I’ve been loving writing these posts to reflect on our lovely wedding, but there’s a tendency to come across as if everything went perfectly to plan- it did NOT! I’ll share some anecdotes of the things that went wrong!
Our error-prone celebrant…
This was absolutely hilarious! We’d met the celebrant on a phone call a few days before the wedding (as they’d messed up the organisation and “forgot” about us until I kicked up one heck of a fuss!). She was very clear that no mistakes whatsoever were allowed, especially in any paperwork, so we were a little nervous to be alert and make sure we did and said everything correctly on the day.
We needn’t have worried: at the start of the ceremony, the celebrant read out some text we had prepared to thank everyone for coming and acknowledge some people who couldn’t make it. She read this out incorrectly and completely ruined a joke about why our cat couldn’t be at the event, confusing her and also our guests! Shortly after, she referred to both of us by the wrong names (she used our middle names), and then she told us to present the rings in the wrong order so I had to ask her to clarify. We were both very much more relaxed after this!
The weather
A very common one! Although we did get lucky with no rain on our actual wedding day, it had been raining the day before so the ground was wet- this is not conducive to keeping an ivory wedding dress with a long train in pristine condition for very long!
Having seen the forecast, I had a taxi booked for me to make the 200m journey to the Town Hall, just in case it rained. Unfortunately, the taxi had not been cleaned from the day before, and the floor was covered in muddy footprints from other passengers! I had no choice but to get in the car as carefully as possible. It did mark my dress in a few places, but I was able to mostly hide this in the folds of the overskirt fabric. I was initially quite dismayed that I’d turn up to the Town Hall with mud on my dress, but the important thing was that I got there without being drenched or late!
No blue skies, but it did make for lovely dramatic photos!
Cheese wax disaster
We had carefully chosen wheels of cheese covered in wax that matched our wedding colours: a black cheddar, a dark red cheddar, ivory Wensleydale and Sharpham Elmhirst, and a rogue stilton (we couldn’t NOT have stilton though, could we?!). We delivered the cheeses in their box to leave in the walk-in cold store and for the kitchen staff to set up for us. Unfortunately, the staff removed the lovely wax, obviously thinking they were helping so we could cut through it! Instead, our colour-coordinated cheeses were all tones of ivory- a little anaemic looking and not quite what we were going for!
Our majestic cheese wheel cake… a little anaemic, but still tasty!
Schedule? What schedule?!
Again, likely another common one, but we were having such a good time that our schedule for the day fell by the wayside quite a bit. We’d planned in some downtime after the breakfast and before the cocktail bar party, but this was completely taken up with photographs and more socialising. I was worried I’d run out of energy for the evening without having a rest, but in reality, I was having such a good time, I couldn’t wait to get back out there!
Toes! Won’t somebody think of my toes?!
Despite having picked high-heeled shoes that were as comfy as possible (see here), my feet were pretty dead by 7pm, especially after walking around central Oxford with our photographer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even switch to another pair as I was wearing my second gown for the evening which was altered to match the heel height. So, I had about a 40-minute break while I changed and touched up my makeup, then I was strapped in and back out there… I honestly lost the feeling in several of my toes for a week after the wedding. They’re fine now, but I was a little concerned at the time!
Hand cream or white chocolate?!
We had solid hand cream disks with paw prints on as wedding favours. I ran out of time to label the basket, so made sure to mention what they were in my welcome speech at the start of the breakfast… However, four hours later when our attention moved to the cake table and favours, many people had forgotten what they were and some had, quite understandably, mistaken the nice-smelling disks for white chocolate treats! I don’t think any were swallowed (and they’re made from natural materials so unlikely to cause harm), but a few unappetising bites were taken!
This chocolate’s a bit waxy…
So, what did we learn?
these things didn’t make a dent in our happiness on the day...
Some things didn’t go 100% to plan but, honestly, this didn’t matter at all! There were so many things that went right, so many small details that were really appreciated, that these things didn’t make a dent in our happiness on the day.
Our error-prone celebrant generated some good laughs and fun memories, plus introduced an air of informality to help us relax. We worked around the weather, and in fact, we decided that it was better for photos as nobody was squinting or eyes watering in blinding sunshine. My dress was not noticeably marked to anyone but my laser perception and it didn’t show in photos.
We were amped on adrenaline so didn’t feel we needed much of a rest (or new toes!), so running late and skipping nap time was fine. And people were too excited about several kilos of cheese to demolish to notice that it wasn’t wrapped in colour-coordinated wax!!
Oh, and we learned to label our non-edible gifts in future 😜
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Sweet, clever, fashionable, beautiful Zoë – I love your posts.