Paying for the Wedding

As of today – the last hour or so, we have now paid for more than half of our wedding (the biggest expense, caterers, isn’t due until May 1st). I’m very excited about it! Never been so excited before about paying money – the Fiance and I danced around the living room!

Earlier on, we wanted to pay for things in full as they came up, but suppliers don’t like you doing this. I can see their point when small changes incur huge faffs rearranging what is essentially small change on the scale of the total cost – and I have changed our flowers a few times, although they didn’t even want a deposit from us!

So we paid deposits, like good children. But then today we received a call from the registrars saying that they wanted payment 12 weeks before the wedding day, and we were overdue! It is now 29 days… We’d never known the payment date (or had an invoice for the amount!) so we looked up the fee on their website and paid it electronically, presuming we’d got the right amounts.

Everything in the garden was lovely. The Fiance updated our budget spreadsheet and made a list of everything else we’d paid in parts – flowers, transport, food and drink… And thus began the furious invoice hunting.

I located two – the cars and the flowers. Christopher cars were out at a wedding when I called them, but are going to ring me back to let me pay. Their payment was due on the 18th – two days ago (oops – but at least we realised and I contacted him!).

The flowers, as I mentioned, didn’t even have a deposit on them. I trawled through the email conversation I’d had with Jemma from Austin Flowers hoping to find out when they wanted our money. When I eventually found it, it wasn’t very specific either – payment was due before the week of the wedding – around the same time as the catering.

Well, I decided I didn’t want to do this again in two weeks time, and it’s a Friday afternoon, so they should be open. I called up Austin Flowers and explained my business to be greeted with a very cheerful, “Oh! I’ll just look up your invoice!” In fact she sounded delighted that she wouldn’t have to chase me at some later date; I suppose if you’re as relaxed about payment as they seemed initially, it does fall to them to do all the chasing.

Payment over the phone was quick and painless. Another expense sorted: hurrah!

Meanwhile, the Fiance was investigating other suppliers. The Town Hall didn’t pick up the phone, so he left a message with them, and they replied by email shortly afterwards telling us that we didn’t need to pay them anything until the 5th of May – two weeks prior to the ceremony.

He also emailed Oxon Carts – the rickshaw company. They hadn’t given a date for remaining payment either. A few minutes later he got a response: the balance was due tomorrow: they were going to email him then, but he’d beaten them to it. Excellent. So I transferred the rest across online, and the Fiance gave them our payee reference code and explained what we’d done.

Sorted!

The only thing left is the Somerville drinks reception, which the Fiance’s parents are in charge of. The Fiance is emailing them everything they need.

Under Wraps

I’ve just had an email from Debenhams asking me to review the knickers I bought from them for the wedding. And, afterall, in these enlightened days, why would any woman have reservations about discussing her underwear online for all to see?

As it turns out, my review mostly focussed on the Buy Online Collect In Store service (hm; that makes it sound longer than 2-3 lines…), because this is the first time I have used it, and it is quite frankly the more fascinating part of the purchase. Knickers, after all, are knickers. You put them on and then spend most of the day sitting on them.

I loathe shopping. So do my mum and grandma. We hate it. We detest it. We are like your typical blokey bloke when it comes to shopping – walk in, feel dazed, and decide we have a headache and need to get out of there as soon as possible (oddly, my aunt quite enjoys shopping…). I’m not even that good in supermarkets: I become maddeningly efficient. The Fiance and I often do a whirlwind sweep and meet each other, arms loaded, at the tills. So looking for undies was not fun.

I had a browse in some shops, but it is frustratingly difficult to find white knickers which are neither transparent or a thong, and online you can’t always tell. Even my size was hard to come by, because apparently the smaller the woman, the more transparent and thong-like she wants her knickers. Which I have to say, is a little bit disturbing…

So I decided to use this Buy Online and Collect in Store service, which meant if I didn’t like the item I could return it in its sealed plastic bag (because normally you can’t return underwear unless there’s something actually wrong with it, like it being a different size to that stated on the box, being torn, stained, or otherwise failing to meet manufacturing standards). Also, no shipping costs. Yay!

I started off faffing about with M&S Collect In Store, but I didn’t like their item (it wasn’t white) so I tried Debenhams instead. Notably, Debenhams give you two weeks to collect your item, and M&S only one week, which is lucky, because I go into town on Wednesdays, and on Wednesday morning I had no Ready for Collection email from Debenhams – it came whilst I was out. Had that happened at M&S my item would have got sent back to the warehouse. It might’ve helped if Debenhams had told me to expect a Ready for Collection email mind you – but I wanted to know exactly what I was supposed to do and nosed around on their website until I (eventually) found out about it.

At least with Debenhams I could’ve returned the item on collection – M&S don’t deal with all items at all stores, and I had to collect at one and return to another – madness!

So I’m pretty pleased with Debenhams, and with their prices. I also got a low-back convertible bra from them and spent £15 on underwear in total. Now, if I type “wedding underwear” into google and hit shopping, sort by relevance, the first hit is £74.99 and there is a garter which costs a tenner. This is not a surprise. Many women are budgetting in excess of £50 for their underwear alone. How many men feel the need for new sexy pants on the day?

And what’s even madder is that the sexy corsetted sets you see don’t even fit under wedding dresses most of the time, which are largely shaped with their own boning so that you don’t need a bra, and if you want one are better off with a simple soft one than a shaped thing which competes with the intentions of the dress. So the women who buy these corsettes don’t actually wear them under their dress, they intend to change into them at the end of a long drunken day to please their new husbands before, as seems to be statistical – dropping to sleep exhausted without further excitement.

So what, you’re thinking, they need some pretty knickers and probably no bra, then an ultra-expensive sexy basque to change into? Well, no actually… a lot of women wear shapewear under their dress.

So something like these:

(which by the way is £36 and £61 from Debenhams respectively)

Actually, I find it quite amusing to imagine all the shapewear-clad brides. When you see a bride looking stunning, English-rose, lightly blushing, a whirlwind of swarovski crystals and other bridal bling – just think: she’s probably got shapewear on underneath! And this really can’t help at all with the going to the toilet issue, which is one incentive for brides not to get too tipsy on their wedding day!

If you don’t know what I’m going on about, I suggest you google for instructions on going to the toilet in your wedding dress. Popular advice seems to be to raise the front of your dress up above your head, have a bridesmaid cling on over each shoulder and straddle the toilet the wrong way round. Now, this is a comedy in itself, but… with shapewear underneath as well? That clingy, skin-tight sucking-in clothing, which probably needs entirely removing underneath the voluminous mass of white princess frivolity? Oh dear god…

(linked to source)

Lend Me Your Ears

I’m kind of excited today because we’re going to see “our” jeweller. I found this man through weddingface.com, and strangely he, like us and our wedding, is based in Birmingham and Oxfordshire.

I’d been having trouble finding affordable earring I really liked… I really wanted a pair which went with my ring, and I want drops, not studs. I wear earrings all the time, including giant paperclip ones, can pull earrings, beaded safety-pin earrings and so on, but mostly I wear simple drop earrings, and those are what I like. Again, this became part of my struggle to Look Nice yet Be Myself with respect to the wedding, and I was giving up on anything until I found these from geraldineonline.com:

And this picture is the closest thing I can find to what my (H Samuels) ring looks like:

The earrings are diamond (rather than cubic zirconia), and the same carot white gold as my engagement ring and our wedding bands.

But they’re studs.

So Gavin is making them into drops for me (he thought this would be easier than making the earrings himself from scratch). However, we also wanted someone to do some ring engravings for us, especially tricky as we wanted freehand engravings.

We have our wedding bands already. We were walking down the Moor in Sheffield on a visit to my mum, and walked past HPJ jewellers, who were closing down. They had a half price sale, so we popped in – and walked away £85 worse off, with two wedding rings to show for it! Given that we just wanted plain bands in 9ct white gold, we weren’t that fussy, and the Fiance’s ring is too big… but that’s where Gavin Mack comes in. He’s going to resize the Fiance’s ring for us, and *fingers crossed* can do the engraving. It’s tricky, you see, as we want non-Roman characters.

Something like this:

Our rings:

Of course, even if Gavin can’t do the engraving, I’ll recommend him. He’s sorted out my jewellery problem and given us invaluable advice about what to look for on wedding bands, et cetera, which is a service we don’t pay for. Some suppliers are difficult to communicate with, hard to get hold of, and obstinate when you do, but even though he struggles with email, Gavin is good at replying, easy to talk to, and all in all definitely gold standard.

I will report back after our meeting !