The wedding went literally without a hitch. The Grim’s Dyke Hotel were magnificent in their organisation and really let us get on and enjoy our day without any concern for logistics. Everyone was extremely complimentary about the food and arrangements; even an aunt of mine who arranges huge events for a living and can find fault from 500 paces said it was perfectly organised. Praise indeed.

Harrow’s registrars were lovely and ensured the ceremony struck the right balance for our wedding, of it being an important statement of commitment, while also being a day for joy and fun. Again, the registrar led their part of the day, making it stress and hassle free, with us just following the instructions, which by that point was perhaps all we could manage anyway! An undoubted highlight was the always slightly tense question by the registrar asking if anyone knew of any reason why we shouldn’t be married. At this Tara’s father shot a look over his shoulder and the guests crumpled in laughter. Superb comic timing.

The speeches delivered after the wedding breakfast all went down a treat. In our case, we delivered a joint bride and groom speech. This helped give the occasion a flavour that was distinct to us, rather than just following the format of every other wedding, and seemed to go down well with guests.

For the reception we also decided to dispense with the standard crap wedding disco DJ and go for a live band. It took a good deal of research to track down a band that offered the right mix of music that would appeal to all generations present while keeping within our budget, but the Untouchables did that brilliantly, and were received to universal acclaim by everyone there. Covering everything from Elvis to the Goo Goo Dolls (our choice for first dance) is no mean feat but the vocals and music were bang on the money with every track.

Another bonus of having a live band is that it makes for great photos. Another tip of the hat goes to our wedding photographer Neil Palmer whose coverage of the day greeted us as we returned from honeymoon and which looks superb. We’re quite sure that many of the shots will be adorning the mantlepieces and walls of family and friends very shortly. He did a sterling job considering the Harrovian monsoon rains which appeared just as the outdoor group shots were wrapping up.

All in all the wedding was everything that we could have hoped for. Everyone played their part allowing us and our guests to enjoy the day to its fullest and we hope that it was personalised enough for it to hold some great memories for all those who helped us celebrate the day.

We started with a couple of coffees at Le Pain Quotidien (annoyingly misspelled on FourSquare) on Marylebone High Street, which is definitely the easiest fun place to get to from Rickmansworth (don’t start, Watford fans). Caught up with chief collaborator Alys just by the big Methodist church – she was definitely looking more glam than I was – and met Sarah and Lucy outside LPQ. Didn’t have to wait long for a table and spent about an hour sipping from those lovely handle-less bowls they give you and very briefly looking at the paper. Virtuously rejected breakfast, although the food they do there is just lovely, so as to leave room for cheese at our next stop.

At 12.30, we mooched down the road to La Fromagerie on Moxon Street. It was already very busy, so we had time to look at the seriously #middleclass ingredients on show in the vestibule (chickpea flour, anyone?). It’s a beautiful cafe/deli with wooden benches or bar stools and a skylight over the eating area. We ordered two large plates of cheese (Spanish/Portuguese and a mixture of selected cheeses) for £13.50 each to share and two lots of bread. The highlight for me was a gorgeously fudgy blue cheese from Ireland from the selection board that looked like it ought to have grown on the inside of an abandoned coffee mug. Annoyingly, I can’t find the name of it on their website – may have been available but briefly. We had the house white to accompany. I have no idea about wine, but I’m told it was a good choice.

Our next official stop wasn’t until 4, so we went on a semi-unplanned hike through Hyde Park. There’s been so little rain that it looked a bit like an apocalyptic wasteland at the Marble Arch end. A few people sat in scattered deck chairs and one drunk lay in a state of seeming rigor mortis on the grass. We carried on walking until we finally came to a vacant bench and watched the hire bikes go by. Alys and I had seen a docking rank finished and installed by the National Gallery on Tuesday and the scheme launched on Friday. Seventeen of the things passed by in half an hour as we sat there in wonderment (this may have had something to do with there being ranks at either end of Hyde Park and a flat surface in between). Don’t think a single rider was wearing a helmet – they need to fix that somehow. Amused to see them being referred to as ‘Bojo bikes’ on Twitter recently.

We walked most of the way to the Strand to the Waldorf Hilton (3.4 miles, let me tell you) for tea. Well worth a visit. £8.50 for a cream tea, which Sarah, Alys and I had. Lucy had a little strawberry tart instead. We had the old cream then jam or jam then cream debate. Personally, I definitely do cream, then jam. I think it’s because cream will go flat, but jam won’t, so it has to go on the top. It’s a visual thing. We also enjoyed the pianist just outside the door (known as Plinky-Plinky Man 1).

Had a wander back up to Soho via Covent Garden after tea, where we saw the best use of a Bojo bike so far. The first half hour is free, so an anonymous gentleman had borrowed one and was doing wheelies up and down the road. Well, why not?

Having popped into the Chandos for a cherry beer, we met up with my mother, her friend and two more friends for dinner at Kettner‘s in Soho, which is supposed to be where Oscar Wilde was arrested. There are plenty of upstairs private dining rooms (which we didn’t eat in, but saw a great deal of as we wandered about trying to find the loos).

This is my starter – scallops with risotto nero (Nero is Etruscan for black, as you know if you’ve read ‘I, Claudius’. ‘Caffe Nero’ is much cleverer if you know that, too). Lovely scallops. Risotto…well, risotto-like. There was a definite emphasis on both savoury and sweet tarts. The salmon and spinach one I had for my main course was very nice. It came with a little bit of potato salad and some salad leaves. What was noticeable, however, was that my mother had the same as her starter and they didn’t differ particularly in terms of size. Clearly they were trying to help me get into my dress. Nonetheless, the atmosphere of the restaurant was very pleasant (Plinky-Plinky Man 2) and the service generally good, other than a small misunderstanding over a ‘blue’ steak. Prices weren’t bad, either. Starters ranged from about a fiver to £7.50 and mains from £11 to £19. Not bad for central London.

Naturally, after that we did a wild crawl of all of Soho’s cocktail bars and stayed out clubbing until dawn. Just joking. We went home.

1. No one reminds you to tell the head’s secretary that you’re changing your name. I think it was when the timetables first started coming out that I twigged that the coding was wrong.
2. Not only that, but I’ve had to ask for a special set of initials – being ‘TA’ in a school would be extremely confusing, as it usually stands for ‘teaching assistant’.
3. You have to tell the children well in advance that you’re changing your name so that they have time to get used to the idea (as with any other piece of information, such as “this is your fifteen minute warning to pick up your pen…”). Then they can enjoy practising it and trying to use it. This confuses the less bright ones, who then think you’ve got married over the weekend and proceed to try to hug you. In fairness, it does affect them slightly – their form name changes by one letter. They don’t seem to mind. We minded very much when our form tutor got married at school, because we desperately wanted to remain ’10OC’ – read it quickly and you’ll see why. I’ve said to them that I don’t really mind if they can’t manage the new name for a bit. Change is tough for 14 year olds.
4. Everybody seems to take it personally if you don’t tell them specifically that you’re getting married. The large diamond/Facebook doesn’t do the trick, apparently. Should I have worn a big sign all year saying “I’m getting married on…”? This applies to the kids who aren’t in my tutor group as well, so when their timetables came out they came flooding in to ask who this mysterious “Mrs X” was.
5. I can’t write my new surname without consciously thinking about the letters. Too many tall consonants. Must practise.
6. Also, I keep forgetting I have new initials when coding up all the stationery.
7. Irritatingly, the data system has decided that I no longer have an initial – I have become the entity “Mrs X”.

I’m sure everyone who changes their name when they get married has similar issues (I haven’t even started looking at important things, like bank accounts and passports). Maybe I should just have persuaded Dan to change his name instead…

Would you believe that people don’t want to buy us towels and a garlic press? I was under the impression that wedding lists were meant to be domestic and boring. Tell you what, though, we’re going to have a hell of a chuck-out after the wedding. Bye bye all the crappy Argos and Tesco cutlery and kitchen stuff we bought when we first moved in together.

Just the peripheral things left to do now and I realise I’m supposed to be some kind of monumentally stressed-out Bridezilla by this point in the process, but I’m failing heartily. We’ve paid the hotel (don’t get me started on  how much we’re paying for one day of our lives), met the registrar and just about decided on the music. Still loads of things to pay for, although our parents’ generous contributions have helped with that (particularly paying for the Dress). Found out yesterday that the alterations to the Dress (inevitable, you’d have thought) are going to be an extra £125 – and the seamstress doesn’t take cards. Hmm… having said I’m not stressed out, it’s sounding like I am. I’m not. Really. I’m just appalled at how much everything costs. I’m sure we paid less (ignore the deposit for the purposes of this sentence) to buy our flat.

So, the shoes crisis. The issue was that I proposed wearing DMs as an alternative to totally un-me bridal shoes, which will also hurt. I don’t usually wear heels. I certainly don’t wear 3″ heels. Mother had a small fit and we’ve had to come up with a compromise to keep everyone happy. Thus, I shall be wearing proper shoes (from Shu Shu in Pinner) for the ceremony and photos (keeping their use down to about an hour and a half) and metallic pink DMs for the rest of the day! I’m going to keep an eye out for thick socks with hearts on them to go with the boots.

The meeting with the registrar did make things seem a bit more real, particularly as it was held in the room where they do civil ceremonies at Harrow civic centre, so we sat in the chairs they use and Jan, the registrar, mimed out the beginning of the ceremony. Choosing readings has been difficult – once again it’s a question of finding something that’s not cliched and sappy.

So, four weeks to go until it’s all over and we can jet off to Malta and some peace and quiet!

So. The Dress is now sorted. Not that I can tell you anything about it, because Dan will probably read this, but rest assured it’s traditional enough to please my mother, but that it would allow me to get away with red shoes if I wanted. Or diamante Doc Martins. Still working on that one. Happily, to balance out the expense, the bridesmaids’ dresses have just arrived from Monsoon and are as gorgeous as they looked on Sarah, my elder bridesmaid, when she tried hers on a couple of weeks ago. Electric lime green with heavy embroidery all over the bust section. And yes, we did think of the obvious problem and posted the dress on our Facebook group for guests’ reference.

Down the road in Hatch End from the bridal shop is Impeccable, where my brother got his outfit for his Yr 11 ball. We’re getting all the boys kitted out there (now including my grandfather, who’s the only remaining male ancestor from that generation, so gets special treatment). Dan’s wearing all ivory with mint green embroidery, while his merry men are now wearing plain ivory waistcoats and purple heather (note, not a typo for ‘leather’ – it’s not that kind of wedding) cravats. They were originally wearing green, but there’s no way that green would go with the green of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

The invitations are green as well. It took me ages to explain to everyone why everything has to be green. Fourteen is green. That’s just the way of things. Gotta love synesthesia.

So we’re now at the point where the day-time invitations are nearly all dispatched. Not entirely sure when to start on the evening ones… Maybe just go ahead and amend as necessary later on. Then we have the seating plan to do. Given my mother and I are both teachers, the plan will naturally be informed by prior attainment data and the individual needs of each guest… or for matchmaking purposes. Whichever is more fun.

Thus, in an atypical move, we’re going somewhere nearer, hotter and better supplied with interesting archaeological sites: Malta. Not only does everyone there learn English, Maltese is virtually impossible to learn (or pronounce, looking at the place names, e.g. Xewkija), so my usual guilt at not being able to communicate in any living language will be less pronounced.

We’ve also booked the photographer and the band.  My mother’s working on the invitations, so pretty much all we have to do now is check the guest list, buy outfits and wedding rings, sort the flowers out and do the seating plan. Oh, and, most importantly, decide on the wording of the ceremony and what the first dance is going to be. But these things are all less pressing – we have six months to do all that.

Makes you wonder why people get stressed out about weddings.

Now, I can’t go mad on dress hunting this week, as my mother’s in Rome and will kill me if I start without her. Having said that, there’s no harm browsing on the internet and thinking “I am NOT wearing THAT!” and “How the hell am I supposed to cost this if they don’t give price estimates?”.

This particular designer is stocked locally and even has price estimates. But they all look the same, no? Or they do to me, anyway. The fashion seems to be paper cornet, strapless with(out) embroidery.

Sigh.

By the time we left (complete with clean bill of hamster health and less £16), and tracked down my parents (or chauffeurs, if you will), we were running ten minutes behind. Having got to the venue and deposited my dad in the bar, we then sat waiting for the wedding co-ordinator for another five minutes.

The long and the short of it is that we’ve now booked the wedding properly, including buffet (easier for picky eaters), string quartet and bridal suite. This despite the distraction of student-aged people outside on the lawn practising historical drama in strange, inflatable hats.  Pleased that everything should be relatively stress free. The only thing we’ll have that’s not provided by the hotel on the day will be the evening band. I assume the registrar is reliable.

We’re on the hunt for a contemporary ceilidh band. Can anyone recommend one?

Initially, we were going to go for December, but our preferred venue was booked up, so we’re now on for August, all being fine and dandy after we see the wedding co-ordinator on Saturday. This means we have around 10 months to go and a million and one things to do.

For your amusement, I’ll be keeping you up to date with all the wedding shenanigans from now until August.

We went up to the venue today for their bridal (why always bridal, not groomal?) fair and picked up a whole load of leaflets (except from the wedding video guy, who was give short shrift). Most of the core things are covered by their platinum package, including food, flowers and a string quartet, which makes things a bit easier. We, quite fortunately, came across the registrars and had a momentary panic when we found their diary said they had someone else booked in that day. Turned out to be one of those situations where people have booked things, then not cancelled them when they changed their arrangements, so all was well. Bit of a heart in mouth moment, though.

Very firmly decided against a few things: chair covers, toastmasters and wedding videos. We’re operating on the basis that we really don’t need to stick rigidly to all those little traditions that are followed because they are, rather than for any sensible reason. It’s quite liberating and I highly recommend it.

More next week.