When I first got engaged, I knew immediately who I wanted as my bridesmaids - My beautiful, wine obsessed crazy best friend M and my gorgeous straight talking, no nonsense, sarcastic (also wine obsessed, but on a lesser level at the moment due to having given birth to a small person less than a year ago) sister C. 
I asked (told) them immediately that they were going to be bridesmaids which luckily for me they both were happy to do. Although it did send my sister into a "OMG when is it? I need to lose baby weight" frenzy but once told it was over 18 months away all was calm. 
I had a conversation with M not long after which went something along the lines of: 

"Ooh you know how much I like the colour green" 
"Yeeeeah?" 
" C really likes the colour green too" 

I didn't get it straight away but did eventually realise M was hinting towards Bridesmaid dress colours. 
This plunged me into despair. Not only did I need to find MY perfect dress I needed to then work out colours for Bridesmaids.... I started researching online and looking at green dresses, pink dresses, purple dresses etc. One day when I typed in Green Bridesmaid dresses, Ireland - A post came up about how in the old days it was classed as bad luck to have your bridesmaids in green in Ireland - More panic ensued! 

After speaking to a lady who had herself recently got married, she told me to focus on my dress first. You need to know what you are wearing yourself before even thinking about what your Maid's will wear. I remembered when we were getting ready for M's wedding  she really wanted her bridesmaids in black, however once she had chosen her dress which was so beautifully simple, she tried it on and I stood next to her in a black dress, it looked like we were going to completely different events, her a wedding, me an evening do! So black went out of the window and was replaced with a soft bronze colour which suited so much better! 

Anyway, I thought 2 bridesmaids would be perfect but whilst having a drink not long after we'd got engaged, with My Man's daughter and  her friend, I overheard her friend ask her if she was going to be a Bridesmaid. I immediately felt awful! Of course I should have asked her as well! I waited until we left and spoke to My Man, asked him whether he thought she would like to and he said I am sure she would love to, this was good.... but I was absolutely petrified of asking her. It took me exactly 6 weeks from that conversation to get up the nerve to even ask her and I did that by text!   (I have a ridiculous phobia of people saying no to me, to my face) 

WARNING _ TEXTING CAN GET YOU INTO TROUBLE!!!
My Man's daughter has the same first name as another one of my friends and I had had a few wines when I got up the nerve to finally ask... 
I ended texting my friend to ask her if she wanted to be my Bridesmaid!!! I realised my error & I was horrfied! I texted her again almost instantly apologising for sending the request to her... Eeek! - This is why you should ask someone face to face! My friend was very understanding and probably not under the influence! 
I eventually sent the text to the correct person & luckily for me My Man's daughter said she would be delighted! Phew... 


Then I started thinking, I cant have 3 bridesmaids that is an odd number. I need 4... 
Now I am not one for having flower girls, nor am I even that good with children. Also there are so many little girls in my family I would feel bad if I asked one little girl to do it without asking all of the others and my wedding party would be enormous! 
So I decided I needed one more grown up Bridesmaid. This job I felt fell to my cousin who I had had the privilege of being a Bridesmaid for when she had got married a few years ago. 
I asked when we were a little tipsy having been out celebrating her sisters birthday all afternoon. She was also delighted to be asked. 
I texted her the next day to make sure I had definitely asked and she had definitely accepted (Memory was a little foggy!) 

So now I have 4 beautiful bridesmaids that for one day I only I can dictate what they wear (within reason).....
BUT I also have to find a colour and a style that will suit 4 very different ladies! 
My very own 4 Bridesmaid Barbies! 


Good Luck M, C, M2 & L! xXx 

So yesterday was Valentines Day, the day of the year the shops say its OK to say I Love You with a £5 card and £30 flowers.
My Man and I can't really afford to treat ourselves to going out as restaurants put their prices up by around 20% so on a recommendation of a colleague I went to M&S and got us a Valentines meal deal - Starter, main, side dish, pud, bottle of wine AND a box of chocs all for £20! Absolute bargain and absolutely delicious. 
I ran around like the proverbial blue arsed fly at lunchtime picking up the food from Marks and then deciding to be a little more slushy & romantic (even though we had agreed no gifts) and buying an absolutely enormous heart balloon which got blown up in the shop for me but unfortunately the weights they had were not heavy enough for this size of it so I was pretty much blown from one side of Haywards Heath to the other with my enormous red heart balloon trying to get back to the car.

Trying to stuff the balloon in the car was another issue in itself, I have a bit of a girly poser car with not much room in the back so I had to pull both of the front seats forward and then try to cram it in, but it kept coming back out. In the end a kindly man stopped and asked if I needed help (you can imagine what I must have looked like if someone was actually asking if I needed help getting a balloon in to a car, face was as red as balloon) and we finally managed to get it in without it popping or flying away! 

I took everything home and made it look lovely as a surprise for My Man as I knew he would get home first as I had fat club straight after work. 
He loved it and we enjoyed our dinner of breaded Camembert with onion chutney, Duck L'Orange with chunky chips & Mediterranean Veg & Posh Profiteroles, all washed down with a gorgeous white Chilean Sauvignon, with some lovely chocolates just in case we weren't full or fat enough as it was! 
God Bless M&S! 

Fat Club - I have a love hate relationship with food. I love it, it hates my body. My weight is more yo-yo than an actual yo-yo but for the last 2 years I have maintained a decent(ish) weight by attending Slimming World. 
Paying £5 a week to get weighed seems to be the only thing that stops me from piling on masses of pounds. Saying that, since Christmas I have lost a pound, put on a pound, lost a pound, put on a pound... You get the general idea... But the thought of looking tiny, gorgeous & angelic on my wedding day and not being to ashamed to have photos out in my house is spurring me on at the moment. 
The dress I have chosen is amazing and holds you in in the waist area but I do need to sort out the tops of my arms and generally just lose the flab. This week I managed to lose 3lbs and I was absolutely ecstatic. The most I have lost since August!! So I am back on the diet with renewed vigour and I will lose another stone and a half before W-Day! I know I have 18 months but honestly I need that long to be in with a chance of losing it and maintaining it. 

Unfortunately after Fat Club, I went home to the M&S Valentines Day feast and probably put on the 3 lbs I had managed to lose.... Will keep you updated*

*If I lose any... 

Happy Valentines Day followers!

The Commodore Hotel in Cobh where we are hoping to have our wedding is a port. As I mentioned before it was the the last port of call for the Titanic, Mauritania, Lusitania and many other ships which then sunk before completing their voyages.

I started off by thinking we could name tables after ships, but I then thought these ships have mostly sunk and people have died! This could be a portent of doom... Naming tables at your wedding after sunken ships? This cannot be a good thing, surely? 
Looking online people have done it before but My Man and I have had quite a bit of bad luck already, do I need to to start positively encouraging it into my life?

I then spent a good hour and a half at around 3 am this morning looking at websites, blogs and photos of other peoples weddings and googling "Do I need a wedding theme" apparently its a great way to pull your wedding together, represent you as a couple and make things easier to organise. Arrrghhh! Really? 

What if your wedding is in quite an old fashioned (but stylish!) hotel, in a port where lots of ships have left from and then capsized? What kind of theme do you have that is going to be any good? 

I am guessing that the best advice is to wait until we get to Ireland at the end of the month and actually speak to the experienced people at the hotel and see what they say.... But until then this bride to be will be waking up with cold sweats as each new thing occurs to me.... Perhaps I should ban myself from wedding websites for a while.... Naaah! 

So, on the recommendation of a friend at work I tried a small but established wedding dress shop, just on the outskirts of Brighton. I had managed to stay sober the evening before and had got up early and done a proper job with my make up, no bags under the eyes and no dry, grey, dehydrated skin!
I also did a few sit ups in the vain hope it would make me skinnier in seconds! I do have magic pants, the ones that you pull right up to underneath your bust area. Terribly attractive underwear, have not had the heart to let My Man see me in these I fear he may change his mind about the wedding.
However, they do a grand job of holding in all unsightly bulges.

I then sat waiting for M who had promised she would come and do my hair for me so that we could get a better effect of what I wanted to look like on my wedding day. I received a phone call from M who was running up the road, "about 7 minutes late" Yes she had been out for a few the night before, but she was still with me in enough time to have a coffee and do my hair so the morning was panning out quite nicely so far.

We left with My Man's sat nav firmly attached to my windscreen (M laughing at me as My Man gave me full instructions on how to programme it, which I could probably do with my eyes closed. I was more worried about getting attached and detached from the windscreen, and I had to have a full demonstration of how to do that. You may think this is simple, I struggle with simplicity!)

So off we went on our way towards Brighton. The sun was shining and it felt like an optimistic, positive, lovely day. I had had a few wobbly days before, missing Mum, wondering how I would ever choose a dress for myself without having Mum's critical eye cast over it. I tried begging more friends and family to come with us that day just so that I could have several opinions but everyone was busy. On that drive down though I started feeling different. Perhaps this would be the day that I would find something perfect...

We arrived at the shop just as another Bride to be was finishing her appointment and we had a look at some of the dresses we could see. They had a vast range and they were all different to others that we had seen thus far. The optimism kept growing inside my head. When it was our turn we were once again handed about 5 discs to pop over the hangers of the dresses we liked. M did her thing and I did mine, I was still looking for that princess dress and this shop had far more of a range of them but surprisingly I did not pick the biggest or the sparkliest. I chose one that was champagne coloured satin, one with sleeves and then my final choice was an ivory number with a sweetheart neckline and subtle bling.

M's first choice was a fairly simple, floaty dress that was reminiscent of my idol Marilyn Monroe. I loved this dress when I put it on, although it was simple, it was flattering and I started thinking of how you could dress it up with a nice head piece, diamonds and pretty shoes. But there was still just that something that was missing for me. I really could not put my finger on what it was... Until I tried on the 2nd dress. This was my choice and it was the last one I had picked with the sweetheart neckline. Even when I held the dress up to myself as the assistant did me up I can remember thinking and saying "this is it"

As I came out and stood on the box, I was fitted with a perfect sparkly headpiece and a veil and I turned to M and the assistant and said "This is how I want to look on my wedding day" It was the first time I had even thought that in my head and the more I looked the more I knew, this really was it. I loved this dress and I did not want to take it off.

I begrudgingly tried on the others we had picked but I was no longer interested, I wanted to put MY dress back on and stare at myself a little bit longer. Looking grown up, pretty and like a bride.

"Is it too early for champagne?" Asked the assistant. 

"Hell no!"