Wow... I can't believe it's been over a month already since my last blog. I'm not doing very well at this at the moment! Hopefully I'll improve as life becomes more settled.
I have so much to tell...!!!
I guess the first thing is the wedding!!! :) It all went beautifully and if anything did go wrong, it wasn't disastrous and I can't remember it! Loads of people came which was lovely and there weren't enough seats in our approx 520-seater main sanctuary so people were standing at the back and in the aisles. Some gave up and were watching outside on the screens too! It was a big team effort from lots of people at church - some I don't even know yet! Lots of the Youth kids helped, the teachers, parents, adult EM (English Ministry) friends, relatives... A hu~ge thank you to everyone who came and helped make our wedding a very special, beautiful, and stress-free day for us!!! Couldn't have done it without you! :)
Things I wish had been done differently? Hmmm...
Bought a bigger dress size!!! I almost didn't fit into my wedding dress!!! I thought I'd have time to go to the gym at least once a week, get fit, slim down a bit or at least maintain the figure I was at the time I bought the dress but no chance! In fact, I was constantly eating and then sitting back down in front of the laptop or in the car to go to one place or another that I gained weight, my posture became very bad, and my shoulders were so tense they hurt when anyone applied the slightest amount of pressure. Thankfully it's a lot better now!!! :)
Walked a bit slower down the aisle. I was really nervous and was afraid of falling in my high heels and heavy dress so I ended up walking a lot faster than I'd anticipated. As a result, I didn't get to hear my absolute favourite piece of music (Pachelbel's Canon in D) for as long as I'd hoped for. It was so beautiful~! Susan, Sarah, Tim, Sohyun and Ahn SMN did a wonderful job with all of the music. It was absolutely fab~!
Worn my wedding dress for the first dance? Not sure about this one but maybe I should've just worn the sweat-drenched super-tight wedding dress again for just a couple of hours in the evening. Because it was really warm on stage due to the lighting and I'd grown a bit (sideways that is!) I became really sweaty and the thought of having to suffocate again for 2 hours while going around greeting guests, dinner, cake-cutting and the first dance just didn't appeal much to me at crunch time. So I opted out and decided to wear my evening dress from the start of the evening reception instead of after the first dance. Although the pics might not be as nice, at least I was comfortable! :)
Gone to the hairdressers earlier (than 9am - 4 hours before the wedding)! Hair & make-up took a lot longer than we'd thought (especially as someone unexpected showed up) so we weren't able to take the group pics we'd planned to take before the wedding at church and a couple of them we weren't able to take after the wedding either so missed out on completely. :( It also pushed our arrival time at CA Buffet back too. However!!! It did mean that Peter didn't see me in my dress until I walked down the aisle which we'd given up on due to time pressure but then ended up doing. I liked that! :) Not for tradition's sake but more for the surprise effect. He told me I was beautiful. *^^*
Worn a bit less make-up!!!Wouldn't have done that 'coating' thing the hairdresser told me to do to make my hair shiny 'cause it didn't make my hair shiny, was painful, cost loads, and worst of all, made my hair turn brown even though he promised that my hair colour wouldn't change!!!
Go around the tables to
greet guests at CA Buffet before doing the traditional Korean ceremony bit. The person running the ceremony rushed us when we arrived as we arrived at the lunch reception venue later than planned and probably because she had a four-hour drive back. She rushed the whole thing a bit actually but I was baking in all those layers and the constant bowing and standing and sitting and having to hold my arms up so I was ok with it but I think Peter wished she'd done it a bit slower. About 400 people came to the lunch and we only got to see about 150 of them which was a shame. :(
But all of the above were things that didn't spoil our day. We were the happiest people on the planet, we had lots of fun that whole entire day, and we successfully got married without any major mishaps so especially considering how much time I
didn't have to plan such a big wedding, I think we did pretty well! ^^
I cried one time that entire day... I slept at 4am, woke up at 7am, was at the hair / make-up place by 9am, finished the evening reception at 11pm, went home to pack and then arrived at Peter's at around 1am and during that 18 hour marathon wedding day, I only cried once... When Sarah & Jay T, and Roy (and Roger) were walking out of the Decathlon Club, the very last guests to leave, and it hit me that I didn't know when I'd see them again and how much I'll miss them. Just thinking about it is making me start crying again! It'd been so wonderful having them there with me on my special day and I'd been looking forward to seeing them the whole time and then when I saw them it was so wonderful and like a dream and so special and I was so grateful that they flew all the way from the UK & Belgium and yet it seemed so normal too for me to be with them all at the same time that I didn't think of them going until they were actually going... :( Hopefully it won't be too long though until I get to see them again~! :)
So all of the Koreans think that I smiled the whole day so I'm apparently going to have a daughter as my first child. ^* Little do they realise... He he he... ^* We'll see! We're happy either way.
I don't have the official pics yet but I do have some of the pics from other people which I'll upload soon. I'll post the link as soon as they're available. I still need to upload all of the engagement pics too!
Still lots to do... Hundreds of Thank You cards, Thank You gifts to buy and send too, still in the process of moving my stuff from my parent's to Peter's / ours + all the usual stuff (Korean School, play practice, other church activities, cooking, cleaning, etc).
Will write again soon - I promise!!! :)
Lots of love,
Jenny x
