Among the many rules of womanhood are the immortal words “thou shalt have a hen party and lo thou shalt be adorned with large L Plates, plastic veils and sashes emblazoned with the words ‘hens on tour’”.
This rule has been written in stone for years and now that I ready myself for my own hen party, I am starting to shudder at the thought of the huge amounts of pink and plastic that will be ceremoniously attached to my £1 bargain bucket veil.
A tacky hen party is a bride-to-be’s right of passage but unlike most women before me I have no idea what I will be doing for my final goodbye to being a singleton.
Because my two bridesmaids, Gemma and Aimee, have mischievously kept the whole event secret from me. I know the date of the hen but I have no clue where it is, what we are doing and who is coming.
This lack of information is making my over-active imagination kick into overdrive with all manner of embarrassing, humiliating and too saucy to mention ideas tumbling out of my mind.
“They are your best friends, they know what you like and what you don’t like, it will be fine,” soothes the logical side of my brain.
Whereas the irrational side is remembering the nightmare hen nights I have inflicted on brides before me.
Lets just say a “butler”, copious amounts of alcohol and a tiny apron that left little to the imagination all played prominent parts in my friend’s last night of freedom.
Oh dear, I think I will have to lay in the bed I have made for myself - fingers crossed there is no stripper- gram there waiting for me.
And instead of worrying about all the cringeworthy plans my friends have in store for me, I should just kick back, relax and enjoy myself because this is the only hen party I am ever going to have.
Yes, it may be full of cheap tacky costumes and yes, I may be dressed up in all manner of questionable attire but it is my one last hurrah before settling down as a married woman.
So to all those women who came before me, stood at the altar of corny hen nights and held up their hands shouting “let’s party”, I salute you.
Monday, 30 August 2010
We all need help to survive the minefield of wedding planning
Counting the cost of a wedding can be pretty pricey.
The average bill for a couple’s big day has reached £18,500 and it is easy to see how people can be made to part with their cash.
With so many bridal magazines and TV shows around, it is hard not to get sucked in to feeling like your big day will be ruined if you forgo the “must-have accessories that will make any wedding one to remember”.
After months of trawling through pages and pages of expensive ideas, I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to be pushed around by bridal magazines anymore.
So I have decided to deliver my own top tips and advice to would-be brides out there who may also be drowning in a sea of cupcakes, veils and blue silk (hot colour for bridesmaid dresses apparently).
“Doves are this year’s must-have wedding accessory,” tweets one bridal magazine as they try to persuade you to part with hundreds of pounds. But here is my top tip – save yourself the trouble of ordering a flock of white pigeons and just look up in the sky. This will also save you from having to clean bird mess off your wedding frock.
“Princess dresses – feel every inch the bride,” proclaims another. Of course you’ll feel like a bride – it is your wedding day. Instead of being cajoled into the belief that you should feel like a princess, how about just relaxing and feeling like you, on your most beautiful day.
And finally: “Make sure your groom wears something to complement you on the day”.
Or how about you sit down with your betrothed and find out what he would be comfortable wearing and then look at ways to make both outfits work together? After all, your hubby-to-be needs to feel confident and happy in what he is wearing too.
After planning my own wedding I feel that I have done well to make my way through the minefield of “must-have” wedding ideas.
I don’t want my ceremony to look like it just came off the pages of a glossy magazine. Instead, it should reflect the personalties of my Mr and me.
So we’ve saved on “wedding essentials” and done what makes us happy, even down to the free yet gorgeous table decorations we made from flotsam and jetsam washed up on our local beach.
Ours may not be the most expensive and grand wedding ever, but every penny will be spent on sharing the things we love with the people we love.
The average bill for a couple’s big day has reached £18,500 and it is easy to see how people can be made to part with their cash.
With so many bridal magazines and TV shows around, it is hard not to get sucked in to feeling like your big day will be ruined if you forgo the “must-have accessories that will make any wedding one to remember”.
After months of trawling through pages and pages of expensive ideas, I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to be pushed around by bridal magazines anymore.
So I have decided to deliver my own top tips and advice to would-be brides out there who may also be drowning in a sea of cupcakes, veils and blue silk (hot colour for bridesmaid dresses apparently).
“Doves are this year’s must-have wedding accessory,” tweets one bridal magazine as they try to persuade you to part with hundreds of pounds. But here is my top tip – save yourself the trouble of ordering a flock of white pigeons and just look up in the sky. This will also save you from having to clean bird mess off your wedding frock.
“Princess dresses – feel every inch the bride,” proclaims another. Of course you’ll feel like a bride – it is your wedding day. Instead of being cajoled into the belief that you should feel like a princess, how about just relaxing and feeling like you, on your most beautiful day.
And finally: “Make sure your groom wears something to complement you on the day”.
Or how about you sit down with your betrothed and find out what he would be comfortable wearing and then look at ways to make both outfits work together? After all, your hubby-to-be needs to feel confident and happy in what he is wearing too.
After planning my own wedding I feel that I have done well to make my way through the minefield of “must-have” wedding ideas.
I don’t want my ceremony to look like it just came off the pages of a glossy magazine. Instead, it should reflect the personalties of my Mr and me.
So we’ve saved on “wedding essentials” and done what makes us happy, even down to the free yet gorgeous table decorations we made from flotsam and jetsam washed up on our local beach.
Ours may not be the most expensive and grand wedding ever, but every penny will be spent on sharing the things we love with the people we love.
A timely tale to help banish the scary thoughts raised by divorce stats
Wedded bliss – fact or fiction? I only ask because as I hurtle closer to the day of my nuptials I have read that 45 per cent of marriages end in failure. Almost half – a scary thought especially as my best friend and I gear up to make our wedded commitments over the next few months.
And this got me thinking – will one of us end up on the divorcee scrap heap? I ponder this scary thought over a glass of wine with my happily married friend and her even happier divorced pal.
“I had a huge divorce party when my papers came through,” she chimed gleefully.
“And it was far more fun than the wedding.”
“But you must have had some good times when you were married,” I asked hopefully.
After a slurp of wine she replied: “A bad day single is always better than a good day married.”
With the Anti-Marriage Party’s words still ringing in my ears I got down to the tricky job of helping a close friend to find a suitable reading for my wedding.
After a fruitless internet search and a desperate leaf through all the poetry books I own, we stumbled across the perfect prose for the wedding day. Hidden in the pages of a philosophical book written around the lives of Winnie the Pooh and his friends, was a tale that rang true to me.
The story depicted a teacher who was cooking food for his impatient protegee.
Finally, many hours after the food should have been served, the teacher presented his young student with his meal.
“This is the most amazing food I have ever tasted,” quipped a dumbfounded student, who then pestered his master for the secret ingredient of his delicious meal.
“Please tell me, I must know how you have made this so perfect,” he pleaded.
“I gave it time,” was the simple response.
After reading the passage I vowed to take that one, tiny word to heart and tend to my marriage with care and time, in the hope that I won’t become just another depressing divorce statistic.
And this got me thinking – will one of us end up on the divorcee scrap heap? I ponder this scary thought over a glass of wine with my happily married friend and her even happier divorced pal.
“I had a huge divorce party when my papers came through,” she chimed gleefully.
“And it was far more fun than the wedding.”
“But you must have had some good times when you were married,” I asked hopefully.
After a slurp of wine she replied: “A bad day single is always better than a good day married.”
With the Anti-Marriage Party’s words still ringing in my ears I got down to the tricky job of helping a close friend to find a suitable reading for my wedding.
After a fruitless internet search and a desperate leaf through all the poetry books I own, we stumbled across the perfect prose for the wedding day. Hidden in the pages of a philosophical book written around the lives of Winnie the Pooh and his friends, was a tale that rang true to me.
The story depicted a teacher who was cooking food for his impatient protegee.
Finally, many hours after the food should have been served, the teacher presented his young student with his meal.
“This is the most amazing food I have ever tasted,” quipped a dumbfounded student, who then pestered his master for the secret ingredient of his delicious meal.
“Please tell me, I must know how you have made this so perfect,” he pleaded.
“I gave it time,” was the simple response.
After reading the passage I vowed to take that one, tiny word to heart and tend to my marriage with care and time, in the hope that I won’t become just another depressing divorce statistic.
Dress dilemmas extend to the mother of the bride
As brides everywhere know, the dress is one of the most important elements of any wedding. But at my ceremony the ultimate bridal attire has been kicked to the curb by what one guest sees as far more important.
I am talking about the mother of the bride outfit.
Not for my mum is the stuffy, shoulder-padded and, dare I say frumpy, dresses and jackets that adorn many a bridal shop.
No, mummy Gordon refuses to wear “fuddy duddy clothes”.
But after months of searching, and with the wedding just a few short weeks away, she still hadn’t found “it”.
I have to admit I didn’t help matters with my own opinion of some of the dresses she tried on.
In an outer-body experience I could hear myself in the changing room of countless dress shops saying: “that one is far too tight, that one is too low cut and that one is very short – mum you are not a teenager you are the mother of the bride!”
My prudish ways led us to exhaust every shop in the wider South West and even a sprinkling of boutiques in Spain while on holiday.
Now the search turned to the Internet and that wonderful world of eBay.
Here my mum is in her element, hunting down bargains and looking at countless gorgeous gowns.
Even though her tastes change on a daily basis, mummy Gordon had her sights set on a very pretty number by designer Karen Millen. The problem now was making sure it would fit before she parted with any cash. Cue a sneaky visit to the nearest Karen Millen stockist to quickly try on the full-priced gown.
Looking gorgeous in the classy clothes my mum and I hot-foot it home and placed a bid on the store’s cheaper, yet still just as new, eBay counterpart.
With a thrill my mum realises she has bagged the dress of her dreams.
Finally, after months of the mother of the bride dress being top of the wedding agenda, we can get on to more important matters.
Now, how should the napkins be folded?
I am talking about the mother of the bride outfit.
Not for my mum is the stuffy, shoulder-padded and, dare I say frumpy, dresses and jackets that adorn many a bridal shop.
No, mummy Gordon refuses to wear “fuddy duddy clothes”.
But after months of searching, and with the wedding just a few short weeks away, she still hadn’t found “it”.
I have to admit I didn’t help matters with my own opinion of some of the dresses she tried on.
In an outer-body experience I could hear myself in the changing room of countless dress shops saying: “that one is far too tight, that one is too low cut and that one is very short – mum you are not a teenager you are the mother of the bride!”
My prudish ways led us to exhaust every shop in the wider South West and even a sprinkling of boutiques in Spain while on holiday.
Now the search turned to the Internet and that wonderful world of eBay.
Here my mum is in her element, hunting down bargains and looking at countless gorgeous gowns.
Even though her tastes change on a daily basis, mummy Gordon had her sights set on a very pretty number by designer Karen Millen. The problem now was making sure it would fit before she parted with any cash. Cue a sneaky visit to the nearest Karen Millen stockist to quickly try on the full-priced gown.
Looking gorgeous in the classy clothes my mum and I hot-foot it home and placed a bid on the store’s cheaper, yet still just as new, eBay counterpart.
With a thrill my mum realises she has bagged the dress of her dreams.
Finally, after months of the mother of the bride dress being top of the wedding agenda, we can get on to more important matters.
Now, how should the napkins be folded?
Is being thin on the big day really that important? Corset it is!
Getting hitched is supposed to be the best way to lose weight, according to new research. So why is it that just a few short weeks before my wedding I am struggling to shove my flabby bits into my dress?
It’s not like I haven’t tried to shift those excess pounds, but for some frustrating reason I am still the pudgy, round-faced woman I was when my Mr proposed. “I love you just the way you are and you are perfect,” he chimes at all the right moments.
But still the red mist descends and I spend my time worrying that I will be rolled down the aisle like a giant beach ball instead of glide down it like an hour glass-figured angel. In desperation I have bought a corset, which instead of solving all of my unflattering problems, has caused even more.
The contraption is more difficult to keep under control than a spooked horse.
I have wrestled with it three times since purchasing it and not once have I managed to fasten it all the way up.
So now I have the worry of not only trying to fit into my beautiful dress but also trying to wrangle my way into the corset that is supposed to keep me looking thin and fabulous.
And I am still left with the problem of my wobbly bits.
Maybe the answer lies with the people who released the research – I’m willing to bet my lucky silver sixpence that they are all thin and gorgeous and pride themselves on making ever-so-slightly plump brides like myself feel like the fattest belle at the wedding ball.
But sitting here pondering the dress size of the researchers is not helping me to squeeze into my wedding dress.
Time to be proactive – where is that shoehorn?
It’s not like I haven’t tried to shift those excess pounds, but for some frustrating reason I am still the pudgy, round-faced woman I was when my Mr proposed. “I love you just the way you are and you are perfect,” he chimes at all the right moments.
But still the red mist descends and I spend my time worrying that I will be rolled down the aisle like a giant beach ball instead of glide down it like an hour glass-figured angel. In desperation I have bought a corset, which instead of solving all of my unflattering problems, has caused even more.
The contraption is more difficult to keep under control than a spooked horse.
I have wrestled with it three times since purchasing it and not once have I managed to fasten it all the way up.
So now I have the worry of not only trying to fit into my beautiful dress but also trying to wrangle my way into the corset that is supposed to keep me looking thin and fabulous.
And I am still left with the problem of my wobbly bits.
Maybe the answer lies with the people who released the research – I’m willing to bet my lucky silver sixpence that they are all thin and gorgeous and pride themselves on making ever-so-slightly plump brides like myself feel like the fattest belle at the wedding ball.
But sitting here pondering the dress size of the researchers is not helping me to squeeze into my wedding dress.
Time to be proactive – where is that shoehorn?
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