The wedding clock has just struck five months! What a difference a day can make. As soon as we reached 12:01am on New Year Day, it all suddenly felt really very soon and like plans must be made with urgent attention.
In 2016, we are now closer to 2030 than the year 2000. And yet celebrating the millennium (and of course waiting for that bug to eat all computers) seems like yesterday. So if ‘yesterday’ was 16 years ago, then five months is going to whizz by in the blink of an eye. There is a lot to do – a perfect groom suit to find, wedding dress to be finished (made by the lovely dressmaker Anna Fink), rings, vows, readings, bridesmaid dresses, a pretty dress for a flower girl, invites to get out, flowers, table things, sourcing A LOT of candle-based items… the list goes on.
But fear not; one of the things over the last few months I have achieved is the creation of the mega spreadsheet of colour-coded organisation. If you like organisation, you will find it to be quite marvellous.
Today I came across a “Wedding Planning Calendar” – quite a useful little thing that charts month by month what you need to do in the build up to the day. Even with the mega spreadsheet, I felt quite compelled to check I hadn’t missed anything.
Looking down I felt quite chuffed; by 12 months we should have done our save the dates down, set a budget, made a date, booked a venue – tick, tick, tick tick! By 11 months we should have put together our wedding party, booked our main suppliers, found a photographer – tick, tick, tick! All going very well, until 10 months “begin your beauty regime and start an exercise plan”… woah, wait a minute, that’s not in the spreadsheet of organised fun and we are already at 5 months…yikes!
Since we got engaged, the social media I frequent (mostly subtle side-bar advertising I must add) has made it perfectly clear to me that if I’m going to be a bride, I should probably start to follow only the best beauty “regime”, shift a few pounds and at the very least do more squats so I can have toned bridal buttocks.
Now, I’m all for having a healthy and happy lifestyle, but it’s the assumption that this is synonymous with wedding planning that narks me.
Over Christmas this went up to a whole new level when I was served a sponsored post (not from this fabulous blog, I hasten to add), about how, as a bride-to-be, you can avoid gaining weight from your Christmas dinner. Well this was a step too far. I would like to enjoy my 10 (thousand) pigs in blankets without anyone wading in on whether that is 10 (thousand) piggies too many.
In many ways I do actually find our wedding as a great motivator to get my trainers on. I recently bought a spiraliser, which will no doubt into its own over the coming months with courgetti a-plenty, but I would like, as with my pigs in blanket, to enjoy my courgetti without a stream of media and advertising that implies I should be doing so specifically for our wedding.
The most important matter is surely that we look after ourselves?! Squats may form part of that, but ultimately that’s just a personal lifestyle choice you make. And while we all try to stay calm balancing life along with planning a wedding (worse still – being accused of being a “bridezilla”… a word which I’d put into room 101 along with weight-loss adverts), I suggest these additional pressures can just jog on.
So as Mr Darcy says to Bridget, all I would like to say to brides and grooms-to-be out there, is that I like you very much. Just as you are.
For all those getting married soon, enjoy every second of your day! For all those with mega spreadsheets of planning, I hope it goes well! I would love to hear from you – whether that’s about weddings, weight loss, spreadsheets of organisation or great courgetti recipes. Pop a comment below and say hi!
Love Kate x
P.S. One of the (many) reasons why I love ‘Love My Dress’ is that it is all about celebrating beauty of every kind and there are loads of great discussion articles. This feature is a personal fave of mine.
___________________
Kate is marrying Tim on 2nd June 2016 in Tuscany. You can connect with Kate on Pinterest and Instagram and read Kate’s previous Lovettes features here.
