On Monday (30th March) it was Dave and I’s 7th wedding anniversary and 7 years ago today we were sitting in the executive lounge at Newcastle airport drinking champagne and awaiting departure for a month in Australia. Eeee how time flies! I loved our wedding day, I had an absolutely brilliant day from start to finish. There were no nerves, just excitement. Everyone in the hair salon that morning commented on how relaxed I was as Ang and I took turns getting glammed up. At the venue, Dave asked Alison, one of our photographers, how I was doing and she said ‘ah she’s fine, she’s sitting in her joggers eating an egg sandwich’. It’s easy to sit and look back and say that I wouldn’t change a thing and in the grand scheme of things, of course I wouldn’t, it was everything we wanted at that time. 7 years is a long time though and a lot can change. And, as where all good debates start (and certainly where the majority of my blog posts start) Carrie, Emma and I were in the pub recently, discussing that I we were to get married now, rather than 7 years ago, knowing now what I didn’t know then, what would I do differently?
Here’s what I came up with:
The Dress
I genuinely didn’t believe it when people told me that when you find ‘the one’ you just know. Because, well I must have tried on every single dress in the North East and none of the them gave me the feels and certainly none of them made my mum or Ang cry. I’d almost given up hope when Ang suggested we pop into a small dress shop in Newcastle on our lunch break as it was the only one in the city we hadn’t been to. I got my little plastic discs, and half heartedly pulled out ones I though were ok. I had one left so almost without looking I put it only a very simple strapless dress in the sale rack (you know where this is going don’t you). I was convinced I wanted sleeves (bingo wings) and lace (Kate Middleton) so I was surprised I loved this strapless sweetheart design so much. Ang agreed with me that it was ‘the one’. Would it pass the Siobhan test though? Luckily my mum worked in town too so I asked the assistant to put it to one side and hide the fact it was in the sale. I wanted my mum’s honest opinion and not have her think I only wanted it because it was cheap (I paid for my own dress). She of course loved it and we bought it there and then. Still no one cried though.
Anyhoo, that was a long-winded way of saying that if I got married again now, I possibly wouldn’t pick that dress. I have been lucky enough to go wedding dress shopping with some of my good friends since 2013 and I’ve seen all the lovely new styles out there, all of which seem to suit my shape much more. I just look back now and think my wedding dress was a little on the safe side, just like a white ball gown really and if I got married again now, I’d probably go for a bit more of a show stopper.
First Dance
Our first dance was Tougher than the Rest by Brice Springsteen. We created a playlist of songs that were strong contenders for first dance and we listened to it over and over again until something stuck. We were cooking fajitas in the kitchen one night when old Bruce came on. Dave said it reminded him of when he went travelling in 2009 and I’d put it on a playlist for him then. It’s about not being perfect individually but standing by each other when it mattered. That sounded like us to a tee.
I’ve often joked that there’s not much in the middle of the Venn diagram of our musical tastes but one of the bands that is there is Bowling for Soup. Given the chance to do it all again, we’d like their song Turbulence to dance to. It’s a super cute ballad, which again is about sticking together through tough times, but the fact it’s our collective favourite band, means it would be extra special to us.
Bridesmaids
I decided at the time to only have one bridesmaid because, well, without sounding big headed, it would either be have 1 or 8. I don’t have any sisters and Ang is the closest thing so it was always going to include her. So, in that respect, that wouldn’t change! What I would do now though is have Steph and Janine as my bridesmaids too because, although they were guests at the wedding, we’ve all become even closer since then and have formed our own little Sex and the City clique. Plus I think having a little help organising the hen do and generally making sure I was facing the right way on my wedding day would have taken a massive weight of Ang’s shoulders who ended up having to do all of that herself.
Guests
Let me state for the record there is no one who attended our wedding who I wouldn’t invite again in a heartbeat. Which isn’t completely lost on me how privileged that is; as I say, a lot can change in 7 years. There would be a tonne of extra people that I would invite though. Carrie and Emma are two of my very best friends these days and it blows my mind that they weren’t at my wedding (because I didn’t know them then, not because they weren’t invited). They’re such a big part of my life now, and my wedding was such a big event, it’s weird that the two streams never crossed. Similarly, all my of newly established work gang, who I’m really close to, would all make up the rowdy table at the back, because I can’t really imagine having a wedding, and chatting about it for months on end at work, and then not having them there. They’d help get more people on the dance floor at the night time do too, which didn’t really happen much at wedding numero uno because everyone was chatting and catching up with each other.
And that’s about it really. All very minor things, which again, isn’t lost on me how lucky we are, it’s just sometime funny to look back on things and see what’s changed. We’ll just have to try and do it all again with these minor tweaks for out 10 year anniversary in a few years time.
