Off I trundled to the UK Blog Awards at the wonderful Park Plaza Hotel in Westminster Bridge, London. The staff there were great and gave me a brilliant first impression of the evening (oh my goodness, I will pay to valet park everywhere now as it was so seamless and a stress free start to events!)
Let me say that I went with little expectation of anything other than a good night out and some nice food and drinks. Well, I wasn’t let down in that department (the sausage, mash and delicious onion gravy was divine!) PLUS I had the added bonus of actually picking up a highly commended award as well!
At first, I could hardly believe that my company name was on the screen when Kate Russell was announcing the highly commended blogs in the individual events category (albeit that my company name was being pronounced a little differently than intended!) But what a very pleasant surprise and one I have to keep pinching myself about. You can see all the winners and high commended blogs from the night at the UK Blog Awards website.
I’m so pleased and feeling fairly chuffed at the moment. More importantly I’m now spurred on to develop my blog further.
It’s been nearly 4 months since my blog was announced as one of the 10 individual finalists in the wedding category of the UK Blog Awards 2016. After voting and then judging, we’ve had a long time to wait. Now finally we get to hear the winners announced this Friday at an awards ceremony in London.
I’m proud to be a finalist and, honestly, I’m so honoured to just be counted alongside my fellow nominees. I’m going along really for a great night out, the delicious bowl food and a brilliant chance to network with some amazing bloggers. I feel like I’ve won already (yes, I know that sounds cliche and cheesy!) as the process has given me such a sense of achievement.
Win or lose, the awards have changed the focus of Hanami Dream. It has given me more confidence and the opportunity to promote my blog more.
For me, blogging has put me back on a level playing field again. After being on maternity leave, I found that there weren’t many flexible options available for women with experience, knowledge and great skills. But no one knows if I’m writing a blog post in my pyjamas late at night, or if I’ve just returned from the school run, or I’m covered in snot from one or more of my offspring. I feel on an equal footing again and blogging means I can still use all my skill set but at a convenient time to me.
The UK Blog Awards have been the catalyst for me to open my mind up to different opportunities and it has given my blog a new lease of life. Since I was announced as a finalist in January my blog has evolved considerably and I now feel that I’ve honed it and progressed it to the next level.
I look forward to hearing the winners announced on Friday night. But more importantly I look forward to the next chapter in the journey of my blog.
Last month I started to talk about the three key aspects of planning a wedding that pretty much affect every other thing that is connected with your big day. These are where, who and how much (otherwise known as your venue, guests and budget). These are a group of three things that are united. As I mentioned in the post that looked at when to get married, nearly all the decisions you have to make about your wedding will come back to one, two or all of the elements in what I class as the holy trinity of wedding planning.
This month I’m going to tackle the who element and your all-important guest list (and will look at the where and how much aspects another time).
There will probably be some tough decisions to make with your guest list. Perhaps the reality of your budget means you have to rein in a few of your plans, or other people’s involvement means compromising on some thoughts, or maybe who you want to invite and have on your guest list causes headaches.
Here are 10 things that can dictate and influence who gets to come to the big day:
1. Venue
Firstly the other two elements of the holy trinity of wedding planning (the where and how much) will have a massive say on how many guests you can invite. For example, you can’t decide on a venue without knowing how many people you want to invite. Or maybe you want to pick your dream venue and have the size of the place dictate the number of guests you can invite. The venue could also influence the style of wedding you have based on how many guests you’re allowed in the room for a ceremony, a sit down meal or a standing buffet (this number will vary depending on the number of chairs and tables required for different room set ups).
Where you hold your wedding may affect whether people are able to travel to it. For instance, if you have a destination wedding abroad or hold it in a different part of the country to where your family live. These decisions could mean that elderly relatives can’t make it or people can’t take extra time off work to travel or stay over at the venue. Although, maybe you want to limit the numbers and so eloping or flying off to Vegas may be the best option for you so that you have just a few select guests there. (Bear in mind that infamous episode of Don’t Tell the Bride though and don’t eliminate important guests ie pick one sibling over the other to go to a destination wedding!)
2. Budget
The other part of the holy trinity of wedding planning is the money side of things. How much you have to spend will definitely factor in to how many people you can invite. It might not just be about how many people you can fit in the room, but how many you can afford to be there too. There are some costs that won’t change no matter how many people are there but there a number of variable costs that will alter depending on how many people are enjoying them. These costs include the food, favours, cake, drinks, stationery (such as invites, menus, orders of services etc) and the size of the bridal party. Plus if you are going abroad, consider whether you or your guests pay for their transport, travel and hotel costs.
[Look out for more on budgeting advice for weddings and venue choices in future blog posts about the holy trinity of wedding planning coming soon.]
3. Timing
I covered quite a bit about this aspect in the So, when’s the big day? post last month. Suffice to say that the day of the week could have a big impact on whether people would be able to attend and also if it’s during a holiday time. If you really want to ensure people can make it then the best advice is to give them as much notice as possible. Send out save the date cards or discuss with key people to find out whether they could make it.
4. Law
Let’s bring this back down to the basics. The most important people to be at your wedding are you and your partner. As well as you two, you only really need 3 (or 4) other people to be there if you want an intimate affair. So as long as you’ve got someone to carry out the ceremony (plus a registrar if the person who conducts the ceremony is not authorised to register marriages) and two witnesses then you’re sorted. Anyone else is a bonus.
5. Family
It’s probably best to start with your nearest and dearest. Who could you not do without in order to enjoy the day? These are probably your parents, siblings, family and close friends. If you have a very large family, it could mean that you don’t have many spaces left for lots of other guests!
6. Wedding party
Then there’s the crew that stand alongside you on the big day. These reliable, supportive and trusted friends are who you are putting all your faith in to ensure your day goes smoothly. So pick your team wisely (this was a top tip from one bride in the Wedding day advice from real brides and grooms blog). It is entirely up to you how big to make your wedding party. But consider that how many people are in the bridal party will affect the number of bridesmaids dresses, bouquets, gifts, suits etc that you have to include in the budget (yes, everything comes back to the holy trinity of wedding planning again!) Decide and discuss what you are going to pay for and what elements you require to be paid for by the wedding party as soon as you can.
7. Wallet
Now this is the biggy and probably the most political and controversial aspect. Who is paying for the wedding? If you are paying for your own wedding, you pretty much can decide all elements yourself. Or at least have the final say. However, if the money is coming from someone else you may feel indebted to honour their wishes or requests. For example, if your parents are paying then they may want to invite many of their own guests to the day. Traditionally it is etiquette for the bride’s and groom’s parents to have a proportion of the guest list to allocate themselves. Often it comes down to a bit of compromise. For me, I didn’t want to look around the room and not know the people that were sharing our day. With an intimate occasion, I didn’t want to invite a long-list relative at the sacrifice of inviting a dear friend.
8. Day vs evening
If you have the option to be able to split the day to different elements then you could include additional people as evening guests to join you after the main meal. But try to make sure it’s not just a tagged on event and still includes elements of a wedding day to make them feel like valued additions to the day.
9. Plus ones
You’ll also need to decide whether you are going to include children to your wedding. Are you inviting work colleagues? If you’re not limited to numbers will you allow single guests to bring plus ones that you potentially might not even know?
10. Who?
Ultimately, it all boils down to who you want in the room with you and how well do you want to know the people that are there. Honestly, you’ll start to see pound signs appearing above your friends and family’s heads! I guess, it’s a crude way to think of it but in reality you’ve got to think ‘Would I take this person out to dinner and pay for their meal?’ (or pay for them to have a drink, if you are having a separate evening guest list). Do you know them? Do you like them? Have you seen them recently? Do you want them to share your day with you?
When you look back on your big day your wedding photographs will be a snap shot of your family and circle of friends at that moment in time.
There’s no right or wrong answer on who to invite to your wedding. Nor is there a magical formula that will work it out for you. Ultimately, you should invite guests that you want to share your special day with. When you look around the room you want to know that everyone in the room is an important part of your life and it is precious to have all the people you care about in one place at the same time.
So, you’ve got all your guests to the venue, now where do you seat them? Look out for a guide to organising your seating plan in another blog post soon.
Your wedding day is one of the happiest days of your life. When you look around the room you’ll see all the people that you love, however you may also notice all the people that are missing from the celebrations too.
Not to put a dampener on proceedings but inevitably there may be some people who won’t be able to join you on your big day perhaps due to distance, illness or because they have passed away. Telegrams are often traditionally read by those who couldn’t make it and sometimes a toast is raised to absent friends.My own wedding day was tinged with some sadness as my father suddenly passed away 9 weeks before we got married. It was a huge shock and at one point we considered whether we should postpone the wedding. I guess this is why we bought wedding insurance but I didn’t want to be sat around on our chosen date commenting that we would’ve been getting married today. We decided to go ahead and it gave our family something positive to focus on.
I certainly didn’t anticipate having to organise a funeral in the midst of wedding preparations but it did give me some clarity for the day. My father wasn’t around much when I was growing up and he wasn’t always that reliable. He had been unwell for some time prior to his death and so we didn’t know if he’d be well enough to be a part of the day at all, let alone even turn up. Or if he had turned up whether he’d been ill at the reception. Although it was unpleasant circumstances, at least I knew whether he would actually be there or not!
We had already asked my mum to do the ‘mother of the bride’ speech and my Grandad proudly walked me down the aisle (which was fitting as he was such an influential part of my life), and my husband toasted our absent friends in his speech. We didn’t want the day to be dominated by the recent sad events, so we chose not to do anything more public – everything was still too raw to cope with anything else.
I knew the day was going to be emotional but we also had this immense warm feeling of love from all our friends and family who were there and all knew about the ‘elephant in the room’. They were so caring, supportive and encouraging. There was torrential rain the day before we got married (it was August – thanks British weather!) and again the day after. Yet on the day of our wedding it was glorious sunshine and the grass was a lush green and the flowers were all blooming after being refreshed from the rain. In the car on the way to the church, my Grandad told me that he thought the sunshine was his late wife (my Nanny) shining down on us.
I know that my other Nan still watches our wedding DVD back frequently so that she can see her now late husband enjoying the day. The photos too are a snapshot of the people that were in our lives at that time and who we were fortunate to share our special day with. There were poignant moments but the sadness didn’t dictate the day. It was certainly a day of huge celebration. We didn’t forget those that has passed but we didn’t dwell on their passing.
Here are some suggestions of ways to privately or publicly remember lost loved ones at weddings:
Photographs – framed photos set up on a table or part of a family tree, hanging in photo charms on your bouquet, hanging from shoes or placed in a locket
Jewellery – wear heirlooms or gifts from the loved one, wear their wedding bands tied round an ankle or wrist, wear or melt down their wedding band to make your own
Embroidery – material from a piece of their clothing stitched in your wedding dress, use their handkerchiefs or ties, have monograms of their initials stitched in your dress
Candles – a lit candle in church or on a table in the reception
Flowers – use their favourite flower, have a single flower in a vase, put your bouquet on their grave afterwards
Ceremony – dedicate a reading to them, include a tribute in the order of service, get the celebrant to mention them
Chairs – have a reserved seat for them at the ceremony (although this may be a little emotional to see an empty chair there)
Reception – name tables after them, toast them in your speech, place a drink for them at the bar, use a special piece of music
Favours – donate to a relevant charity or place a charity pin as a favour
Releases – let balloons, Chinese lanterns or butterflies float off in to the sky
‘If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.’
A. A. Milne
We don’t have a television at the moment. After some building work before the summer we moved it and have never reinstated it. We haven’t missed it at all and what it has meant is that we only watch something that we really want to watch now (rather than flicking through channels if we are tired) or do other things instead.
I’ve taken to watching iPlayer whilst I cook and found some great period dramas over the summer to watch such as The Duchess of Devonshire, The Scandalous Lady W and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I soon discovered that there’s a common thread through these and realised that all of these films made me feel really lucky to be a wife of this century. Plus along with the recent film release of Suffragette, I’m very grateful that I have choices and rights that my ancestors wouldn’t have had.
The vows I chose to make when I got married were promises rather than laws. I didn’t become the property of my husband and I chose not to ‘obey’ him in my vows. However a few centuries ago people didn’t have this same luxury. We live in a time when marriage is about partnership, lifelong companionship and equal rights.
The wording of the Church of England traditional wedding vows includes the bride promising to ‘obey’ and the groom vowing to ‘worship’ his wife. However some couples choose to leave out these words nowadays and alternatively choose ‘to love and to honour’ or ‘love and cherish’.
Traditional vows ‘I, (name), take you, (name)
to be my wife/husband,
to have and to hold
from this day forward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part’
Traditional promises Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her,
and, forsaking all others,
be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?
Whilst traditional vows still hold a lot of meaning, relevance and importance, we are also able to choose to make those vows more personal depending on the type of ceremony. Especially in humanist or non-religious ceremonies where you can personalise and express yourself completely when writing your own vows. Whilst sometimes the amount of choices we have in life can be overwhelming, I remain grateful that we have choices.
Over the past four years, Zena Birch has worked very closely with couples to help them create their own personal vows to go alongside or precede more traditional ring vows. Here are some of her top tips for writing your own vows.
In a humanist ceremony instead of holding themselves accountable to a god or a deity, couples are actually asking those gathered to hold them accountable as they witness their public declarations. Therefore the words they say as they make their vows and their promises to each other are more important than ever.
In today’s age it is possible to live very happily together without getting married, so when a couple decide to take this extra step it is a deeply personal commitment. Your vows are to be celebrated every year you manage to uphold them, but they should also be the words that hold you fast when times get difficult and as such it is important that the vows you say to each other are made up of the values and commitments you are willing to stand by.
My couples and I work together to discover just what those words/promises might be. It can be very daunting – faced with a blank page and some of the most important words you are ever going to say, so the advice I tend to give is to make sure they:
sound like you, they should have your tone of voice, they should be authentic – if you tease each other, there is no harm in an element of this being reflected within your vows, this is just as important as a sense of solemnity. Capturing the twinkle in your eye as well as the sincerity in your heart is key.
reflect what you have both agreed to commit to one another. Although many couples decide to say their vows as a surprise to each other on the day, it is important that the process involved in creating them is shared so that they are in agreement with their core values.
Enjoy creating them!
We are lucky to live in an era where our own words hold validity. Writing your own wedding vows is a very enriching experience and one which can really help lay the foundations needed for a long and joy filled marriage.
What an exciting Friday night I had last week!
Last month I started to talk about the three key aspects of planning a wedding that pretty much affect every other thing that is connected with your big day. These are 
