My Wedding Scrapbook

I've been thinking of sharing the details of my wedding on my blog for quite a while now, and well, why not - my wedding was after all, an ideal, perfect wedding.

Ideal for us at least.

Now, to get the full picture I'll have take you back a little - about a year or so before our actual wedding day in fact, to mid 2010.

We decided to get married, mainly because family were hinting at us to get it sorted - after eight years together, I think they were getting a little impatient with us.

 So, I scoured every supermarket I could, and bought every wedding magazine I could lay my hands on.

I had notepads crammed with ideas, pictures, clippings and doodles - I knew exactly what I wanted and although we were on a budget, we were having the works.

I found a not too expensive, quite massive, full skirted "princess" dress and had the Vivienne Westwood sling backs with the blue heart on (as my something blue) to wear with it.

I had an evening hotel reception party and the ceremony in a stunning stately hall complete with beautiful grounds all booked, with a registrar sorted, organised and marker penned in.

The £900 photographer's deposit was paid, the florist had been consulted, the reception drinks, food and entertainment were all decided upon - even the kiddies sweetie bar was fully designed, right down to the correct, matching sweet colours.

We had two best men, four ushers, six bridesmaids and four page boys.

Even my hen night was all arranged - with an initial list of fifty ladies having to be painfully whittled down to a more acceptable number.

You could say, I like to be organised.

And then, very unfortunately, I became very close to loosing my job and finances, which were already limited, became so unsure that it was a case of either plough ahead with the wedding plans and hope things worked out, or be a tad more sensible, loose the deposits we had already paid but not waste any further money by cancelling everything.

And that's what we had to do.

We cancelled the wedding.

I tried to be very pro-active and positive, but having to sell the things I had already bought - including my beautiful dress and shoes - to try and help our possibly worrying financial situation - well - that was quite emotional.

And then my supposed wedding day came - it was a sad day - and then it went again - and I was fine.

I figured that these things happen and I'd get my wedding day I was sure.

And then one evening during the second week of July 2011 we decided to just do it - to just go and get married.

We would elope!

We told no-one and booked, very much in secret, a lovely little chapel - The Mill Forge in Gretna Green, Scotland, to wed us in less than a months time.

We posted invitations to our immediate family on the Saturday morning before the wedding, so that our parents, siblings and grandparents would receive them on the Monday morning, hopefully around the same time we were due to get married.

They basically just said - "Surprise! Guess where we are! Guess what we're doing right now!"

We drove up to Scotland on Sunday 14th August and had a lovely hotel room for the three of us the night before the wedding, and before we went to sleep we deactivate all of our social media and turned off our phones.

I think we were partly scared of the Wrath Of The Family once the postie did his rounds and everyone realised what we were actually doing, and partly, we decided that because we had come so far to keep the day just about us, we really should keep it that way for as long as possible.

And then the day arrived.

I was so nervous I couldn't eat a thing.

I had a hairdresser come and pamper me a little bit, and then I dressed and waited nervously, until, at 10am on 15th August we finally said "I Do"

I wore a simple, but lovely Monsoon wedding dress that I found at a bargain price, brand new on eBay and teamed it with some sparkly flat sandles.

The Husband and My Son wore smart grey suits with pumps and they looked lovely.

We had a fab photographer - Northern Lights Photography - travel all the way from Bradford for us and she took some amazing shots of the day - for an amazing price too.

My beautiful son gave me away

He was the ring bearer

And he was the best man

He was just perfect

Afterwards, we had a small table sectioned off in the hotel restaurant just for us, with an absolutely beautiful wedding feast set out.

Once we had eaten, we changed out of our wedding clothes in a little hotel side room, drove all the way back home, and my son went to sleep at Grandmas.

Me and the New Hubby had a coffee in our living room whilst we faced the music from our families

..... E E E E K ....

Then - we went to the cinema and spent our wedding night watching Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2.

It was an amazing day

We realised that all of the stress of booking things; the drama of having the correct table plan; of having the huge wedding party and not wanting to offend anyone plus the horrible financial strain of that one day just really wasn't worth it.

It wasn't necessary.

We had a beautiful wedding for the fraction of the price, and the only thing I stressed out about was thinking the false lashes I had on didn't suit me!

We absolutely had our ideal wedding.

And what made it ideal was simple:

It was the three of us

It was perfect