I can’t wait to be married to Darren. However, the more I learn about what needs to be done to get to that point, the more reluctant I am becoming. I can’t believe how much planning, thought, preparation, practice, not to mention the blood, sweat & tears, that goes into a wedding day. For all of the weddings I have been to, I never really grasped the effort that went into detail. I thought all this magically fell into place. I am the type of person that manages to plan well, but waits until the night before a deadline rather than weeks, months or even years before to put my plan into action! This is all very new to me.

I was fine until I bought my first wedding magazine and saw all these fantastic weddings with clear evidence of the minute detail the couple went into to make the day perfect. How does a girl match up to that! Where in god’s name do I begin? Do wedding dresses really cost that much? I have to choose flowers? Having no sisters and a mother who is not overly interested in girlie stuff, I was very lost and wishing that we could reconsider co-habitating for the rest of our lives. But we want the marriage and we want the wedding. So if we can’t go over it or around it, we’ll have to go through it!

As things have settled down since our announcement, my reluctance has thankfully waned. I think I focus too much on what could go wrong and the potential family requests and possible upsets. We have a fairly solid idea of what we want for our day, and we don’t want to bend too much from that. Going on past family weddings, we have a good idea of the guest list…hopefully not too many objections there. Being a typical man, Darren is giving me full control over deciding the theme for the day. Luckily for me, he is also willing to give coherent and honest feedback when I need it….best of both worlds! I have decided on a more modern wedding, cutting out some of the traditional aspects of the day, but not all. My theory is that the theme mostly depends on the style of the bride’s dress, and it works its way out from that. I hope this works in practice!

We are having one bridemaid & best man. Darren’s brother Ronan is his best man and my sister in law, Oorla, is my bridesmaid. She has been a part of my life for about 15 years and is really like a sister to me. She loves weddings and the all the planning involved. Being very interested and creative, I know I can run ideas by her and get good, honest advice. Oorla was the natural choice for me, but getting around to asking her was the hard part. I decided to ask Oorla last Christmas, as it is the longest time we all get to spend together. Unfortunately, my bridesmaid to be was miserably sick over Christmas. On top of that, she was four months pregnant….not a nice combination! I just couldn’t pitch the idea of being an energetic bridesmaid for a day, however faraway that day was. It would have been cruel, so I let it go for a while. I had my chance a few weeks later, on a shopping trip in Dublin. We decided to have a look in some wedding shops for fun and to see what was out there. I didn’t really know how to broach the subject, so I kept holding bridesmaid dresses up against her, hoping she would get the hint. It worked and she was delighted!

So at this point, with 14 months to go, we have organised the hotel, the church, the best man & bridesmaid and the band. We have booked Faithlegg House Hotel in County Waterford. It is a fabulous old manor house with lovely grounds away from the hustle & bustle of the city. Whatever about the rest of the wedding stuff, we really want the setting to be perfect and we are very happy with them so far. Our main plan of action for the day is to keep the numbers down to about 100. As the room only holds 130 we are keeping invites to that amount to avoid panic stations three weeks before the day because we can’t fit everyone! I have been trawling WOL for ideas, suggestions, warnings and recommendations for all the other bits and pieces. Darren thinks I have become a crazy Internet wedding junkie! He just doesn’t understand!

As of yet, the jury is out on the sticky subject of pageboys, ribbons, assigning duties etc. You would only drive yourself mad! I am off to Italy next week for my brother’s wedding. Forget the joy of watching him take his vows…I am after tips and ideas!!! I am only joking of course, but I will keep you posted! You never know!

Until the next time!

Siobhan