Big life news

I’ve been quiet for a good while on here basically because it’s been all change since I last checked in in September… Last time we met, I was merrily sewing up door stops and cushion covers as part of getting our flat ready for sale. We had grand plans of buying a house in Walthamstow (market proximity was a plus) but that all came to a bit of an abrupt halt.

A few days before we were due to put the flat on the market Chris was sort of made redundant. I say sort of, because his company were shutting down their London office and moving operations to America. He had three options: find another role in the company in London, redundancy or move to Seattle with the job. We had a chat about it, went to visit Seattle for a week, decided we really liked it and opted to move out there! We’re currently in the middle of the visa process, and all things being equal, we expect to be flying out by the end of February. Sounds pretty intense, eh? You don’t know the half of it!

My being able to move to America with Chris and staying there legally is really dependent on us being married. So, Chris popped the question on our anniversary at the end of October and six weeks later we got hitched! It was always going to happen anyway, and I’m informed that he had the ring for several months before he proposed but this sped things up considerably. We decided to have a quick and quiet wedding in Merton registry office in London, with a buffet and drinks at his parents’ house afterwards – just immediate family and friends.

If the stress of organising a wedding in six weeks wasn’t enough, I decided to make my dress too! I was already doing the 1940s wrap dress class at Sew Over It anyway, so I thought why not just make that my wedding dress? It made sense to me – I had dedicated class time to get it done, I had fitting help and (most importantly) it took a massive headache out of finding THE dress. And the teacher, Dominique, didn’t freak out when I told her the occasion!

I managed to get most of it done in class time, with just hemming to do by the end of it which I did while Chris was on his stag weekend. I was really pleased with how it turned out – while some bits were quite fiddly (the neck line binding in particular), it came together quite nicely, which is pretty standard for Sew Over It patterns. It’s a good job too, since this is probably the most important dress I’ll ever wear!

The wedding itself was lovely, and despite my dad tripping down the stairs as he walked me down the aisle and a bit of a mix up with the rings, it all went smoothly. We couldn’t have done it without the help of our family and friends. Chris’ family really pulled out the stops and transformed their house for the day, and my bridesmaid Gillian was brilliant at being decisive, and listening to my rants about cake arrangements (that’s another, long, story). We’re both really happy and looking forward to new adventures!

Anyway, here’s some pictures!

Vows

Just married. Prob the best view of the front of the dress that isn’t obscured by my bouquet

Rings n’ flowers. I loved my bouquet – the florist got really excited that I was wearing lavender and not ‘Cadbury’s purple’. I think she’d seen a lot this year…

Me and my bridesmaids, Anne and Gillian

Confetti: can’t speak for Chris, but it was so windy that not one bit of it landed on me!

Oh I felt so classy in that car! Here I am desperately trying to keep my dress closed in the breeze.

I love this photo – so much going on in the background.

Getting papped.