My ‘Rona Wedding

The wedding industry has been hit SO hard this past year and the effects are going to continue for years to come, with little help from the Government the whole industry has been left on its knees and its been so sad to see so many of my friends suffer. I've been thinking about blogging this for a while now but I'm quite a private person so I'm putting my experience of getting married and embracing a micro wedding out there for anyone who's going through this at the moment.

I'll take you back to Christmas Day 2019, my long suffering partner proposed to me - FINALLY! After a quick shot in the kitchen, amidst the chaos that was Christmas morning and three little people bursting at the seams with excitement it was happening. The lounge looked like a wrapping paper factory had exploded but there he was, on one knee proposing. It was the perfect proposal for me. Simple, involved the kids and just pure Kieron. 

In fairness it was a long time coming, I kinda knew he was going to do it but when I had no idea. Being 36 at the time, never been married and with three kids and a mortgage I just wanted our family to be complete and getting married was the perfect way to to do this for us. 

We sat on the engagement for a whole year just enjoying the new promotion from housemate to finance. Then Christmas 2020 we decided, let's just get something booked up, a nice small wedding that was stress free and in the imminent future. We looked around some of the gorgeous venues Cambridgeshire has to offer and although they were stunning they just weren't 'us'. Neither of us are extroverts and big spenders, already having a family of our own the thought of spending so much on one day horrified us. At the end of the day It's all about celebrating us with our closest right? So we found the cutest registry office over in Woodstock and an equally gorgeous pub that offered great food and most importantly a gorgeous backdrop to our wedding. We snapped up the date, 24.05.20 just 5 months away, our guest list sorted, a happy mix of 50/50 family and closest friends which turned out to be 50 guests. 

Then the 'Rona happened. Weddings were cancelled and along with thousands of other couples our day was cancelled too. We always said if we can have just the ceremony only we'll do it, we just wanted to be married and the rest is just a party at the end of the day isn't it? But no that still wasn't an option for us. Wow the stress of rescheduling all the suppliers was immense, the emotional whirlwind was crazy too, not something I would want to EVER do again. We were cheated too, we never got to have our stag and hen do's, there was no build up of excitement just the feeling of impending cancellation. We didn't want to wait around another year or two - I was now 37 and i'm gonna start looking even more haggered by the day so we rescheduled for 7.11.20. 

With our new approaching and the news that weddings had opened up. it was starting to become real but then Bojo started cutting the guest list from 30 to 15... that's a really hard choice of who's going to get on that VIP list.. after us, the kids and our parents we got 3 seats each left. Mine was a no brainer, my sister and her family. For Kieron this was pretty tricky as he has four siblings! He went for his best two friends and let them decide who would like to take up the last seat - genius!

Scroll forward, it's now Halloween, one week before the wedding and everything is in full flow but Bojo decided to mess with us AGAIN issuing another national lockdown for the 5.11.20 just two days before our wedding. We were gutted and spent the weekend deciding what we wanted to do, we'd already been through the trauma of rescheduling, cutting our guest list and neither of us fancied doing that again so we decided to just not get married and pick it up in a few years. Then we had what we thought was the perfect solution, we thought everyone else would be cancelling and rescheduling like mad so why not just bring ours forward? 

Funnily enough everyone had the same idea as us. Monday was the craziest day, all our suppliers were amazing there was just one piece of the mission left, The registrar. Now they turned their phones off and you just had to sit and wait for a call, in the meantime we had to run round the county collecting suits from various stores as our rentals had been put on hold. We had to commit to the cake if we were to have it made on time and we had to try to retain our key suppliers as other brides were trying to book our venue, photographer and make up artist. Somehow we managed it, we finally got the confirmation we could get a registrar to perform the ceremony only having to wait all day on tenter hooks.

It was now on. Who cares there was no build up before this was now so exciting it was seriously guys, drop everything we're hauling ass to Woodstock, it just felt amazing. 

The day was crazy, with flyaway balloons, odd socks, 4 kids 9 and under, forgetting flowers and what the time was... but it flowed beautifully thanks to Marta, from The Crown who coordinated everything for me. We just got to relax and enjoy the ride. What I'm saying is it was worth it to crack on and get married. There was romance, a rollercoaster of emotions and such amazing memories. Here's our day to help sway you to the new way of doing weddings - The Micro way - they are da bomb!

Credits:

Photographer - Daniel Ackerley Photography

Dress - Shades of White St Ives

Cake - Two little Cats Bakery

Suits - Moss. Bros

Flowers - Angel Wings and Pretty Things

Hair + MUA - Melissa Gaunt

Venue - The Crown Inn, Woodstock

Ceremony - Woodstock Town Hall