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