As I prepare this second Lovettes blog post, I honestly genuinely feel a bit too busy to get married! With roughly six weeks (at the time of writing, now two!) to go until our wedding, and lots of loose ends to be tied and final decisions to be made, it just seems at the moment that there are not enough hours in the day.
Matthew and I
As a newly qualified teacher, planning our wedding in under a year and it coinciding with one of the most crucial parts of my career has been pretty tough going at times. After returning to work from the half term, I envisaged the last seven weeks to be a gradual, stress free wind down to summer and our upcoming wedding day…how wrong was I to think that?
I am currently juggling writing reports for my whole class, scheduling meetings for parents evenings, assessing each child, preparing for my performance management meeting, organising an educational visit to the Tate Gallery etc, etc, blah blah blah, the list goes on!
So in order not to lose my mind and my sanity, I thought I’d share all my recent thoughts for you lovely readers. Thoughts that have helped me keep my cool at what is possibly one of the most stressful moments in my life.
I recommend the Headspace app
Firstly, I’ve come to realise to stick with your head and your heart and be realistic and true in all areas of wedding planning. I’m not doing the DIY approach, I’m not particularly creative or crafty, I like the thought of it but over the process of this hectic year, it’s just been so much easier to buy pretty things than spend time making them and I’m not going to beat myself up about it. Similarly, I’ve had numerous fresh flowers in my hair wobbles. It’s the in thing, I love them, they’re absolutely gorgeous. But in all honestly, this look doesn’t really suit me, or the way I’m wearing my hair and I don’t think they would complement my dress either…another decision easily made and no regrets!
Khaki Bedford Photography
Via The Knot
Another thing, although Pinterest has been a massive source of inspiration, I’ve come to realise that some of the images, as beautiful as they are, are styled shots that have had so much money thrown at them and realistically, our wedding might just not look like that on the day. But it will look equally as amazing because we put thought into every detail and that’s good enough for us.
Via Pinterest
From the moment we got engaged we had a mutual agreement, almost reading each others minds about under no circumstances to scrimp on food and music. Our industrial warehouse venue, Camp and Furnace is known for it’s legendary Sunday roasts, Friday night food slams and glamorous Saturday night meat markets with steak and lobster on the menu.
With Camp and Furnace also being host to regular gigs and raves, their little black book of music contacts also really impressed us. It’s really important to us to have our guests share the love during our ceremony and we will never lose sight of the commitment we will be making to each other on 6th August. But it is equally important for us for our guests to feel relaxed, be well fed and entertained during the whole celebration.
It costs so much to be a guest at a wedding these days that we feel our friends and family deserve to have a fun filled day and night. I daydream about looking out from the top table and seeing our nearest and dearest under one roof, family and friends united, all laughing, dancing, crying and hugging together.
Lastly, I’ve discovered that although we had the best intentions to be complete hermits in the run up to the wedding and turn into massive diet and exercise freaks. On a day like today when the sun is shining, once you’re home after a stressful day at work, it’s absolutely ok to ditch that gym class/ sup on a beer/sip that glass of prosecco and consume the whole bag of kettle chips from the cupboard without feeling any guilt whatsoever.
Seriously fellow brides to be, don’t beat yourself up about it, because if you did, you’d be a bitter, narky cranky bride and nobody wants that kind of negative energy in their lives, especially not in the run up to your wedding day! Speaking of which, an ace way to de-stress is by meditating.
We can thoroughly recommend the Headspace app which provides online guided mediation sessions linked to work, relationships and every day life. I’ve seriously been out like a light every night and not had any freaky wedding nightmares since investing time in my health and wellbeing through meditation. Peace out lovelies, Ommmmmmm and pass me another beer!
Jess x
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Jessica Stainton is marrying Matthew Gallagher on 6th August 2015. James Melia will be taking their wedding photographs.
Lovely article! Full of zen and positivity – just what us brides need to hear! The meditation is clearly paying off! Good luck with your planning 🙂