Tag Archives: wedding

A new relative!

Cutting the tasty cake

Cutting the tasty cake

Jessica, Samuel and myself were honoured to be guests at my sister’s wedding last weekend. Nick graduated from funkle to uncle and I gained a brother-in-law. Everything had been meticulously planned by Cara and it all went off without a hitch.

There was a tea theme to the wedding (that Jessica really approved of) and we were on the Earl Grey table which featured a cup fully of jelly bears to keep us going in between courses. The ceremony itself was short but sweet and unfortunately Samuel had to watch through the glass doors as he was a bit upset to be losing a funkle.

Samuel was very excited to see so many people in one place… he barely slept and was careful to smile at everyone he met in case there was a possibility of recruiting new minions. This was Samuel’s most complicated trip to date and I am pleased that we all coped with it well.

All in all it was a great event, Nick is a really nice guy and I welcome him into our family.

Wedding pictures

We have uploaded some of the pictures from the wedding and you can find them in the picture library. We have put high resolution copies with the nice people at photobox if you would like to get prints. If you are not yet a photobox member let us know and we can get you 30 free prints. At the moment I advise you to wait until we get a few more photos in from our friends before you choose which ones you want.

Click here for the picture library or here for photobox.

Buon Giorno

Hi, we are now back from our honeymoon in Rome. We had an excellent time and there are loads of photos so we’ll add some to the photo section soon. I’ll do a separate post on the holiday when I get a chance.

Whilst the wedding day may be over there are still loads of admin tasks and bits to tidy up. Thanks to everyone who made their way to Kingswood to celebrate the day with us – we’d really like to get an original copy of any image/video files you acquired on the day. The intention is to select the best to share with everyone, both on the site and in print (probably using photobox). You can burn them onto a CD/DVD and mail them or catch me when I walk by with a USB memory stick.

I was really pleased with how the day turned out, the reception went well and the ceremony exceeded all my expectations by having a really fantastic atmosphere. I again extend my thanks to everyone who helped us both before and after the event… we couldn’t have done it without you.

So what’s next for me and Jessica? A rest I think! Then we’ll have to find a house :-/

Staaaaag!

Yesterday me and twelve other brave souls went out on my stag do. To celebrate one of my last days as a single man I decided that we should go karting, drinking and eating (in that order).

The karting venue was an unknown quantity but thankfully it was a nice little track and the majority of the karts were in good shape. We all got a practice run and then a number of heats to decide the starting line-up in the two semi-finals. The top three from each semi made it through to the final round.

The track staff had a fairly relaxed attitude to safety which meant I was able to wear the ‘attachment’ Steve had built for my crash helmet. Performance varied from kart to kart so everyone got a chance to do a bit of overtaking in at least one of their heats. In the final were me, Jeff, Duncan, Andy, Matt and Richard B. I fell back to last as I exited the first corner due to a game of chicken with Jeff in which neither of us yielded. I battled my way up to third with a bit of off-roading but was unable to catch Duncan and Andy in front of me. Andy’s prize for winning? A trophy and a bottle of Charlemagne! Andy – you seem to have left the Charlemagne at my flat… I’ll save it for when I next see you!

For our evening meal we went to the excellent Banana Leaf (pictures soon) before heading off to the pub. Avoiding the first pub which had some ‘Croydon street theatre’ outside, we ended up in the Oval Tavern.

Thanks to everyone that was able to make it – I had a really good day. Sorry that James couldn’t make it – get well soon James.

I edited some of the footage together… here it is in pixelated youTube glory.

Ticking down…

Not long to go now…. I wanted to take this opportunity to make a couple of requests:

Firstly, we have not hired an official photographer as so many of you have expensive cameras. We’d really appreciate it if you could let us have the high quality original pictures from you camera (except Steve ‘RAW’ Perrott) and we’ll make an online album available. If you like anything in the album then we can arrange for you to get a print of it. Hopefully this will save you the cost of getting prints from an official photographer and also save us the cost of hiring one.

Secondly, it would really help if you could get to the reception by 5pm as we will be having Champagne and speeches then. The food will be available shortly after this so you don’t want to miss out 🙂

One month to go….

*Sections of this post edited by fidget*

A distinct absence of blog posts recently as we are getting closer and closer to the big day. Me and Jessica have been rushing round trying to sort out flowers, balloons, shoes and tablecloths to name just a few.

We are also taking a one month break from Taekwondo whilst we get the wedding sorted out. This may become a longer break for me as I am considering stopping TKD and trying to move up to the next grade in badminton. I am finding it hard to motivate myself to remember:

10 3-step sparring routines
8 2-step sparring routines
4 1-step sparring routines
7 patterns
+ a shed load of Korean words

I’ll see how I feel after a month – perhaps I’ll want to rush back.

Weddings and motor sport

Things have been really hectic recently… attending weddings and Grand Prixs.

Firstly, I wanted to thank Liz’s parents for the fantastic wedding reception they organised for Zig and Liz (pictured left). Jessica and I hired a car and drove up to Essex for their wedding which was held on the 30th June. The wedding service was held in a local church and the reception took place in a marquee erected in Liz’s parent’s garden.

We had some lovely food at tables in the marquee and then some of the tables were cleared to make space for a band and dance floor. The band were really good but I have forgotten their name so can’t give their website a plug – perhaps someone can add the name to the comments? Strangely, just about everyone I spoke to at the wedding was in the process of planning their own – Jessica and me felt the need to defend our registry office in the face of castles and other fancy locations. I expect the castle would win in a stand up fight though – I doubt Russettings has the necessary armoury. Anyway, a great event (even the farm canine got dressed up) – I wish Zig and Liz all the best with their new marriage.

This weekend saw me resuming my spectator marshalling job at the British Grand Prix. This is the sixth time I have been, but it was the first time where I felt there was a realistic chance of a Brit actually winning the race.

Only my dad and me made the trip to Silverstone this year, (Zig was honeymooning) but dad didn’t disappoint… bringing the amount of food and equipment for which he is famous (in parts of Newcastle anyway!) Lewis Hamilton treated us to a thrilling qualifying session on the Saturday but the Ferrari’s pace was too great on the Sunday and Hamilton had to settle for a third position in the race.

I don’t have many pictures of the event as marshals are not allowed to use their cameras whilst on duty. So, I’ll leave you with a couple of shots – me in my marshalling get up, and my view of the crowd at 7am on a Sunday morning (note: there was nothing on track until 9am).

Any requests?

We have booked a DJ for our wedding. In with all the paperwork he sent us was a play-list which we can use to request tunes in advance. If anyone has an urgent need to hear a particular piece of music then please let me know via a comment on this post.

Let’s try to keep the joke suggestions to a minimum please?