Transferred from MySpace.
Yep, I'm terrible and haven't posted for yonks. Anyhoo... thought I'd better put together a few posts in order to fill in some of the blanks...
...starting with the wedding...
The wedding took place in Cyprus - although actually it would be more accurate to say that the wedding*s* (plural) took place in Cyprus since we had to have a civil ceremony as well as the church one. The civil ceremony took place early in the morning, but we deliberately chose not to invite anyone (beyond the witnesses and best man) since - in our eyes at least - the 'real' wedding (i.e. the one with the posh frock) was taking place in a church later that day.
Anyway, by around 9:30 that morning we were already married - we stood on the steps of Paphos town hall, took off our wedding rings and handed them back to the best man (for re-use at the church wedding).
...as you might imagine, that got us some funny looks...
Anyhow, despite being married we went our separate ways (Stuart back to our hotel, and me back to my sisters villa) where we both went back to bed until it was time to do it all over again.
Pretty strange - getting married and then leaving without your spouse (or wedding ring)!
The 'proper' wedding was wonderful - obviously I'm rather biased, but I swear it was the best wedding I've ever been to! The church was tiny (holding a max of 25) and (oddly considering it's size) was beautifully decorated (lots of high colour and Greek style iconography).
We had about 20 0f our close friends and family there and I guess that one of the best things about getting married abroad is that everyone was in 'holiday mode' by the time the wedding came around, and that meant that there was no stress or worry, just lots of happy, relaxed people - just what a wedding should be about as far as I'm concerned! Organising it was pretty easy too - you simply don't have the same level of choice as you might have at home - once you've accepted that, there's really no point in getting stressed about the small stuff!
The wedding reception was held in the hotel that we had been staying in over the previous week, and we were welcomed at the door with a red carpet, the wedding march and (because Paphos is clearly a holiday resort), lots of holiday makers in shorts and bikinis applauding us!! Slightly bizarre I suppose, but very memorable!
Equally memorable was our 'first dance' - we hadn't booked any entertainment - we were just going to play it by ear and relax by the bar after the meal, however as you might expect, the hotel put on it's own entertainment for it's guests each night. As it happened, the day we got married was the day they had a Robbie Williams tribute act (which my new brother-in-law hijacked by getting 'Robbie' to invite the happy couple up for a dance). Given that neither Stuart or I had particularly wanted to do a first dance, it was rather unfortunate that we ended up dancing in front of about 400 boozy holiday makers!
Let's just say that we now feature on lots of their holiday videos and photos! To be honest, I was mortified at the time (so much so that our guests quickly joined us on the stage), but looking back on it now it was pretty cool - I guess not many people can say they had Robbie Williams sing at their wedding!
Anyway... it could have been worse... if we'd married a day later we'd have had a stage hypnotist!!!!
(*shudder*)
So that was it... the wedding. There's only one other thing to mention I guess, and that was my hen night - the ONLY stressful part of the wedding...
My 75 year old mother invited herself along and was 'drunk on life' way before she'd had a whiff of the strong stuff (or any stuff at all to be frank). At one point she had her head inside a waiters T-shirt, whilst on another occasion she had to be restrained from dancing in a circle of fire (created on a pedestrianised area by the club owners using lighter fluid) - I'm quite sure that should she have been left to her own devices we'd have ended up having the wedding in A&E! Suffice to say, it's jolly difficult to let your hair down when you're trying to look after your elderly (in years, not in behaviour) mother, and to prevent her from booing the stripper booked by another hen party. To cut a long story short, we ended up cutting the evening short and dragging her back to dad before she could do any real harm to herself, a waiter or a stripper.
...The legend that is my mother, is now known far and wide - even people that weren't at the wedding (and have never met her) have since commented on her 'joie de vivre'!!
(My husband on the other hand is fervently hoping that I don't turn into my mother any time soon!)
