Wedding Night

Subnote - If you want to set the scene a bit, scroll to the bottom of the page and press play for some nice background music.... then read on.

Also, 2 photo type entries are before this one. I am just trying to fill this in whilst the memories are still fresh. I mean it's been 10 days already. 

Part 2......

.......So we all separated. Matthew went off with my parents for a meal at a local pub. James and Liam went back with hubby's mum for a nap whilst myself, hubby, his brother, and my 2 sisters in law headed back to the hotel hubby and I were spending the night.

Hubby and I travelled by car whilst the others walked through the town to The George hotel on Colchesters main street. We sat and relaxed with a couple of friends for just over an hour before it was time to sort out the reception venue. Sitting relaxed in the hotel lobby I was able to get my wedding ring on at last. Though I still have my eczema, I didn't have the nerves or the panic that came with the ring being a little tight.

Some of the food for the reception was at hubby's mums. He went off to collect the food, as well as her and the boys. I began the set up process. The best man was supposed to be helping as were the others who were coming down after food to help me set up.

At 5.30 I was still working by myself trying to set tables, organise a cake stand, the cakes and balloons had arrived and I was running around like a headless chicken trying to do it all by myself. Eventually everyone turned up at the same time and I was finally getting the help I needed.

Just before 6, hubby returned with the rest of the food, the kids and my mother in law. Just as the first guests were arriving for the party. Things weren't finished but that wasn't my worry for the next half hour or so.

We disappeared off back to the hotel and parked the car up for the night. We went back in for another drink and for me to redo hair and make up. We then got a quiet half hour alone with a glass of wine and a beer whilst we waited for a taxi to take us back to the reception.

We got to the reception and were last to arrive. The place looked rather full and I was very happy with how many people had made it to the evening do. We spent part of the evening mingling and thanking people for coming and their gifts. It took a long time to get the best man round to doing his speech. The kids who were there kept asking for food and it did get to a point where I had to put it to hubby to tell the best man to get a move on or we'll skip it altogether. It got things moving. Our best man is a little of a control freak but I was the bride. ha.

He eventually did his speech, it was interactive with funny pictures of my groom on his kids playstation. It was funny if a little long. In all it was a good job. Matthew was laughing out very loud at jokes and making everyone else smile. After a toast to the bride and groom, hubby gave out flowers to the bridesmaids, his mum, my mum and his stepmum, the buffet was pronounced open and everyone got to eat. This pleased all the kids. We had SEVERELY over catered but I was pleased with the selection we had and I am glad the food didn't run out.

We cut the top cake fairly early after posing for photos and everyone enjoyed our cupcakes. The top traditional cake was shared out amongst the older generations too. We had about 15 cup cakes left over at the end of the night, they were wrapped up for the kids who stayed latest and extras for our kids of course.

When it came to the wedding dance there was a problem.

Despite being told that they had a catalogue of virtually every song on their system, they didn't have our wedding song.

We were prepared though and had it on cd in case.

However this was one thing we had overlooked.

Our cd was in the car at the hotel.

We were shown a list of wedding songs they had and I personally found it very limited and felt rather let down by the list of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Aerosmith etc.

In the end we settled for Ronan Keating - When You Say Nothing At All.

Three quarters of the way through our first dance hubby asked how long the song lasted. I smiled and told him about 3 minutes less than the song we had originally picked. So I guess it wasn't all bad.

The rest of the music was pretty general and rather forgettable. They did offer requests but the 3 songs I asked for in the current top 10 weren't on the playlist. I did find that disappointing that they had so little. On the night it was fine, but looking back, we'd have been better off having a different dj,

Other than that I can't really fault how things went.

People started drifting off fairly early. We started the reception early so that those with kids could come and had the option of leaving early.

We ourselves left the party around 11pm. Most people had gone. Mother in Law and hubbys younger sister had taken the babies back to their house for the night and Matthew was going to stay at my mums that night.

We were given a lift back into the town centre and had an unwind drink before finally getting to bed.

Though it had been a long day, it had been exciting and just flew by.

Finally, for anyone who didn't scroll down and may be interested, here's what we had picked for our wedding song.