One Year Married

It's Christmas Eve 2016 and I've been ordered not to get out of bed yet. He's downstairs cooking breakfast for us, bacon by the smells of it! We've just woken up in our beautiful new home on our first wedding anniversary and I cannot believe my luck. The first year is 'Paper' and he presented me with a bunch of white roses wrapped in brown paper and some beautiful New York prints that I'd spotted months ago. I am beaming from ear to ear. 

Married life has been chaotic so far but not in a bad way. We've had a busy, crazy year together. Plenty of travelling, adventures and bonding and right at the tail end of the year we bought a house.  Believe me, if you can make it through the purchase of a house you can make it through anything! 

Our fairytale in New York feels like a dream. It seems so daring and out of character for us that we sometimes ask ourselves "did we actually do that?!" And in only one year from engagement too. It will likely go down in history as the craziest thing we've ever done but we're so proud of our wedding story. New York is a total dream and this year we're feeling a little sad at not being there. We miss the place.

Michael just came up the stairs with New York style bagels for breakfast. He had to practically force feed me a bagel on our wedding morning as I was diving straight into the champagne without eating first. That feeling of excitement is imprinted on me and I could cry thinking about how happy we were on that day. Walking through a sleepy New York on Christmas Eve morning on the way back from the hair dressers was one of my favourite moments from the day, 15 minutes of just me and the city, before the madness ensued. It was a little moment of total peace, love, happiness and reflection.

If you still have the whole wedding experience in front of you, enjoy every single second of the madness. Just make sure you do it all for you and your parner. That's so, so important.

We cannot wait for our next adventure!

X

One Month Married

One month today we flew out to New York to begin our wedding adventure & in 3 days time we'll have been married for one month.  People are constantly asking me how married life is and so far it's been great!  Of course it's not in any way different from how it was before; when you've been living with each other for years already how much different can it be?  We were very close before and now, if it's possible, we're even closer.  We're enjoying the novelty of referring to each other as husband and wife and I'm slowly getting to grips with signing my new name in work!  We're still waiting for our marriage certificate to arrive in the post but it should be here any day now and I can start changing my name officially. 

It's hard to believe that it's all over now but I think towards the end we were looking forward to moving on and starting to enjoy marriage and life as family. We're both back to work now; I landed back to my desk to over 1500 emails (aghhh!) and a Welcome Back chocolate cake so it was swings and roundabouts for a week or two while I settled back.  We're now looking forward to the future and 2016 promises to be a big year for us.  The next thing on the list is buying our forever home so we've a few months of paying wedding debts and saving our socks off in order to afford the home of our dreams.  It will be hard but, like everything else that we set our minds to, we'll make it happen.

I guess this is where our wedding story ends.
Thank you for reading & following our year long wedding planning adventure - we hope our story inspires and helps spur you on with any future wedding plans. 
One final piece of advice?  Make sure you do it your way. Completely.

With love,

Mr & Mrs Archer x

Our Wedding Reception - Malone Lodge Hotel, 9/1/16

 

We were definitely more nervous about the Reception than any of our other plans - the pressure is on when more people are involved and we had 100 people to entertain!  Thankfully, I quite enjoy planning parties and celebrations but I had no experience of planning anything quite this big.  I gained a bit of experience while planning Mum's 50th birthday celebrations (which was a small event) and that was stressful enough so planning our wedding reception had my head spinning from January 2015 right through to January 2016. 

 

One thing I did learn though is that preparation is key.  However, I also learnt that you cannot plan for everything and things will not always go exactly how you imagine them to.  It's easy to build up an idea of how everything will go and your expectations can easily be shattered on the night so my advice would be to go into event planning with this in mind!  Thankfully, I already knew that so on the night any little surprises didn't irk me at all.  I'll give you an example of what I mean.  We planned a drinks hour for our immediate family as a chance for our parents and siblings to meet before the actual party started.  We had rented out a room where we hoped that everyone would stay and mingle together and get to know each other, but in actuality, most people grabbed a few drinks and canapés and went to sit in the hotel lobby in their separate groups and didn't spend much time together in the assigned room at all. Infact, my Dad completely disappeared for most of it! There were also a few other guests who showed up early and we invited them in for drinks and canapés too, which we weren't expecting but it was completely fine as we'd ordered plenty of drinks.  So it was little details like that, where what we had imagined in our heads was different in reality and it was interesting to see how events actually played out in real time. It's important to remember that you can try to control every aspect of your event, but you can't control the people who attend and your day/evening will pretty much run as your guests allow it.

We have to give big thanks to our wedding/event planners Lisa Marie and her successor Jenna at Malone Lodge Hotel who were so helpful and completely lovely throughout the whole planning process.  We basically told them what we wanted and they made it happen!  Jenna was there on the day which was great and the whole evening we were looked after by the very attentive Erwin for whom nothing was a problem or chore.  We stayed at the hotel for 2 nights in total, the second of which was in the Bridal Suite which they had sprinkled completely with rose petals and all the usual decorations - very sweet!  A member of staff also knocked on our door and delivered a lovely card from the hotel which was nice.  We weren't really expecting any kind of special treatment as we didn't have a full wedding day there but they didn't seem to treat us any differently and it was a lovely surprise.

We started the evening at 6pm with the aforementioned drinks hour which was nerve-wracking stuff but it all went well and everyone got on fine.  We were served our canapés and drinks by some very well dressed hotel staff in The Study filled with candles and Erwin was there making sure everything was going as we wanted it to.  At 7pm we all moved into the Deramore Suite where the rest of our guests were starting to arrive.  The room looked great and our jazz music was playing and the vibe was really relaxed and fun, I was about 4 Prosecco's down at this point and was buzzing from one person to another like a bee in a flowerbed.  I don't think there was any time that I didn't have a glass of wine pressed into my hand so things definitely did get a little bit blurry from a certain point which annoys me slightly - I had so much fun, but I just wish I wad more "present" mentally - there was just so much going on that I didn't have any time to absorb too many details.  My biggest regret is not getting to spend as much time with everyone as I wanted to but all brides say that.  It's the nature of hosting events I think.  It's hard to juggle chatting, drinking and embarrassing myself on the dance floor!  One thing that Michael and I both wanted to make sure of is that we managed to spend some time together during the night as it's easy to get distracted with all our separate friends and families but we managed lots of time, thankfully!

Before the DJ's started playing, the hotel brought out the food and Michael had organised some speeches.  The food was (apparently) great, I didn't have any of it or even see any of it as I was so busy!  The speech was made by Michael's sister Megan, followed by an super-sweet and unexpected speech by Amanda, Lucy and Sam who I had met while travelling in Australia. Michael's best friend/man Paul stood up and said some really lovely things about Michael and I.  The best speech was saved for last when Michael delivered his - it was so good and everyone (especially me!) was so proud of him.  He did really well, everything he said was perfect and he didn't even come across as overly nervous.  I ran up to give him a huge hug afterwards and he is still so pleased with how happy it made me, and it did!  The speeches were a great start to the night and the DJ's started playing straight after.  The music was great; they played all our favourite songs and some surprises which included Rage Against The Machine which was hilarious!  They took requests (Salmon Dance anyone?) and played every song that was asked for (except Rock The Boat as per my strict instructions ha-ha) There are some really funny photos of me and Michael dancing and we looked like we were having a great time so I suppose we were! The dance floor parts are all a little hazy...probably for the best...

Overall, it was fantastic to get all the family together in one room.  Lots of both of our family members travelled over from England just to be there and it was such a privilege to have them do so.  I also had friends fly over from England too, people I hadn't seen since I was in Australia 5 years ago.  The night before was spent catching up with old friends and family.  We had drinks in the hotel bar with Michael's visiting Aunts and Uncles - all of them great craic with lots of interesting stories about Michael growing up which was a bonus for me!  One of my favourite moments was seeing my lovely friend Sam for the first time in 5 years - I've never been jumped at quite so dramatically :') I loved seeing the girls again and meeting their boyfriends.  We had a couples night out on the Friday to The Albany for a lovely dinner and Filthy McNasty's for drinks afterwards and it was such fun - you know you have true friends when you don't see them for years and then when you do, it's like you've never been apart.  I'm so thankful to them for making the trip over - thanks ladies - we can't wait to repay the favour!

When the lights finally went up, I remember being devastated!  How could our night be over so fast?!  Everyone piled onto the dance floor for the last song which was "New York New York" by Frank Sinatra - perfect! As everyone filtered out of the room we stayed behind to help clear up and then eventually some of us went to the residents bar for another drink.  This was a great time to catch up with my Aunt and Uncle who were also visiting from England.  My uncle Joe was an absolute hero and ordered Dominos Pizza in the wee small hours which we nicked a slice or two of - it was the perfect end to a perfect night!

 

Wedding Reception Preparations

We arrived home from America on the morning of the 3rd January to find that my sister (and

Michael's now sister-in-law) has taken time to decorate our house for us coming home.  She had bought us a bottle of Prosecco and stocked our fridge & cupboards with food and treats as well as lots of other bits and pieces.  It was the best thing to come home to and kicked our week of celebrations off perfectly.  Arriving home as husband and wife was great - seeing our little furry family again made us so happy!  Our first day at home consisted of us curling up in front of the fire with our blankets around us because we'd run out of oil! Brrrrrr. Michael was back to work the next day - I had separation anxiety for sure - newlyweds don't like to be apart from one another apparently.  Took some getting used to being on my own for 12 hours straight again (how pathetic!) but I was able to launch myself straight into the remainder of the plans for our wedding reception which was booked for the 9th January.  My lovely pal Sian came round to visit and very kindly offered to bring my wedding dress to the dry cleaners for me - total angel, thank you Sian!

 

There was so much to do, so much still to be bought and I spent an entire day shopping for the last bits and pieces.  I also had to spend time at the computer designing and printing quotations and signs for the dozens of photo frames I wanted dotted around the reception room (and if you've ever attempted to use my printer you'll know how testing that task was...) I bought over £100 worth of sweets and cakes for my sweet table; madness I know, especially as on the night I forgot to tell the hotel staff that there were extra sweets & cakes under the table to replenish the bowls with and to this day our house is coming down with leftover sweets and cakes! 

 

Mum and I went to the flower wholesaler to look at flowers and other bits relating to them - this was a fun day!  We ended up sourcing little silver pots to put little bunches of gorgeous white roses into, and me being ever the awkward one, I asked that we spray paint the pots black!  So Mum and I stood in her garage spray painting the pots and other bits that needed painted (okay, okay, Mum did all the work and I watched and bored her with tales from America). Mum added rows of little silver diamonds to the top of each pot which really finished them off nicely.  I didn't actually get to see the finished flower arrangements until the reception night and I just loved them.  I brought all of them home (over 30 arrangements in total) and they still look amazing almost a week later.  White roses are just so classic and elegant, perfect!  I also had to transport all the stuff that I was storing at my Mums house back to mine so that I could prepare and pack it all for bringing to the hotel with me on the Friday night.  Saying that, I was quite organised and everything was done on time without much fuss, thankfully. The hardest part was packing everything into my little Peugeot but we got there alright :)

 

Michael and I took an evening out for a mini road trip to Magherafelt (about an hour and a half during rush hour from Lisburn) to collect a polaroid camera and stand that we were renting from a small wedding design company called Ooh La La.  We met Rachel at her house; she was so lovely and her camera was a really fun addition to our guestbook table - we love the results, the pictures are too funny and the best bit was that we get to keep all the digital images as well as the sticky-back print outs that are in our guestbook! I also borrowed a large digital photo frame from my Mum which we planned to show a slideshow of our travel photographs and pictures from our wedding day on.  Michael and I picked out about 100 of our favourite photographs for the frame which took up most of one evening. 

 

Music is a really important aspect of a party, obviously.  It helps to set the tone of the evening, raises spirits and gets everyone in the party mood.  We decided to begin our evening playing an assortment of jazz tracks over the sound system while our guests were arriving and getting settled at their tables.  While picking out Jazz music, Michael and I stumbled upon a few artists/bands on Youtube that did jazz covers of popular songs.   By the end of it, we had jazz covers of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Fall Out Boy and even Rage Against The Machine - we were quite pleased with ourselves!  On the night, everyone loved the music and the next day I had messages from friends asking for links to the songs.  It was such fun to see people's reactions - I'd be over talking to one of my guests when suddenly their head would cock to the side and they'd go "....is this System of a Down?" haha! 

 

Our DJ's were Mark and Chris from Bespoke Music Solutions and they were fab guys to work with.  We had sent them a list of songs we would like played and they were so in tune with the music we loved.  The guys pride themselves on their refusal to play any wedding cheese which was perfect for us - for me, nothing ruins a wedding party like 'Rock The Boat'. Cringe! These guys come highly recommended - they even gave us a discount because they recognised that we're big music fans which was amazing.  Our friends Stephen and Tina have already booked them for their wedding this summer so it will be great to see them again.

 

I am proud to say Michael and I did all the decorating ourselves - the hotel did offer but we wanted to do everything on our own.  We unpacked the car and put everything on all the tables and decorated the entire room to our own taste. It was actually a really fun activity and it felt great to step back and see our ideas come to life.  The only part that was missing when we finished was the flowers, which Mum brought in while I was at the hairdressers and I didn't see them until I entered the room with all my guests later that night. One of my favourite bits of décor was a chalkboard I had bought and had my sister design.  Laura has the patience of a saint, something I do not have whatsoever and was able to apply her artistic abilities to create an amazing sign that looked as if I had bought it from a shop.  I bought the chalkboard online and bought some gold and white chalk pens for her to work with.  I wanted a kind of Welcome Sign of sorts, something that told my guests that there wasn't a set seating plan and that everyone was to sit wherever they wanted.  I liked the idea of everyone smooshing in together, when in reality everyone kind of stayed to their own groups anyway!

 

Little details included all the sweets being American brands, we had a bowl of Big Apples to symbolise New York and we had lots of little yellow taxies hidden around the room.  We didn't want a New York themed wedding, but a lot of our décor was in an art deco style that gave it a subtle New York feel. I had little famous love quotes printed and put into little silver frames on each table, as well as a large frame with the words from our wedding ceremony printed out and framed. The most important part for me was that the room was filled with candles - and it was.  There were large candelabras on each table and x6 glass candle holders surrounding them.  We had candle sticks on the sweet table and in the drinks reception room.  The room was filled with mirrors and glass and this really made the candle light look gorgeous, we loved the effect and anyone who's ever been to our house knows we love our candles! In the Reception room I also had little paper hearts scattered over the drinks table. These little hearts were cut out of a copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and I just loved them.  It would be pretty much impossible to tell what book they were from but when I told people they just adored the idea and some people took little handfuls of them home to keep :)

 

Mother had the genius idea of putting little baskets of toiletries in the ladies bathrooms and they were such a hit with all the girls.  I put a little sign saying "For any emergency repairs, with love from Rachel x" and they were completely raided which was brilliant!  We just put in things like deodorant, makeup wipes, nail files, all the usual girlie bits and pieces. Was a fun little addition to the vanity table in the bathrooms.  Our guestbook was a fab little find that I stumbled across on Notonthehighstreet.com, it was called Be Our Guest by Illustries.  Sometimes it's hard to know what to write when you're presented with a guestbook but all the pages in this one have little prompts and fun things to fill in and write on. It's made such a great keepsake and is such a fun read, especially with all the funny photographs stuck in next to each entry.  Well worth investing in!

 

When it came to food we just wanted to keep it simple.  I ordered chicken goujons and chips and vegetarian spring rolls and chips all to be presented in a single cone per person.  I also ordered little pizzas (a nod to New York cuisine!) and sausage rolls etc.  On the night, the cones were placed beside the food so everyone could help themselves but this actually lead to all the non-vegetarians eating all the spring rolls as they weren't set out separately or labelled so the poor vegetarians went without for the most part!  I was completely unaware of this until afterwards and felt terrible!  Thankfully, one of the vegetarians raised this issue with the hotel and they brought him out his own plate of veggie ravioli free of charge!  The hotel were fab, they couldn't do enough for us and we couldn't have asked for more.  I didn't even SEE the food on the night, I was too busy chatting to everyone so I don't even know what it looked like - but the hotel staff came to me and asked me had I eaten and when I said no they put a plate together for me and told me to ask for it when I was ready.  I forgot all about it of course, but I really appreciated the gesture.  The regret was instant come 1pm and I hadn't eaten a thing all day and my uncle ended up ordering us a Dominos pizza at ridiculous o'clock. What a legend!

 

Once the reception room and the drinks reception room were all set to how we wanted them, the hotel locked the doors so no one could peep in and it left Michael and I to go and get ourselves ready.  I had a very relaxing hair appointment at 2pm with Leighann at Andrew Watson Hairdressing and she worked hard on my ridiculously long locks to produce a gorgeous bouncy curly blow dry!  A quick stop into Tesco on the way back to the hotel to buy the apples and some beer for Michael and I made it back for just after 4pm.  I couldn't resist a bit more primping in the reception room so by the time I got back to our room it was after 4.30 and Michael was pulling his hair out worried that I had done a runner (my phone had run out of battery around 2.30 and no one had heard from me since) so once I calmed the Drama Queen down we poured ourselves a drink and started to get ready.  Well, I got ready, but Michael decided that this was the perfect time to start writing his speech.  Typical.

 

We had a family drinks reception planned for 6pm for our parents and siblings so it was a bit of a rush to get ready for then.  Michael and I barely had a chance to look in the mirror before we ran out the door around 6.05. Michael gave me a kiss in the elevator during a tiny moment of calm before the storm; we both took deep breaths before stepping out into the Reception area dressed exactly like we were on our wedding day in New York.  We were immediately sucked in to the madness, pulled left and right from the second we stepped into the hotel lobby - I won't lie, my main concern at that point was getting a glass of Prosecco in my hand!  We had booked a little room in the lobby called "The Study" which was a cosy room with a fireplace, lots of candles and a big window looking out into the cold winter night outside.  I had picked Prosecco with blackberries and raspberries as well as big ice buckets with a selection of beers & ciders as well as dinky little glass bottles of fizzy drinks for the kids.  We had a lot of canapés too, far too many though as there were tonnes left over - I think most people were too nervous to eat as it was all families meeting each other and seeing people they hadn't seen in a very long time!  I kind of wish I could have nipped back and scoffed some more because the few that I did have were lovely, and quite Northern Irish!  They had some with potato bread as the base which was weird, but I liked it.

 

It really is the little details that make it and I think our night had plenty. I was so happy with how everything went and I think Michael was impressed at the level of planning it took to pull the whole thing together so perfectly.  I did work really hard on it and I feel very happy that it all went so well.  I actually feel sad to not have a project to work on anymore so any friends and family planning a wedding, feel free to include me!!

 

 

Wedding Photography by Amber Marlow

www.ambermarlow.com

Our Wedding Ceremony by Marley Jay 24/12/15

The songwriter and philosopher Eden Ahbez said “the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” How can that be? We spend our lives telling people we love them and hearing them say they love us. We love to hear nice things about ourselves. We enjoy it when people show their appreciation. But loving someone in the deepest sense and being loved by them turns out to be a challenge.

To love someone well, you have to love what that person brings to your life but also love them unselfishly — not just because it feels nice when they do kind things for you. You have to love them, but recognize there is more to love than romance. You must see them for who they are and help them achieve what they want — while accepting that you can’t do it for them. You have to put your new family first while keeping a sense of yourself. You have to accept that sometimes things will go wrong. In loving someone else you accept so much of the unknown into your life.

And to accept that kind of love in return, you have to admit this other person sees your best and worst qualities. You have to understand that this person chooses you again and again, day after day — which is such an enormous and consequential choice that it’s hard to grasp. It can be frightening, but loving them well forces you to push beyond that. You might be tempted to prove you’re worthy of that kind of love, to show you deserve it. But you don’t have to prove anything. You have to be that same person you already are while trying to improve and care for another person in that deepest way.

Today we’re here to celebrate what you’ve already learned about loving each other and your pledge to keep loving and being loved. There’s so much to learn and so much hard, joyful work to do. The blogger N’tima Preusser gave this advice on that work — advice I think you’re already following:

Marry your best friend.  I do not say that lightly.  Really, truly find the strongest, happiest friendship in the person that you fall in love with.  Someone who speaks highly of you.  Someone you can laugh with.  Wit is important.  Life is too short not to love someone who lets you be a fool with them.  Make sure they are somebody who lets you cry too.  Despair will come.  Find someone that you want to be there with you through those times.  Marry someone who you wouldn't mind waking up to every day for the rest of your life.  The one who makes you glad to be alive.  Marry someone who makes you the best version of yourself.  The one who believes in you, even when you don't.  The one who stands by you through thick and thin.  The one who brings sunshine to the most greyest of your days.  Marry someone you can't imagine your life without.  Marry the one you are completely in love with, and the one who is completely in love with you.

I’m honored to be a part of your wedding. I hope this day is everything you dreamed it would be. And I hope this is the best day of your week. I hope it’s the best day of your month. And most of all I hope it’s equaled and surpassed by many, many other days over the course of your marriage. Not just days where you travel somewhere or do something spectacular to fulfill a lifelong dream — days where you hang around the house and see friends, go out for a meal and a drink at a place you’ve been many times before and look at each other and think “I am so happy that this is my life.” I hope those days surpass this one, too. Because this is a wonderful occasion and I hope you’re enjoying your wedding, but what I wish you the most is a great marriage.

Michael,

Do you take Rachel to be your wife? Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and keep her all the days of your life? If so, say ‘I do’ and as a symbol of your promise, place the ring on Rachel’s finger.

Rachel,

Do you take Michael to be your husband? Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and keep him all the days of your life? If so, say ‘I do’ and as a symbol of your promise, place the ring on Michael’s finger.
 

By the power vested in me by American Marriage Ministries and the City of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may seal your vows with a kiss.

 

Our Wedding Day - Finally!

As I'm writing this, Michael and I have been Mr and Mrs Archer for exactly 3 weeks.  The whole 3 weeks were a complete whirlwind but some of the happiest days of our lives.  Everything in America went exactly as we hoped it would and we returned to Northern Ireland with massive grins on our faces and hearts full of love and pride at being husband and wife. I love being Mrs Rachel Archer so far - we're a family now.  It's the best feeling.  Our wedding day went so smoothly and while we had a couple unexpected changes we firmly believe that everything happened as it was meant to and we both agree that the entire day was perfect from beginning to end.

We had just spent the first 3 days of our trip exploring New York City - it was exhausting truth be told.  There is so much to see and do and we were run off our feet trying to fit everything in - what a city! We were like kids in a sweetshop, running from one exciting sight to the next.  It was raining for much of the time and our feet were often soaked from traipsing through giant puddles all day but the weather did little to dampen our spirits, thankfully!  We took a million photos each day so we have plenty of physical memories to look back on of those last few days as "singletons".

On the morning of 22nd of December we woke up early and headed down to the City Clerks Office in downtown Manhattan.  We were one of the first people through the doors and a queue started to form behind us of lots of couples, whom, like us, where there to apply for their marriage license.  There were a couple of brides there too, in their wedding gowns surrounded by all their friends and families which was nice, but not quite the quiet, private wedding we'd chosen.  After a quick passport check we were told to take a ticket and wait in line.  Our ticket number was A002 - we were the second couple in line that day so we didn't have long to wait.  When our number was called we brought our application form and our passports to the allocated clerk and within minutes we were handed our completed marriage license. After a 24 hour wait we were legally permitted to get married. Yay!

So 24 hours came and went and we spent our very last few hours as an unmarried couple hiding from the rain, holed up in our hotel room with Chinese food (in little boxes like on the TV!) and Christmas movies on the TV.  To be honest, it was perfect.  It meant that we were completely relaxed and well rested for our big day. 

Christmas Eve arrived and we woke up bright and early to get our wedding day underway.  I had my hair appointment booked for 7am in Dry Bar Tribeca and Michael walked me there as it was still dark outside at that time.  I was the first into the hairdressers - a really cute and quirky salon where Christmas Movies were playing and all the staff were wearing lovely Christmas outfits.  I had been booked in for a voluminous curly blow out (as the Americans call it) which I was able to pick from a "blowout menu" - the blowout I picked was called a Cosmo; very Sex and the City!  I was there for about 1.5 hours and my stylist barely spoke to me which stood out for me as I was completely buzzing and wouldn't have minded chatting!  But as it turned out, my stylist was amazing and she made my hair look stunning.  I was so pleased with it, honestly the most beautiful my hair has ever looked and it really helped me feel good about myself on my wedding day. 

The sun had come up while I was in the salon and I was able to walk back to the hotel by myself, soaking up the morning atmosphere of a sleepy Manhattan just starting to come to life.  I must have had a big grin on my face because everyone who passed me smiled and said "good morning" - it was all very sunshine and rainbows that morning.  I was beaming with excitement.  When I got back to the hotel room, Michael had champagne on ice and we had a couple of glasses together while I got to work on my makeup. I had been to Macy's the day before and had bought a lovely, shimmery blusher and a matching red lipstick in Mac and that teamed with my Estee Lauder Doublewear (aka the best makeup ever) and Smashbox Contour Crayons I managed to make myself look half decent without the aid of a makeup artist.  Winning.

Amber (our photographer) and Marley (our celebrant) arrived at our hotel room shortly after 10am and they were everything my internet stalking told me that they would be, I felt like I knew them already! Their happy, smiling faces and big hugs made us feel instantly relaxed in their company which was really important for Michael and I because the nerves were prickling somewhere in the background, threatening to have us shaking at any minute!  Well, Michael was more nervous than I was - I had about 3 glasses of champagne and was buzzing to get married, I honestly couldn't wait.  We were only half dressed when Amber & Marley arrived, so Marley took himself off to the Roof Terrace for a drink while we finished getting ready and took some shots in the hotel room with Amber.

Amber took a few shots of me in my dressing gown and while I went into the bathroom to put my dress on she took some really lovely detail shots of our jewellery, shoes, cufflinks and perfume/aftershaves - these are some of my favourite shots she took.  Amber also took a "first look" shot of the first time Michael saw me in my wedding dress which actually turned out more funny than romantic and emotional - typical for us, really!  Michael helped to  do up all the little buttons at the back of my dress, all while Amber clicked away with her camera.  It was so strange that we suddenly felt so comfortable in front of the camera.  I think photography is just an accepted part of your wedding day and for some reason it just feels natural to have someone clicking away while you go about your business - maybe your brain and thoughts are just so consumed with what's going on that you don't really notice the camera clicks - whatever it is, we just went along with it and actually enjoyed it.  A lot of that is likely due to Amber being fab at what she does; a natural born photographer with a lot of talent for making us feel special and less self conscious than we usually would.

We decided to go up to the roof terrace to find Marley and take a few photographs as the view of the Empire State from there is just amazing.  We had worried about the weather all week.  It ended up being 24oc on Christmas Eve which was very muggy and humid (and confusing!) and there had been quite a lot of rain so far.  We'd been watching the weather reports religiously and it didn't look good for us.  We had planned to journey over the Brooklyn Bridge to find a spot in Brooklyn Bridge Park to have our ceremony and pictures but while we were on the rooftop the clouds were visibly starting to roll in and it was Amber that first piped up "You should just have your ceremony right here, right now."  I'll never forget the little ripple of terror that rolled over Michael's face as we realised the ceremony could be happening a lot sooner than he expected it too - I burst out laughing!  Later, he told me that it was actually because he was worried that I didn't want to get married on the rooftop and still wanted to go to Brooklyn, when in all honesty I was more than delighted.  The rooftop was the original location that we chose and part of me always wanted it there - I had doubts about us actually being authorised to use it which is why I started to change the plans with Amber last minute.  At that moment, when the skies were clear, the roof terrace was completely deserted and it was just the 4 of us and the Empire State view. It was the perfect time to do it.  So we did :)

Marley's ceremony took less than 10 minutes and it was completely lovely. We believed and supported every word that he said. We've since had his words printed at our Reception and we've framed and displayed in our home.  Michael and I held our hands in a "pinkie promise" throughout the entire ceremony, a little personal touch we decided upon. The whole of New York was silent to me, all I could hear was Marley's words and I know that I beamed throughout the entire thing - we were just so happy to be there celebrating our love for one another and I honestly felt so proud.  It was a magic moment, one that I doubt we would have enjoyed as much a whole bunch of people been watching us!  The privacy and intimacy of our ceremony was exactly what we wanted and we wouldn't have had it any other way.  It was perfect.

Afterwards we went into the lounge that is attached to the terrace which was also deserted and we watched Marley officiate our marriage license before signing it ourselves.  We then went out into the streets of Soho/Tribeca and took lots of photographs. I love our photographs - they're exactly what we wanted - very streets-of-New-York, a bit grungy and very different to your typical wedding photography.  We actually had a lot of fun following Amber's instructions, dodging yellow taxis to get that perfect in-the-middle-of-the-street shot that we've now decided is our absolute favourite.  Amber laughed and joked her whole way through and we had so much fun with her that we didn't even flinch when we became a bit of a tourist spectacle with some people taking photos of us on their phones!  We were definitely sad when it was time for Amber and Marley to leave but we trundled on back to our hotel just as the drizzle really began to come down (I have frizzy hair in many of the photos due to the humidity and drizzly rain but I don't care!) and we went back to our room to Skype home.

After talking and waving at our Mums (and aunts and uncles and cousins...) we got changed out of our suit & dress and hopped onto the Subway to make our way to Rockefeller Centre for some wedding cake!  The whole of midtown was filled with people out celebrating Christmas Eve - there were crowds everywhere, so many in fact that we didn't get close to the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Centre or the ice skating rink.  It was just too busy and we had a show to catch!  We queued up at Radio City Music Hall where we had tickets to The Christmas Spectacular.  We grabbed a couple glasses of Prosecco and settled down in our front row mezzanine seats to enjoy the show, and it was amazing, the Rockettes were unbelievable performers and it was just the best way to celebrate.  I actually, secretly, welled up at one point, just thinking about how lucky we were to be there together having as good a time as we were.  New York really was a dream come true and it was so fantastic and completely fulfilling to see all our plans come together; everything that we had worked for, for an entire year playing out perfectly in front of us - so lucky!

After the show we walked to Times Square, soaking up the Christmas craziness (and it WAS crazy) and we had dinner in one of our favourite restaurants and had plenty of cocktails and drinks before heading back to the hotel.  The whole day from start to finish was perfectly suited to us and we'll never forget it, certainly a wedding that stands out from the rest and we're so happy we did it our way without any outside influences and one day we'll get to return to New York and revisit the spot we were married, stand back and see how far we've come together in that time.  I can't wait for that day!