So with exactly 5 months and 11 days to go until the wedding (who’s counting), I wanted to start writing a lot more about the ups, downs, twists and turns I’ve faced – and going to face along the way! I don’t say it in a negative way, it’s actually been relatively breezy up to this point. Stress on ‘relatively’. I’ve managed to successfully coordinate trips to the UK with Wedmin (Wedding Admin incase your week has been as hectic as mine!) and got the all important dress.

Given as I haven’t written much about the big day, I’d thought I condense what’s gone on up till now to give you all a little insight into planning a wedding, and doing it from abroad!

5 Things You Were Never Told When Planning a Wedding.

1. Your dress maker points out you have some weight to lose, as she’s squeezing your dress to close the buttons.

I bought it small on purpose, obviously.

My dress is from Pronovias, a dreamy bridal store that originates from Spain. I bought mine from the London shop, it was the second one I visited and first dress I tried on. Always helpful when you only have a weekend to find a dress. But, when you know, you know. The dress is stunning, however given I know my fiancé reads all my blogs I can’t give too much away. It’s safe to say I went for the opposite of what I thought I would go for and it’s definitely on the princess side of the scale – as am I apparently!

The dress maker I mention is a wonderful Sri Lankan lady doing all my alterations and embellishments. Comment below if you would like her details. Pronovias apparently don’t do any additional work to the dresses, and don’t have a single recommendation for you. This was just the start of a series of poor customer service from a leading bridal store!

2. You know how in the movies champagne is served whilst trying on dresses and everyones laughing and crying? Well that’s not true.

At least it wasn’t for my time in Pronovias. This renowned bridal store may have stunning dresses but their service is close to the worst I’ve received, to the point where I was disappointed I had fallen in love with a dress that came from such a cold customer care.

It started with the first consultation, I came in with just my mum who was shown a seat whilst I tried on the dresses. You are on a strict schedule (ship in, ship out type thing) so best be sure to choose the dress for the most important day of your life quickly! I was fully expected to be greeted with a glass of bubbly, as was my mum; it’s an exciting occasion and you want it to feel like that. Needless to say the bubbles did not arrive. We got on with the dresses and after a huge little girl’s smile was planted across my face once trying on ‘the one’ – we told the lady we would take it!

We were shown back downstairs where 1/3 of the price of the dress had to paid. Only whilst we were waiting for the card machine to process the payment were we offered a celebrity glass of Prosecco and a bowl of chocolates. Delightful. The Pronovias fiasco gets worse, but I shall leave that for another time!

3. Your husband-to-be becomes incapable of making decisions.

Sorry baby, I know you’ll be reading this, but let’s have a little look at the facts!

You get engaged to this strong, intelligent, powerful, organised (not all men I know but I was lucky on this front…as on many others) man who promises to look after you for the rest of your life. Now, whilst the latter isn’t remotely in question, girls – what the hell happens when it comes to Wedding decisions!?

My super efficient partner in crime has just gone SWOOSH and pushed all the decisions about the wedding into my playing field. Now, although I may want the option of having the final say on 99% of wedding decisions – it doesn’t mean a little playing of back and forth, discussing ideas isn’t also an enjoyable occasion! Apart from additions to the guest list every week (which we had indeed closed), everything else is “Not sure baby, you decide”.

“Wonderful thanks Jack, I’m glad we had that discussion!”.

4. Top table can get a reallllll tight squeeze.

We haven’t done table allocations yet as, well…we haven’t even sent out the official invites.

Good reminder Carly.

But there’s clearly a few members you can be pretty certain are a sure thing, at least you’d hope. I have my mum and dad, obviously, but also both their respective partners and then my handsome fiancé (who did make the call on this one) decided he wanted not one, but two best men. Who, by the way, are all called Jack – wonderful! I’m all for more the merrier but an eleven person top table just doesn’t quite work, or fit in the marquee for that matter. So, when table settings do come around it’s going to be interesting, and possibly slightly awkward affair.

5. Enjoy it.

This is the most important one of all! I’m sure it’ll get thrown around closer to the time but I haven’t yet had these words said to me, nor do I mind though because to be honest, I am.

I am so incredibly excited to walk down the aisle to this man, it appears in most of my dreams at night and gets my voice shakey and eyes welled as I write this to you all now. It’s flying by, the whole thing, so much quicker than I ever would have expected and the other day when we were talking about something that wasn’t going to plan, I just stopped and said, it doesn’t matter, it’s not what the day is about.

We are getting married in August, outside, and my aisle to ‘walk down’ will be green grass flowered with petals (how I’ve always envisioned it). There’s an almighty strong chance that given it’s a UK summer, rain will fall. But if it does, I’ll take off my Valentinos and put on some wellies with a smile, because at the end of that day I will be married to the most incredible person I know.

So if anyone reading this is also mid-wedding planning then let me be the first to say to you, enjoy it.

More to come on The Big Day series, I’ll be sharing everything from toning up and slimming down 6 weeks before and the funny anecdotes in-between it all!

Carly x

Image Sources: Pinterest