Sista..... Stand Up!

After 8 months, today I made the last payment on my wedding ring! As the assistant flicked the case open it sparkled and was much more beautiful than I remembered. I was quite taken aback as I wasn't expecting to feel the way I did but it was another to do list box ticked, and another step closer towards the big day. I had to try it on just one last time before it was banised to the wedding trunk until next year! It's so perfect… I am really happy!!

I was in a bit of a bad mood when I got on the train this morning as it was so packed and got bashed about 5 times in the head, leg or wherever by commuters handbags, elbows, umbrella’s and someone even stood on my friggin foot!… no wonder they say Londoners are bad tempered! I really don’t like commuting to work generally but right now I am particularly loathing the journey cause I am hungry as well… had no time to have my porridge! When I get on the Victoria Line I manage to get a seat 2 stops before I’m due to get off and I hijack a discarded Metro (A free tube newspaper for those of you not living in London) . I opened a page advertising the new Star Wars DVD and it brought back memories of incident some months ago which I would like to share that made me smile… I had stepped onto the circle line towards the end of my journey to work and stood next to a 6ft Darth Vader! Yes! Darth Vader… A fully clad London lad in the full black get up complete with scary mask like he was a normal commuter… I caught the eye of a couple of other commuters and we all could not stop laughing…. To make it even more classic he was also reading the Metro like a normal passenger!! It was just the funniest site I had ever scene and tickled me for the rest of the day… it reminded me that however much I hate traveling to work there are sometimes gems like this that remind me why I chose to live in London in the first place!!

Today I am still livid about the selfish fool who did not have the decency to leaving note on my car after taking out the side of it! I've only had the thing 2 months and some ignorant imbecile has been reckless at my expense.... I am so angry because it’s not really going to be worth me repairing it. As the car was not worth a huge deal but the thought of having to look at it every day makes me angry all over again each time I look at it... after expressing my upset to few people it appears that several people I know had done the same selfish thing!!! I wish I could just let my anger go but it just seams to be lingering.... I could have swallowed it if I had done the knock myself but to have someone else do it have really pissed me off! I so want to use every expletive to express my anger but I have to respect who else may read this!!!! It feels so personal and when it first happened I was asking myself if it was bad karma and what had I done to someone else that put my in the firing line for what has happened... I had had such a good weekend and got alot of productive things happening only for it to be ruined buy this... I spoke to my Mini man today and he has said that the door may need replacing at £450!!!! There is no way I am going to pay that with all the other commitments I have at the moment... I will just have to swallow the fu*king thing and try not to let it get to me.... everyone came up with 101 reasons why its not as bad as it could be i.e. I wasn't in the car when it happened, I can still driver it etc... And I know they were trying to make me feel better but I still felt like a sack of shite and nothing was going to change the huge dent in the side of my little car that I have grown to love over the last couple of months.... I've had good vent but I still feel like crap... will just have to give it time before it goes down.... didn't realise that having a car can affect you be so personally...... I've only been back at work I week and I’ve had to deal with one of my team members who had to go hospital with temporary paralysis spells which was awful as I was the one who was with her while it happened at work and now my friggin car has been dented.... I was really happy last week after my rest but now everything just seem to have gone shite again.... I am also very tired because I didn't sleep properly last 2 nights so things properly feel much worse than they actually are so I’ll shut up and try to get some sleep.........

After taking a week off work to chill out I went down to the wedding show on the Friday to get some ideas and hoping to find a photographer... the show was so small and swarming with Essex chav’s hunting for their discounted meringues!! The stall holders seemed really bored and there was very little I was impressed with..... I realised that looking for ideas in 'weddingy' places was not really going to give me what. There were few that were leaders, all mostly followers and it took me all of ¾ hour to walk round the whole event. I had no real intentions of spending lots of money at the event, but I get some inspiration to go out and find cheaper and better alternative that weren’t at wedding prices but there was not a lot!!! I have never really been one for just doing what everyone else does so I decided to think about the things that Rene and I love and used that as a source for inspiration and expression for our day. I had recently been watching alot of really old movies and there were alot of beautiful women in the 40's and fifties whose faces I knew but did not know alot about. Juanita Moore, in ‘Imitation of life,’ was amazing. She was so kind and had the inner beauty of my mum. Lana turner also looked amazing I have to laugh because we watched the film with some friends of ours and I caught Rene with tears running down the side of his face towards the end of the film! Dorothy Dandridge, in ‘Carmen Jones’ was another gorgeous feisty sister and Hattie McDaniel in gone with the wind! I’d always loved old vintage things and the clothing and style of these films just fuelled my passion for vintage even more... even though the wedding show was shite, I was glad that it directed me to the beautiful era’s and women of earlier years. I have decided that the theme of the day would now have a real vintage feel. Oh.. I forgot, amongst all the crap at the wedding show I managed to find a photographer! After trapcing around I recognised some great photos I’d seen in a recent wedding magazine. The photographers name was Nicole Ramsay. I stood and had a long chat about her work and she understood everything I wanted from the day so I booked her there and then… Making such decisions on my own makes me nervous and even now I am wondering if I’ve made the right decision. I have to look at her work every now and then and I remember how lovely she was at the show and remind myself why I chose her. Job done….

Finding a photographer for the big day has been a bit of nightmare... The good ones get booked up as much as 2 years in advance and there really is so many shit ones around..... Finding someone to capture the spirit of your day in the style you want is a very important task. These pictures will be my only memory of the day and are also very expensive. On initially looking through the wedding mags for the style I could not believe how cheesy alot of them were. Overpriced, amateur photographers making alot of money out of people who want the typical cheesy Posey pics of bride in big meringues with fake nails.. I didn’t want the typical album with people standing in a line. I also have to remember that Rene doesn’t like having his picture taken and I know the best ones of him will be where he’s not totally aware of the camera in his face... I decided that a more journalistic style would suit us best so we would have lots of candid unassuming shots of the day with a minimum amount of shots set up with family etc. I also felt that I would like a woman as I remembered from my days as a model that there are subtle differences when working with women photographers and there seems to be a sensitivity in their approach that I wanted for us. I looked through a few mags to see what was out there and the style I liked kept giving me the same 2 photographer’s names Lucy Tanner and Jeff Ashcombe who both captured the spirit of the day and the couples they worked with. I got a alot of emotion from their work. The only trouble is that they were both friggin booked on our wedding date! If anyone else out there is looking for a wedding photographer, book Lucy Tanner (on web) as I love what she does!!! I will just have to keep looking……..