Body Confidence

Hi guys!

I’ve been debating since getting engaged whether I want to write this post, but I’ve figured that I should for several reasons. Number 1, I’m hoping that it will keep me motivated. Number 2, hopefully it can inspire someone? And number 3, I feel like every single person in this world deals with some sort of insecurity on a daily basis, and I feel like I’m coming from a really positive place now so maybe it can help people deal with their own issues.

My family have always been “nicely covered” as my mum puts it- I tend to go for curvy but quite frankly, it all amounts to a nice way of saying that none of us are naturally slim! But that wasn’t something I really noticed until I was about 14; I think that’s the age a lot of girls start to notice the media pressure and the difference in their body compared to other girls the same age – I’m sure it’s also true for guys! My friends were all quite slim, so it was when we were getting ready for parties etc. that I’d notice I couldn’t wear their clothes because they were too small, and I couldn’t buy similar clothes to them because you needed a flat stomach to pull them off. It didn’t bother me too much because I was quite good at dressing to hide my size (don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t obese! But I was carrying some timber).

The reason I lost weight is actually a little bit ridiculous, but regardless it set me off on a really great journey to getting somewhat comfortable in my skin, so I’m glad I chose to take on the ludicrous task of dropping 2 dress sizes in 3 weeks! So the thing that spurred me to lose weight was… a fancy dress costume. In year 12, me and a group of friends decided to go as characters from Shrek to our “Fright Night”. I was going as the fairy godmother (Shrek 2) and my friend Holly had the perfect dress! So I went to try it on… and it wouldn’t do up. Not even close. Holly said it was fine and we could find something else, but something in my head just clicked. It was almost definitely my competitive nature, but I decided that I was DEFINITELY going to get in that dress, whatever it took. I won’t detail my diet plan for those three weeks, because it most certainly wasn’t healthy, quite frankly it was dangerous! But 3 weeks later, the dress zipped up. (Before and after below)

After Fright Night, I felt amazing. I felt confident, I felt slim, I just felt like I wasn’t embarrassed of who I was for the first time in a long time. But actually this feeling stemmed from the fact that I knew other people had commented on my weight loss, so they must be impressed right? Which means I must look ok? Basically, my “confidence” was actually based on insecurity – it was entirely what other people thought of me. I still hated my body, and knew there was a long way to go. So I continued with the weight loss, but in a much healthier way! I managed to maintain it fairly solidly during uni (shout out to my gym-buddy Em for keeping me in shape despite the alcohol and takeaways) – I put on a bit of weight in third year when I discovered that I actually love wine as a casual drink, as well as to get drunk on! But still I looked pretty decent when I graduated. (Start of uni and end of uni photos below)

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it went downhill, but I’m pretty sure it started when we went to Florida. Obviously I put on weight while I was there due to all the incredible food (but also the incredible sized portions!), and then I think it just spiralled out of control. I knew I’d put on weight, but think I had what I’m calling “comfortable syndrome”. I was living with Anthony, I knew he loved me, everything was working out well with us living together, and life generally was pretty good! But I was also unhappy in my job (and surrounded by food while I was there), which led to comfort eating. This alongside the fact that I knew Anthony loved me for me and not how I looked led to me being bigger than I’d ever been.

The next turning point should have been my cousins wedding in January this year, and it was initially! I lost a couple of inches off everywhere in the space of two months (September-November), but then put on a stupid amount of weight over Christmas and was still big for her wedding. Then, I got engaged. Obviously, weight was something I considered from day 1 – I need to get slim for the wedding. Once we set the date for Feb, the plan was simple – lose almost too much weight before Christmas so that I could put some on and still look amazing for our wedding! But again, that didn’t happen.

So, I’m sure you have probably worked it out by now but I REALLY love food, and don’t really enjoy exercise. I force myself to exercise because I don’t want to make too many compromises on food; I literally cannot stress how much I love food. I wake up and plan dinner. I go on a night out and while I’m getting ready I plan what food I’m getting at the end of the night. I have had, and will always have, fat-girl-brain. But I’ve learned over time how to deal with that (by making healthier substitutions where possible, exercising harder if I know I’ve got a big meal coming up, and also just accepting that sometimes you’re allowed to eat and drink! There’s no point restricting your food and drink intake if it means you’re going to have a miserable time). I think what’s also key in this change of confidence is the shift in my attitude. I’ve accepted that everyone has flaws, and that my stomach will probably never be flat, and I will never have a thigh gap. But that’s ok! I also have a proportionally small waist, pretty decent boobs and bum, my skin is quite good and I don’t dislike my face. Writing that isn’t comfortable because part of me still doesn’t feel like I should like the way I look because it’s vain, and what if I see myself as pretty when no one else does? I still deal with these insecurities on a daily basis. But I think the way I deal with this is knowing that life is too short. I know that I have parts of my body that I love. And I know that with diet and exercise, I can love every part of me!

So that leaves us with where I am now. The short answer is, my body is not where I planned for it to be in terms of size/toning, but actually a lot further than I thought I was a week ago. I don’t seem to notice my weight loss as it happens, it’s very much a before-and-after thing, with nothing in the middle. I was getting frustrated the other night that I didn’t feel I’d lost much even though I’d worked my arse off for 3 weeks. Last time I did that I dropped 2 dress sizes! I was talking to Amy and Mel (cousin and sister, maid of honour and bridesmaid respectively) about it and they said I should take my measurements. That’s how I used to track weight loss and gain, but I hadn’t taken any since March. In fact, that’s a lie, I had taken them since then but they didn’t show any improvement (they actually showed weight gain) and it was really depressing so I didn’t track them. This is why I stopped measuring at all, because I didn’t want to be disheartened. But Mel and Amy kept encouraging me to do so, and it made a massive difference because it turns out I have lost weight, and a fair bit at that!

Now, I am SO aware that last year, I was in a similar situation – tracking weight for a wedding (my cousin Amy’s) and then put on a lot of weight over Christmas. So I am PAINFULLY aware that this Christmas is going to be hard. And January, for that matter. But I feel like I’m in a totally different place. I don’t hate the way I look now, so I just need to maintain it over Christmas, and then focus on toning problem areas. By focusing on my diet, I become obsessed, and then crave everything I can’t have. Not ideal! This time around, it’s everything in moderation. Mum has been telling me this for years, and I hate to admit she’s right (though she always is right in the end) but genuinely, this is the best I’ve ever lost weight, because I don’t wake up hating every day because I can’t eat what I want to.

Now we get to the part that I’ve had to get slightly drunk to decide if I’m going to do this. I have progress pictures. These are tricky for me because firstly, the person in the “before” pictures makes me feel so sick. And also, the person in the “now” pictures (they’re not after, because I’m not done working on me!) isn’t how I want me to be, but is definitely on the way. And there’s a saying, that you can’t see how far you’ve come until you look back at where you started; these pictures define that. I feel like I’d been the same size for 2 years, and though there’s definitely been fluctuations, I’m clearly not the same size anymore! So, here goes… *takes massive swig of gin*

 

 I also feel like here I have to justify these pictures (I will always be a bit insecure!). These pictures are not fishing for compliments at all! I just wanted to address something that has always bothered me, and I used to be so inspired by people sharing photos of their insecurities; I felt I should give it a go. This is a massive step for me and I feel very uncomfortable (and slightly drunk; Dutch courage is a miracle worker!)

I don’t really know where to go from here… so I think to conclude, the main points of this very rambly blog are that I have somehow found body confidence, but while also being aware of my flaws (but no longer intimidated by them). Anthony has been amazing at boosting me up, and my friend Carys from school was also a massive support; she really helped get me to the person I am today, and helped me find some semblance of confidence even when I was big! Obviously there are so many other people that helped me, but actually I think the most influential person was me. Everyone said that when you look back when you’re older, you’ll wish you were as fat as when you thought you were fat – that is so true. I was fat, but I also when I was size 10 with a flat stomach, I thought I was fat because I had rolls when I sat down. With age, you come to realise that those things don’t actually matter, and most people probably have that anyway! The most important person to accept you for who you are is you. I’m happy enough with how I look, but also aware of the areas I need to work on to make me wholly body-happy. But the confidence I feel now just makes me generally a happier person.

I’m going to leave it there because I don’t think there’s anything else to say. If anyone wants to message me/comment/anything, please do because I know what it’s like to be plagued by insecurities, and though I can’t necessarily offer an answer, I can help support you. You can do this! Every one of us is beautiful, you just have to have the inner strength to see that. And that won’t happen overnight, but the journey is worth it.

Sending lots of love to you all!

 x

94 days...

Hi guys!

I feel like this is a trend for the opening of my blogs… sorry it’s been so long! Life has been manic – it’s crazy enough planning a wedding, let alone doing it alongside two full time jobs, settling into a new flat and trying to maintain some semblance of a life! I don’t have anything specific to write about in this blog, but I’m conscious that it’s been a while; so much has happened but nothing has happened at the same time. So here is your fair warning, this will probably be a bit of a ramble.

 

Last time I posted, we’d just bought our flat. I’m happy to announce that it’s now fully decorated, almost fully furnished, and definitely feeling more like home. It’s also a massive relief to be able to think about the wedding again; during the whole flat-buying process, it definitely took a backseat. I’ve genuinely loved every second of wedding planning, and I missed it while we were fighting with solicitors!

Fairly soon after buying the flat, I knew that it was time to get round to sorting invitations; it’s all well and good planning an amazing wedding, but if no one is there then it’s not quite the same! We did some shopping around on google, at wedding fayre’s, Pinterest etc. The invitations were one of the only things that I had a clear picture in my head of how they should look, and I couldn’t find anywhere that would do what I wanted for less than £10 per head; as much as I love the people invited, £1000 for invites seemed a bit extravagant! So we made the “great decision” to make our own.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that we did it and we did save a shedload of money! But to anyone else thinking about making your own invites, my main piece of advice would be to do them early. To make roughly 100 took me about 3 months! They are a phenomenal amount of effort, but now that they’re all finished, they are 100% worth it – they’re exactly what I pictured in my head.


The next update is the amazing weekend that we had at the start of October. We decided to have a major wedding planning weekend, to include a trip to the church we’re marrying in, cake tasting and menu tasting (we really like food). Firstly, it was really reassuring for me how much more comfortable I felt going to church.

At this stage, I feel like Fr Danny deserves a shout-out; he is the priest at our local church in Knebworth, and I’ve never met anyone who’s been more welcoming or made me feel more comfortable than Fr Danny has. He’s such a lovely man, and I love the fact that he’ll be the priest for our new marital family. I’ll probably do a whole other blog post about marrying into Catholicism, but it’s something that with time I’ve really gotten proud of.

Enough deep stuff, onto the food! So as I’ve mentioned before, Anthony’s mum is making the cake. Even though I know she’s an amazing cook, I had minor reservations; would she still enjoy the day? Would the cake be as amazing as it is in my head? Would she be able to get all the flavours that I want? Well, having tried the cake, the answer to that is a resounding YES. It was PHENOMENAL. I’m not going to add photos because a) we agreed it needs a few small (tiny!) tweaks, and b) I don’t want to ruin the surprise for people on the day. The photo that I will attach from that section of the day is our rings, because you’ve seen them in blogs before and they’re just so beautiful! We chose to keep them at Anthony’s parents’ house mainly because that’s where they’ll need to be on the day, but also because I can’t stop looking at them/trying them on!

So, the menu tasting – it was amazing. Every single bite of food was a delight, but it was more the service and the treatment that we received that blew my mind. We had prosecco on arrival, a private room with a view of the beautiful grounds. As if that wasn’t enough, we also had canapés and starters, even though we said we’re not having either for the wedding. And the house wine included wasn’t too bad either… it’s a good job Anthony was sober enough to speak to the head chef cos I was definitely in a euphoric food/wine/happiness buzz!

We also had our engagement shoot; this led to very mixed emotions. Neither of us are particularly comfortable in front of a camera, nor are we particularly photogenic. The shoot itself was fun; we had it at Wytham woods which is really pretty, and I think both of us miss living in the country. Our photographer is also lovely, and it was really easy to talk to him on the way around. At the end of the shoot, we just felt odd. Neither of us could put our finger on why, I still can’t really; I think it was just unfamiliar. However, the majority of photos were really beautiful. Some of the posed ones surprised us – we’ve never really managed to take a nice photo of us when we knew it was being taken!  But the best ones were the more natural ones. We’re keeping most of them private but here’s a few sneak peaks for you!

We’ve also had Anthony’s birthday which was a lot of fun; I took him to Cardiff for a few days, during which we took a day trip to Barry Island. It was so much fun, and Gavin and Stacey was one of the first shows that we watched as a couple. It may have rained but it didn’t dampen our spirits!

Overall, we’ve done a lot over the last couple of months, but it hasn’t always been plain-sailing. To take on a new flat, a wedding, seeing family and friends, working for 40 hours a week (plus the commute) is a lot; I think that we under-estimated how much work it would be! But I feel that all it’s done is solidify our relationship. Every day, I get more and more nervous about the wedding and everything that needs doing, but all I feel about marrying Anthony is excitement. And love – overwhelming, heart-bursting love. I don’t believe in soulmates, but I do 100% believe that Anthony is my other half, my better half. He’s the spoon to my Ben and Jerry’s, the dip to my pizza, the onesie to my winter evening; he is the thing in my life that makes everything better. And on that sickening note, I’ll leave you all to enjoy your day! Thanks for reading, and I’ll update you when I can.

See ya!

x

We bought a flat!

Hello again! I guess apologies are in order for the amount of time it has been since my last post... but I promise I’ve been busy, not just ridiculously lazy (I wish it had been laziness!). I have no idea where this blog post is going to go, so it’s probably worth grabbing a cup of tea (or a gin!), because you could be in for a long slog!

So where have I been? For those of you who don’t know, myself and Anthony have moved into our new flat, (which we own!). It’s all very exciting, though that is not the first word that springs to mind when I think about our experience… exhausting is more apt! Unfortunately, because we are both saving our work holiday for the wedding, we’ve not really booked any extra days off to deal with the move, which I think has made everything all the more overwhelming and knackering.

So, let’s begin at the beginning. We were fortunate enough that the new flat didn’t NEED any urgent work doing; it has recently been decorated and new carpets laid, and the kitchen and bathroom were also in good nick. However, as I’m sure most of you can imagine, when you’ve been living in rented accommodation for 5 years, as soon as you get your own place, you want to make it your own. Anthony hated the decoration in the new place, and I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. The plan was to have a couple of weeks where we overlapped with the flats, so that we could decorate the new place before we moved in. This didn’t quite happen… all we managed was to paint half the kitchen! In hindsight, this wasn’t even a useful room to paint as we didn’t need to move any furniture in, but shoulda woulda coulda – I could go on forever about what we should have done!

On moving day, we hired a van – I drove, and thought I would hate it. But I loved it!! And we couldn’t have managed without it, it was our saving grace. We started properly moving stuff over on the Monday morning, and by the Tuesday evening, we were completely in. The Tuesday evening was definitely my low point. We spent over 6 hours deep cleaning our old place, and it really did seem like we were fighting a losing battle. I also didn’t anticipate it taking more than 2 hours, and I HATE cleaning! That, alongside the physical exhaustion of moving, did not equal a happy Natalie, and I’m sorry Anthony! I was truly a nightmare that night.

Decorating around the furniture and boxes was a royal pain; this is when we did become grateful that the kitchen was decorated, as we managed to get rid of 5 large boxes by unboxing kitchen stuff. We did most of the decorating ourself, and almost all of our colour ideas were mutual – the only exception is the bedroom, where I had no idea what colours I wanted, until Anthony suggested we decorate in our wedding colours, which I LOVED! Below are some transformation pictures:

 

   

These transformation pictures are by no means the finished product!! We’re still living in a fair amount of clutter; unfortunately, Anthony has been working ridiculous hours due to the get-in for the summer show at the theatre he works in; he’s been working 14 hour days every day for the last couple of weeks, which has meant that we’ve had very little time to work on the flat together. However, every day it feels more like home; we’ve added a few finishing touches, such as a Harry Potter doormat, our bed (complete with all our books), and our sofa (which I assembled myself! And was then basically useless for the next 3 days due to extreme muscle aching...)

 

I feel like this blog is a bit rambly, so I apologise for that, but I’m still shattered! And any update is better than no update, right? Long story short, we are making this place home, and I have every confidence that this place will be so beautiful when we’re done with it. It’s a massive change from living on the High Street, but I think both myself and Anthony are actually 60 years old inside, so this place suits us to a tee!

In terms of wedding, we have done very little! But I’m not stressed about that because we had got so much done in the first 6 months. The main things we’ll be sorting in the next few weeks is notice of marriage, invitations, window shopping for suits and finding ways to incorporate all of our passions into the day. Currently, I’m actually not hugely missing the wedding planning, because I’ve been so tired and busy with everything else. But I am at a friends wedding on Saturday, and I have a feeling that will thoroughly refuel the fire! I’m also waiting for an email from my wedding dress shop, as she said my first fitting will probably be around September; that feels completely unreal!!! I think it will all sink in again very rapidly from then.

Anyway, I’ve done enough waffling here to last a lifetime, so I’ll leave it there, but thanks for being patient! I'll update you as and when I can :)

X

Ring Shopping

So today was one of the best days of wedding planning ever. Everything is pretty much back on track, in fact, it’s so much further ahead than it was! Long story short, we officially have our new venue (with alterations to suit us), we've sorted our wedding cake, and the biggie is… we have wedding rings!

So as most of you will know from my previous blog post, unfortunately we lost our original venue. I'm not going to linger on that because it’s still upsetting for me, so if you do want to know more about it then check out the post before this one, as it explains exactly what happened. But everything happens for a reason, and the further into planning we get, the more I'm starting to believe that it was a good thing for us. We had loads of stuff that we wanted to finalise with Fiona (our amazing wedding coordinator at Milton Hill) before we signed the contract and paid the deposit, so we arranged to meet her this morning before heading up to Birmingham to go ring shopping. And as this is a bit of a trek, we decided to stay at Anthony's parents’ house last night.

Kate (Anthony's mum) is one of the best bakers that I've ever met, and we had

previously asked her to make the wedding cake, but topics of conversation moved on and I don’t think any of us knew where we stood, Kate included! So we took the opportunity to talk it through with her; it's so important to us that it won’t stop her enjoying the day due to stress, but at the same time, we'd love for her to be such an important part of our day. So we went through a book she had, we reassured her that we don’t want a fancy cake, just something simple with three tiers, each a different flavour. She's agreed that it's doable,

and we found a few cakes that we liked the look of; this one was our main inspiration and I'm sure the finished product will look very similar to this, but without any flowers on the cake, and loads around the base of the cake stand. It's nice to finally have an idea of what our cake will look like, and it really does mean the world that Kate will be making it!

So this morning we left with smiles on our faces and a whole host of questions for Fiona, and for the first time, I got a warm feeling when we got to Milton Hill; I think its finally hitting me that it's our wedding venue, and its so beautiful! Fiona was amazing (again), she moved our buffet room free of charge to another room that we preferred (and has easier access to the bar!), which means we will also have room to put some small entertainment pieces in for the guests (keeping that quiet for now though!) We smoothed out a few other details, during which time I was reassured that 3 months before the wedding, we go through a 100 question document (anyone who knows me will know how much my eyes lit up at that prospect!) Before we knew it, we’d signed the contract and paid the deposit, and once again, we have a wedding venue. We feel so much more prepared than we did with the previous venue, the rooms are nicer – it’s all just a lot better!

So again, we set off with smiles! We had Disney blaring in the car all the way

to Birmingham, and arrived with spirit high. It was a long journey, but so worth it; Newey's was where Anthony bought my engagement ring from, and I’ve always loved the idea of getting the rings from the same place. And having been there myself, I cannot fault it. Every single item of jewellery was gorgeous, and it really didn’t take long at all to find the sort of rings we wanted. I originally wanted a ring like the one on the right, but having tried it with my engagement ring, it just didn’t work; the dip in the ring wasn’t big enough. Then I found this one, and I loved it instantly! Anthony was just as keen, which has always been important to me. 

He actually took longer than me to choose his ring! The first ring was too thick, the next too thin... he’s actually got a custom made one which is between two sizes of thickness. Both of us have gone with platinum to match my engagement ring, and both rings are significantly under budget – we didn’t even have to haggle!

 I also want to give a shout out to the lady who served us; unfortunately we didn’t get her name, but she was so incredible. She sized both our fingers correctly just by looking at them (and then measured to confirm), she was honest with her opinions, she listened and suggested amazing rings, and managed to create exactly what we wanted. The company also clearly value loyalty; both of us got a reduction on our wedding bands because my engagement ring came from there, and they also resized my engagement ring for free! My finger no longer looks like it’s about to explode (though the sizing is totally my fault!

I told Anthony what size to get year after year, but didn’t consider that my finger might be bigger since I was 18 and have grown 2 dress sizes...). I cannot recommend this company enough, if you're looking for any sort of jewellery then check them out!

It has been the best day, I genuinely think it’s been my favourite part of the planning so far! I cannot wait to have that ring on my finger for the rest of my life. 

That’s all for now, and it may be a while until the next post, as we’ve not got anything major to book in the next few weeks. But as soon as we hit the next wedding milestone, you'll be some of the first to know!

See you then!

X

Something had to go wrong… but maybe it’s gone right?

This is not a blog post that I ever intended to write. You always hear that something has to go wrong with your wedding, and to just be prepared when it does. I expected it to be something relatively minor; I’ve already accepted that it’s likely to rain on our day, it’s going to be cold, I'm so ridiculously clumsy that I’m bound to fall over walking down the aisle, and someone will probably throw up on the dance floor! What I didn’t expect was to have our dream venue snatched away in seconds.

We’d been back in the UK for about 20 minutes, having just ended our holiday in Paris (which was AMAZING!) when my phone rang. I saw it was the wedding venue so answered, expecting them to want to book in menu tasting or something. What I got instead was that the room we booked (which we’d been promised was being renovated over summer and turned into a private function room, which would definitely 100% be ready for our wedding) is no longer having the refurbishment. Or more accurately, it is, but they can’t guarantee when. They say January, but then they said April to us so who knows. Either way, it doesn’t work for our wedding date.

It was like the world stood still for a moment. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, it was like a nightmare. Most of you are probably reading this thinking we should have known that there was an element of risk booking a room which didn’t exist as a function room at the time, but we were assured that it was definitely happening – it didn’t even cross my mind that it might fall through. Some of you are also probably thinking, it's just a room, get over it. But it was perfect. Exactly what we both wanted. And this isn’t just a party, this is the most special day of our lives. So naturally, we were both heartbroken.

But anyone who knows us knows that we’re not the sort to wallow. We poured ourselves some VERY large gin and tonics, and set to work trying to fix this mess. The way we saw it, we had 3 options; move our date, find a different room in the hotel, or just move venue completely. We very quickly agreed that neither of us wanted to move the date; it already holds emotional significance to us as our wedding day (and we already had to move our date at the very beginning of planning!) and we’ve booked too much to move it now. I'm also loving watching the count down to the big day, and to suddenly add on a year would be gutting. So we arranged to go and see our venue early on Tuesday (our next available day together) to see what they could offer, and also booked in two appointments elsewhere; one with one of the venues we cancelled on after seeing our dream room, and then one with Milton Hill House, which you might remember from the Venue Hunting Blog.

We found out about the venue debacle on Friday, and couldn’t do anything until Monday as they were away for the weekend. By Tuesday, upset had turned to anger, which had turned to concern, which then moulded into one big mess of emotion. This emotion all poured out when we got to De Vere; our (ex) reception room is currently their hotel reception, and as soon as we walked in, I very quickly had to go and excuse myself. I don’t think either of us anticipated how emotional it would be walking back into that room knowing that we could no longer use it for our wedding. The manager who dealt with us was lovely, and she offered us more than she would to any other potential wedding client; price reductions, difficult layouts for the tables, anything really within her power. And the other room she offered was nice, but it wasn’t the barn, and to have to walk through that barn to go to a relatively basic room – it’d just be too upsetting.

On that basis, we decided to go elsewhere. The second venue we looked at didn’t really grab us, and was quite expensive so onto Milton Hill. I think by the time we got there we’d already basically decided that we wanted it; we loved it on our first viewing, and had we never been to see the barn, we probably would have booked it anyway.

Fiona (the wedding coordinator we were talking with last time) welcomed us back instantly; she was so thorough with trying to work out what we had planned so far and how she could accommodate it at Milton Hill; I honestly can't sing her praises enough, she’s made everything so much easier for us. She walked us around the venue again, which gave us the chance to remember how much we liked it before (the drinks reception room is so beautiful!!) and listened so intently to any questions we had. She also reassured us that there are no planned renovations! Which was definitely reassuring to hear.

Milton Hill House is a beautiful venue, and suits us really well. Its accommodation is also A LOT cheaper – if you’re a guest at our wedding and planning on staying over, then good news – this mishap has saved you £60!! And it's also a lot closer to the church, which means less travel time and more time to boogie at the end of the night. 

This whole situation has been exhausting, and so upsetting. But several people have said to me that everything happens for a reason, and that is something that I do firmly believe. It's upsetting for now, but I do love Milton Hill, and Anthony has always been really keen. I keep reminding myself that ultimately, it doesn’t matter where we get married, the commitment is the most important thing. I'm so glad that it's Anthony I’ve gone through this with; he’s been so supportive, and held my hand the whole way through, dried my tears, given me encouraging smiles – he even serenaded me with Disney in the car! And none of this has been easy for him either, we both loved that room and he was choked up when we entered it today, he’s just better at keeping it together than I am. I can totally understand how planning a wedding can push two people apart, but I feel that for us, it's just pulling us closer together. I’ve never been surer that Anthony is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. 

Wedding Dress Shopping

Hi guys, first things first, an apology is in order! There has been a ridiculous amount of time between blog posts, mainly because instead of writing about my life, I’ve been super busy trying to get it in order! I didn’t want to write about it because I didn’t want to jinx it, and it could still fall through, but one of the main things that’s been keeping both myself and Anthony crazy busy has been that we’re in the process of buying a flat. It's still small and modest, but it's a lot bigger than where we are now, and most importantly, it will be 100% ours to do what we want with (not that much needs doing!). We’re both super excited and also still keeping everything crossed that it doesn’t fall through, but we are at the stage where we’ve done all we can, and it's out of our hands now.

We also go to Disneyland Paris in less than two weeks (eek!) so have been trying to plan for that, but alongside both having full time jobs, buying a flat, helping Dad move into his new house, wedding planning, and general housework, it's been a mad time! So that gives you an idea of what we’ve been up to in the last couple of months, and now let’s move to the point of the blog. I can't really remember where we were in terms of wedding planning in my last blog, but we’ve got a lot more sorted recently; we’ve booked transport, we’ve booked the florist, we’ve found the most BEAUTIFUL bridesmaid dresses I have ever seen, and most importantly… I have a wedding dress!

So before you go desperately scrolling through this post to find photos, there will be no photos on this blog at all, not even the reject dresses! I will be writing a blog with loads of photos of me in an array of dresses, but for very obvious reasons, that will not be uploaded until after the wedding, so I’m sorry but you’ve got to wait at least 8 months for that one! This post will mainly be me talking about the experience of dress shopping, as well as talking about the shops we went to, but the actual mention of dresses will probably be pretty scarce!

So how was dress shopping? Well the whole experience was amazing, but actually really hard to describe; I feel like all the wedding planning we’ve done so far could almost be for someone else’s wedding, but when you look at yourself in a wedding dress, there’s no denying that this is all for you! I think I felt a bit numb for a lot of the day, because it just didn’t feel real. You spend your whole life dreaming of the moment you wear a wedding dress, and then to see yourself in one is so overwhelming!

I would advise people not to read up too much on what to expect before you go – the only thing you need to consider before you get there is are you wearing decent underwear, because you spend most the day basically naked in front of strangers! But I’d read in so many different articles and magazines to shop around, and try everything, which I did. However this led me to being uber critical about every dress. You also hear that when you find “the one”, you’ll know straight away. What I'm about to say is going to sound bad, but I didn’t get that “the one” moment when I put my dress on. Not because my dress isn’t perfect – it definitely is, and I love it SO much! But I was overthinking EVERYTHING. It also didn’t help that my dress was in a sample size 8, so didn’t even do up; because of that it was quite hard to imagine how it’ll look when it fits (but the more time that passes, the more I know it's going to look amazing – I actually miss it, I want to see it again!). I was looking for faults in every aspect of every dress, and even though I couldn’t find anything that I didn’t like about my dress, I still wasn’t convinced. Looking back, I think this was denial. I was so in shock about it, and the fact that I might have just found my wedding dress… it just felt really surreal.

I tried on more dresses after finding “the one”, and this I think was when I started to realise that nothing compared to that dress – and my dress didn’t even look amazing on me at that time because it didn’t fit! It was trying on more dresses that made that “this is the one” moment start to kick in, and as I said earlier, I am now 100% sure that it is “the one”. But all I would say to future brides is don’t be disheartened if you don’t fall in love with it straight away! It doesn’t mean that it isn’t “the one”, and the more dresses that you put on after it, the more you’ll realise how right it was; you’ll want to kick yourself that you didn’t realise straight away!

I would still personally recommend going to at least 3 dress shops; each of the ones I went to was a totally different experience, each as amazing as the last but in a totally different way! For anyone who is interested, I went to Heritage Brides in Hatfield (it’s in a converted barn and was by far the most beautiful dress shop I have ever seen!), The Wedding Gallery in St Albans, and Dress in Love in Hertford. I would wholeheartedly recommend each one of them, they were all so welcoming, so helpful, and so friendly! As well as being really professional; each of them seemed to know my personal style before even I did! And for those of you who want to be super nosy (like I would be!)… The Wedding Gallery was my favourite shop, as that is not only where I found my dress, but we also found incredible bridesmaid dresses there, and cannot fault the service or the experience they gave me. I feel slightly overwhelmed whenever I think about the time I had there, because it was just so amazing.

I feel like I’ve written all I can about the whole experience, but my main point is to reassure people that you won’t necessarily know straight away, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! I'm falling more in love with my dress every day, and it's such an amazing feeling.

I don’t know when my next blog post will be, or what it will be about, but for now (even though I said no photos) I'm gonna leave you with a little treat… this is the face of someone seeing themselves in a wedding dress for the first time! (Disclaimer – this is not my dress! Simply the first one I tried on).

See you soon!

x

Surviving Long Distance

Hey guys! So in terms of wedding, there is very little to report – we have chosen a photographer and are in the process of booking, and in the next week or two (probably month) we will have sent out our save the dates, but for now it’s mainly research for things rather than booking. As a result of that, I have very little to write about with regards to the wedding, so I thought that as this blog is about me becoming Mrs Holmes, I’d give you another insight into our past.

As most people will know, we got through three years of long distance while we were at university. Before I go any further, this blog is not at all an advice article on how to survive long distance, because there is no answer – you just have to find what works for you. I am also so aware that although I would definitely count us as long distance, I know that so many couples have it so much worse – we had over 200 miles between us, but at the end of the day, it was just one train, 3 hours and with luck, about £40 and we were together again. Some couples have to cross oceans, get up at ungodly hours to speak to their partner in a different time zone, and spend an insane amount of money on flights. I'm not expecting sympathy in this blog, and equally I want to stress that I am not writing this to advise people on how to maintain a long distance relationship; I'm just giving an honest account on what was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been a part of.

So before we went to uni, we had already been together for over a year and a half, so we had a really strong foundation to build on. We also kept each other in mind while looking at universities, but agreed from the start that we would not hold each other back from going to a university far away. We knew that Anthony was going into theatre, and so it was highly probable that he would end up in London, though he did also look at Old Vic (Bristol) and LIPA (Liverpool). I was much harder to pinpoint - you can study psychology at pretty much every university in this country! Some universities I preferred purely because of their close proximity to London, such as Brunel. Others I looked at because they were highly rated. Ironically, I only went to look at York to shut Mum up – she loved the city and was determined I should go to uni there! But the second I set foot there, I knew that was it – I was gonna work my butt off to get the grades and go to the city that I instantly felt most at home. Anthony was always so supportive of how much I wanted to go there, even though we knew it would make our relationship so much harder because of the distance. And fortunately for us, we both got into our dream universities! Though it meant that we had a pretty sizeable distance between us, I think it helped us that we were both so happy where we were.

So September hit, and Anthony was off to uni. We’d made the agreement before we left that we wouldn’t see each other within our first two weeks of arriving at uni. We thought that would actually be pretty tough but I think anyone who’s experienced Fresher’s can appreciate just how much is going on in that week. You’re getting involved in all sorts of activities, and making friends with complete strangers that you now live with, learning how to cook/balance bills/budget, missing home, and of course I missed Anthony, but with all that was going on, it wasn’t too overwhelming. Though Anthony didn’t really have a Fresher’s week, he was so busy with work at RADA that I feel fairly confident in saying that he felt the same way. When the two weeks had passed and I went to visit him, it was so nice to see his new life, and I felt like a part of it straight away. Then, before I knew it, I’d been at uni for two weeks and he was up visiting me in York. I was lucky enough that he got on like a house on fire with my flatmates, and was happy to let me lead him around my new hometown, and share my experiences so far with him.

Then the reality of uni hit. You’re not going out as much anymore, you’re actually having to do some work, you’re starting to really miss home, and it's just not as exciting as it was. Don’t get me wrong, I loved uni (particularly first year!) but I think it was really starting to hit home what we’d got ourselves into, and how hard it was going to be. And the two weeks that initially flew by, began to seem like they were travelling at a snail pace. I had incredible friends to keep me going but the pain didn’t get much easier.

There aren’t really any words to describe the elation when we got to see each other after a few weeks apart. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and though I don’t necessarily agree (we’re just as fond of each other when we live together as when we saw each other after a few weeks), I do agree that the time you spend together when you’re long distance, is much better quality. You just can't stop making plans, you’re going for dinner, to see a show, to go on day trips – and you just feel so unbelievably in love. But the heartbreak when saying goodbye? To me it doesn’t compare to anything I’ve ever known. I'm fortunate enough that I’ve never had my heart broken by a boy – Anthony is the only relationship I’ve ever had. But sitting next to him on the platform, waiting for the train to arrive and watching him get on and leave me stood on a platform crying, was horrendous. It obviously works both ways, and actually I don’t think it was any easier being the person on the train - if anything it's worse, because you feel like you're abandoning your partner; you're the one physically leaving. It's like you can feel the distance between you growing, like someone is stretching an elastic band – the further it gets, the more it feels like it’s going to break.

So how did we get through it? Again, I’d like to stress that this is not advice! It is just my account of what happened and what worked for us. So the main thing that I would say is key to maintain a long distance relationship is a no-brainer really – communication. You have to accept that you will have to speak to each other as and when you can, and when you both have very different schedules, this can be a nightmare to fit in. We spent a lot of time texting and spoke when we could – it didn’t feel like enough but it was better than nothing, and it got us through.

The other thing to be aware of – you will have to make sacrifices. And lots of them. You will miss parties, you will miss family events, you will struggle to be a part of any sort of society - basically it will feel like you miss a lot! And another thing you will miss – money. I always imagined that I probably would get a part time job at university, but if I wanted our relationship to work, then financially I had no choice (though I'm so glad I worked at Disney, it was one of the best parts of my whole university experience!). Ironically, having a job also makes it harder to see each other because you have another area of your life that you have to plan around! So I'm very grateful to the managers who were at Disney with me, they were so understanding and gave me most weekends off to be able to go and see Anthony/for him to visit me. 

There’s also so many costs that you don’t consider initially. So you expect the train ticket cost, that’s fine (though you don’t realise how soon it adds up!) but we would easily spend at least £100 every time we saw each other, not including the train! We were constantly seeing shows, going for dinner, even just getting takeaways. So we worked out, at an average of seeing each other every three weeks for three years – that’s over £5000!!! Such an insane amount of money, which I know was worth it, because we wouldn’t be together if we hadn’t, but it can get depressing to think about how far that money could go now.

One of the worst parts of long distance for me was the lack of comfort. You can text, you can talk on the phone, but sometimes, you just need a hug. Knowing that you won’t get that hug for another two weeks is so crushing. But on that note, Anthony was seriously the best person I could ever have been in a long distance relationship with. There were several occasions where I was having a tough time, and he came up to York just for one night as a surprise to comfort me. Even when I wasn’t having a bad time, he surprised me by visiting all the time! The most memorable of which to me was my 19th birthday party - my first birthday at uni and he "couldn't make it". I was gutted, and to be honest, slightly resentful, but I had to just move on and deal with it. I was also lucky enough that three of my friends from home were coming to join, so I threw myself into that and was so excited for some quality time with them! Then, while we were all pre-drinking, the doorbell goes, and my flatmate goes to get it. By this point I'm having a great night, loving spending time with my friends and had almost forgotten that Anthony wasn't there! Then who walks through the door? He does. I lost it, as did several other people in the room - I was definitely not the only one crying! Though it unfortunately meant that I didn't get to spend quite such quality time with my friends from home, it still meant the world to me. And Carys, Kate and Holly, if you read this, I'm so sorry I didn't spend enough time with you that night. But I hope you feel that in the long run it was worth it - from memory (or lack of it...) we definitely made up for it on other girls nights! 

Though long distance was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, it's also made us who we are, and I will be forever grateful for that. I believe that it is the main reason that we are such a strong couple today, particularly given the lifestyle that we lead! Neither of us have 9-5 Monday to Friday jobs, our hours at work are always fairly unpredictable, but I think being long distance taught us how to be grateful for each other’s company but also how to enjoy time on our own.

So, to summarise, long distance is hard! But I strongly believe that if you want to make it work, then it will work, it just won’t be easy. I wouldn’t change a thing about our past, including being long distance, and I hope that to anyone reading this who is/has been in a long distance relationship, this can remind you why you keep committing to it - because it is worth every second in the end. And for those of you who haven’t been long distance, I hope it's given you some insight into how I felt about it. I'd also just like to add a thanks to everyone who supported us through it, the list could go on forever so I won't mention anyone by name but I know there were so many people I phoned on the train home and sobbed to - your support is not forgotten, and I will be grateful for it every day. 

That’s it for this blog post, but I'm sure there’ll be another one soon! Thanks for reading 😊