The Wedding series - tips

This year we've had 2 weddings, child 2 and 2a in June, best friends in July and our niece is getting married in October. I've also been helping with the planning of child 4 and 4a's wedding next September.

L-R Mother in Law, Child 4 & 4a, Peter, Child 2a & 2, Me, Child 1, Child 5, Mum.

Child 3 & 3a were unable to make it over from Australia.

Weddings are BLOODY expensive. There are ways though to keep the costs down. As a guest the cost mounts up, especially for Peter and I, before we even buy our outfit and a gift we have to book flights from where we live in Dubai. However, we had a very small wedding at a registry office, I wore a prom dress to get married in, bought in the sales in Vegas, Peter needed a new suit for work anyway, we had a 3 night for the price of 2 hotel deal in Chester, no reception, no photographer and no cake, although 3 sets of friends turned up to surprise us and we had a meal afterwards in an Italian restaurant on the way back to the car park.

There are so many new things to think about these days that we never had to worry about and the main one for me is that guests don't share photos online during the day and that they leave the Bride and Groom to post first a few days afterwards. It also makes for a nicer day if the wedding is social media free, the wedding photographer will certainly appreciate being able to take photo's freely without mobile phones blocking their view. There are so many new ways to share photo's in high resolution with the guests and I found an app that would allow photo's to be shared on app so family and friends who can't make the day can still share in the event. Child 3 and 3a were unable to travel over from Australia for Child 2 and 2a's wedding.

So after the initial shock of 2 of the children announcing they were getting married and a bank transfer made, it was time to find out if and what input we were to have. We're now someone's in laws and so far I think it's going reasonably well.

Both Peter and I are step parents to each others children. We needed to establish our roles as step parents at our children weddings. At child 2's wedding his mother wasn't invited so no worries about the top table, but child 4's father will be at his wedding but it is Peter who will sit at the top table with me. These are all issues that have to be resolved before the big day when it comes to family and the modern day dynamics.

Then of course there was the outfits. I can hardly wear the same dress at all 4 weddings? Well technically I could but as 3 of them are family do's, I really didn't want to appear in all the photos dressed the same. Living in Dubai there are some fantastic sales and I bought the outfit for the first 2 weddings in Debenhams. There isn't a lot of stuff available for the Mother of the Groom, everywhere focuses on the Mother of the Bride and I fall into 'occasional wear'

There's also the wedding gift to account for. When I asked the internet about what was a reasonable gift amount, it varied greatly.

Something I've noticed quite a lot is there often isn't a 'plus 1' on invites anymore. Usually the invitation is addressed to a couple, whether married or not. There have been quite a few single guests at both the weddings and at wedding number 2, I spent most of the day on my own as Peter was the Best Man, I searched to find out what my role as Wife of the Best Man was, but only came across the partners moaning about how they felt it unfair they sat on their own all day and in some cases turned the invite down, so I wrote about how single guests can feel more involved and not so isolated.

We've got one more wedding this year, the reception is being held in a barn in a field. I've selected my outfit based on the potential weather and it will look great with my bright yellow hunter wellies should it rain.

Next year's wedding is taking place under one roof and I can certainly see the advantages of doing this.

A couple of these posts contain sponsored content, but as I was already writing posts about the wedding and like I said with mounting costs, every penny helps, especially when there are 3 in 1 year.

The role of the Best Man's Wife at a wedding

My husband was Best Man at a wedding last month. Whilst researching his role, I noticed a lot of discussion from the partners of the Best Man, from tips on how to avoid feeling isolated to people actually saying they didn’t attend the wedding as they didn’t want to be on their own all day.

As close friends of the Bride and Groom and the Grooms family, I attended the wedding rehearsal, sat in the front row with the Groom’s mother, sat on a table with the Usher and his wife near the top table and the night before the wedding the Groom stayed with us over night.

We had a lovely day, met new people, met up with old friends, ate, drunk and were (very) merry.

I’m a social person, I love a chat and to meet new people. It doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t times when I feel isolated or lonely or even find the people I’m with hard work, there are always people I find hard work, but I’m good at spotting them early on and sticking with like minded people.

It got me thinking though about the people I came across online who felt isolated, knew no one or even stayed away from the wedding of their partners best mate.

I’ve been a plus one at many weddings, where my husband has known either the bride or groom and I’ve only known my husband. When I was a maid of honour at a friends wedding, my husband knew the bride, the groom and the brides family also, so his day rolled along the same lines as mine did when he was best man.

There are things you can do though to ensure you don't feel too isolated on the actual day.

• Suggest that you meet with the Bride and Groom for a meal a month or so before their big day. Difficult if you have to travel to the wedding, but you could take part in a Skype call.

• Ask your partner to have a word with the Bride and Groom about seating arrangements for the wedding reception. Can you be seated with people you know or paired up with another single guest?

• Offer to take on a role during the day; is there an elderly relative who might need some support?

• Accompany your partner to the wedding rehearsal, I made friends with the verger and met the Usher and his wife, the bridesmaid and her family, which meant there are people to talk to whilst waiting for the guests and bride to arrive and during the reception.

Do you have any suggestions on how not to feel isolated at a wedding where your partner plays a role in the ceremony? Do you do anything extra at your wedding to accommodate single guests?

Wedding Photo Swop in high resolution for printing.

We've attended two weddings this year already, our 3rd is in October and we have one more planned for September 2019.

The weddings so far have been that of our eldest son and best friends. It’s the turn of our niece in October and our 2^ndyoungest son next September.

With family and friends living around the world and not everyone being able to attend, it’s rare for us all to be together at any family event. When one family member is unable to attend we still want to make them feel part of the event, even if they can’t physically be there. 

So when I heard about Wedding Photo Swap I decided to take a look. It allows you to create your own personalised space in an app where guests can share the photo's they have taken on your wedding day. Once you have downloaded the app you can email your guests or send them the link with the invite. 

Although a professional photographer has been at both the weddings to date, they spend the time with the Bride in the morning as she gets ready and arrives at the church. With the app we would be able to upload the photos taken of our son when he arrived at the church and for the second wedding, the Groom stayed with my husband and I the night before, we would be able to take and share photos of him and his best man getting ready also.

With the official photographer leaving the venue after the cake has been cut and the first dance, it’s a lovely way to have un staged moments of evening only guests and friends and family snapping away catching those other ‘unseen’ moments that the Bride and Groom often miss.

Wedding Photo Swop allows guests to share their photos from your wedding with everyone else and they are saved in high resolution for you to download and print. 

What I particularly like is that photos can be shared for those who can’t attend allowing them to still be part of the day but not posted online until the Bride and Groom decide to share their pictures of their big day.

For the last two weddings we’ve attended we’ve shared the photos we took with the Bride and Groom via face book, but the quality is affected when it comes to the Bride and Groom wanting to print any photo’s out. With the app the photos are saved in high resolution. 

Photos can then either be downloaded or edited and printed directly from your phone and they can be uploaded as the day unfolds rather than sending 100’s of photos via face book in the following days, as I’ve been doing for the past two weddings.

I certainly will be passing this on to my niece for her wedding in October and my other son for his next year.

It would also be a good app to use at hen and stag parties and who knows? Christenings in the future.

This is a collaborative post.

My Sunday Photo - The Best Man and Me

Wedding no 2 of 2018 took place yesterday. Peter was Best Man. We didn't look quite so smart by the end of the evening. Any suggestions as to what I should be doing with my hands/arms? They either hang by my side in photo's or they're tucked behind my back, usually hiding my cigarette.

I've taken a break this week from my series of construction projects and unusual buildings in Dubai and around the world. If you'd like to see them, then click on the links below:

Week 158 Dubai Bluewater Islands and Dubai Eye. Man made island a 210m high Big Wheel
Week 159 Dubai Dubai Marina - Reflections
Week 160 Dubai Dubai Frame. A window between the Old and New Dubai and a 150m high glass floor.

Week 161 Dubai Dubai Marina 3 years apart.

Week 162 Dubai Dubai Water Canal Bridge Construction and reconfiguration of roads

Week 163 Dubai New Metro Line for Expo 2020
Week 164 Arizona and Nevada Hoover Dam 2002 - 2010
Week 165 Dubai Dubai Opera House What a difference a year makes
Week 166 Dubai Unfinished buildings. The Pentominium
Week 167 Coventry Mixing the old and the new. Coventry Catherdral
Week 168 Dubai New Dubai Metro Station 
Week 169 Dubai The new extension of the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa 
Week 170 Dubai Hotel fire After the Address fire 
Week 171 Dubai Unusual designs The Opus Building
Week 172 Dubai District Cooling. Keeping the desert cool.
Week 173 Dubai Can I visit the Burj Al Arab
Week 174 Dubai The Almas Tower
Week 175 Dubai The Cayan Tower
Week 176 Toronto The CN Tower
Week 177 Nevada The Paris Hotel 
Week 178 Dubai Ibn Battuta Gate
Week 179 A Wedding
Week 180 Dubai The World's Tallest Tower
Week 181 Dubai and Wales Al Fahidi Fort and Chepstow Castle 
Week 182 Dubai New Metro Station in Al Furjan 
Week 183 Dubai Ski Dubai

Top Tips for Wedding planning and keeping costs down

As you are probably aware, I’ve had a busy and expensive year to date with weddings. Child 2 got married in June, my husband is best man at a wedding this Saturday, his niece is getting married in October and child 4 is getting married next September.

As a guest alone the costs are mounting. I can hardly wear the same dress to all 4 weddings can I? Other than a cash donation to child 2, we’ve not had any input with the other 2 weddings we’re attending this year, but we do know how much they’ve spent and the lengths they’ve gone to, to make sure everything is in place for their special day. 

We’ve also made a cash donation to child 4 and have already been involved in helping them to plan their special day. 

Peter and I eloped in 2002, we’d both been married before and had recently bought a new home for us and our 5 kids to live in and so we kept our wedding as simple and cheap as possible. I’m a believer in keeping things simple and costs down, but if you do want the full wedding experience there are plenty of ways to keep the costs down.

The confetti shop offers a wide range of ideas to plan your big day, choose by theme, colour or season. This is a great idea for weddings that are in the planning for 12 months or more; you can see the current and predicted trends, help inform your colour scheme and more importantly give you an idea of the costs involved from save the date cards, invites, table decorations, wedding favours to planning the hen night and stag do. 

With child 4s wedding there are a lot of people involved in the planning, we have a face book group message titled ‘Wedding’ where we can pop suggestions on anything that we come across from web searches and attending other peoples weddings. 

My top 6 tips:

Invitations -  Can you do save the date and invitations online? Only printing out a handful of cards for those not on social media. It will also reduce the amount of stress chasing up replies.

Photography – Disposable cameras on tables for guests to snap away more personal shots, especially for the evening do after the photographer has captured the first dance and departed.

Bridal Party Gifts – If you’re giving your best man cuff links as a thank you gift, then give them to him in the morning so at least he’ll get some wear out of them. Personalise gifts for the bridesmaids and groomsman; consider something they can actually use. 

Wedding favours – Consider making a charity donation. Purchase a charity pin or band for each guest on the table.

Hen and Stag do’s – Do you really need to go abroad for a week before the wedding? A meal in a local restaurant or even a party at home, this way you can accommodate all budgets and invite all ages.

Food – Not for the reception but between the wedding and the meal. It’s common now for the bride and groom to spend up to 90 minutes having photo’s taken, guests can often be left hanging around, they will be catered for but if you’re part of the wedding party you may not get a chance to eat or drink from breakfast time till 4pm. I always pack drinks and snacks in a small cool bag to hand out to keep us going through the day.

This post is in collaboration with the Confetti Shop.

The Mother of the Groom with Compton House of Fashion

As the Mother of 4 boys, I potentially have 4 occasions as Mother of the Groom. The first of which is taking place this June 2018. The 2nd in September/October 2019.

This post is in collaboration with Compton House of Fashion who got in touch with me in March to ask me to share my experiences of finding a suitable outfit as Mother of the Groom and I must say I found their website extremely helpful. Although I won't be visiting their store as I live in Dubai and arrive in the UK only 2 days before our son's wedding, it was lovely to see the variety of outfits and accessories they have available. They feature a range of ages of models and offer advice on weddings and etiquette as well as running their own blog which offers help and advice for the Mother of the Groom.

Until Compton House of Fashion got in touch with me, I'd seen very little on the internet about the Mother of Groom. The high street shops focus on the Mother of the Bride and I seem to fall into Occassion Wear.

The harsh reality is there is no role for the Mother of the Groom compared to the Mother of the Bride who takes centre stage after the Bride, the Father of the Bride who gives the Bride away, the Groom who makes a speech, the Best Man who makes the main speech and the Father of the Groom who is also part of the Wedding party as he at least gets to wear the same suits as the rest of the above, as do the ushers who happen to be the Brides brother and the 2 of the Grooms brothers.

And that's where it ends. There is no role for me. Apparently I could write a letter to the Mother of the Bride, showing my interest in the upcoming event and as the parents of the Groom it is traditionally our role to organise the rehearsal dinner, stand in line after the couple to receive guests and to dance with the Groom during the mother-son dance. But I have no idea if this is part of the plan.

I'm sounding quite bitter. I'm not, I'm slightly bemused. I had thought in 2018 we'd done away with all this tradition and besides, my husband and I eloped as a) we wanted to do things our way b) we'd both been married before and been swept away with other peoples ideas of what should and shouldn't be happening and c) we'd just bought a house and didn't want or need the expense. I really hadn't given a lot of thought about my role as Mother of the Groom until now.

I did take part in making a booking for our son's suit fitting and order and paid the bill, but my thoughts on the large number of suits was not wanted and I recommended a photographer, an old school friend of mine. All I had left to do was transfer the rest of the money I promised into the Bride's account for her and her mother to spend as they see fit.

So we've handed over a lump sum to the Bride, replied to the invitation with our meal preferences and booked our flights and car hire.

At the moment I have absolutely no idea what I will be wearing on the day as I'm still waiting to find out what colour the Mother of the Bride is wearing. I also have to avoid the colours of the Bridal party. So I've got a couple of dresses, shoes and a hat (is the Mother of the Bride wearing a hat?) 

Last month, son no 4 announced he was engaged also. But thankfully this wedding won't take place for a year or two and hopefully by then and after a friends wedding in July and our niece's wedding in October, I'll have this outfit choosing sussed out.

Injecting some colour into my life and trying new things in Dubai

I joined the local leisure centre. By local I mean it takes me 3 minutes to walk there, by crossing the road at the end of our garden.

There's an outdoor pool and a gym (as yet unexplored) and a cafe (as yet open when I've been there) 

There are plenty of sun beds and umbrellas for shade and the pools temperature is controlled, perfect for the hot summer months.

It takes an hour out of my day to go for a swim and is already after a week benefiting my health, I can feel I have a lot more movement in my neck and shoulders already.

I used to belong to a gym in South Africa and used it most days and we had a decent sized pool in the garden, but gym membership in Dubai is very expensive and as I now spend half the year in the UK, it hasn't been worth it. This gym costs £400 a year and for a small fee I can take visitors with me.

I've also inquired about attending some sewing classes and have finally got round to taking my sewing machine and over locker in for service and minor repairs. I did a lot of sewing in South Africa, making bags and bunting that I sold for charity to raise funds for educational supplies, but since moving to Dubai, there's a ban on fundraising and even advertising charities unless they're registered with the UAE Government, so all my stuff has been gathering dust, but my plan now is to get back into the swing of making things to sell over in the UK when I'm there.

Having spent most of 2017 in the UK I was living in Jeans and t-shirts, I was in the UK in February and March for a month also during the snow and wore so many layers I could hardly move. It's nice to be back in Dubai for some warmer weather, sadly it will be too hot soon to enjoy the outside (other than using the pool over the road) but by the time the heat kicks in at 45c I'll be back in the UK for summer and I've decided I need to revamp my wardrobe.

Peter and I have 3 weddings this year in the UK. Our eldest son is getting married, Peter is best man at another, both in the summer and Peter's niece is getting married in the autumn which is going to be a casual affair.

I must say the last wedding excites me the most. No pressure on what we wear, attending as guests only with no responsibilities. For the first two weddings Peter is wearing suit hire and forms part of the Groom party with formal wear, it's not stressing me out what I'm wearing but I do feel a little out on my own when it comes to my choice of outfit, particularly with our son's wedding as I have to avoid the brides colours (red and yellow) and avoid clashing with the Bride's Mother (still don't know what she's wearing either)

Due to ill health over the past year, I've lost a bit of weight, as in I'm now back to the weight I was a few years ago, which means I've been able to wear so many more of my favourite dresses I've hung onto and I've had fun buying new outfits for the upcoming weddings, all of which are suitable for the occasions and for day to day wear in Dubai for popping to the malls, out for brunch or dinner.

I do need to invest in some new underwear and sort through my accessories

Dresses I've been wearing around Dubai and upping my expat game. It's so much easier to wear dresses in Dubai, teamed with a pair of sandals and I'm good to go. No need for jackets, coats or sensible shoes in case it rains over here.

Dress - Jasper Conran

Dress - Mr Price, South Africa

Gap

Dresses I've purchased for the weddings, as yet undecided what I'll wear for which yet and I'll need jackets and a hat and possible water proofs although the first two are summer weddings, they are both in the UK. Shoes are already sorted.

Jacques Vert

The Collection at Debenhams

Debut

M & Co

Dress Sea Salt, Jacket Quiz for the Autumn Wedding, need shoes but have yellow Hunter wellies should it be wet as the reception is in a barn.

However the dress I'm looking forward to wearing the most is this one, but I'm not sure for what occasion it is best suited, but we do have brunch this Friday.

Cheryl Arthur - South Africa