WEDDING NIGHTMARES

The general stresses of getting married are bad enough to deal with anyway, but I had some additional ‘challenges’ (it has taken me 6 months of therapy to call them that!) to deal with in the few days leading up to the wedding:

1. Death of a Laptop

On the Monday evening before our wedding that Thursday, I decided to add a couple of photos from my Hen Do in Paris to a photograph presentation I had been working on to show at the wedding during the evening. I had scanned loads of old photographs from mum and dad’s wedding, Andy and my childhood and then images from the last 12 years that we had been going out together. I tried to include everyone who was at the wedding as well as people who couldn’t be present.
I switched the laptop on and didn’t bother plugging it in as I knew I’d only be 15 minutes or so. I added the photos to the end of the presentation and then messed about for about 10 minutes trying to put years on when the low battery warning popped up. I scrambled for the power lead and then it happened… I didn’t realise it at that exact moment, but the next two days were going to be a nightmare. The screen went blue and from that moment the laptop never regained consciousness. I even laughed and said to mum, “Ha, the laptop has just died on me, how bad would that be if it had broken?!”. All the wedding evening do music was on there which I had painstakingly mixed for days using some special mixing software, as well as the photographs I had spent so long preparing – aside of course from the fact that the laptop had every photograph I had ever taken in the digital era and every mp3 I owned was there too. Yes, I should have had it backed up, but that’s one of those things that you never desperately need until it’s too late, I’ve learnt my lesson! I convinced myself that the battery had just gone totally flat and it would be fine later. That night it tried to switch on but gave up halfway – still I remained optimistic and told myself I hadn’t charged it for long enough.
The next morning when I stared at a black screen and some almost flickering lights the realisation of the tragedy struck me. I was due in Hull on the Tuesday morning for a ‘relaxing facial’ and between fits of hysteria managed to phone an IT company and arrange to bring it in for them to look at that day. I think I lay at the beauty place in a complete daze, and then raced to the IT place to see what my fate was. At first they thought the hard drive was corrupted, which caused me to nearly explode. Eventually they managed to retrieve the hard drive and put it in a little box with a USB connection. The little box, an empty useless shell of a laptop and a stressed bride-to-be travelled back home.
To cut a very long and very traumatic story short…Caroline and Ricky very kindly lent us their laptops and by 10pm the night before the wedding (oh yes) I had got them both working correctly ready for the next day.

Grandma, Sarah, Julia, Christine,Kate, Mum and a very stressed bride-to-be after just resolving laptop 'issues'

2. And the Bride’s father wore PINK

My dad commented about the yellow colouring of the waistcoats and cravats being a bit ‘feminine’, but he isn’t overly adventurous with colours so we just laughed and said he would look fine.
Mum, Kate, Caroline and I were travelling down to Gloucestershire (3 hours) the day before as we had to pick the cake up and had appointments on the Wednesday afternoon. Dad was to pick up his suit from the hire shop and travel later that day.
By the most amazingly fortunate stroke of luck, just as we were leaving my grandmas house to drive down my dad pulled in there. I jumped out of the car to say goodbye and he said that he couldn’t believe he was wearing pink to the wedding. Thinking he was still meaning that the colour was feminine, I laughed and said it’s not pink, it’s yellow and it’ll look fine. He pulled the waistcoat out of the suit bag and said, “It’s pink”, and indeed it was. If it wasn’t for us seeing him then I would have been walking down the aisle with dad wearing a suit intended for a man half his size and double his weight and a pink waistcoat and cravat.

3. My advice to any bride-to-be: Don’t pluck your eyebrows the night before the wedding after a stressful day and three champagnes

End result = half an eyebrow, an even more distressed bride-to-be and a make-up artist drawing me an eyebrow extension on the biggest day of my life.

Aaaaaarrghhhhhhhhhh!!!