Properly engaged!

We went ice-skating with some friends at an outdoor rink this evening which was fun and I also managed to stay upright which was good! The best moment though was when Michael and I stopped for a break and he suddenly took a small box from his pocket and presented me with my engagement ring which had finally arrived! It was a very romantic moment and I have had a permanent smile on my face ever since! I finally feel properly engaged (for the last two weeks, people have been looking at my left hand expectantly whenever they see me!)

The (almost) alcoholic midwife

I’m feeling a bit like a zombie today after spending all night at a labour and not getting home until 11am. I had anticipated that I would be at a birth so had stocked up on Red Bull and another energy drink which came in a large dark-coloured can. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise how much it resembled a can of beer/cider until I pulled it out of my bag on arrival at the hospital and opened it. My client looked quite startled until she realised it was an energy drink – for a moment she thought she had an alcoholic midwife!!

Wedding planning is somewhat time-consuming!

I am discovering how easy it is to spend hours just browsing various wedding sites on the internet. I can lose so much time without really feeling like I am moving the planning any further forward! Still, on the plus side, we have now had our first meeting with the minister to discuss booking the church, the legal requirements and things like that, and I have started looking into photographers and wedding videos and things like that. The hunt for the reception venue still continues – there are two definite possibilities on the list, but Michael still needs to view them.

Wedding cars

I am amazed at how lovely people are. One of the guys at my church, on hearing that Michael and I had got engaged, came up and asked me if I had considered transport yet. I told him I was considering a black cab for the bridesmaids (Michael’s dad is hopefully sorting out my car) and it turns out he has a vintage black cab which he is willing to let me use at a very reduced price which is fantastic. He has also arranged for a second cab as my mum and bridesmaids won’t all fit in one car.

Busy weekend

It’s been a busy weekend. As well as investigating potential wedding reception venues, Michael and I also had a trip to IKEA and so most of today has been spent putting together furniture. I’m hoping that once we have got things organised, this will mean that the spare room becomes a lot less cluttered and might actually resemble a bedroom rather than a junk room. Having less clutter will also make it easier to see if the mouse is still around as at the moment there are lots of hiding places for it (although no obvious signs of mouse activity).

More on the search for a reception venue

Michael and I looked at another two potential reception venues this afternoon. The first would have been perfect if the room had been a little bigger (and available on the right date!) whereas the second helped me to think more about what I don’t want rather than what I would like. Whilst the three function rooms were rather lavishly decorated, the focus seemed more on quantity of decoration rather than overall appearance. Throughout the rest of the venue, the décor was tired and a little shabby, with lingering unpleasant cooking odours in the corridor. The search for a venue continues.

Unwanted guests

I cleared out the spare room back in the spring and discovered that we had a mouse. However, since then there had been no further evidence of mouse activity and I had hoped that our little furry guest had chosen to lodge elsewhere. However, this afternoon I moved the chocolate Advent calendars which I had put in the spare room and discovered a little pile of cardboard flakes from where a mouse had chewed the cardboard off the calendars so it looks like my furry friend has returned. I think another clear out of the spare room may be necessary.

In search of the perfect reception venue

I read recently that the national average cost of a wedding is £20,000 which I was utterly shocked by, but having started investigating possible reception venues, I’m now no longer surprised at all. It seems that some people feel they have a right to charge ridiculously inflated prices because the word “wedding” is mentioned. I’m hoping to put Michael’s skills at event management to good use in finding a good venue at a reasonable cost. I visited one potential option today, and have an appointment to view another place later in the week – fingers crossed we find somewhere reasonably nice.

Oklahoma rehearsals

We’ve started rehearsing the ballet scene in Oklahoma! which meant that yesterday’s rehearsal was quite physically demanding. During the number, I get lifted, pushed to the ground, dragged across the stage, thrown over Jud’s shoulder, and knocked back to the ground again. There is also a fight scene between Curly and Jud in the ballet. Fortunately I got used to being picked up and thrown about when doing acrobatic rock ‘n roll but it seems to be a close-run thing between Steve (Curly), Simon (Jud) and myself as to who ends up most bruised at the end of the number!

Preparations have started

The wedding plans are starting to come together surprisingly quickly. I have been engaged for just four days and already I have put together the designs for my wedding dress, bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses with my sister who will be making them all, organised getting a veil and tiara and have drafted a guest list with Michael. We went shopping for my engagement ring today which was very exciting – it will take a couple of weeks to arrive though. The biggest thing we need to focus on now is trying to find a suitable venue for the reception.

Disclaimer

WARNING: The writer of this blog has been infected with wedding fever. Symptoms may include walking around grinning from ear to ear, squealing loudly when in the presence of female friends and family, and being incapable of discussing anything that is not related in any way to weddings and getting married. This is a temporary condition, but is likely to last several months, during which time blog posts may show a distinct bias towards the subject of planning a wedding and anything related to matrimony. Normal service is unlikely to be resumed before summer 2009. Thank you for your understanding.

Engaged!!!!!

After eight years, Michael is finally going to make an honest woman of me! He proposed on the last night of our holiday. We had just finished dinner in the hotel restaurant and were holding hands across the table, when he suddenly asked “Will you marry me?” My first reaction was “What?! What did you say?!” followed by “Oh my goodness… yes!” We were surrounded by businessmen so it didn’t seem appropriate to dive across the table and kiss him so we sat looking at each other in a “what now?” kind of way! I am very happy and excited!

Lest We Forget

I stand amongst the stones of white
thinking of those men who went to fight in France:
Young men cut down in their prime;
names and faces lost in time.
This was “the war to end them all”
but as I watch the poppies fall
at the Remembrance Festival each November,
in the silence, I stop
and remember their sacrifice.
Time’s pages turn:
the world has changed yet we can’t learn
to live in peace.
So – on we fight and watch as lives are sacrificed
and war goes on.
But still we pray
that peace on Earth will come someday.

Armistice Day

90 years after the last shot was fired in World War 1, we stood at the Thiepval Memorial, a memorial to the missing of the Somme, and remembered those who fell. It was incredibly moving to stand in one of the battlefield sites, listening to the Last Post and then in the silence remembering those who fought in that very place, as well as others who are killed in defence of their country. We then moved to the Anglo-French cemetery behind the memorial where the children attending the remembrance ceremony placed French and British flags on some of the graves.

The Somme - Mon 10 Nov

Michael and I spent today looking around some of the battlefield sites in the Somme. We went to the Sheffield Memorial Park which was one of the starting points of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. Some of the trenches are still visible, and looking out across the fields, you could see where the German front line would have been. It is hard to imagine the horror of the battlefield on a peaceful autumn afternoon but the sheer numbers of military cemeteries give some idea of how many men were killed in the fighting in this area.

Paris

Paris is one of my favourite places to visit, although I had only really visited the main touristy areas before. This time, Michael and I were visiting a friend who lives in Paris, so we got to see the city from a different perspective. Paris has a system known as Velib, where there are rental bikes available all over the city – you just pick up a bike locally, cycle to another part of the city and park the bike at a rental point there. We ended up cycling around some of the city which was a little scary but fun.

Ieper - Sat 8 Nov

Today’s excursion took us to the area around Ieper. We visited New Irish Farm Cemetery, a WW1 cemetery where a distant cousin of mine (the known relative who died in WW1) is buried. It was very sobering to stand amongst hundreds of white headstones, over half of which simply read “A soldier of the Great War. Known unto to God” and think that most of the men there were younger than I am now, and that this particular cemetery is one of hundreds along the Western Front. We also visited the Menin Gate in Ieper before heading off to Paris.

Amsterdam day 3

Having spent the last two days exploring Amsterdam pretty thoroughly by foot, Michael and I rented a canal bike (like a pedalo) and spent a couple of hours seeing Amsterdam from the canals. I was very glad that I hadn’t decided to go canal-biking alone – having rather short legs meant assuming a somewhat interesting semi-recumbent position to have any hope of operating the pedals (not comfortable!). This afternoon was spent in Zannse Schans, an area where several windmills have been preserved and we got to explore a working sawmill. It was quite pretty in a kitsch postcard kind of way.

Amsterdam day 2

My attempts at speaking Dutch when ordering breakfast this morning resulted in much more friendly service (not that it was unfriendly yesterday). Today’s walk around Amsterdam took in the Old Centre and the Jewish Quarter. One of the best places visited today was the Museum Het Rembrandthuis – a house where Rembrandt lived between 1639 and 1658 which has been reconstructed to look just how it would have done back then. I also visited the memorial to the Auschwitz victims in Wertheim Park – broken mirrors covering the buried urn containing the ashes of the dead from the concentration camp – very thought-provoking.

Wed 5th Nov - Amsterdam day 1

Amsterdam is quite a compact city and I decided that the best way to explore it was by foot so having donned my new comfortable (but decidedly ugly) shoes, I set off on a long walk around the canals. I discovered a tiny hidden garden behind a ordinary looking door amongst the canal houses which I would never have discovered without the guide book, visited the Theatermuseum (very odd), the Bijbels Museum (Biblical museum), had coffee in a red light district coffee shop and explored the Anne Frankhuis, which was much more interesting that I had expected it to be.

Arrival in Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam this evening. Rod and Jamie (who are working with Michael) arrived about an hour before we did, having taken almost the same time to get there by plane as Michael and I did by car. The drive from Calais to Amsterdam was very dull – particularly as nearly the whole journey was in thick fog so we didn’t even have any nice scenery to look at. Still, the hotel is nice and I am looking forward to exploring Amsterdam tomorrow – hopefully Michael will have some free time over the next couple of days to come sightseeing too.

Catching up with friends and family

It’s been a lovely few days of catching up with friends and family. I had a couple of days back home seeing my parents and as many of my siblings, nieces and nephews (and one great-nephew!) as I could manage to fit in. Being part of a large family is lovely, but when visits home are usually brief, it is impossible to see everyone! Michael and I have just returned from seeing my friend Gillian up in Scotland – a lovely relaxing weekend, visiting Loch Lomond and Glasgow. We’re off to Amsterdam tomorrow so blog posts may continue to be intermittent.