Dance till you drop

For me the end of the first dance marked the beginning of the proper festival. All the traditional stuff was over so Dave and I could finally relax and enjoy the moment without having the worry of any more awkward bits to come. So it was time to let our hair down and DANCE!! After Holy Moly's rendition of the Bright Eyes classic it was time to crack on with some stomping folk music.

Of course much barn dance type 'swing your partner round and round' action ensued. It really felt like a festival, with some folks like myself dancing up front, some watching from the back and others lazing about on the grass with a pint of specially brought in Nel's Best ale.
 

 

When we were in the process of planning it all, although we obviously wanted the reception to have a real festival atmosphere, I don't think we realised just how close it would feel to the real thing. Our very own mini Glastonbury!
There was no doubt that our first band went down a storm, but then it was time for our headliner act who really got things moving....

There will be more on that next week, but in the meantime as promised I managed to get the first dance video uploaded and as embarrassing as it is i'm still going to share it with you.  Its bad! Don't say i didn't warn you:

Note to self: NEVER slow dance again

Happy Friday! I'm a bit late with the post today but at least i got there eventually.
Before i get into this post, i just have to say a big thanks to Narc magazine for recommending our first band of the evening.
Organising the bands was undoubtedly one of the most difficult parts of planning the wedding.  With a very tight budget and family and friends who all have greatly different tastes in music, getting this right was going to be no mean feat.
I think its fair to say that Dave, my better 1/2, pretty much only likes dance music - ala techno and drum and bass. Now as much as I love a good bit of D&B, it doesn't really have that early evening festival vibe... does it? Given that dance music (at this point of the day at least) was off the menu, the band hunt was essentially down to me. After months of hunting and with the clock counting down, I contacted 'Narc' a well-respected local music mag, for help. They  suggested 3 bands and after listening to each, one really stood out; 'Holy, Moly and the Crackers', a dancey folk outfit, who we know would appeal to lots of tastes and get the crowd going. Finally! We'd identified out first main stage act.


















I was really excited about the bands, but I wasn't at all looking forward to the first dance, which we planned for the very start of the 1st act's set.
Looking back now, the sensible thing would have been to just say ' we're not having a first dance at our wedding'. However at this point during the planning, tradition reared its meddling head and said in a very hypnotic voice which seemingly I couldn't resist 'YOU MUST HAVE A FIRST DANCE'. Like a fool I said:
'Yes, we must have a first dance, and I have a brilliant idea! Given that we both have absolutely no clue how to slow dance, lets choose the slowest song we can find to dance to'.
Whoops, bad plan.
The intention was for us to practice, but as usual lack of time, coupled with the embarrassment of attempting to slow dance in the lounge when you're totally clueless, equated to virtually no practice.
Anyway when the 'time' arrived there was no escape, particularly as the band learnt their own rendition of the song especially for the occasion. The song was 'First Day of My Life' by Bright Eyes and although not the best choice for people who can't slow dance I still love it and the lyrics are very appropriate.
Now despite the embarrassment I was going to put a video on here of 'the crappest first dance in the world' as caught on video by one of our guests, but lucky for me and probably you i can't work out how to do it so will have to make do with some pics.

The good thing about the photos is you can't witness the crap-ness to it's full effect.
The 'lift' was Dave's spontaneous attempt to fill time, which to a point did work quite well . Then as time goes on and it becomes increasingly painful we just call on guests to join in an ultimately save u. I promise i will get the vid up when i can work out how to do it.

Next week - a good ol' knees up!

Wedding post - Its raining sweets

Thankfully yesterday evening I managed to devote some time to write up a new post about the wedding which is now starting to feel like long time ago.
Right now lets see where are we up to. Ok so following on from 'the speech' post ... After food everyone was desperate to get out of the hot marquee and back into the hotel's gorgeous sun bathed garden. On the invitation we requested people bring and wear at least one festival accessory to get into the spirit, and it was at this point that the accessories started to come out.
 

Oh as did the face paints provided by Tom, Dave's brother and best man -

With 25ish minutes to spare before the main stage called, this seemed like the ideal opportunity to have a spot of piñata bashing, whilst our friend Ed hit the decks with a selection of pop-tastic tracks.
I mentioned back in this early wedding blog post that Dave made an incredible piñata for the big day which took several months of messy papier mache labour.
We thought the most appropriate piñata for our festival wedding would be a rain cloud so everyone could bash it, because no one wants rain at a festival. Until last year when we went to our first sunny festival, the rain has poured down at every one we've been to and there have been a fair few, so smashing a rain cloud to pieces seemed justifiable. This was the finished product hung in our back yard.

At the hotel we hung it from the swing frame in their garden. The cotton wool covering was looking a bit disheveled by this point.

 I was quite glad to have missed the first few hits as it seemed such a shame destroying this work of art. The trillions of papier mache layers had turned this beast of a piñata into a candy fortress and it took sometime before it showed any signs of weakening. Finally though Dave's uncle sent it to pinata heaven and its sugary insides spilled out for an eagerly awaiting crowd. I think this was the final strike:

Unsurprisingly this caused a flipping great mess of cotton wool and newspaper.

At 7pm everyone headed up to the higher end of the garden where our stretch tent and homemade shipping pallet stage would play host to 2 awesome bands.

To be continued...

Mamma Mia!

Damn you time!! *shakes fist* Once again time has thwarted my plans and I don't have enough of the stuff to spend on writing this weeks wedding blog post. I want to do the post justice so don't feel right in just quickly hashing something together. Instead, as a 'post quickie' i'll share with you a snippet of a new illustration.
Very recently I completed an image which is intended to be part of a collaborative calendar with 11 other North East based illustrators. The original aim was to get it done this year, however due to that there 'time' again causing no end of havoc *shakes fist again*, we've postponed to next year.
Its going to be a really ace little collaboration and the name of the calendar is absolutely perfect, but i'll keep that under wraps at the moment.
I don't really want to ruin the surprise by showing you the full illustration on here, so instead here is a small part of it: the recipe bit...well the ingredients bit anyway -

I will try my hardest to slot in some time next week for writing up the next wedding post installment. Hope you all have a fab weekend. I'm off to Brighton to visit friends. I LOVE Brighton so i'm really exctited, but just wish i had some spare cash to fritter away in the awesome shops there. No doubt i'd be bankrupt if i lived in that place.

P.S. Have you noticed the new page on my website?

Wedding post 6 - The speech

Yep i'm back with another wedding related post. I was going to make this post the 'festival' one but decided to do one about the speeches so a word of warning before you read on, this is maybe a more somber post than you may have been expecting.

Once everyone had descended from the beach bus it was go, go, go in order to keep to time as we were 1/2 an hour late in getting back to the hotel and the food was due to be served in 10 mins. Yikes! After a quick 10 minute breather the guests were swiftly ushered into the marquee or, in keeping with the festival spirit - 'the food tent'.

Before the wedding guests were given a selection of menu choices on the back of their invites.
They could choose from 3 starter options and 4 main options:

You'll notice desert was not an option, this was because we thought as there was going to be an absolute ton of cake we'd serve that as desert.
Not in our wildest dreams had Dave and I thought the weather would be tropical on that day, and even though we'd been hoping for sun 'heat' wasn't something we'd exactly planned for as that would have been tempting fate. So Dinner or 'the wedding breakfast' as is officially known was a bit out of kilter, given our menu wasn't exactly hot weather friendly. Put it this way...if people had known they'd be sitting in a 30+ degree marquee in the blazing sunshine, I don't think 'leg of lamb' would have been their first choice.

Our plan was to have the speeches before the meal as knowing how much anxiety having to give a speech causes, it made sense to get them done and out the way so everyone could relax. Alas, this was not meant to be since our late arrival back from the beach. Instead we had to opt for a quickly thought up plan B and give the speeches whilst the cake was being dished out.
There were 5 in total and although that may seem like quite a lot, they were mostly quite short.

My dad, who like me was dreading doing it, went first -

He was followed by the two best men Dave's brother Tom and his good friend Samir. 

Then Dave gave a short groom speech (which lucky for him i can't find a picture of) and lastly came mine. I guess its not traditional for the bride to give a speech and although i'm not really one for sticking to tradition, this one tradition which as a bride I was extremely glad to follow, as it meant I had a legitimate excuse to dodge a daunting task.
'So why did you do one?' I hear you ask. Well I thought I would share a cut down version of my  speech with you, so have a read and it will answer your question: 

'When we first started to organise the wedding around May time last year, one of the things I said to myself is ‘thank god I don’t have to do a speech and I can leave that bit up to Dave, my dad and the best men’. I hate doing speeches and I was very clear in my head that I wasn’t going to do one…. until something happened that changed my mind.

Now most of you here today will know that my mum passed away fairly unexpectedly on boxing day last year. It was a huge shock to my dad, my sister and me, as well as my mum’s sister and family and we are all still trying to come to terms with it now.

Actually for a while after it happened I was seriously considering postponing the wedding, but in the end we all agreed that mum would have wanted me to go ahead with it.
That horrible day is still so clear in my head, but one of the positive things I remember on that night, just as we were leaving the hospital for the last time, was my dad saying about Dave who’d been incredibly supportive and I quote ‘he’ll make an excellent son in law’, and I knew he was right. So Dave I just want to say ‘Thank you for being there’.

Anyway I don’t want this to be depressing and the main reason I decided to make the speech was so that we could have a toast in my mum’s honour as I know she will be here in spirit today even if she can’t make it in person. She’ll be on that dance floor with us, as she was always the life and soul of the party. So if we can raise our glasses -
‘I would like to make a toast to all those who couldn’t be here today and all those loved and lost, I hope we meet again’.

Also I’d also like to thank all my fantastic close friends and family who have all been so amazingly supportive through this time, having you there to listen has made it so much easier to get through....

So now you see. I had to and although I was REALLY nervous and despite trying couldn't stop the tears from falling at one point, when it was over I was so pleased i'd done it. Particularly as that very morning I was still unsure as to whether I could go ahead with it and went through it at least 5 times.

After we left the marquee my aunt gave me a big hug and said how proud mum would have been. It was captured on camera by one of the guests and is one of my favourite pics of the day -

Promise next week i'll get to the bit with the dancing :)

A folky little giveaway

Today i'm putting the wedding blog post on hold. There are 2 reasons for this, one is that because i've been so busy i've just not had the time to put anything together and the other is that I have something to give away.

A few years ago a lovely Chinese lady who was one of Dave's work colleagues that I met a few times,  found out I was very into making things and gave me some little booklets containing traditional Chinese folk paper-cut art. They're lovely delicate little tissue paper cuttings which can be used to make cards and a host of other things. I've kept hold of them for ages, in the hope that I would one day use them for a project but haven't really every found the time to plan anything to use them in.
So i've decided to give them away to someone who can make use of these.

There are a total of 50 beautiful and intricate pieces in 5 themed booklets/folders each. Two of the booklets are the same type and have dragon themed paper cuts:

1. Opera art - A bound booklet containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. A page of this book is featured in images.
2. Ming Vase art - A bound booklet containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 5cm. A page of this book is featured in images.
3. Dragon art (1 of 2 of the same) - a small folder containing a total of 10 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. A piece from this is featured in images
4. Dragon art (2 of 2 of the same) - a small folder containing a total of 8 pieces, the same as the others in the other dragon art folder.
5. Chinese ladies - a small folder containing a total of 12 pieces, each measuring around 10cm x 6cm. There are 12 ladies in different poses in traditional Chinese costume.

I want them to go to someone who will genuinely use these in a project or piece of work, so anyone interested please comment below with details of what you plan to use these for and i'll choose the best. If there are several comments, i'll put the best ones in a hat & pick a winner. 
Make sure you put your email address in the comment so i can contact you if you win for your address. I'm afraid you will need to be based in the UK to take part.
This will be open till next Friday when I will pick the winner.
Please feel free to pass this onto anyone else you think may be interested.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Its time for another wedding series post.
Following on from the cliffhanger end (sort of) to my last wedding blog post, you've probably already worked out from the above title, that the Routemaster bus ride destination was the beach.

After a 20 minute (longer than planned for) ride through various Northumberland villages, down narrow rural lanes and past many bemused holiday makers, we arrived.
Of course, Dave had to make an exit from said bus by giving a waiting audience a little pole dance action:

The bus pulled up at the top of a cliff beside a slightly awkward path leading down to the beautiful Northumberland coastline looking out over to Bamburgh Castle.

Dave and I had visited this beach on several occasions in the past but never had it been quite so busy. The sun had attracted LOTS of people. Luckily the bit of beach we were on was tucked away at the end of the stretch so we mostly had it to ourselves, aside from bothering a family of four who obviously thought this was a nice quiet spot - WRONG!

Once down at the beach the champers was doled out from the pre-cooled ice boxes into sunshine yellow cups (very fitting).

Of course once on the beach stood next to that beautiful blue, cool sea in the blazing sunshine, a paddle was practically compulsory. Knew those wellies would come in handy!

This has got to be one of my fave pics - my uncle making sure the remaining bubbly didn't go to waste:

As the day was fun packed, we were running a tight ship and only had about 25 mins on the beach. So after a quick paddle I spotted a perfect photo opportunity & swiftly rounded everyone up for a 'WEDSTOCK' shout out pose...

before we all hiked back up the hill towards the bus -

Let the festival fun commence!