A worrying time and good news

I'm an awful blogger, I'm supposed to write regularly and keep you all up to date with what's going on in my life. But the reality is that life all too often gets in the way with the result that I finally get time to sit down and blog, then realise I've missed huge important chunks.

This is yet another case in point... I sat down to write a post entitled 34 days and counting, and then realised that I hadn't told you all what I'd be counting down to or why. SO...

About two months ago, at the beginning of Feb, I had a phone call from my 'much beloved' which went a bit like this...

"hi Hun, I don't mean to worry you but....umm.... I'm in hospital"
"what do you mean in hospital, are you all right, what happened???"

...there then followed a few minutes of utter panic as I'm told that he'd had a ride to the local hospital at Welwyn Garden City in an ambulance, as he'd been having some pains in his chest, generally feeling awful and they thought it might have been his heart.

Well, I was all for heading off there and then to see what the problem was, but of course Bradford to Welwyn is rather a long way and there were the children to consider. I spoke to the hospital myself and they were very kind and informative (especially as we aren't married and so technically I'm not his next of kin). They put my mind at rest that he wasn't about to die on me but they were keeping an eye on him.

I spoke to him later on and he was completely out of it, they'd put him on oxygen as his blood oxygen levels were low and the effect was rather like being high on something. But in his spaced out state he did say that it would be a good idea to pop down to the registry office and get a piece of paper, all official like, in case anything like this were to happen again.

Well, I did wait till the following day when he was "sober" (for want of a better description) and checked if he'd really meant it. I'd gone down south by train to pick him and the car up, then drive him home, so we had a good long time in the car together to really talk. We decided that we did just want to get married. For me suddenly, the church and the trappings weren't any where near as important as actually being married to him. For him I think it was a case of, just in case anything awful does happen he wanted to be sure I was legally married to him so I had rights.

So the following day we rang the local registry office in Bradford and made an appointment to go and "give notice". After a bit of worry about locations of vital documents on his part (strangely for me I was organised for once) we headed to see the registrar. What an odd experience. We were interview separately and asked all sorts of odd questions before being seen together and being able to sort out date and time and things.

On reflection I suppose we weren't treated any different to any one else and in line with the recommendations on making sure it was a genuine marriage and not one of convenience.

We've booked to get married two days before my birthday at the end of May, at 11am.... there have been times since then that I have really wondered what I was thinking of setting such an early time to get married, I mean, my hair dressing appointment for the day is at 8am!!!! I mean 8am on my wedding day..... I must be bonkers!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still things are going fairly well on the organising front. We finally managed to find a good, non curry based restaurant that will accommodate up to 30 people for a nice meal. Personally we'd have had it somewhere like Anam's or Mumtaz but there are too many people on both sides of the family that don't eat curry for it to be a realistic possibility, mores the pity. The only downside of it is that the restaurant turned out to be rather further out of Bradford than I remembered it being. (It was after all just before Christmas that I went there and I'm hopeless with the area and distances) However, the food there is lovely and I'm sure it will be worth the drive for everyone and if not tough its my day and for once I intend having what I want.

With the reception sorted, everything else seemed fairly easy-ish. My mum initially was going to make the girls dresses but a 20% off sale in Debenhams and a lack of time coupled with cost effectiveness meant that we bought them. One lovely pink mid calf length dress and one in white. Mum's knitting shrugs of white and pink to go with the dresses, just in case its a bit cold.

I bought my own dress in the sale on the same cost effectiveness grounds, I've just got a jacket to make to go with it. The girls and I have co-ordinating pink or white handbags that look like they are made from fabric roses and are gorgeous. I've got my shoes, the girls have hairbands which will suit both of them, I bought the bags for the favours and we're having sugar free favours for all the diabetics among the guests (including the bride/groom and all three mothers/stepmother-ish) and I collect my contact lenses tomorrow.

I've just got to sort out flowers for me to carry and what I'm going to do with my hair. The latter by next Tuesday as I've got a practice appointment booked for then with the hairdresser that's doing my hair.

The flowers are proving to be a bit more tricky. I've been trying to do this in a minimalist way, given that its a registry office wedding and my second one. But it is his first (and hopefully only wedding). I bought a book on wedding flowers, thinking of making my bouquet from artificial flowers so I could keep it. I was thinking something small, the sort of thing that a bridesmaid would usually wear or a wrist corsage or something. He looked at the book, turned his nose up at all the things I had in mind and decided that he liked the traditional cascade arrangement......

Oh well, given that he's given me the money for it I can't complain, so its off to the florist for me this week as there is no way I can achieve the sort of thing he has in mind by myself.... Watch this space as they say.