1 Year To Go Until The Big Day!

The 1st November officially marked the 1 year mark until my wedding! As I am writing this, it’s currently 363 days until I say “I do” and I’m feeling giddy with excitement, although a little overwhelmed by the amount of planning I now need to do.

The venues are booked!

Just after lockdown 1.0 ended, we checked out the reception venue that we had wanted to visit for a while, but couldn’t because of the national guidelines. We went for a lovely lunch and adored the food, location and facilities, so we booked it for our wedding reception as soon as we got home. 

We actually got a really good deal on the venue and there are lots of rooms for our guests to stay in. It’s in a lovely rural area and the rooms are dog friendly, which is perfect for Mikey’s family as they all have dogs! I’m really looking forward to dancing the night away with my new hubby in their gorgeous cellar room.

It’s a huge load off my mind knowing that we now have our ceremony and reception venues booked, although we still need to pay off the reception venue. We’re working to a tight budget, so our ceremony is a basic reception office deal and only cost us £300. At least we know that no matter what, we can at least get officially married. That is, I suppose, if COVID-19 lets us! 

The Wedding Dress.

I bought my wedding dress during lockdown and got it custom made for my size. I toyed for ages about whether or not I should get a custom fit, or buy a dress that’s in the size I’d ideally want to be on the big day. I asked lots of people on wedding Facebook groups for advice and they all said not to do it! It turns out that wedding dresses can be taken in by up to 4 dress sizes, which is fantastic news. It means that I can work on my fitness and lose weight and know that I’ll still be able to wear my beautiful dreamy princess dress on the day. 

With a year to go, I’m definitely going to start seriously working on my fitness levels and shredding for the wedding. I’m going to be using a combination of apps, YouTube videos and advice from other people in the same situation to help me. I’m worried that I won’t manage to lose the weight, but again, that’s why I bought a dress that I know I’ll fit in no matter what. As if weddings aren’t stressful enough, imagine not being able to squeeze into your wedding dress on the big day!

Decorations and styles.

Honestly, I am so indecisive that I’ve still no definite colour scheme. I have a white dress as I thought the sparkly bits on the dress looked a lot nicer in white rather than ivory. The wedding is the day after Halloween, so I think there are going to be a lot of pumpkins and the whole thing will be quite rustic and autumnal. This suits us perfectly too, as autumn is my absolute favourite and it’s also a season that is full of beautiful colours. Having an autumn themed wedding also means we can use pumpkins, pinecones and conkers as decorations, which I think will look lovely and it’ll also cut the costs a bit!

The Honeymoon.

We’re working on a small budget and our original plan was to buy and convert a van into a camper for our honeymoon. We were going to take 2 weeks off from life and cruise around the North Coast 500, living that #vanlife and taking in Scotland’s finest locations. Sadly, what with all the craziness that’s happened the last few months, including us being forced to move house next month, we simply can’t afford it any longer. Buying and converting a van would have cost us thousands, and even if we took a loan out for the project, it just isn’t feasible anymore. At least not this year.

So instead we’ve booked ourselves a week away in the sun in a nice all inclusive resort and saved ourselves a lot of money. It’s really heartbreaking to know we won’t get our van done in the next year, but it’s something that we can at least look forward to in the future. 

Everything else. 

There’s still loads of other bits that need to be sorted within the year, and now’s the time that I need to sit down with Mikey and sort it all out. We have our finalised guest list and those in the wedding party know their roles, it’s just putting everything together and turning it all into an event. I can totally see why people hire wedding planners – there’s so much to do that you don’t really think about. A lot of work goes into planning a wedding that the guests may not even know about! 

The only thing that’s making it all a little easier to handle is knowing that the ceremony is 100% done. After all, that is the most important part. Assuming that COVID-19 and the government guidelines allow weddings this time next year, I do at least get to marry my Mister! 

I suppose you can expect a fair bit of wedding content over the next year, but don’t worry, there will still be a lot of my usual content too! If there’s anything you particularly want to know or you want me to talk about, let me know in the comments.