Back to our venue for a wedding fair

We went back to our beautiful venue on Sunday for a wedding fair that we’d been invited to – the main purpose of which was to chose which of the ‘feature rooms’ we would like to spend our first night as a married couple in.

They’re quite clever little blighters – we’ve opted for a great value fixed price deal which includes one of these ‘feature rooms’ for the newlyweds – but not necessarily one of our own choice. We can express our interest in any particular room, but if some cruel, wedding crushing individual came along and decided to pay for the room we had opted for, our wishes would go straight out of the window. 

Straight out of the window unless we gave them some more money that is. Sneaky - their experience means they know how brides behave and can capitalise on this :

Now, we might have been prepared to take a chance had the rooms been of a similar standard – but some seemed to lack the practicality you would expect of a bridal suite. Like somewhere to hang a wedding dress. It understandably might not have been at the forefront of Fiance’s mind, but I’m sure not spending all that money on a dress only to have it hung up on the floor at the end of the day.

After an hour or so spent fighting our way past the other groups who were also inspecting the various suites, we finally decided on our favourite – complete with a fancy spa bath and adequate hanging space. As soon as we had decided, a switch flicked in my head that told me every single other person present was getting married in our venue, on our day, and had decided they wanted to book our room. The race was on for us to get back to reception through the throng of wedding couples - and past a rather inappropriately placed string quartet - so that we could get our room sorted.

Of course, my Bridezilla inspired paranoia was misplaced, and we managed to get our room booked with no problems whatsoever. And the extra charge just went straight onto the bill, which doesn’t have to be paid for ages – and thanks to the way my brain works, this is as good as free as I will no doubt have forgotten about it by the time it comes round to settling up.

There were also some great table set ups that would go perfectly with our theme, and I got some info about the hair and makeup people who are actually located at the hotel and therefore perfectly placed for the primping and preening that me and my bridesmaids get to enjoy on the morning of the big day. These are another couple of things I was keen to get straight sooner rather than later.

While I still haven’t reached full time stress at the amount of stuff that hasn’t been sorted yet, I am admittedly starting to experience the odd moment where it hits me and I have to stop and take a deep breath. In my (probably) naive way, the fact I now have contact numbers for people who can decorate me, my girls, and the room kind of means those things are now sorted. Even though that is, in all honesty, some distance from the truth.

In other wedding news, I finally got the name of someone at the dress shop who I can trust – after a week spent waiting for a call that I should have known wouldn’t emerge, I called back and spoke to someone who promised they would keep me informed of any progress. She could obviously detect the forced calm in my voice as I explained my situation and to my delight, I got a call last week that confirmed my dress would be arriving in December (woo!). Continuing her good work, I got a call this afternoon to let me know that the sample of fabric had turned up, would be put in the post straight away and would probably be with me tomorrow. I’m so pleased to have finally gotten a decent response from the shop, I probably won’t even go mad if the sample doesn’t arrive for a couple of days.

And for the final piece of news - we have been mega-huge-lucky on the wedding cake front. A few posts ago, I mentioned my mum’s new job and its potential for wielding a discount on the fruity/spongy artistic concoction and my mum has finally done some investigating. Not only can we get a 20% discount – which is most definitely not to be sniffed at – the lady who makes the cakes has just won an award. In fact, she is so good, she beat a rival who is frequently asked to make wedding cakes for the footballers of Manchester. Suck it Manchester footballers, our cake will be better than yours. This is the kind of result that makes me glad of our fairly laid back attitude – if we had panicked and booked at the last wedding fair we went to, we’d have missed this amazing opportunity.

So I guess what I am saying is that our wedding is teaching me that patience is a virtue. And what an inspirational way that is to end a post.