Almost 2 years on from our wedsnowpocalypsing I guess it’s time I introduced you to the snow.
The snow, the snow, the snow. Oh the snow.
I cannot emphasise this enough, the snow.
“Ne’er in a hundred years has the ground been dusted with snow before the light has reached its darkest hour, oh young lady, this is a joyous sign, blessed be your marriage and may your life be full of happiness”
said the toothless, blind, deeply furrowed soothsayer to me as I walked towards our wedding venue laden with weddingness.
Or in reality anyone I met in the week before the wedding. (the snow part anyway)
So back to the snow?
Shall I let the picture do the talking? Remember Bean is 6′ 2″ and it only got deeper the further me walked.
Bean, the lovely Emma Case, Me and a lovely brave Descartes. Taken by my NYC Goddess! How beautiful is that purple sky!
So the snow brought sadness but also happiness too. Most of our family and friends were shattered from clambering through the snow laden with stuff or spending what seemed like hours moving cars. Yet from these moments I will carry the most heartfelt memories of our weekend.
- The memory of trying to push my parents’ snow bound car whilst lying horizontally in the air with my feet “firmly” planted on a country wall and then a falling faceplant. (I thought I had dislocated my shoulder – ever the dramatic)
- Trying to move Grumpole’s (one of Bean’s brothers) super heavy car when laden with much beer, then said car flailing much to the amusement of the assembling cows.
- “Running” around with my nephews with the snow engulfing their little snow suited bodies.
- Squealing with joy at the appearance of family and friends finally making it to the venue despite looking completely exhausted from their epic journeys.
These are the memories I need to remember and not the tiredness and disappointment.
These moments are very Anna and Bean. I could pretend we are hipsters but I’m pretty sure you know we are not! We are all about the giggles and certainly not afraid to make fools of ourselves. Yet the tiredness that ensued led to lack of attention to detail, chaos and generally people thinking they knew what I wanted. (I shall never know why people moved my boxes!)
A wedding that is nearly all DIY means that nearly all the stuff for the wedding needed to be packed, unpacked and moved. I really did not think about that when I signed on for a DIY wedding! If I’m honest it barely crossed my mind. I had thought about it, but not in the detail that I needed to. I assumed that things would just happen. What a fool I am. I knew that it would be hard on the Friday night but I sort of just, well forgot. I also sort of forgot that I would be somewhat uncontactable on the Saturday morning. Although I was so happy that I was nested in a little cocoon of joy and love. (The cocoon that looked after me despite knowing so many people were stranded by the snow.)
I guess one of the problems is that I held most of the wedding in my head. I wanted it to be a surprise for everyone involved. One of my biggest mistakes. I know, I know. I knew what I needed to do. I just forgot that I could not do it all on my own.
DIY brides of tomorrow please want to do everything (it’s exciting and somewhat empowering) but realise that you will need help. At some point you are going to have to let go and let people help you. Learn from my mistakes.
Indeed I definitely blanked out the concept of having to clear everything else up on the Sunday. That was just, well depressing. Having to throw away your lovingly made decorations and taking down the sweet little touches that your spent hours agonising over is horrible. I now understand why people leave for honeymoon under a blaze of sparklers. The bleakness, I succumbed. It engulfed me. I watched my loved ones leave me to go back to their exciting lives and I was left with seemingly nothing. Such a cruel way to end a wedding. For one who does not like to be the centre of attention I did not want to hugs and love to end. It came as quite the shock. I made Bean feel terrible, like he was not enough for me. Then his hugs came and my tears flowed. He showed me why I could love no-one else the way I love him. He made me realise why we brought everyone together and then triumphed despite, well despite, everything.
So the snow caused problems (more trouble that you can shake a stick at really) but then I remember, the moments. The moments that gave me pictures like this. I may not feel like I look amazing but the moment was amazing. The moment I felt like the Bean and I were the only people in the world. A beautiful delicious intimate moment that I will cherish forever.
Such a candid, heartfelt post! I guess all of us who glorify the DIY bride don’t realize the after-the-wedding letdown as you have to dispose of all the items you so lovingly made. You do have fabulous photos in the snow, though!
The memory of the hundreds of pom-poms we just threw away (mainly because there was no room left in the cars) still makes me sad. Or it could just be the hundreds of hours I spent making them!
Fab post – nobody ever mentions what will happen to all of your lovingly handmade items after the wedding and I can imagine how awful and sad it would have been to have to take them down and dispose of them yourself the morning after. Such an important thing to think about DIY brides, arrange for a friend to do it instead!
I love your snow filled photos and dream of a snowy wedding day… xx
I think I need to write another post on how I integrated my wedding stuff into our home decor.
Thanks for sharing Anna – totally something to not under-estimate! I was ever so cheeky with mine in 2010…We had a pub wedding with a bit of DIY decoration and I wanted to keep it all quite laid back so I basically made a list, a map of where I wanted everything to go/be hung/flowers set out etc. I then arranged a team of my friends who lived in Kentish Town near to the venue to go before the wedding and set it up for us – I’d been to the pub the night before and left everything ready to go in boxes. It was amazing to arrive at the venue after the ceremony to see it decorated how I’d imagine – and oyu know what? They’d ignored some of my plans as they didn’t work in practicality and they’d done a few things differently but they were so much better!! It looked amazing and was actually more enjoyable because I hadn’t set it up myself. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any red heart balloons as my friend Andy had left the cap off the helium canister, in fact I didnt even notice until they told me about their panic afterwards! I got the kids in my class to personalise some bunting, was so gorgeous and worked really well – but I wasn’t sure until I saw it.
Thats the thing with DIY and creativity, you kind of have to ‘feel it’ rather than plan it and having that team of friends to do that for me meant I had to give up some of my control but it meant I had the most amazing evening with my family the night before and a chilled morning getting ready….
Especially when you can only do stuff on the day or if you’re lucky the day before. There are not enough hours!
such a heartfelt and incredibly interesting insight into wedding DIY. A great post!! x
we too went DIY, my art college pals all ganged together and decorated the venue beautifully, all fab.
but the few of us left at the end had to tidy up, so glowing and semi drunk I had to pack and tidy away before 1am- no option to clear up on the sunday…
guests took away most of the lovely decs when requested to help themselves, but finding a taxi to take us away at 1:30am laden with everything else and a heap of food to fill the freezer was not the perfect ending!
It’s not quite the flourish of sparklers is it?!
Lovely words Anna. I have just come back from my sisters wedding which was a serious DIY effort which despite there being at least 15-20 pairs of hands helping out it still felt like all the jobs were never going to get done. I had always imagined myself having quite a DIY affair but after this weekend Im not sure I could face going through all of that again. Maybe its different when its your own wedding but its definitely something I will think seriously about when it gets to my turn. x
It can be so much fun but you really have to plan, plan and plan some more. (Which we really didn’t as much as we should have!)
I too under-estimated the Yourself bit in DIY-wedding!! I didn’t have snow, but we did have rainy drizzle to contend with (totally not the same, I admit!). I found myself just flapping and getting cross at our caterer who was bossing me around (I later realised, she was doing this for my own good!)
As for the Sunday – we deliberately stayed away and left our friends and family to tidy up the barn – I would’ve found it too heartbreaking, and that’s the bit of advice I would give – it’s your wedding, you put it together, ask someone else to take it apart (as it were – not the marriage itself, oh dear, yknow, just the decorations and stuff!!)
If I’d thought about it before I would have paid someone to do it!
You’re so, so right. DIY is always made to sound like the perfect solution – cheap and personal and you get to spend fun evenings covered in glitter with your best friends. It wasn’t until the few days before my wedding when I realised that having to hang the 100 hand-made tea light holders around the venue why people go for an ‘all inclusive’ wedding package at a hotel. It took so much longer than I could have thought and I didn’t even have to tidy up the next day, as I was comatose in bed with the world’s worst migraine.
Watching that glitter being shaken off is rather sad.