Wedding complete

We did it. We went up to Scotland, and we got married!

(Settle in, this turned into a long one!)

Last week, we packed up the Ioniq 5 with our holiday suitcase and our wedding ‘costumes’ and headed off on our 3.5 hour drive. 50 minutes into the drive, we realised we’d left the wedding cake in the fridge! After a quick debate we decided we couldn’t just leave it because it had been made for us as a gift by a family friend (who is trying to start a cake-making business!), and we’d not be home for a week, so it’d be no good by then! And so we turned back home and added a nice little 2-hour loop to our journey!

I blame Fiancé for this! I clearly remember going to use the loo before we were leaving and remembering about the cake – thinking that we’ll need to repack the car – once I got downstairs, Fiance asked me something and that pushed the thought out of my head because when I’m stressed with packing for a trip, I can’t think more than one thing at a time! I clearly remember saying to him, “I had something important to tell you, but now you asked me that I can’t remember it.”

The cake was delicious, and we were glad we went back for it! I just wanted a simple “semi-naked” vanilla sponge, and she made it with 4 layers with a perfectly proportioned buttercream to jam ratio, so it wasn’t too sweet. We decided to decorate it ourselves on the morning before the wedding with edible pressed flowers, because we needed to transport it on the long journey the day before, and I wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up if we put them on earlier. I say ‘we’ decorated it, Fiance ended up doing it (while watching Murder, She Wrote in our Days Inn hotel room) because I was too busy trying to curl my hair!

Lovely car

Wedding aside, this trip was also momentous because it was the first big drive in the new car! I generally hate driving – always have, always will! – But I hate driving a lot less in the Ioniq 5. We broke up the drive so we could swap drivers, and my legs of the journey were actually fine. I think this is the least stressed I’ve been driving; my watch didn’t tell me to relax once! It helps that it’s a nice drive with lots of it quite scenic through the Yorkshire Dales, and that the further north you go, the less horribly crowded the roads seem to be! I also found that that the cruise control and lane assist helped to ease the number of things I am trying to focus on so I can be more alert to what all the other drivers are doing – and that the adaptive driving has quicker reaction times than me when some dickhead pulls out into my lane without bloody indicating!

We managed to find ultra-fast charges along the route, so that turned out to be quite easy, except for some “quirks” with the car and different types of chargers, and once, where a few chargers seemed to be broken. We did pay to charge more than we really needed to, but we are still learning how much we can trust the estimate range when doing motorway driving, and I’m afraid of getting stuck somewhere with a charger that won’t work! Overall, I suspect we spent the same, if not more, on electric charging than we may have done on petrol for the old Fiesta! It’s very expensive to use those things compared to slow charging at home.

Overall, though, the Ioniq 5 made the whole journey so much more comfortable and pleasant than it would have been in the old car. It was a lot of money, but we’re both now convinced it was well spent because we love it! Oh, also, it did rain a lot at one point, and we were very thankful that we got the new model that has a rear wiper!

Anyway, enough about our wonderful car… back to the wedding.

So many questions!

We stayed overnight at Gretna Green Services in the Days Inn, and so had a very un-special service station breakfast. It did feel like a strange way to start the day, as I did starting to prep my hair in a dingy little hotel room!

Once we got to our venue, though, the whole thing just became a whirlwind. We’d decided to have a very simple wedding with just our immediate family, with none of the traditional fuss. I wasn’t quite prepared for the barrage of questions the coordinator at the venue had for me when we arrived – they wanted a table plan, a list of the meal ordered, what music we wanted to play at various points, where to put the cake and when to cut it, where did I want to get ready… all things I’d honestly not thought about (and would have been nice if they’d asked before!). I didn’t even know it was a “thing” to have music playing while you sign the papers with the registrar! (I don’t think they did either because we had the piper!)

We don’t really have a song as a couple… other than joking about St. Elmo’s Fire by John Parr, not because it’s romantic but because the radio station we listen to after our morning alarm clock (Smooth Radio) plays it so much! And we once looked up the meaning of it! Not quite the vibe for the moment, though, we thought.. it definitely would have made me laugh! The theme tunes to Corner Gas or Deep Space 9 – both of which we always sing along to (yes, you can sing along to DS9!) – also didn’t seem appropriate!

Thankfully, I listen to quite a bit of instrumental stuff on Spotify while I’m working, so I could just tell them to play pretty much anything from Vitamin String Quartet, but in particular any of their wedding albums (which I was fairly sure didn’t include their version of WAP or Unholy!). That worked out well and provided a bit of fun as everyone tried to work out what the song was during lulls in conversation at dinner!

Quiet chaos

Once all those questions were answered, I could finally start getting ready, with about an hour and a half before the registrar was going to arrive. At this point, there was also no sign of my family despite telling them when to arrive… they are typically late though, and my Dad just had a knee operation, and my elderly Nan is also not particularly mobile, so I wasn’t too worried as dealing with them would slow things down. I’d not heard anything from any of them to at least tell me they were on the way, but also my family are terrible at communication, so that wasn’t out of the ordinary either.

It was actually kind of nice to be by myself doing my makeup in the quiet, though I’ll admit it felt a bit strange. The wedding co-ordinator at the venue was absolutely lovely, and while she did keep interrupting me with questions (apparently the woman we’d spoken to when we arrived didn’t pass anything on, so I had to answer all the same things again!), she was very helpful. I don’t know if she took pity on me because I was by myself (and I later learned my family had arrived with my Mum stressed and in tears!), or because I was not doing a great job with my hair and it was painful for her to watch, but in any case it turned out she is an ex-hairdresser and offered to help! She did a far better job than I’d have been able to (not being able to see the back of my own head!). It was not in her job description to give me free hair styling, so I’m extremely grateful!

My family did arrive, but much later than planned. My Mum was really stressed out and crying because she’d missed being with me getting ready, and hadn’t had time to steam her dress or do her make-up. The dress thing honestly did frustrate me because if anyone had bothered to message me about what was going on, I could have given her the portable steamer I had with me (that I’d told them all about) and that problem would have been solved in 10 minutes!

I believe that what had happened was my Nan had an accident at their holiday cottage that night and cut her arm, and my Mum (since my Dad has a bad leg) had to deal with that, and do the laundry to clean bedsheets before they could leave. Mum’s stress levels would have been through the roof, and the whole morning must have been a nightmare for them. I don’t think anyone wanted to message to tell me what was going on and stress me out… so I was in the dark on all this until much later! (Again, this is very typical for my family).

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any time with my Mum and my sister before the ceremony. I do feel a bit sad that we were robbed of that, but you know, that’s life, and we don’t have any control over these things. It’s nobody’s fault, and at the end of the day, I’m glad I could have everyone there! As it was, I only saw Mum in stressed tears for about 3 minutes and my sister for about 2 minutes before everything had to kick off. She did burst into tears when she saw me all dressed up, which was sweet and took us both by surprise!

There was another issue that resulted from all this chaos! I had been in a hurry to get my dress on so I was decent for the photographer’s imminent arrival, and with the co-ordinator lady coming in and out, and her ending up doing my hair, and then the drama of my Mum arriving late, I didn’t get a chance to properly check my reflection and notice that I’d forgotten to put the flesh coloured control shorts on underneath my dress! The consequence of this is that with any light on my dress, you could see the dark outline of the blue plants I was wearing… and I didn’t notice this until much later in the day, post photos, when I had time to use the bathroom and look in a full-length mirror!

Extra annoying because I’d also forgotten to put on the something old and something borrowed clip-on pearl earrings that were my late Gran’s and handed down to Mum! I’m not superstitious at all, but it felt like the blue pants were really pointless without the earrings to complete the silly rhyme!

Ceremony

When the time came, I was whisked up to find my Dad outside the ceremony room. He was able to hobble down the aisle with me as our wonderful Scottish Piper played Highland Cathedral for us. It was quite a surreal feeling to see everyone in there waiting for me!

The registrar performed the ceremony. We just had the bog standard vows, and I was mostly concentrating on being able to recite back all the bits correctly, but I did still feel a little bit emotional. Although I had also noticed that Fiancé had not tucked his tie into his waistcoat! If only I’d thought to say something to him then, so we don’t have half our wedding photos with his tie loose and flapping around (frustrating, but also this makes me feel better about my pants!)!

We did the signatures bit, and then the piper played Sounds of the Shire for us as we walked out, and then we had everyone throw the biodegradable confetti on us (this was also something I’d not thought about, the venue had some for us!).

The family were all fascinated by the Piper, who was a lovely guy and looked awesome in his full regalia, and formed a queue to have their photos with him, which was quite funny as we stood off to the side! We then had our formal shots – all of these will have Husbands’ tie loose (I don’t know why nobody said anything, I’d forgotten about it with everything else happening!).

The Fun Bit

Then came the best bit of the day! Husband and I went off with the photographer to have our couple’s shots. I thought it would be weird to have our photos taken, because I hate having my photo taken usually, but it was actually really fun!

The photographer was a lovely guy and put us at ease right away, and it was honestly just so nice to be only the two of us away from all the rabble and just relax after the whirlwind!

We had him for a few hours, and there were loads of fun spots at the venue to have our photo taken, so we had a nice adventure down to the lake, played on the swing and went up to the top of the castle’s turret (where we found a wasp nest!). We loved it!

I mean, God knows how the photos are going to turn out. We did get the tie issue sorted out, but nothing to be done about my visible pants!

I also must share how gorgeous my wedding bouquet was and the flowers we had for the table! I absolutely loved them. We took them with us afterwards to our holiday lodge so we could enjoy them for a few more days, and once we got home, they were just about still hanging in, so I’ve attempted to press them. I spent most of my remaining day off trying to work out how to do that – it’s tricky with big chunky flowers like roses and peonies! I don’t know how well any of it is going to turn out (especially as it’s been boiling hot and humid in the UK!) – I am hoping I get enough good ones to make a pretty picture – if they look OK, I will share the result. I’m also hoping I don’t ruin all our heavy-bound comic book collections, which I’ve used as the press… I put a lot of printer paper in between, and I’ve already changed them once, so hopefully it’ll work out!

If I’d thought about things beforehand, I would have planned to send it off right away to be properly pressed by someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s also popular to get whole thing dried to preserve it but with our plant-munching cats, that’s not really an option!

Back up plan if I end up with nothing but mouldy brown flowers is I will create an embroidery piece for myself!

Lovely Evening

Our Wedding Breakfast meal was great too, absolutely delicious! One big advantage of a small wedding is that the kitchen only has to cater for a small number of people, so the food is likely to be better. For this reason, we felt safe ordering the chicken because it shouldn’t be typical dried-out mass catered wedding chicken! I had haggis-stuffed chicken wrapped in bacon, and I wish I could eat it again. I enjoy haggis; it was such a treat!

After that, we all just chilled out in the bar/lounge area, and everyone talked, and it was lovely and relaxed. Everyone was ready for bed by 10 pm, absolutely stuffed with food and a nice level of alcohol. Exactly what we’d wanted! We even got to bed early enough for Husband to get to use the claw-foot bath we had in our suite! He’d been very excited about that.

I don’t know what the family made of it all. I don’t think any of them had ever been to anything other than the typical big wedding with lots of guests and a party! We are very happy with what we chose to do, though, and aside from a few blips, it went to plan.

The best part of the whole day was when it was just Husband and I (and the photographer lol), so I think my absolute most perfect wedding would have been a true elopement just the two of us… but nobody would have forgiven us for doing that, and I think I’d have felt really guilty about it! If we’d done the expected big wedding, I’m sure I’d have been a lot more stressed and exhausted with more to coordinate, and so many different groups of people to talk to. This was the perfect compromise, and the castle in Scotland might have been a trek, but it did make it magical while still costing a lot less (I think about £7,000 all in)!

We also got very lucky with the weather and only had about 2 minutes of rain on the wedding day, with the rest of the week bright sunshine!

After we had a few days as a honeymoon after the wedding – a lodge on the coast, it was idyllic! I might share some photos from that later because I like having memories of our trips on the blog, and I am missing it now, I’m back at work!