FOOD glorious FOOD

Well we just had our final wedding planning meeting with a lovely lady from Hedingham who seems to have everything that I've been stress heading about under control. Which is excellent cos I don't think I've got a brain big enough to hold all the disparate threads of everything we've booked, never mind process what needs to be done! Everything seems wonderfully in hand, which is good. As my sister says, it's not that hard organising a wedding, you just book stuff and they turn up.... unless you're a complete control freak like me!

An added bonus to our visit was that we got to try our wedding menu, which is being cooked by a lovely lady called Liz (from her company karat catering). When we arrived, we were shown into the Georgian manor house - in the picture here. This is where we'll be having our post ceremony drinks on the big day. It's a really lovely house, with beautiful gardens overlooking the lake at the back. I'm just hoping for a sunny day!

Anyway, we went in and were given our 'thrones' in the dining room round a mahusive table. Much like the ones you see in Jane Austen dramas (though I don't any more as Mike won't watch any more Austen with me. Our house is an Austen free zone) with proper posh antique furniture and scary looking portraits of long dead ancestors with big noses, hands in waistcoats, big beards and hunting dogs. Well, that was just the ladies :D (got to add one bad joke to keep up with Mike). I don't think I'll ever have another experience like it - our own personal chef cooking us our meal at a table you could fling salt cellars down.

I am tempted to pretend at this juncture that I've made it an all vegetarian menu. A selection of just salad leaves and fish would particularly annoy Mike's best man, Tom, and we did pretend for a while that he would have no big juicy plate of meat to eat but I couldn't keep it up. So he and my step dad Magnus will be happy to hear that there is a hearty meat option....

So out came our first courses - I had a salad of asparagus, jersey royals, radishes and mixed bay leaves, while Mike had the hot smoked salmon pate with lemon and parsley potato salad. They were both absolutely delicious and very impressive. Though a tad intimidating to eat surrounded with all those scary portraits looking down at us...

After devouring both, we were brought through our three (yes three!) mains to try between us. Mike said it may well have been the happiest day of his life.... he had a braised lamb shank with chick peas, tomatoes, smoked paprika, coriander and minted yogurt, which was, quite frankly, the biggest leg of lamb I have ever seen. My normal practice when someone is eating lamb is to spend the meal making bleating noises and talking about cute fluffy little baby lambs skipping joyfully across meadows, but I managed to restrain myself somehow. Anyway, Mike loved it. I think he was determined to eat it on our wedding day, until he tasted the Roasted Salmon fillet, which although standard wedding food fare, was the most delicious salmon fillet I've ever tried. Poor fishies. I think a lot of them will die so that our wedding guests may taste their delicious flesh. Have I converted anyone yet? Anyway, I was delightfully happy with my vegetarian selection, which was really really tasty. I had avoided anything with mushrooms, cheese or anything with 'spinach and ricotta' in the title, on the grounds that that's always what vegetarians get, and I was so glad that the vegetarian selection that Liz cooked was really good. I chose buckwheat pancakes stuffed with roasted sweet potato, red pepper, pesto and red onion with spicy tomato sauce. They were gorgeous.

We did actually eat all that. Foolishly, I was not thinking ahead to how I would fit in that wedding dress in my cupboard, or the beach pictures from my honeymoon. Nor was I thinking about the desserts.... vanilla cheesecake with strawberries and a chocolate torte with coffee cream. Despite the fact that I am a complete chocoholic, I didn't actually think the chocolate torte went with the menu - far too rich! So I've changed it to a lemon and lime tart, which I thought would go much better. I couldn't finish the desserts - how depressing!
All that followed by coffee too.

I hope I've whetted your appetite. The food was fantastic. Far too delicious for dieting through!! Aw well, I'm back on the beansprouts and lettuce leaves now :(

I hope everyone at the wedding enjoys the food as much as we did :)

lyn x

Suits for my sweet

With work finally slackening off a little bit, I've finally had a chance to sort out the suits for the grooms men. I will admit that the whole process of picking suits has been a little difficult, mainly because I'm total crap on decisions that are based entirely on aesthetics. Give me two car companies quoting for duties on the day and I can rationalise the right decision in a heart beat. Ask me whether or not the bridal party should have thin stripes on their trousers or not and I'm sunk.

Unfortunately Lyn thought that giving me help with this was cheating.

Nuts.

In the end, I've gone with tradition and stuck with morning suits. Despite the 3pm start time for our wedding. Apparently that's bad form and convention dictates that I should, really, wear a lounge suit. Convention can go hang for all I care; I'm not wearing a lounge suit.

Of course, the suit for the inestimable Mr Rhys-James is fairly obvious. He's very kindly agreed to be the Master of Ceremonies, which means that I need to get him one of these:

It's a bit of a cheat, I know, but...one down....all the rest to do.

In the end, after all of my researching through magazines and the internet totally failed to make the decision for me, I eventually decided on a suit called the Carisbrooke for the bridal party. Its definitely the right decision. Unless its not.

Seems fine. The waistcoats and cravats at the hire shop were a bit naff, so now I need to source those from somewhere else. I've already identified several possible vendors. Now all I need to do is decide on the colour and style.

Sigh.

Health and happiness to all

Mike

Amazing cakes

I've spent a long time researching wedding cakes. I'm quite sure Mike isn't really bothered about cake as he doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, but I really really love cake. Particularly beautiful crafted novelty ones. I think it might stem from when I was little and my mum (and my sister Avril) used to make me phenomenal birthday cakes in the shapes of my favourite things- a goldfish bowl, a teddy bear, a witches cauldron with black icing (for my superb Halloween themed birthday - my 11th I think). I remember Avril making and decorating her 13th birthday cake with a beautiful picture. I was usually allowed to stir and sift things, being far too small for any real assistance! I guess that's why I've become so obsessed with the idea of a beautiful wedding cake.
Of course lovely Deb at work makes the most amazing cakes, so she was naturally my first choice for making ours. Sadly, she will be on holiday at the time, so that option was out. She gave me some names of friends who might help, but they were all unavailable too! So eventually we found the lovely Andrea Barker, had a meeting at her house and she's agreed to make it. I just had to decide on a cake....

My first choice was the fantastic James Bond Wedding Cake:

Now even though Roger (my future father in law (who's a very nice man) ) totally agreed with me on this cake, Mike really wasn't having it at all. Not traditional enough apparantly. So in order to avoid a situation like this:

I thought I better search again. I thought, maybe it is the violence that upset him? Maybe I needed something more traditional? And what could be more traditional than a fairy tale castle? Aw, innit beautiful?

Perhaps this was romantic enough? But no. Too girlie, too pastel, too shiny... Back to the drawing board. I decided to take inspiration from one of our shared interests: Zombies. I wasn't going to go so far as to leap onto the recent American bandwagon of having a zombie themed wedding, but I thought he might just go for this utterly phenomenal cake:

Is that not the most brilliant cake you've seen? Despite it clearly being the best wedding cake on the whole of the internet ever, Mike wasn't having it. I think he just wasn't keen on seeing me with a chainsaw in my hands. And, to be honest, I was a little shy of showing the picture to the lovely lady who was actually going to make it!
So I gave up on my interests, and decided to just stick to what Mike likes. So some MORE searching uncovered this beautiful specimen...

See - it is gorgeous, it's not violent, it's not girlie, it's not pink, and it even encapsulates the things Mike likes (steam-punk, pocket watches). What could be wrong this time? Too shiny apparently. Ah well. Time to give up and turn to the demon drink.....

I'm too mean. We did on the end agree on a lovely cake design and Mike has really let me choose (within limits!). I'll not post a pic as it'd be nice for people just to see it on the day. Mike is a lovely lovely fiancée really, who has put up with my endless wittering on about cakes and flowers and shoes for a very very long time. Bless him :)

Lyn x

Rings

So Lyn and I have finally decided on the design of our wedding rings after a very pleasant trip to Hatton Gardens in London. Interesting range of shops, with an interesting range of sales people. Who, very often, spoke total nonsense about the benefits of their rings.


Like the shop that offered us a price for the rings, then offered to take over £1000 off the price, because 'we seemed nice'.


LIke the shop that told us that their 18ct gold was, gram-for-gram, heavier and stronger than 18ct gold from other shops.


Like the shop that went to considerable lengths to convince us that a German-machined ring was significantly superior to rings machined in Hong Kong (as if we were discussed precision-made components for a jet fighter or something!)


Very quickly, Lyn and I came to opinion that if it fulfilled these criteria, then it was fine:


1) It should be ring shaped
2) It should be metal
3) It shouldn't cost the same as a deposit on a house


In then end, we picked a two-tone ring in white gold and rose gold, which we both really liked.




The precise design will be revealed on the big day!


Anyway, that's enough babble from me. Hope everyone's staying hale, healthy and hearty!


Mike

Bridesmaids' dresses

It's been ages since we've updated - very lax. I guess we've both just been really really busy. So I've sorted the bridesmaid's dresses which is good - I seem to have squeaked in at the last minute in terms of ordering in time! Well, for the dress I've ordered anyway. I had a lovely time trawling round Colchester with one of my bridesmaids, Jo, and found loads of dresses, some of which were frightening prom looking things, and some of which were really really lovely. In some shops, it was like entering a whole other bizarrely coloured world of sparkly weird dresses for 16 year old girls waiting to go to the prom.... very scary! Still, there were some really nice shops and I got a really good idea of what suits and what kind of thing to go for.

So I returned to the lovely 'Abigail's Collection,' because the people there have been so helpful. They recommended a really nice, elegant dress for my bridesmaids which I just loved, so I ordered it. It was in just the right colour too. I won't describe it too much cos I don't want to give away all my secrets! Sadly, I couldn't choose the dresses with my bridesmaids because Rachel and Avril are both in Scotland, and the shop had so few available appointments - Jo couldn't make the only time they had. I hope it all works out all-right. I'm sure they will all look stunning.

Now on to buy accessories! I have to decide to tiara or not to tiara. Can I resist the small girl inside me's desire to look like a Barbie doll princess? Hmmm...

Seriously, having bought four pairs of shoes for my wedding dress already, none of which are quite right, I'm looking forward to going on a shoe hunt with Rachel and Avril, both of whom I hope to meet up with in April. My mum recommended Dr Martins would be more 'me' and I tend to agree.... bright pink ones I think!



We'll post sooner next time!

Lyn x

Casino

So...I've finally managed to convince Lyn to let me have casino tables at the wedding. Jacqui and Andy had them at their wedding and, although I was delirious with the flu at the time, they were great fun. 


The big question is: which two tables should I get? My choices are stud poker, roulette, blackjack, chuck-a-luck, craps and Texas Hold'em (my favourite). I'm reliably informed that poker isn't a great idea as the turnover is really low, meaning that not everyone gets a go. Apparently chuck-a-luck and roulette are pretty much the same experience.. Craps sound interesting, but the rules are complicated (doesn't usually equate with fun).

Chuck-a-luck

That leaves me with roulette and blackjack (big fan :)). Or chuck-a-luck (for the novelty value). Or Texas Hold'em (my favourite). Or craps (dice games would be something new). Or stud poker (old classic).


Nuts. Back to square one.


Mike

Wedding Dress Shopping

So lots has happened since the last time we posted, which was far too long ago! I have mostly ben obsessing about dresses, and am now starting to get a bit panicy about how soon I need to order it. Apparantly some of them need 8 months to arrive, which is scary because it means I need to choose basically now, instead of just dreamily looking through magazines.

So I visited about 5 different shops, mostly in Colchester, which seems to be the home of Wedding Dress shops. It's quite nice them all being in the same place. I've tried on what feels like a million dresses, with Mike's mum very patiently waiting to give me advice about what looks best! Though I have discovered that anything too big looks ridiculous, and that corsets are my friends. And that there are some fantastically pink, sparkly and fluffy dresses out there. Nancy's been brilliant at helping me pick out dresses that will suit. Some of the shops I've been in are just lovely - wine and chocolates, my own private consultant and everything, and my own plinth to stand on.... I'd post pics but I need to keep some secrets! Still, I need to order it.

I guess the next step will be choosing accessories to suit the dress. Though there's nothing I like more than shopping for shoes. Except Mike, of course.

I'm looking forward to going shopping with Jo, one of my bridesmaids for those dresses too sometime next month :) It's fun being totally girly for once! Wonder if Mike'll run a mile if I wear Doc Martins going up the aisle?

Lyn :)