My Wedding - Five Months To Go

This is where I tell you all about planning my own wedding. After all, if I'm publishing all these Real Weddings, it's only fair I share my trials and tribulations. Read the rest of my wedding diary here.

If I had to pick a single word to describe how I'm feeling right now about our wedding, I'd use panicked. With less than five months to go, the decisions are coming thick and fast, and I feel like the days are flying past, without me actually achieving anything. If it wasn't for my fabulous wedding planner, Kerry, I'd be a complete stress-case. In part to calm myself down, here's a list of what I've actually got sorted out.

The Caterer
We have found a caterer who is just about within our budget, and we're booked in for the taste-testing in early March. Choosing caterers was really difficult. Trying to figure out who was the best value was pretty much impossible, because they all offered different options. Kerry very kindly put everything in a table for us, and I'd thoroughly recommend doing that if you're still struggling. We got three quotes in the end - the first two were a bit to fussy and fancy. Lesson learnt - don't be afraid to keep on asking for quotes until you get what you want. It is out there, even if it doesn't feel like it in the early days.

The DJ
Choosing a DJ was harder because we're in France. Have you ever been to a French nightclub? The music is always dreadful. So we knew our DJ would need to be English. This is when the lovely Kerry stepped in all over again, and suggested her friend Sophie Callis, who's a professional DJ in London, but lives in France. We met her last week and we love her. We totally clicked, which was a huge relief. I now feel like I'm going to have this lovely team of ladies behind me on the big day. However, our entertainment budget is completely blown. We've at least doubled it, by hiring both a string quartet, a DJ and a music system. Mobile DJ's normally bring their own kit, but all the French ones were just too cheesy, so we've had to go for our own system. That's something to remember if you're planning a wedding at home, or in a rented house. If you hire a full set-up wedding venue instead, they'll usually have all that sorted for you. We've argued away our double-budget, by rationalising that if everyone's going to fly out to France for our wedding, the least we can do is host a great party!

The London Wedding
We have to get legally get married in England before our ceremony in France, and I'm determined to keep it discrete, and 'not a big deal', so it doesn't take away from the main event. However, it does mean that our grandparents, who won't make it out to France, can come along. We wanted to have it in Shoreditch Town Hall which is round the corner from our flat, but on the day we went to register our wedding, we discovered it was going to cost a fortune! The Hall itself is cheap-as-chips, but to arrange for a registrar to come ten minutes down the road from Hackney Town Hall costs £400! So we're going to host it at Hackney instead, and taxi all the relatives down there. I had a minor bridezilla moment when I discovered we'd have to get married at 3pm instead of 12.30pm, but reasoned that a high tea after the ceremony would be just as good as a lunch. Just think of all the cake!

So there's a list of three things I've done, here's the list of what's left - stationery, flowers, wine, site visit, ceremony to be written, dress, veil, shoes, groom's outfit, honeymoon, drinks the day after the wedding, catering for the high tea, dress for the London wedding.....aaaaah!