Sneak peek: Afternoon tea – 4 days to go

As a special treat, here’s a guest post from The Boy, all about the crockery we’ve been buying for the wedding, and the fun weekend we’ve just had, making sure it’s all clean and ready for Saturday.

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So about four months ago Carrie-Ann suggested that we buy our own wedding crockery.

 

The idea was to create a mix-matched vintage feel to the day. We could of just rented the stuff in, but my wife-to-be said we could sell the cups and plates and so forth on eBay afterwards, and reduce the eventual cost. And considering how I’ve consistently baulked at the absurd cost of getting married, I heard those last four words and said: ‘Yes, yes, a million times yes’.

 

What followed was almost daily trips to charity shops, and weekly visits to the local car boot sale – no matter the weather. We spent a good two months buying 100s of cups and saucers and cake stands and plates, which then pretty much took over our spare room. And then this weekend, we commenced a day-long mission to clean, scrub and dry each item.

 

61 minutes into our mammoth washing session and I asked: “So how long before we regret this decision?”

 

“About an hour ago,” quipped The Girl.

 

Was all this work worth the saving we’ll make at the end? No. But actually, doing our own crockery is one of my personal favourite things we’ve pulled off for our wedding day.

 

There was something nice about mum coming over and helping me dry the plates. There was something altogether satisfying about seeing everything piled up on one table.

 

Weddings can, if you’re not careful, be entirely off-the-shelf affairs. Pick the font you like for the invitations, the colours, select the wedding dress, find a competent DJ, visit the fairs and grab yourself a photographer… you’re presented with a swatch of wedding options, and you can mix-match them as you will.

 

But what if you didn’t? I’m not suggesting everyone goes in for the whole ‘DIY wedding’ thing. If you’re anything like Carrie-Ann and I, you’re really busy and sewing your own bridesmaid dresses isn’t exactly a realistic option.

 

However, the girl and I – just like you, for that matter – are individuals. We don’t just want to give you a close approximation to us, selected from a seemingly endless sea of options. Some of it we wanted to do ourselves. The crockery is the big one, but there is also an elaborate joke that we dreamed up a few weeks ago. It’s nothing dramatic, but I’ve spent about four hours with wrapping paper and sellotape to pull it off. We’re also doing our own wedding reception music, which was another agonising amount of time (I think I’m done now, so no suggestions).

 

All of these are just little touches, but they were our touches. 100% us. It wasn’t set-up by some florist, or carefully constructed by a loving wedding planner. This was pure Chris and Carrie-Ann.

 

“But Chris, isn’t all this just adding to the pre-wedding stress?”

 

No. Pre-wedding stress is when your uncle Nigel wants to change his name to Boris and is demanding you re-do the table plan. Pre-wedding stress is when you receive a text message from a distant relative that reads: ‘The whole family can’t wait to see you.’ When you never invited the whole family. Pre-wedding stress is when the venue calls you because their drinks supplier has gone bust, they’ve only got Creme de menthe in stock, and it costs £30 a glass. Oh, and they’ve broken the card machine, so your guests will have to use cash and the nearest ATM is a 2-mile walk away down a dark alley that locals have dubbed murderer’s row.

That’s pre-wedding stress.

Cleaning up some crockery, that was actually quite nice.