Our wedding anniversary is coming up this weekend (twelve years, thanks for asking). So for this month’s playlist, I’m sharing the song that we had for our first dance at our wedding, along with songs from others’ weddings and a few that we considered but didn’t choose.
‘Shining Light’ – Ash. This was our choice of music for our first dance. Ash are one of my favourite bands; I have seen them live three times now, and the second of those gigs was the first gig that Christine and I went to together, about two weeks into our relationship.
‘Amaranthine’ – Amaranthe. I really like this song, and there’s a nice acoustic version as well. I regularly listen to Amaranthe’s music; they’re in the same genre as the likes of Within Temptation, Nightwish and Evanescence, but their sound is a little more commercial.
‘Superhuman Touch’ – Athlete. Athlete are probably best known for ‘Wires’, about the lead singer’s son being born prematurely, and ‘Chances’ which was featured in the Doctor Who episode ‘Vincent and the Doctor’, both from their second album ‘Tourist’. ‘Superhuman Touch’ is from the fourth album, ‘Black Swan’, and is a lovely upbeat song about love.
‘Chasing Cars’ – Snow Patrol. One of my favourite songs of all time. It’s one of the 100 biggest selling songs in the UK of all time and it deserves it.
‘All of Me’ – John Legend. This came out shortly after our wedding but would have been a strong contender if we had heard it sooner. I particularly like how the lyrics talk about loving the whole person, including all of their ‘perfect imperfections’.
‘Amazed’ – Lonestar. I’m not really into country music, but this is a lovely song about being completely besotted with someone.
‘Heaven (Candlelight Mix)’ – DJ Sammy & Do. This is a cover of a Bryan Adams song that’s also a popular wedding song, but I prefer Do’s vocals on this version. This is a slower version of a 2002 dance track that was one of the soundtracks of my first year at university.
‘Truly Madly Deeply’ – Savage Garden. You could include many Savage Garden songs in this playlist, so I’ll limit myself to just one. Savage Garden may have only ever made two albums, but they were both great and still stand up well today.
‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ – Aerosmith. I haven’t actually seen the film ‘Armageddon’, from which this song features on the soundtrack. The inclusion of an orchestra just makes this a truly epic love song.
‘Cup of Brown Joy (Teabag Remix)’ – Professor Elemental. So I’ve included this because some friends of ours genuinely had this as their first dance, even though it’s more about a love of, well, drinking tea. And it’s an opportunity to share another song by Professor Elemental. You can also listen to it on Bandcamp.
Today marks 11 years since Christine and I got married, on the 4th May 2013 in York. This apparently makes it our ‘steel’ wedding anniversary, hence the AI-generated image of a steel wedding cake that accompanies this blog post.
We don’t have any major plans to celebrate this year; for our tenth anniversary last year, we had a nice lunchtime meal at Engine Social Dining. Also, I turn 40 this month and so we’ll be celebrating that instead.
We are aware that May 4th is Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you…) and whilst our wedding wasn’t specifically Star Wars themed, Christine did come down the aisle to a string arrangement of the Imperial March.
Looking back at my blog archives, I posted the day before and day after the wedding in 2013. I wrote a mere two sentences in 2014, and then didn’t really write anything more until our fourth anniversary in 2017. I may or may not have written anything in 2018 for our fifth anniversary, but if I did, it’s not in the Web Archive. And whilst I had resumed blogging again by the time of our tenth anniversary last year, I didn’t write about it at the time.
Christine and I are still happily married, and we try to take the time to keep making our relationship work. Here’s to at least another eleven happy years.
Last weekend some very dear friends of ours got married in St Andrews in Scotland, and so Christine and I made our way up there.
This was our first time in Scotland since a trip to Edinburgh four years ago, and the first time either of us had been to St Andrews. It’s a small town on the Fife coast, north of Edinburgh and south of Dundee. The town is dominated by its university, which is one of the oldest in Britain and has many famous alumni, including Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge. It’s also rather isolated, with only a couple of roads in and out, and three miles from the nearest railway station at Leuchers.
There’s a small harbour which still receives boats carrying fish and shellfish, although not on the scale of other small port towns like Whitby. The major landmark is its ruined cathedral which sits on the top of the cliffs, overlooking the North Sea.
We had enough time for a stroll around the town, followed by lunch at the St Andrews Brewing Company – a very nice brewpub with an extensive gin and whisky selection. The town is very much geared up for tourists and students in equal measures.
St Andrews is somewhere I’d happily go back to but there isn’t a lot to do there. It really is quite a small town – just one that happens to be very well-known with a lot of history.
A bill to change the law was passed last year, and on the 13th of this month, same-sex couples who had married overseas had their marriages automatically recognised as such here. At the same time unmarried couples were able to give notice and the first same-sex marriages happened just after midnight on the 29th March.
The wedding we went to was a mixed-sex marriage, but a marriage all the same. The only thing that was slightly different was that the registrar stated that a marriage was between ‘two people’ and not ‘a man and a woman’, as it was before and when Christine and I got married last year.
I’m really pleased that any two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives with each other can now marry, regardless of their sexual orientation or genitalia. Though Britain has had a compromise of ‘civil partnerships’ since 2005 – offering the same legal status as marriage – it’s good to see that every couple can now be treated equally.
Well, mostly. Whilst same-sex couples should have no problems obtaining a civil marriage, religious marriages are only offered to same-sex couples by a small handful of religious groups – namely the Quakers and the Unitarians. Same-sex marriages are not yet available in Scotland, although the relevant legislation has been passed so it is only a matter of time before this changes. Northern Ireland, however, refuses to allow or recognise same-sex marriages. There are some other issues too.
And there are still changes to happen in wider society. Though a majority of people in the UK support same-sex marriages, around 20% of people would turn down an invitation to a same-sex wedding. But the tide of opinion is going in the right direction and, on the whole, I feel that British society is more accepting of LGBT people now than it has been for any time in history.
Note: This post is pre-recorded as Neil is on honeymoon.
There’s a quote by Irish comedian Ed Byrne on the lines of “The best thing about being married is that you don’t have to plan a wedding”. Whilst our experience was probably not as bad as his, your typical wedding will have several elements, all of which need organising separately, and it can be a big thing to take on.
Therefore, based on mine and Christine’s experience as a recently married couple, here are 10 things that we were advised or found out during the planning of ours.
Tip 1: Silk flowers are better than real ones
Almost all of our flowers were actually silk (or plastic). We bought them from Silk Floral Art near York, which meant that we could pick them up several days before the wedding. We also weren’t limited to using flowers which were in season – we could have any that we wanted that matched the colour scheme. For the table decorations there was a deposit for their return, and we have the option of converting Christine’s bouquet into a permanent decoration to keep. And, of course, silk flowers don’t wilt so they will always look good in your photographs, and even up close it’s hard to tell that they’re not real.
Tip 2: Think about what could go wrong
I’m not suggesting that you need to do a complete risk assessment, but it’s worth thinking about any problems that could arise, and, if so, what you could do about them. In our case, when we went to collect our flowers, it turned out that we hadn’t ordered enough for all of the tables; thankfully, we were collecting them four days before the wedding and so there was time for more to be made up for the day.
We also ensured that both myself and Christine were at the wedding venue (but in separate parts of the hotel) a couple of hours before the ceremony, so that we didn’t start late. And the cake was delivered to us by the bakery, rather than us collecting it and then potentially dropping and ruining it.
You may also want to consider wedding insurance, but we didn’t bother and wouldn’t have needed it anyway. We did, however, use credit cards for the expensive things, so there would have been the possibility of using Section 75 if things went wrong.
Tip 3: Your wedding needn’t cost the earth
On average, weddings in the UK cost £20,000, apparently. I find that hard to believe as ours cost less than half of that. They are expensive (and consequently we’re a bit broke at the moment) but you can avoid a lot of unnecessary expenses. As ever, MoneySavingExpert.com has a guide – 50 cheap wedding tips – and whilst some are extreme we did make a number of savings. With the help of Christine’s chief bridesmaid, we designed and printed our own wedding invitations on VistaPrint(sponsored link), which looked great and worked out at about 50p per invite – far less than some companies charged.
Also, when using some suppliers it’s sometimes worth not mentioning that it’s for a wedding, as some companies will want to charge you more because it’s your ‘special day’.
Tip 4: All-in-one packages are easier
We went for a big, all-in-one package with our hotel, the Best Western Monk Bar Hotel in York(Now known as the York DoubleTree by Hilton). The package was the single largest wedding purchase and cost almost half of our total budget, but it included lots of things that we would have otherwise had to organise separately. These included use of a room for the ceremony, along with some flowers (these were real but matched our silk flowers), the wedding reception with food and some drinks, plus placecards, and a DJ for the disco in the evening.
It may have been cheaper to hire a hall, caterers, and a DJ, and then buy in drinks and our own stationery, but more hassle. Considering all of the other things we’ve had to organise, having these things together was a big weight off our minds.
Tip 5: Get help from friends and family
Christine’s chief bridesmaid helped us with the invites, as already mentioned, and my mum also helped us make the wedding favours (which again cost around £1 each in the end), as well as some legwork last year looking for suitable venues.
But you could go further – if you have a friend with a decent camera who takes good photos, it may be worth approaching them to take your pictures on the day rather than hiring a professional photographer. Ditto if you have a friend who makes nice cakes. In the end we didn’t have any friends helping us on the day – we wanted our friends and family to enjoy the wedding as well – but it may be worth asking.
Tip 6: Get some ‘you time’ on the day
I’m saying this because we didn’t. We got married at 2pm and it was after midnight before Christine and I had any time alone with each other to sit down and relax. Ideally we would have taken some time out after the reception had finished to put our feet up, but we ended up spending some time with the photographers instead.
Tip 7: Go to wedding fairs, but get recommendations as well
Wedding fairs are a good way to find out about photographers, cake makers, florists and the like, but a personal recommendation is always better. The hotel and the bakery that we went for – 3 Tier Cakes in Halifax – both came recommended by several people and we weren’t disappointed. The hotel were fantastic and went out of their way several times to help us, and the cake looked and tasted fantastic.
However, we also found our flowers and our photographer – Michelle Heseltine – at separate wedding fairs and we very pleased with both. In all, we went to three wedding fairs in Leeds, Bradford and Manchester; the latter wasn’t so much use as it was so far away from York where we got married in the end, so I would recommend going to fairs closer to where you plan to get married. There are plenty of them and you can usually come away with a lot of freebies, but don’t feel pressurised to sign up to anything on the spot.
And I’d suggest setting up a throwaway email account for use at wedding fairs, as you’ll get asked for your contact details by lost of people which will result in a lot of junk email. Once you’ve got everything arranged then you can just close the account.
Tip 8: Think how long you want your photographer for
We’ve been to a number of weddings where the photographer turns up just as the bride finishes getting ready, stays for the ceremony and official photographs, then grabs a couple of shots of the newly-married couple pretending to cut the cake before disappearing. That means that you’re reliant on friends and family taking pictures during the reception and the disco.
We decided to pay a bit more and have two photographers all day. They were there about an hour before the ceremony to separately photograph Christine and I getting ready, and were there right through the ceremony, the reception and for the first hour of the disco. Therefore they were able to photograph the actual cake-cutting and also the guests who were only here in the evening. That way our photo album will record the events of the whole day.
Also, when choosing a photographer, make sure you sign a contract so you know exactly what services to expect, and whether you can buy the copyright for the photos (we didn’t do this, but we’re not too bothered about it). And make sure that the photographer is insured, and therefore able to provide a replacement photographer in case of illness. You don’t want to receive a phone call on the morning of your wedding saying the photographer can’t make it, leaving you high and dry.
Equipment isn’t everything. You absolutely should ensure that your photographers are using good quality kit, but make sure you see plenty of sample photos that they have taken as well. Ideally, you’ll be able to find someone who can take great pictures, and has top-end cameras, flashes and lenses so that you get plenty of quality and detail in your pictures.
Finally, always look at the photographer you’ve paid for. Your friends and family will have their own cameras too, and feel free to pose for those when your official photographer doesn’t need you looking at them.
Tip 9: Drink plenty of water
The abundance of alcohol at most weddings, combined with big wedding dresses or suits with waistcoats and shirts, and lots of dancing, means that you can get dehydrated. Make sure you drink plenty of water throughout the day, and alternate alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones. Dehydration will be the main cause of a hangover the following morning, which makes things difficult when you need to tidy up and vacate the premises before lunchtime.
We were offered a lot of free drinks and ended up turning some down; not at least because I wanted to be able to do my speech without slurring.
If you’re planning on wearing a big dress, think about toilet breaks as well.
Tip 10: Relax and enjoy the day
I suppose this is a re-hash of tips 2 and 6, but with good planning, everything will work out fine on the day, and you won’t be overwhelmed and stressed. And try to relax – you are the focus of the day and people will always be there to help you.
Everything went well for us, and we had a fabulous day that we will want to remember for the rest of our married lives.
We’re a married couple now. It was a bit of an exhausting day, but we both had a really good time, as did our guests – hopefully! I didn’t take any photos myself (the above is lifted from a friend’s Facebook album) so it’ll be a while before we see the rest of them. Christine looked absolutely beautiful.
So we’re Mr and Mrs Turner now, and I have a ring on my finger which is going to take some getting used to. Today we’re having a rest and then tomorrow we’re off to Paris.
Apart from last week’s eulogy to Google Reader, it’s been the best part of a month since I’ve last posted on here. This is not due to a lack of things happening but more because I’ve been very busy, and/or too tired. Today is actually the first day that I haven’t been at work since Sunday 10th March, having worked both days last weekend. As it happens, I’ve picked quite a good day to take annual leave as there’s quite heavy snow outside. As well as having a well-deserved lie-in, I’m trying to tackle all of the unread items in Google Reader (which I’m kind-of still using) and Pocket that I’ve amassed over the past three weeks or so. Christine is working this weekend so I basically have three days in which to do basically nothing, which for once I’m looking forward to.
Things are progressing with the wedding, which is about six weeks away; we have all of the RSVPs now, and have organised a few of the major outstanding things like the mens’ suits and flowers. And we’ve booked a honeymoon – five nights in Paris. It’s only a short break but we may go on a more substantial holiday next year. What with the wedding, we didn’t want two really large purchases this year.
Having missed it when it was on TV, I’ve bought the DVD of the first two series of The IT Crowd (also on iTunes) which we’re both enjoying immensely. I may have to buy the other two series as well.
Two more of my user accounts have two-factor authentication – app.net and Apple ID. I’m now waiting for Twitter to catch up and enable it on their site.
Trinity Leeds opened yesterday (see my blog post about it). I didn’t go, despite the possibility of a free t-shirt at the new Apple Store there. Yes, at last, Leeds has an official Apple Store there; I’ve been waiting for at least 7 years for one, after Manchester and Sheffield got theirs.
If you don’t yet have an opinion on the matter, have a read of my views, and then make your own mind up.
It probably won’t surprise you that I am very much in favour of marriage equality – allowing couples to marry regardless of their sexual orientation. My reasons are:
It’s achieving equality. Right now, depending on your sexual orientation, you can either have a marriage or a civil partnership. This isn’t fair – nobody chooses to be gay, straight or bisexual. It’s not a lifestyle choice. Having one set of rules for one type of people and another site for another type is discrimination, pure and simple. If, say, black people were banned from getting married and had to get civil partnerships instead, there would be outrage.
It will save the marriages of transsexuals. At present, if a man and a woman are married, and the man wishes to undergo a sex change to become a woman, then by law the marriage must be dissolved – even if the couple still love each other. It doesn’t even convert to a civil partnership – the couple would have to acquire that later, at an extra cost. To me, that’s totally wrong.
Some people seem to think that allowing same-sex couples to have civil partnerships is good enough. Don’t get me wrong, I think civil partnerships are a great idea, and their introduction in 2005 was a massive step forward for gay rights. For the first time, same-sex couples could have the same legal rights as different-sex couples, including the right to a civil ceremony that is very similar to marriage. But it’s not the same – it’s still one set of rules for one group, and another set for another group. This consultation will remove that distinction, and provide one set of rules for everyone, regardless of gender.
I do, however, feel that this consultation could go further. As it stands, the Home Office are only consulting on civil marriage – i.e. non-religious ceremonies. Even if same-sex civil marriages become legal – and I hope they do – religious organisations won’t be able to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies (although they can offer blessings as now). There are some religious groups out there, like the Quakers and Unitarians, who would like to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies if legally allowed to do so. I don’t think all religious institutions should be forced to marry same-sex couples, but those institutions that want to do so should be allowed to do so. If you agree, note this in the comments on the consultation.
And a final word. As you know, Christine and I are getting married ourselves next year. We’re fortunate that we’re a different-sex couple who love each other. I really hope that, in the future, my same-sex friends who love each other will be able to do the same. Please, do your bit and fill out the consultation. Thank you.
