wedding rambles and a bit of christmas chatter

Haven’t done as much wedding stuff as I’d wanted to this past week, namely because I am at one of those “waiting for everyone to get back to me” stages. Also in a “waiting for my job to start” stage, because until then I don’t want to court the idea of things like spending money! We are one step closer to our marriage prep, which is nice—at our church they do it one on one, instead of as a group, so we just need to email the contact name we were given and see if he has time for us. So that is good, and David will be doing that today.

On the Save the Date front, free postcards turned out to be not quite free. Excited as I get about things like that, I like to do my research as I believe that very little in this world is actually free. And although I was willing to brush aside complaints about quality, I read one too many warnings about a semi-legal form of credit card theft to trust my details to the company. So it is back to the drawing board, literally—just waiting for some printers to get back to me with quotes before we decide if our postcards are going to be printed as postcards or printed as photos! And we still need to ask someone to design them... ahem. But as I see it, there’s no great loss without some small gain, and having to rethink options usually leads to a better solution. So other than being annoyed last week that you just can’t trust people, or at least internet businesses, that’s that.

One thing that is a weight off my mind is a veil. There is nothing worse than falling in love with a veil and then having to worry that it won’t work. One of my mum’s friends gave me the very kind gift of her wedding veil. But when we took it down to try on with my dress our consultant was very worried that the veil was ivory and the dress is white. And in the pictures the veil does come out looking very yellow, but as it’s taken under yellow light in a room with yellow walls, we weren’t sure if it was going to be a problem or not. So when it’s sunny, sometime in the spring I guess, mum is going to haul my dress and veil into good light and take a picture or seven so that we can see if the contrast is too great. The reason I’m not stressing, however, is that I just found some veils that are almost as good as the one I love on ebay and the prices are very reasonable. So it is a weight off my mind! And yes, I am girly enough to worry over my veil!

I’ve got a warm fuzzy feeling about getting married, most likely because David and I were talking about actual wedding stuff the other day. It is so nice to get his thoughts on things, because they bring me back down to earth and make me focus on what is really important, and it is just really exciting to know that he is excited and involved in wedding planning, even if he spends most of his time working on his thesis instead of fussing over invites.

Christmas is coming up and I’m starting to look forward to it. The one thing I’m really hoping is that neither of our mothers starts getting all teary about how we’re away from home for Christmas, because that will make it hard again, instead of just a fun experience. I wish we could be home, but I don’t want to focus on what I’m missing and instead just focus on what I’m getting—my first Christmas (ever) with David, a chance for us to start setting our own traditions, and a chance to spend Christmas in another country. It is so magical here already—when we go downtown there are pockets of carollers, lights strung up everywhere, and church bells tolling in the distance. Because the city is so old you really feel caught up in an Olde English Christmas play or something.

I am taking part in carolling and going out with the Saint Vincent DePaul society to sign some carols and hopefully raise some money. It is a good start to the Christmas season! We haven’t done much here yet, for one thing because I refuse to start Christmas decorating until advent, and because until I work we’re not going out to buy superfluous stuff like a tree and decorations. We’ve received one Christmas card already, but it was from Royal Mail advising us of extended post office hours...so I’m hoping we get more than that! I’m not going to do much baking, if any, baking this year as I don’t have an electric mixer or any pans (and the grocery store sells delicious cookies and shortbread and pies). We did get our chocolate advent calendars, however, so the sitting room is a little prepped for December. And that is that!

A somewhat poor quality photo of our advent calendars. David has chosen a retro design, but I went for the brightly-gaudy Cadbury's calendar, because I trusted the chocolate quality more.