Share Your Wedding- Hannah Says

Hello! Welcome to Share Your Wedding, a weekly feature that gives you the chance to re-live your wedding day. This is my first week hosting- I have taken over from the lovely Aby (You Baby Me Mummy) and I will be running it every Monday.

This week we have an invitation to Hannah’s wedding. Hannah blogs over at Hannah Says and can also be found on Twitter so go say hi!

Hi Hannah! Introduce us to your family.

Hey! I’m Hannah. I’m married to Chris. We’ve been married 7 and a half years. We became foster parents to Our Sidekick three years ago and parents to the newest member of our family in July, he’s called Jaxon.

We live in Bedford which is about half way between Cambridge and Milton Keynes (if you didn’t know)

Let’s set the scene..

How did you meet?

We met at a bible camp run by an organisation called CCCF (Caravanners and Campers Christian Fellowship). I was 14 and Chris was 15, we tried the “long” (okay 30 miles!) distance thing but it didn’t work and our teenage selfs called it quits and stuck as friends.

How long have you known each other?

About fourteen years

How did he/she propose?

Back in 2005, Chris had been back for the summer holidays and we had been discussing the future. Little did I know he already had a plan up his sleeve. At some point across the summer he had been to see my Dad and do the official thing. My Mum had always expected that my Dad would absolutely grill whoever came to ask for my hand but apparently my Dad let him off easy.

Head towards September, it was our six month anniversary and Chris had a plan, it was a Tuesday so I spent the day at my Grandma’s, shortly after lunch I got a text from Chris telling me to go outside. When I got outside there was an envelope with the first clue of a treasure hunt. At this point, little did I know but Chris had roped in various friends and family members to hold onto different clues. Even my friend Sheena in Australia had a clue. Apparently she’d set her alarm to make sure she was up about 3:30am for when Chris had estimated me to get to that clue but apparently she was that excited that she’d barely slept!

How long were you engaged before you were married?

We got engaged in September 2005 and decided to set the date for May 2007 as we figured that I would have finished university by then (as it happened I did have one last hand in date the week after the wedding so I made sure I handed in the work early rather than worry about it!)

Share Your Wedding

When did you get married?

We got married on the 12th May 2007 at Woodside Church. It had been my “home” church until I moved church in July 2006 when Chris moved to Bedford as it made more sense to be under the leadership of the same church.

How many guests, bridesmaids etc did you have?

I actually asked my Mum for the actual figures because I wasn’t sure and now I’ve sat down to write this I can’t remember what she said! I know that the church was near enough full and it seats around 300-400 people (I know I didn’t even think I knew that many people! I think for the sit down meal it was around 80 guests that we had. I had three bridesmaids, two were my cousins, Victoria and Kirsty, and the third was my sister in law, Rachel. My three uni best friends ended up being honorary bridesmaids for the day as my Head Bridesmaid didn’t live locally to me so they were helping with things the hen do and stuff like that. My cousin Joseph was the ring bearer (he was 7 at the time and very cute! He wore his school shirt and trousers then had a tie that matched the men in the wedding party. There were four ushers – my brother Richard, Chris’s cousin Alex and our friend’s Alfie and Ben.

Tell us about the Venue: Day / Evening

The wedding service was at Woodside Church in Bedford, Woodside was my home church up until 2006 and when I moved to the same church as Chris. We had looked at having the service at our new church but there was building works in progress. The reception was at The Pavilion in Biddenham. I used to do waitressing for a catering company based there so it was unusual to be on the other side of the hatch!

Did your wedding have a certain style?

There was a theme throughout as far as colours etc. The main colour was a lilac purple and the main flower was daisies. The men in the wedding party all had matching lilac ties and the bridesmaid dresses matched the ties.

Tell us about the most important thing, the Dress?

My dress was a bit Disney Princess. I don’t really wear dresses unless it’s an important occasion like a wedding or funeral so decided if I was going to wear a dress then I was going to wear a DRESS!

It was a two piece as I needed two different sizes in the end. The top was a corset with wide straps so that I didn’t spend all day pulling it up. The skirt was like a tutu as it had so many layers of netting but was long to the floor. At one point we tried to count the layers and gave up at about twenty layers and still had some to go.

The dress was white – the bodice had lots of beading on it. I had a specially made handbag by one of my Mum’s friends who is an international embroider and mixed media artist. (In fact it’s on semi-permanent loan back to her so it can be shown off at exhibitions and shows.)

Description of your Wedding, as brief or as descriptive as you’d like, flowers, clothes, food, speeches, gifts?

Flowers

I had white roses, gyposophila and tiger grass in my bouquet. The bridesmaid has a similar smaller arrangment that also had a couple of darker purple flowers in it.

Clothes

The guys all had smart suits, I think my father in law was in grey and my brother and dad were in black suits. At least for my brother and my Dad when they bought new suits we got ones that they could use for other occasions after. They also all had lilac ties that matched the bridesmaids. Usually it would have been the fathers, ushers, best man etc who might have matched but we also included my Grandads as well.

Food

My Mum helped us chose and advised us, we went for quite traditional choices to make sure there was something on the menu that people would like. We had a roast for the main course. I remember having chicken for my main course. Pudding there were a couple of choices, I had profiteroles as they are my favourite (the caterer even made sure there was a second portion for me!)

Speeches

We stuck to being tradition, my Dad, Chris (the best man) and Chris (my husband) all too their turns. My Dad told a story of when I was little about how he was out in the garden cutting the grass, I’d run out of the house in floods of tears and in a right state. He stopped the mower immediately thinking that I was hurt or something like that. Once he’d calmed me down enough to get out of me what was wrong, it turned out I was crying because he was cutting the heads off of the daisies as he cut the grass.

Gifts

From my parents to Chris and me, we were given my car, it was technically all in my Dad’s name and I “borrowed” it up until that point. They then gave us the car as a wedding present. My in laws helped Chris with the cost of the honeymoon.

From Chris and me to the Bridesmaids- they were given a necklace that they wore with their dresses then later in the day they were given a little trinket box that had “To our bridesmaid, Thank (their name), 12th May 2007”. It was something simple but really lovely.

What was your favourite part of your Wedding?

My favourite part of the wedding was not stressing! It sounds sort of silly but my Mum is like the Queen of Organisation so even when Chris proposed she’d already got a list of things for me to start thinking about. Leading up to the wedding she had a list of things to think about and when the decisions needed to be made like what the menu was at the reception and would we have a disco or a band and things like that. On the actually day there was an itinerary of where we needed to be and at what time and then we ended up ahead of schedule but it meant that there was no need to stress as Mum had it in hand.

What extra touches made it special for you both?

I’m not sure if there was anything that Chris found particularly special but the fact that Kewey was at the house before the wedding made me not get so nervous. She kept making me laugh and as soon as I got serious she’d pull a face at me or make me smile and stop churning over the worries about whether things were going smoothly and things like that.

Did anything not go as planned? Any funny stories?

The weather was forecast to be changeable. I guess we hoped that it would be changeable in the direction of dry to warm rather than wet. Thankfully the sun stayed out when we had photos although it was cloudy and it only rained when we sat down for dinner – the rest of the day the weather was dry and warm. Something we certainly couldn’t have planned for was the rainbow. When Dave gave the message during the service at the church, he talked about Noah, the rainbow and God’s Promises and linked it to how we’d made promises to one another in front of the people present and God. As we were starting dinner and saying grace, a beautiful rainbow appeared out the big window behind the top table.

With regards to the photos Mum had a running list of who need to be in each picture but other members of the extended family tried to take over – it did upset me and at one point Mum had to give me a talking to, I wasn’t being Bridezilla but my mood was wrecking the day a little bit. It sounds sort of silly but I’m glad my Mum took me to one side and told me off.

Would you do anything differently with hindsight?

Dress

My dress was gorgeous and I did love it but by the end of the meal I was hungry and uncomfortable my corset bit was too tight so I was struggling to eat, even when it was slacked off a bit I was still having trouble. When I got changed the following morning part of the boning of the corset had been digging into my back and ribs so I ended up with bruises. If I was to do it differently I would consider sitting down and standing up while wearing it in the shop to make sure it is comfortable.

First Dance

I’d change our first dance, my first choice Chris had turned down and the second choice was made in a rush. I’d make sure it was a song that I was happy to tell people about in the future. (Or have a surprise first dance like we did to my brother. He didn’t know it was coming and his first dance was to Don’t Want to Miss A Thing by Aerosmith, my Uncle, my cousin and I sang it at the reception)

What song did you walk into and what was your first dance song?

I walked into the church to The Flower Duet by Delibes (You might not know it by the title but it used to be the opera song on the British Airways advert when I was a child). We left the church to All You Need is Love – the version from Love Actually. I love The Beatles but Chris preferred this version in the end.

Do you have any advice for the soon to be married?

Enjoy the day, don’t stress about it, Yes the wedding is important but it’s just the starting of your life together with your spouse – so breathe, enjoy and party!

Where did you go on honeymoon?

We stayed at a B&B in Harwich for the weekend, I felt rubbish on the Sunday given how crazy the last few weeks before the wedding had been. So we went for a potter around but there wasn’t that much to see, it actually turned out that one of Chris’s friend’s from college lived across in Felixstowe so we caught the foot ferry and went for lunch. It was lovely to have something homely like that given how the B&B was.

On the Monday morning we caught the train to the ferry port and then caught the ferry to Hook Van Holland and then the train to Amsterdam for the remainder of our honeymoon. When Chris told me we were going to Amsterdam I wasn’t convinced there would be stuff to do as it hadn’t ever really been somewhere I had thought of visiting. Well actually there was a heap to do and a week certainly wasn’t long enough.