Family and Wedding Planning in Diary

My mam, dad and sister came to visit at the weekend. Mam and dad were flying to Turkey from my nearest airport, so they came down a couple of days before to spend some time with me and I drove their car back from the airport to park it at my house and save them the extortionate airport car park fees. So my sister decided to come with them and get the coach back home.

Sadly, the weekend was anything but relaxing as I have the giant dogs, Molly and Lulu here with me.

They look sweet and peaceful there, but when they’re awake they’re an absolute nightmare. Charging about the house, play fighting, following you around, covering everything in slobber, and I mean EVERYTHING, having to have their faces in everything you do, if you lock them in a room, they scratch and bang on the door so all the lovely 100 year old solid wood doors in our house have been ruined. They’ve been here for 13 days so far and we have another five to go…not that I’m counting or anything…I can’t even remember what it’s like to be able to relax in my own home anymore. I just have to keep reminding myself that the board their owners are paying is paying for our mortgage while they’re here…

So anyway, my family got here Saturday afternoon and we just spend the whole day right until Sunday night chilling out, chatting, catching up, fighting with the dogs.

On Sunday night, we all went out to see a couple of live bands (except Jay, who wanted to stay in and have some time to himself. I can’t blame him either!) The bands were great, playing rock covers from Rolling Stone, Led Zeppelin, The Who and all that sort of thing. Me and Sonja had a dance to Led Zeppelin and had the whole dance floor to ourselves at that point, I think our flailing arms and legs scared people off.

Monday was busy. I still had all my dogs to walk and cats to feed, but everyone wanted to come with me for different things. Mam wanted to come with me to feed Sammie the cat and walk Diesel the staffie, Sonja and dad stayed at home because dad was taking Sonja to the train station. I then brought mam home, and picked dad up because he was coming with me to walk Loki the husky. I then brought dad home, dropped him off to go and walk Blue the staffie. Then dad drove us all to the airport, I drove his car back and fed Sammie the cat again and walked Roxy the rottweiler on the way back. In between this, I also had to walk Molly and Lulu twice. Although dad did help me, and he helped to tire them out by playing tug-o-war with them. I think he tired himself out more, though.

Really proud of dad, he has just passed his 4th dan karate black belt. Not bad for a pensioner! :o)

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We also had a lot of talk about weddings :-D squee Jay has picked seven or eight venues he likes the look of and we’re going to choose a few to go and look at. Most of them are hotels so that’s probably what we’re going for. I would love a castle, manor house or barn, but they’re all really expensive. Also, hotels are convenient as me and my family can stay there the night before, and our guests can stay the night after if they want to, without having to get taxis anywhere. One of them is having a wedding fayre next month and he’s booked us tickets to go along. They’re going to set it out as if for a wedding so you can see what it would look like and they’ll have suppliers there like cake makers, photographers, car hire etc. I’ve always wanted a horse and carriage, but they cost twice as much as a car and you also can’t go more than two miles in one because it takes too long and it isn’t fair on the horses. We’ll be getting married somewhere in the West Midlands, but it will be more than two miles away so a car will have to do to save money and for convenience.

We’re thinking of September 2016 as everything will be cheaper than summer (venue hire, cars, photographer, cake) but the weather is still usually quite nice. We’re also probably going to do it on a Friday to get everything cheaper (midweek days are cheaper again but no one would come on a Tuesday!) and have the ceremony quite late, about 3pm, so we only have one meal to cater for in the evening. It would be lovely to have a wedding breakfast and a buffet, but our guest list is so long it would make a difference of about £4,000…and we would rather spend that on going on honeymoon and doing up the house, instead of one meal that lasts a couple of hours.

So, if we find a venue we like that is free when we want it, it looks like we might be getting married on either 4th, 11th, 18th or 25th September 2016. EXCITE! I would prefer the earlier ones as I don’t want it too close to my birthday, but we shall see.

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In amongst all this, I’ve been getting ready for my new job. Getting paperwork together, sending in my P45, filling in their health questionnaire etc. I haven’t had too much time to think about it though as I’ve been busy fighting these giant dogs, winding down my business and talking about weddings. So much going on all at once!