We had a magical day on Saturday. Chloe text me as she and Ed travelled in the taxi to their hotel on Saturday evening and said - Mumlet it was perfect. I want to do it all again!
I have decided to write about it in sections. For those of you who don't like detail you can stop reading now! I will put photos in a separate post.
Wednesday - Flowers collected, Chloe and Ed arrived along with Hilary and Kit, flowers arranged in wooden pots for the table decorations
Thursday - Flowers arranged in church (pedestal for the first time!), nails painted at Gilding the Lily
Friday
The day dawned with a beautiful sunny morning. Earlish start for breakfast - with Hilary (chief bridesmaid), Chloe and Ed. Then Ed, Chloe and Paul left to meet the marquee people before they began the huge task of erecting the marquee. Back to meet up with Kit and Talia and we left for the last dress fitting at Confetti (wedding dress shop). Talia had a lesson in lacing the dress (quite a tricky task) and all was well. The dress and veil looked beautiful - all neatly ironed. I also picked up my dress which had been adjusted for the last time. We were just about to leave when we had a text from Paul saying that the flowers had fallen over. We weren't too concerned as we thought he was at home and meant the flowers in a vase. Unfortunately we discovered he had gone to open the church and had discovered the very large pedestal of flowers had tipped over and was lying on the floor - the oasis shattered into a hundred tiny pieces! So off we set on a mercy mission to rescue the flowers. On the way I phoned our flower arranger from church who (thankfully) was able to also come to the rescue. We decided to laugh about this as there was nothing we could do about it. We carefully removed all the flowers from the heap of broken oasis and ordered them and then using new oasis, which we attached very, very firmly to the stand, we re-arranged the flowers. Thankfully only a few had been damaged and only one rose had been completely destroyed. An hour later - all was well. This wasn't part of our plan but had been one of Chloe's 'bits and pieces' that we had left gaps for on Friday!
Back home for lunch - thankfully prepared by Josh and Paul. Packed lunch made for the boys who were collecting the drinks from Henley and taking them in a horse box (yes there was that much) to the caterers to keep cool until Saturday.
2pm rehearsal at the church with bridesmaids, ushers, mums, dads and best man and bride and groom. Lots of practice of SLOW walking! So hard not to speed up the aisle when you feel nervous. Ed's mum and I practised our crying! Then a lovely meeting on the grass, in the sunshine, where Chloe told best-man, bridesmaids and ushers of their tasks for Saturday. It was great to see them all together. There was lots of laughing!
Then all over to the marquee to set up. It was wonderful to see the huge marquee set out with the 100m of bunting that Chloe had made all ready, softly blowing in the breeze that was gently moving through the open doors. Although I had seen drawings of the marquee with tables etc... I couldn't quite imagine what it would look like. It was HUGE! Even on Saturday with 180 people in it, it was still huge, with plenty of space. I had worried slightly about the 'gorgeousness' ( our name for the swags until we found out the proper name) being too low and making it feel claustrophobic but it was fine. Under Chloe's direction we set up the tables with the wooden table decorations ( cut and carved out by Ed and his dad and flowers arranged by Joy, Clare, Hilary, Chloe and I), table numbers and little semperviviums (grown by Chloe) planted in little wooden pots ( cut and drilled by Ed). Each pot had a little flag with the guests name. They looked wonderful. We set up the tables and chairs etc... in the marquee and the church. With so many helpers we soon had it all done.
The boys left for a meal at Ed's dads house. We returned home to a fish and chip supper supplied by Matt and Joy - who had to stand for a very long time in a Friday evening queue.
Earlyish night ready for the big day.
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