The Wedding Morning

I woke up at 5am. I didn’t want to be awake at 5am but there was nothing I could do to make myself fall asleep again, my brain was whirring with thoughts, I think I eventually drifted off again by about 6.30 but was up properly by 7.30 anyway! Emily and I had breakfast (a proper full English with cereal and toast too!) then I strolled into town at around 10am to go to the MAC store to get my face prettified. It was weird walking round town on my own thinking “I’m getting married this afternoon!” but I had planned this so I did have some time on my own in the morning before all the faff started!

The makeup artist who did my face didn’t make me look like a tranny, which is always a worry when someone else does my makeup, and she listened to what I wanted and wasn’t surprised when I said I wanted “a dark smokey eye with sparkles” for my wedding, which was nice as the girl when I booked it definitely raised her eyebrows at me! She helped cover up the bags under my eyes, and was careful near the corners of my eyes as I’d been suffering from stress induced conjunctivitis for the week before the wedding! (funnily enough that disappeared around the same time we got on the plane to Egypt!)

My friend Yasmin met me after I was all made up, and we left my friend Carla (who was doing a reading in the ceremony) having her makeup done to walk back to the hotel, I must admit I felt a little over done in town on a Saturday morning, especially popping into Morrison’s on the way so I could get some sparkling wine for the bridesmaids to drink at the hotel! Once we were back in the room Yasmin started on my hair, which we had practised once, a couple of months previously, but she remembered what she was doing and got on with it in less time than it took for Emily to curl her hair, which was no mean feat as it looked amazing and had a string of pearls intricately entwined in several plaits! A word of advice for any brides to be here, yes you may have bridesmaids to ‘maid’ for you, but they may actually be too busy doing their own hair/makeup/putting their dress on and generally faffing to help you, so have a friend/mum/someone who is already ready to help you into your dress, spruce you up and tell you it’s all going to be okay. Yasmin was a god send and zipped me into my dress, attached my veil and even tidied the hotel room up so it would be perfect for Sam and I to come back to that night. Time at this point seemed to be going at double quick time!

My amazing photographer Laura was very good at calming me down too once she arrived. Its not that I was nervous as such, more worrying that everyone else would be there on time, and thinking about what Sam and his ushers were up to, and had all the people who were coming from further away found the church alright and so on. It wasn’t till I put my shoes on that it all became ‘real’, and the cabs were arriving (no fancy cars for us!)

We took a couple of pictures with my dad and bridesmaids outside, then hopped into the cabs and set off! Driving through town on a busy Saturday in a wedding dress was really strange but all the Christmas lights had been turned on a couple of days before, so it was really festive and dare I say ‘magical’ (sorry!) After a couple of pictures with my dad outside the church, and a happy hello to our reverend Betsy at the church door, I peeked round the edge of the door frame to see a huge sea of faces (around 90 guests and 15 or so people from the church that had come to the ceremony too!) and almost peed myself with excitement/shock!

After checking I was ready (and that Sam had come back from an emergency pee (where his sporran broke and had to be fixed by one of the church ladies!)) Betsy signalled for the music to start, and The Beach Boys “God only Knows” started up and off we went…

[all photos were taken by Laura McCluskey Photography ]