Channeling My Inner Marilyn

After the tears had been wiped away and I finally got a grip on myself – in the grand scheme of things ( and again apologies for the slush) it was really about James and I wanting to spend the rest of our lives together, not about the lushness of our venue’s pot plants

I had a little confession to make to James at this point actually. The week we got back from Edinburgh while I had been addicted to surfing the world wide web for all things sparkly I had also had a little sneaky peak at private hire venues. Suprisingly there were not that many and the majority of them were London based.

There was one stand out though, a place called Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire. It looked beautiful on the website and was once the marital home of Vivienne Leigh and Laurence Olivier – how romantic is that?? even Marylin Monroe had stayed there many years ago……ah sigh at the Fairytale of it all. …

I had sent off for the details via the website which was a colour brochure, DVD and price list. It arrived a few days later and the brochure had plenty more pictures that were not on the site – and suprise suprise it looked even more spectacular.

Then I looked at the price list.

Then I nearly fainted.

Very quickly the Notley Abbey welcome pack got shoved to the back of my underwear draw and to the very back of my thoughts ( well kind of) and I certainly didn’t even consider telling James.
And there it remained for 8 months.

So on that dreary November evening I told James all about it. He called me a berk – I should have just shown it him in the first place and then at least we could have considered it together.

I did remind him what I was like though – look at the Tiffany fiasco. I hadn’t even seen this place and had immediately built up this whole day of gorgeousness in my head. Oh and Marilyn Monroe is like my favourite icon of all time and I wanted to actually BE Scarlett O’Hara since the age of like 10…. – talk about carrot and stick.

So I showed him the brochure ( he was suitably impressed) and then he suggested we watch the DVD. Good Lordy I was nearly in tears again -it was so darn lovely.

Hmmmm so now it was just the question of cost…..

Right from the beginning James and I had been adamant about paying for our wedding ourselves ( I don’t have any issues with people that don’t of course it was just our personal choice) and although both my parents and James’s Mum had been pretty insistent on being able to make some kind of contribution ( for which we are eternally grateful) the majority was our responsibility so anything over and above our budget was going to be a challenge.

Luckily mathematics is not my strong point and it transpired that I had added the VAT when I didn’t need too and only looked at Saturday’s in peak months – June, July and August. Fridays and Sundays were more reasonable and September was more reasonable still. So although it was still more $$$$$ than I think either of us ever considered spending we both decided it would be worth at least seeing Notley Abbey in person…….to see if it really was as movie star fabulous as I expected.