lavendersparkle

There was something about the envelope which let me know at a glance that there was something special about it. It's contents were given away by the bride and groom rubber stamping on the outside. Wedding invite! It was from two college friends who have been engaged nearly as long as Alec and I have been together, but have kept failing to actually organise their wedding. This disorganisation had led to another boon, non-Saturday wedding. I'd already heard that they were getting married on a Monday because it was the only day they could book all of the rooms they wanted to use for the wedding and reception.

Forward to this morning, I was thinking about the wedding and had a little niggling feeling. A Monday... in September... I just checked my calender and (the Jews reading might have guessed what's coming) it's on Yom Kippur. It's not too bad. The weddings at 3 and in Cambridge so I think I'll go to shul in the morning, go to the wedding, head back to shul for the last couple of services and hopefully get back to the wedding in time for the speeches and cake cutting. I'm trying to work out how to compose an RSVP with a menu request of "meat for Alec and nothing for me, I'll be fasting".

I now have the issue of what to write after you've been off LJ for ages.

Well I got married, had a lovely honeymoon and moved in with my husband. Since then I have mainly been sleeping, praying and fasting.

I suppose the exciting thing is that some of my wedding photos are online and can be found here.

I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. TODAY!

For my hen night I'm going to have a sleppover at my house with a few good friends and lots of booze. I like the idea of having a more sedate event which I would invite more people to, including my female future in-laws and my mum. I had the idea of having a picnic at Kenwood Ladies bathing pond. I like that it's a women only space and it's reasonably easy access for everyone and quite cheap. The only issue is that Kenwood Ladies Bathing Pond is frequented almost exclusively by lesbians and some people might think that that would make it an inappropriate place to take my relatives. What do you think?
[Poll #1224443]

Deliver Cambridge invites
Have trial manicure
Meet with florist
Chat to accommodation officer about married couples accommodation
Update wedding website
Get Jonathan to fill in the passport forms again

In my perusing of the wedding planning part of the internet I'm getting increasingly irritable with non-religious brides who want to have an Anglican wedding so that they can get married in a pretty church but then bitch about unfair it is that the church:
a) won't let them get married in a different church to their parish church just because it's prettier and/or was in a film.
b) strongly encourages them to come to church a whole three times to hear the Banns read.
c) makes them meet with the vicar more than once and dares to try to explain Christian ideas of marriage during those meetings.
d) won't allow them to do things which it deems inappropriate during the service.
e) makes them use the liturgy of the Church of England.

The Church of England is a religious body, not a wedding and pretty building preservation service. Would these people wander into a Mosque because it was pretty and then get all uppity about how the imam wouldn't let them wear a strapless dress for the ceremony?

So, Alec and I have a text for the marriage contract we want in both English and Hebrew. We're trying to work what to do about the actual ketubah. We don't want to spend much money (less than £300) so I don't think we can afford a custom ketubah. We have quite different aesthetics so finding a ketubah is a struggle. The next issue is that the text we want is really long (probably about 1000 words including the English and Hebrew) so a lot of ketubot where you just fit the text into a print aren't going to have room. Then I had a thought as I was browsing through a ketubah site. We could just get the text with no decoration and have it decorated at a later date when we have less of a time pressure and possibly a bit more money we could have it decorated. Now the website which gave me this inspiration charges about £130 for a plain printed ketubah text and I'm sure I should be able to get the text printed high quality for less than that with a printer who'll print from a PDF.

So the question, do any of you have any idea where I cold get that printing done?

So, it costs 50p to £1 plus VAT to hire a cloth napkin. I could buy a pack of 100 recycled paper napkins for less than £4 and chuck them in the compostable bin after the wedding. This calls for a poll.
[Poll #1183398]

I am beginning to realise why people tell you to book things early. I have just started looking into hiring table clothes and crockery etc. for the wedding and am starting to fear that a) it will cost way more than I thought and b) there may not be any hire firms with crockery free on our wedding date. On top of that there's the stress of how to get all of the stuff to and from the Guildhall. I suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world if guests ate off biodegradable plates with wooden knives and forks.

Alec hasn't found a band we like yet and I haven't even begun getting the stuff for the brit ahuvim yet because I've yet to find out whether any of my friends would be willing to officiate at one. Eclesiastical lawyers are being consulted over whether our marriage will be legal or we'll have to get legally married beforehand.

On the plus side, Alec has his outfit almost sorted and frankthebarmaid is still happy to make my dress in July. I think I'm going to go with Peter Graves for the flowers because when I visited them they were really helpful and they've been recommended by quite a few people as the florists to go to as long as you don't want lots of fancy stuff. My mother has managed to break down my fathers resistence over wearing morning dress and he has booked his suit.