34 days to go: Riba, RSVPs and Rings

This week lots of things happened. The best of which for me was spending some of friday afternoon with the best man sorting him a morning suit (black tails, dark pinstripe, grey waistcoat and grey tie in case you want to join us) and getting ourselves to Riba to join the FMA in a food tasting with catering queen Bobby and an arrangements discussion with organiser extraordinaire Julia.

The food was great. The wine was too. And the plans all fit the bill.

Yesterday we met with D2 to hand over the final invites they hadn’t/couldn’t put in the post. 90% have gone out and the others will early this week. We have to thank my good friend Mr Max Gadney who did a wonderful job of helping us to come up with an idea which was close to our hearts. We love walking, and mountains, and the Lake District… and Wainwright.  Also thanks Max for, er, bending the copyright rules (it’s a homage, we’ll make a donation).

In case you wondered, it’s the north western fells, Grassmoor. The ascent from Rannerdale via Red Gill.

To all the people who’ve commented how much they like the invites: please make sure you send an email saying how many of you are coming, whether you need to put kids in the creche and if you have any special dietary requirements other than vegetarian.

Email: rifiwedding@yahoo.co.uk

And finally, I tried on a ring this week. One of those that measures your size.

I’m R +½. Which seems appropriate.

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T -55 days: Lists of people and presents

When I was a much younger man, I got married. A variety of circumstances and choices meant that I invited less than half of my extended family, *and* chose not to invite any children.  Everything’s easier with hindsight, isn’t it?

So, this time the invitation list is going the other way.

Family – My parents have been good enough to pull together the extended family list, *with* all the kids invited. And when you’re 38 your cousins have a lot more kids than they did 15 years earlier. Most of them I’ve hardly ever met but BDMs (as the newspaper guys call them) are the significant points where families get a good excuse to come together.

Friends – Of course, the other thing about being 38 is that you have a lot of good friends you’ve built up over the years. What with the entire Ayers/Curran extended family and the Clough clan there’s a pressure on numbers. We did think of hiring the O2 centre, but thought that we’d just have to draw a line somewhere. So we’ll be welcoming everyone we can for a good knees-up and obviously, if you don’t get an invite, then it just means we don’t like you enough.

Formal invitations – will be coming out in a couple of weeks.

Catching up – Let’s be honest, the day I’m getting married isn’t the best time for having any kind of decent conversation with all the people I haven’t seen for a year, two.. five or, in some cases people that I’ve hardly ever met. So I shall be taking the regal approach – introducing the FMA and looking forward to talking properly another time. Forgive me (us) if we don’t get much time to catch up.

In the meantime, this week has been one for another kind of list:

Gift List – If you feel that you’d like to give us a gift, that’s lovely and you’ll find all the details on the Wedding Info page (also on the tab at the top of this page). If you think we’re too old to be getting gifts, or you want to give it to your favourite charity, then that’s wonderful too.

We’ve already got two houses worth of stuff to fit into one and you know what I’m like about trying not to buy loads of new things, recycling etc etc … so at the moment we’ve got a few larger items from John Lewis in mind (the HD projector is the best idea yet) to which you could make a voucher contribution if you wished. The other list we’ve set up is for Highbury Vintners (that way we’ve got an excuse to open some good stuff when you come and visit). Of course, the FMA would love it if you bought a lifetime supply of golf stuff for me too. Titleist pro v1s, since you ask.

And finally, as this has been such a dry update. Here’s something from Dara O’Briain to lighten the mood: