastic one and a very sexy string bag that holds an enormous amount of shopping. I love it. The plastic one is for meat and the string bag is for everything else. I also use any room left I have in my backpack.

I don’t have a water bottle as I am trying to cut down on plastic. So I just have water at home and work.

Summary

So my backpack is filled with such excitement. I actually loved writing this. It’s sad isn’t it. I love Abi’s backpack. It holds so much and when I run ( haven’t this year) and it doesn’t undo as I run.

The Proposal: A Gory Start

Make Up, Personal Experience, Wedding

So, if you have read my first blog you would know that I waited a long time to get here. Well today I thought I would share with you the proposal.

Which was a total surprise.

But makes me so happy.

I didn’t believe it.

I have been waiting a while for Gav to ask me to be his wife. And if he tells you he wasn’t nervous, he is lying. Not from me answering him with a no (never going to happen), but just what he did.

So, in order for it to be a surprise my lovely fiancé planned to propose to me on the most unromantic day of the year in the most unlikely place.

The reason: he didn’t want me to suspect!

And I never would have in a million years

I looked terrible!

Me with my Zombie friend and Zombie Frank

Gav has been saying he was going to get me a diamond surrounded by dolphins and deliver it by carrier pigeons. I hate dolphins (don’t ask) not a solitaire kind of girl and I abhor pigeons. So that ring he described is definitely not my cup of tea. He is a complete and utter tease.

This is one of the reasons I love him so much.

We are never bored of each other.

Gav did my make up

So the day…

My wonderful man proposed to me on World Zombie day.

Covered in blood, fake glass glued to my head, surrounded with friends on a pub crawl in aid of St Mungo’s Charity. We do this crawl every year. You get dressed up. March round London with a horde of zombies and raise some money for a great cause. Stop at a few pubs on the way and scare a few tourists quietly eating their dinner in a restaurant.

It is really fun.

We are the first proposal they have ever had… I wonder why.

I should have suspected when my friends turned up, but others, couldn’t make it.

He didn’t want too many people to know, they would have had big smiles on their face all day.

Frank dressed as a zombie

Frank our Frenchie had only been with us a month and he was busy bounding in and out of people, happy as Larry, we had all had a few drinks. Talked to many Zombies and was generally having a thoroughly lovely time.

Me in a scruffy t-shirt and jeans, big hair lots of blood on my face.

We gathered for a group shot somewhere in Chalk Farm, north London. Gav ushered a professional photographer over and asks him to wait. Then starts bossing us all around because he wants me in the middle.

Just after the proposal I am still in shock

I had no idea.

I got fed up and told him off.

“Stop being so bossy and get in the photo” are words I usher before he asks me a question I always wanted to hear.

Then he gets down on one knee

And I don’t believe him, I hear the words but they don’t make sense.

Gavin is on one knee with a ring in his hand

And I still don’t believe him, I think he is joking mainly because he presents the ring like this.

My severed finger engagement ring

Yes, that is a severed finger with a plastic cracker ring on it.

I thought it was a big joke.

Nope

After a while I realised he was actually asking and I loved it. I was elated, he had even asked my dad a month before. He said I can choose the ring I want but for me it wasn’t about the ring, it was about us. It is about us.

I did cry tears of happiness.

Emotionally it was a bit overwhelming, dreams coming true and all that. It was about love not romance.

Gav chose this Christmas cracker ring.

At Christmas we had been round his family and we had started our feast with this cracker and as this plastic ring fell onto my lap I said I do and proudly wore it for a week for a joke.

Gav kept it because he knew it would fit, he had actually thought about if for a while.

He truly is amazing, now we just have to find the ring!

https://worldzombieday.co.uk/world-zombie-day-london-2017-roundup/

https://www.mungos.org/

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Dysfunctional Planner

The joys of planning a wedding, travel and all that life throws at me

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