Love and Literature… Part 2

Dunstan and I narrowed it down to three photographers and met with them all. After a good night’s sleep and a day away from things we made the decision to go with Catherine Frawley of Lily & Frank Photography.

On top of her beautiful photographs, we really appreciated her willingness to trek across London to meet us. Her photography webpage was beautiful and the images she had there were really lovely, but her blog was a huge factor in our choice because it gave a sense of her personality, which was really important to us. It also introduced us to various sides of her work, which were really nice to see. For example, the excitement she expressed about a master class with David Beckstead really resonated with me.

There’s something wonderful about continuing the learning process and feeling like there’s a hidden depth to our abilities waiting below the surface. Also the posts about her husband made it obvious that she was going to ‘get’ what the wedding day was about. I still look at her blog and I like to think that we would be friends if we’d met in another context!

We also made a seating chart for the wedding that was inspired by one I saw on etsy (melangerienyc). We couldn’t afford a custom made one, and also didn’t know how many guests we’d have until five days before the wedding (some people are really bad with deadlines—and unforeseen circumstances (lost passports and denied visas) also played havoc with our list).

One of our favourite things was our ‘Guest Book’, a book of recipes my mum collected from all of the people invited to our wedding, which people were encouraged to sign. She called the book ‘Cooking 24/7’ (the date of our wedding).

I designed and printed our save the dates, invitations and programmes. These things weren’t high on the list of priorities, but they took a lot of time. Printing the invitations was my biggest headache and my husband rightly pointed out that sometimes it’s best to pay others to do the work—and he is by far the most frugal of the two of us. Our save-the-dates, an old LNER poster, actually ended up being the inspiration for the wedding (including the stag-do – punting on the river Cam).

We also had a last dance, to Nora Jones, Come Away with Me. This was my husband’s idea. It was brilliant. People gathered tea lights and stood in a circle around the dance floor while we swayed to the music. Then while we gathered our things, they lined the path over the bridge to the back gate with the candles in hand. We walked between the rows saying goodbye to everyone and then off to our house. It was amazing!

I worried about how much this was all going to cost. It was important that we truly entertain our guests, particularly those who were coming from so far away, but I also didn’t want to spend all the money we’ve been saving on a single day, even if that day is really important.

So here’s what we learned:

Book the important things first: we had big things like venues and the photographer sorted out a year in advance, because they were the things that were most important to book early.

Follow your instincts, not wedding planning advice: We didn’t go into this with a big list of priorities or themes or plans, like so many wedding planning sites (e.g. knot.com) and worksheets said we needed to. We didn’t sit down and map out themes, colour schemes, or ‘traditions’ we wanted to include, or events that had to take place. My mom really wanted the bridesmaids to match, I didn’t, I went with my instincts and she admitted later that I was right. I also found sanity in the world on bridal madness at the blog A Practical Wedding. I still read Meg’s posts because it’s about being married and getting married.

Use the connections you’ve got (even if you feel you haven’t got any): I kept seeing amazing weddings, only to find out that one friend was a caterer, another a photographer, another a seamstress, hairdresser, baker etc. We didn’t know anyone like that, but we knew where we wanted to get married, who we wanted to do the ceremony, and where we wanted the dinner. These decisions were dictated by places we had connections with (we got married at our church so there was no fee, although we made a donation to the church after the fact) and the same was true of my college.

(I’d worked with the catering staff before, and knew I could trust them, and indeed, the person I worked with was on top of all the details – down to the types of flowers to be used on the tables, and how our unorthodox seating chart was to be displayed.)

Be flexible: The thing I found most difficult was actually convincing people that I really wanted them to do whatever was easiest for them. We were really very flexible on almost everything.

Being organized helps others: I made spreadsheets, for us, the caterers, for the groomsmen, bridesmaids, readers, ushers, and the families with a full list of contact details on all of them. I sent these in advance because I’ve been to weddings where the bride was too consumed with things in the days leading up to the wedding to be clear about what she needed people to do when and where they could go with questions. This also meant that people basically knew what they needed to do and if something didn’t happen or went wrong, they had the knowledge and the power to make decisions. They also knew my aunt was in charge on the day so they went to her with questions about things. Maybe things went wrong, if so, we didn’t hear about it.

Dunstan: There were multiple spreadsheets involved in the wedding planning. I thought it was a little over the top at first, but when you think of the number of guests, and things to keep track of like dietary requirements and thank yous for presents, it’s really essential.

Have someone take care of things on the day: There was no way we could afford to hire someone to coordinate our wedding day (the thought never crossed our minds). It was OUR wedding and it was a WEDDING for heaven’s sake, not an ‘event’. We organized things in advance with the caterer, the baker, the disco, etc. and put it all in spreadsheet and list form and handed it all over to my aunt who had full decision-making power on the day. In the end, a few things cropped up (some wilted flowers in the flower arrangements, some chairs out of order, and an extra guest at the dinner (the catering staff were great about this and dealt with it immediately)). It was wonderful for my aunt to be involved and it was fantastic for my mom and me to enjoy the day without worrying about whether things were going right.

Hire people you trust and let them do their jobs: We trusted the people we hired to do what they were being paid to do and they came through for us. We didn’t hire the least expensive people we could find, we hired people that were in our budget and whom we met and trusted. Notice it’s about trust, not about liking people. The caterer started to drive me a bit mad with questions about things I didn’t care about, but she knew her business, kept me informed, worked hard to make our day nice and did her job. That being said, Catherine, our photographer was both trustworthy AND likeable. It’s hard not to think of her and Lily as friends after spending so much of our wedding day with them.

Dunstan: The best example of this is the photographer – we were torn between two at first, but although the other one was a bit slicker and more talkative, we went with the person who took the best pictures, and she turned out to be wonderful!

Decide to be relaxed: I know this sounds crazy, but I think it really helps to be intentional about letting go of the wedding. I had organized my heart out and 10 days before the wedding there was nothing else to do, so I went to Bath with my best friends from Uni and had a wonderful weekend away. The days leading up to the wedding were spent getting my own research done, and as the wedding guests began to arrive we let go and had fun. During the stag-do our group of women decorated the church, after the rehearsal we had family and friends from abroad join us for a barbeque at the pub where Dunstan and I first met, and we enjoyed being in the community we’d always dreamed would exist for the few fleeting days and hours they were all together.

That being said, I wasn’t sure I’d actually be relaxed on the day, so I purposefully built in breakfast with our parents on the morning of the wedding, because I knew they would be a calming presence for us –and they were!
I also made sure that I built in more time than people said I’d need to get ready. That meant I took some time when I got back from the hair salon to be alone. It wasn’t easy to do with a house full of women and people wanting to get ready and to help. But it was really important. I wrote my fiancé a note, I read the card he’d left for me and I had a moment to be thoughtful, intentional, prayerful about the afternoon. It also gave me time to notice that his trousers were still sitting on the chair (I’d been planning to iron them and forgot to hang them back up so he was wandering around town in borrowed trousers held up with a hairband!)! And then the whirlwind of getting ready began.

Dunstan: Hmm, the trousers. I immediately assumed I was the one who lost them. I was glad to find that it wasn’t my fault, but more glad to get the trousers back in plenty of time for the ceremony!]

Being intentional about being relaxed meant that I laughed a lot and had fun getting ready. My only regret was that we rushed to get everyone to the church on time and in fact it meant I didn’t have the time with my mom that I had wanted even though we did HAVE the time (maybe this is one problem with giving people schedules ).

In the end it is the marriage that matters: Some things went wrong but we just went with the flow. The music I walked into wasn’t what I had expected, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were surrounded by our far-flung community for this one day in order to celebrate this new family we were creating and in that light none of the details, as nice as they were, mattered. (I expected Wagner, but the cellist hadn’t finished her piece and I felt like it was daft to stand there having everyone stare at me so my dad and I decided we’d walk).

Thinking about “us”: I worried about how this wedding was going to reflect “us”. So many brides writing posts just like this talked about this “us” factor, and that’s actually really hard to get your head around until it happens. In the end, we did what we thought was easy and cost effective and fun, and that made it ‘us’. We chose things we liked, and again, that made it ‘us’. Black forest gateau with a marzipan layer at a wedding? We liked it – it was ‘us’. Homemade flowers and no bridesmaid bouquets—I liked it and it was ‘us’ because we made them together.

So far, this has all been about the ‘stuff’, but the thing that was most important and often seems to get lost in these bridal blogs is that REAL event that takes place – the marriage. And it was THIS that was most ‘us’ and most important. We chose some silly, some esoteric (we study Greek and Latin), and some deeply meaningful elements for the ceremony that reflected the way we felt about each other, the occasion and our feelings about life on this side of being married. Each of these elements somehow jived with us. If it was corny and sappy it was out, because that’s not us, but over-the-top goofy (a poem I’d known since childhood), beltingly loud hymns, loaded pieces of ancient poetry, and words that reflected our own feelings about marriage (which, by the way, came to the fore during our pre-marital discussions with each other at the suggestion of our minister) were all there. And so were the people we cared most about. It was important to us that people in our lives not only witnessed but participated in our wedding. Sisters, brothers, sisters-in-law and close friends each gave something of themselves in the service – music, readings, prayers. And it was this – seeing them offer these bits of themselves—that made it ‘us’. Because ‘us’ is bigger than Dunstan and me, it is the community that we had brought together, for that one brief day, and that continue to sustain us despite being spread across the world.