Wedding Photos!

At last, after a weeek and a half, I've finally got around to uploading some of our favourite wedding photos to our website. Of course, there are plenty to be found on flickr, and you can even add your own (see our website for more info on how to use flickr), but a sample of our faves are finally up for those people that don't want to wade through (at present) 300+ pics!

Foolishly, I thought there would be far less to organise after the wedding, but no...there's my name to change (everywhere - honestly, you do not know how many places have your name), money to sort, Thank You cards to make - and just to make life even more complicated, job interviews to prepare for and funding issues to sort for when I start my MSc in Sept. I guess it's not surprising I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the beginning of the week!

Anyway, have a look at our Wedding Photos for now, and I may even get round to making a start on Issue 19 of PALS at some point in the next few days.

Issue 18 and Other News

Issue 18 of PALS is now on-line and ready to view - this time round it's a Wedding Special, fitting in with the general theme of my life at the moment! I hope you enjoy it.

On other news, Dan and I have now created a Flickr account, where you can view all our wedding photos in top quality images. So far there aren't many sections - just Reed Hall, Devon and Hen Do ones, but a Stag Weekend section will be coming shortly and our wedding photos (the ones we like at least) will also be added to this account, so you can see them there after the big day.

This is likely to be my last post for a while as we head back to Exeter on Sunday, a week before the wedding, and we are then on honeymoon until mid July. Looking forward to the wedding, but also to the holiday and time away afterwards to relax after all this planning!

Fun Hen Weekend!

I've just uploaded a bunch of photos from my hen night to the Wedding Photos section of our website - I've also put a few on facebook if you want to have a look there. I really should be doing more useful things like learning Italian and doing the piles of washing we need to get through before Saturday, but this was more fun! Plus I now have the Sims 2 to upload and a bunch of wedding gifts to open that arrived this morning - all the fun wedding stuff has started to happen, it's great!

The Hen Weekend was fantastic, the themed room was lots of fun with plenty of chocolate in it, and we got fast passes to tons of rides -we went on so many! I was very tired when I got home Sun eve though; the 6 hour train journey back from Blackburn didn't help! I'm pretty sure Dan had a great stag weekend too, although he didn't take any photos. I thnk his may have been slightly more action-filled than my hen night though; he went waterfall climbing in the Lake District...

Finally got around to doing some of this!

After weeks of failing to get anything to do with PALS done, I had a spurt of unexpected energy and have managed to not only begin PALS Issue 18, but also hassle people for articles on their wedding (sorry if you are one of them!) and update the photo page with some of the photos Dan took in Windsor back at the end of April - when we spent a weekend in London (see the British Landmarks Section of our Photo Website).

And Dan and I even did some wedding planning - we have created all our menus and even have a vague idea of where important people are sitting at the ceremony! Most people have replied to their invites now too; it seems that the people who can't come leave it until the last minute to let us know. Only waiting on 5 - 10 people now, which is pretty good out of 100 or so I think, considering they still have a week before the official cut off date.

Photos Done!

Well, Dan came home and fixed the computer, so now I have Dreamweaver, Publisher and MSN Messenger again, which is great news! So I have basically finished writing Issue 17 of PALS and will be uplodaing it next week. I have also just spent an hour updating our Photos Webpage with some more pics of Reed Hall, some pics of Dan's mum's wedding, some more Scotland pics (taken out of a plane) and some pics of Devon in general. There are new sections for some of these categories, so take a look!

This is the last thing I plan to do in terms of updating things on-line, as I'm a bit sleepy now and have been doing this for most of the day. It's good to finally get it done though, after failing terribly for the rest of the weekend!

You're Invited!

So, all the wedding invites have gone out - we've even had some replies already. Thanks Gavin and Anne. :) It seems all modes of communication are working too - the post is arriving and our website is being used.

I posted the evening invites this morning. That ws fun, standing at a post box for 5 mins stuffing it with silver envelopes. Dan told me off for not posting the daytime invites ceremoniously enough on Sat!

And now Dan has gone to a conference in Sheffield until Fri and I'm stuck on my own in Aberdeen - my birthday morning on Friday is going to be very dull! Thankfully I'll have the weekend in Edinburgh to look forward to. I can't even chat with the people at work because everybody I work closely with is on leave/ away on a course all week - so it's very quiet in my life. But somehow still very busy...

And none of that has anything at all to do with PALS but it's 4:30 and I'm finding it very hard to concentrate on my job - I've been working pretty hard all day and the concentration has gone.

It's probably about time I put some more pics on here too, but we've just not taken any photos recently - nothing much has happened. Perhaps over Easter...

Busy weekend

Had a totally mad weekend, which involved an awful lot of wedding sorting which still hasn't yet been fully done (still a whole bunch of invites to send), but I did manage to write up a page for the next PALS! Albeit quite a quick one.

It's unlikely I'll do much more now for a while, or blog much either - this weekend we are in Edinburgh and then we go back to Exeter for a week and a half over Easter. At least this is my last full week of work for nearly a month now!

Can't say I'm enjoying the job too much - it ends on 11 May and I'm not too disappointed about that. Still wish I was back at Kingston in a job I knew and loved with a bunch of people I liked!

Lots of successes

Having a really fun, really successful weekend. Glad I have tomorrow off too before I go back to work though, as pretty tired.

The shopping in Exeter for all things wedding went really well; I found my dress (I LOVE it, as soon as I tried it on I knew it was the one). I took photos and every time I look at them I like it more! I have to hide them from Dan though, so they're not going anywhere for the moment. I aslo ordered shoes - I've only seen photos so far but they look lovely, but I have to wait for them to arrive to check they fit/ are what I really want. The ones I saw that I wanted were a discontinued range, and they didn't have them in my size, so they suggested these instead which are very similar.

We also got Anne's matron of honour dress! It's lovely, in cornflower blue. Waiting for that and my dress to be ordered so we can be fitted - won't be until January, but I feel that may come a lot faster than expected!

Anyway, none of this is relevant to PALS but it's pretty relevant to me right now. And there's always the chance of having a 'wedding special' in the future - I think perhaps I need to get through it before I can write about it though? Although I guess a perspective from a bride-to-be, a new bride and an old hat (or something) would be pretty good.

Anyway, tomorrow we're off to Chessington World of Adventures; something totally un-wedding related, which I think I need! Can't wait to go on all the big rides. But I had better go to bed now because it'll take a couple of hours to get there, so I need to get some sleep.

Happy dreams!

Dresses

This is totally unrelated to all newsletter things, but I'm excited! Going back to Exeter this evening, and spending the next couple of days looking for wedding dresses. Excited, but also quite nervous! Really hope I can find something - have some ideas and pics to help. Can't put any pics up, of course, or Dan might see...you'll have to wait until next July!

Also quite looking forward to going back to Exeter in general and getting out of nasty London for a few days - been stuck here too long. Plus the days off work help too. Got plenty to see in Exeter; my brother has just moved out of my parents house and into his first house, Anne and Andy are around for the all-important tastings of varieties of Otter Beer for our wedding reception and I get to go shopping and have my hair done with my mum. Oh, and Dan's gran gets to try out my keyboard and see if she's happy to play it at our ceremony, being that we can't get a piano in the room!

Right, enough rambling. I'm going to go and be excited in a quiet corner until 5PM when I can finally leave work and get on that train!

A quick up-date

I've just spent a few minutes updating our photo website with some more garden pics; we've got a really pretty tree with loads of orange berries and fruit on it in our garden at the moment. No idea what the fruit is, but it looks very colourful! Also spent the morning chopping down lavender as it was growing into the path; very relaxing scent! Need to go now and look at wedding seating plans though; we found cheap pebbles for our floating candles bowls, so need to decide on what colours we want! Have a look at our garden photos to see the new pics.

Photos

I tried to add the Exeter University pictures to my previous blog, but for some reason it wouldn't let me. Perhaps too long a blog already? So I have made this a pictures blog instead, with a few photos of the uni! Hope you like the pics.

I have also done some more with our photos website this evening. Click on the picture below to see our new 'wedding photos' section - it currently has a few shots of the venue where the wedding wil happen, Reed Hall at Exeter University. I've also updated the 'Our Garden' and 'London' pages if you want to see a few more pics!

Right, time for bed!

Wedding, umm, "fun"?

I haven't posted/ done anything with my newsletter for a week now, as I've spent almost all of it trying to figure out a venue for my wedding next June! It's harder than it seems - does everyone have this much hassle?! I do have ideas for the next PALS issue though, so I will start to create the newsletter soon.

Sooo, wedding issues...originally we (well, I) thought it would be nice to get married in the church my mum goes to, in Exeter. All fine, except you have to be a local resident - albeit only for 8 days before you tell the registry office you want to get married. It's not a major problem as I can go home and give my parents address, but it does feel a bit like we're cheating the system...+ Dan blatantly has some reservations about getting married there, and I don't want him to do something he really doesn't want to + the only place we like in Exeter for the reception is fully booked all Saturdays next summer, although we could have a Friday, and the place does have other rooms (not sure which ones) that are free on Saturdays...

So we have been thinking about other places we could get married, where we won't be screwing the system and will both be happy. Current suggestions are a castle in or near Aberdeen, where we may well be living next June (another story entirely, and another decision we have to make...I'm slowly making it), a castle in Exeter (there's one near Tiverton, it's available but may be very expensive - awaiting the brochure for that one) or the uni halls where Dan lived in Bristol - a nice idea and very pretty but we need to check prices and availability.

I'm so confused, I don't know where to start! I also can't figure out what's least stressful/ affordable/ will make us happiest. I just want to get married somewhere pretty and as stress-free as possible! Should have done it 3 years ago in New Zealand without telling anybody I guess...

Oh dear, back to trying to make a decision...oh, Anne, I haven't forgotten you want a pic of the ring! (Well, I had, but I just remembered). Will try to send one this week!

News!

I'm engaged!

Now I'm back from Spain, Bath and all the random places I've been, I've got a chance to write a blog and tell you all the news. Obviously it's not directly connected to my newsletter but I thought it was worth a mention...

Dan asked me when we were in Spain, in Seville, a couple of days before we came home. One of the photos you can see here is of the cathedral in Seville - the photo was taken very near to the place he proposed, and it looked quite similar as it was 11PM at night when he did it.

The second photo is of us in the carriage of a horse and carriage ride we went on to celebrate - v. similar to the ones we saw in Prague. It was expensive, but we thought we should celebrate and the place we went to have champagne sold none, so this seemed a good choice!

Dan asked me properly too - he had bought a really nice ring (white gold, one diamond in the centre) and got down on one knee too! It came as a total surprise, I really wasn't expecting it all all. I only figured it out when he started to pull the ring box out! So, now I have a wedding to plan - we should be getting married roughly this time next year.