Six days to go

Not long to go now and all the months of preparation for the single big day seem to have paid off.

Everything has come together nicely. Everything has been booked and confirmed, we've chosen our first dance song (though not really practiced dancing much, so that should be interesting), finalised seating plans for the reception and are now all set for our final rehearsal at the church on Wednesday.

So all-in-all a big success bar one hiccup...

We ordered a custom made topper (bride and groom figures for the cake) a few months ago from a woman on eBay (who had very good reviews) only to be badly let down with a complete non-delivery. She doesn't reply to e-mails or phone calls and both eBay and PayPal have said that it's too long since the order was placed to be covered by any of their protection processes.

Bit rubbish really. So we've had to order generic toppers (as the top of our cake will look a bit sparse otherwise) and I've managed to find someone who does bald groom toppers so hopefully we'll get them before the end of the week.

But it's not a showstopper (or should that be no shows-topper) and now with things being really hectic at work (I've worked the weekend to fit everything in) this week up until Friday (when I am off) should go pretty quickly.

Hmmm, just remembered, must pack for the honeymoon too.
*sigh* I knew I forgot something!

Late Night Thoughts

I sit here late at night
wondering

marriage
what will it be like?

will it be all happiness and butterflies
or challenges faced together?

will things change
will we change?

companionship
exclusivity

stronger
two as one...

the end of something
or a new beginning?

Or all of these?

The Dress (part 2)

I got an e-mail from the other half today.

She'd received a phone call from the dress shop.
The dress has arrived! Hoorah!

Finally! *phew*

She's off to the shop on Saturday to get her first fitting (with just a fortnight to go...)
Fingers crossed all goes well :)

The Dress

Less than three weeks to go now... The clock is ticking....tick tock, tick tock, TICK TOCK

We've sorted out a lot of things: invited people, wished that we could afford to invite more but we had to draw the line somewhere. We're sorting out the order of service now, meeting up with the priest of the church where we are to be married this week to sort out a rehearsal, cross the t's and dot the i's.

Only a few blips at the moment.

1) We ordered a topper for the cake from someone on E-Bay who isn't replying to any of our e-mails. They appear to have lots of satisfied customers regularly but we're certainly not one of them at the moment.

2) The florist at the church is an elderly lady who has been doing the flowers for the church for thirty years. She's not very flexible especially when we found out that we have to settle with the flowers of the couple who are getting married two hours before us. The other half was not pleased and reverted to true Essex-speak to express her feelings about the issue to me.

3) The dress hasn't arrived yet. So a rather HUGE show stopper really and unsurprisingly the biggest worry so far. We've been told that it's due this Thursday and that the tailor who makes adjustments for the shop is a real wizard with a needle, so everything will be sorted in plenty of time. We went to the shop the other week and heard this huge earthquake of a sound shaking the building.

"What's that?" we asked. "Oh, it's the tailor upstairs with his new sewing machine."
The tremors has already made a crack in the ceiling! I stood there secretly hoping to myself that if it did collapse it, it'd only be after our dress has been dealt with.

But until the other half sees the dress with her own eyes, she has yet to be convinced. I'm trying my best to support her but this will be something that even I won't be able to do anything about if it goes pear-shaped.

In the meantime, when work isn't taking my mind off things (which it does A LOT), we've gone to see Fatboy Slim at Hyde Park (music good but pill popping, coke snorting crowd not-so-good), Neil Diamond at the O2 (great music, vertigo-inducing seat) and I've taken in a bit of culture at the opening of the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum (excellent, especially as we'd been to his Tivoli villa and stayed by the Pantheon when we were in Rome last year, though not anywhere near as busy as the Terracotta warriors exhibition was.)

Happiness Is...The Simple Things In Life

We like to spend sunny, lazy Sunday afternoons in the park amongst the bluebells, watching the ducks gossip.









Well, we have to make the most of our Sundays since so many of them aren't sunny. Even in Summer.

We sit on the grass or a bench eating our M&S sandwiches, sharing our diet coke and crisps, just happy to be together.



The last time we were there, a photographer came along with a newly wed Asian bride and groom. We watched as he got them to pose by the water and took portraits shots of them.

We thought, that'll be us (in a similar situation) in just a few weeks!

And we were happy....

A Change Is As Good As A Rest

I've settled in nicely in my new job. Though still early days to know whether the job or company are right for me (an attitude which I'm now adopting after having been made redundant three times) things are going well so far. It's only a small company and obviously has it's quirks but also has more than enough business to keep me busy. Days are racing by at the moment.

As a new challenge, it's a job with more authority and responsibility, something that I have no problems dealing with, and I now realise with hindsight that career progression-wise, things had pretty much plateaued at my last job and were even going downhill in some respects. I wish it had been different as I did very much like it there. I'll certainly miss the people for sure.

I'm guess that I'm glad it happened whilst I'm still young and able to adapt rather than years down the line things might have made it very hard for me to move elsewhere.

And yes, two months is more than enough time between jobs.

Okay, so I think that in all that time that I probably had less than a week of actual relaxation (mainly spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV), the rest spent looking for jobs, sorting out the wedding and then when I did get a job, reading up on it to make sure that I got off to a running start. House hunting had to be put on hold but we hope to get that up-and-running soon again.

So I didn't feel all that rusty when I did start and the main challenge that I'm facing at the moment is learning the business. It's a company that does a lot of work for the education sector and the number of initial and acronymns used for everything is just silly!

Anyhow, as I've said, so far so good...but I'll carry on crossing my fingers for a bit more, just in case.

It had to happen eventually....

Yes, after almost seven weeks of being a man of leisure, a sense of worth has been restored.

Someone has employed me!

It was very much like buses. I waited ages (an under-statement if there ever was one) in-between interviews and then three positions came up at once. Three different sized companies and three different roles. I basically had my pick.

Two didn't pan out as what I was looking for or progressed too slowly but the third did.

So, starting June 4th and for the foreseeable future I'll be commuting off to the South side of the river to "lovely" Clapham (or Cl'am to the locals.)


Hoo-rah!

It's funny the things you see when having lunch in London

Fingers Crossed

As of tomorrow, I'll have been unemployed for one month.

One month and just a single interview in all that time.

It's not quite what I expected. I apply for IT management or team leader jobs all over the place and my CV (which everyone says is excellent) doesn't even get me to the interview stage. It feels as if there are so many people out-qualifying or out-specialising me out there that I can't even get my foot in the proverbial door.

Giving up programming six years ago and hoping that my career would progress in another direction at my last job was the worst career move I've ever made.

It's hard not to feel down but I am keeping myself busy, learning to program all over again (which is more exciting than I thought it'd be) and of course sorting out lots of wedding stuff.

Something now gets booked or arranged for the wedding every few days now.
It's project management at its finest and I'm actually enjoying sorting everything out.

Photographer sorted, DJ sorted, transport sorted.... Oh, just another 50 things left to sort now!

Plus in between all this stuff I'm actually keeping fit by doing regular runs on my old treadmill and as of Monday, using the Wii-Fit to strain all those muscles that I didn't even know that I had through the wonder that is Yoga!

See? Life does go on, though I do hope that my holiday doesn't go on for too much longer.

Fingers crossed...

In Suspended Animation

Hello peeps,
I've been unemployed for almost a working week now with no luck even getting an interview as yet. I'm wondering if it'll be like the last time when I suddenly got a load of interviews out of the blue in a huge flurry and got offered three jobs on the same day?! I can only hope.

Although the last week has actually gone very fast and I'm not sure at all where it all went?

The wedding countdown still ticks on. The other half is on the verge of getting a wedding dress (4 months before the wedding is actually cutting it very fine apparently) and I'm sorting out the formal wear for myself and the best men along with finding somewhere romantic to honeymoon that isn't in the middle of its monsoon or hurricane season.

Once again, I've been told that someone may be interested in buying my flat but to be honest I'm not so fussed if it falls through as until I get a job I'd be better off staying put. However if an offer is made I'm afraid with the impending predictions of house price falls, I may not be able to refuse.

But then I'll cross that bridge when I need to.

Free?

So, my last day of current employment was on Monday.

Today was technically my first day of 'freedom.'

I plan on keeping myself busy looking for a new job but today I gave myself the day off. It was the RAF's 90th anniversary today so there was to be a fly past over the Thames that I headed down to see.

It was just the Red Arrows and some Typhoons and it was over in a flash. Impressive but it caught a lot of people (me included) off guard. I was on Westminster bridge in a spot I'd acquired thirty minutes previously. We waited expectantly, looking over the horizon for them to appear but they didn't come along the river as we all expected but cut across the bend and appeared from behind the old city town hall and flew right to left above us.

Luckily my camera was at the ready and I managed 2 shots before they were gone, though both required editing to salvage what were essentially rushed shots.

I rushed off afterwards to meet the other half for lunch but noticed that most of the people on the bridge were staying; expecting more, so I reckon after a while, there were probably a few disappointed people out there. They'll probably have to wait for the 100th anniversary for the full monty.

Lunch was a nice two meal special jobbie at the local Wetherspoons establishment which I then walked off through Mayfair popping into the church in which we plan to get married for a bit of peace and quiet and then onto the cinema for a bit of light entertainment-based escapism in the form of 10,000 BC.

Finally, thanks to a nice bit of retail therapy over the weekend, I'd also acquired an iPod Touch, the Wi-Fi abilities of which I managed to give a good test around London after having signed up to a provider called The Cloud.

Essentially, some places with advertised hotspots didn't work, whilst those in all McDonalds I passed did. I managed to review a proof of our wedding invitations, forward to the other half and approve it with the suppliers alternatively from Westminster Bridge (where a free provider allowed me 5 mins of access if I watched an advert for 30 secs), a park bench in Mayfair (some random connection) and from outside McD's on Shaftesbury Avenue.

It's amazing how Wi-Fi is omni-present though the number of unsecured connections is just silly!

Can I have a napkin please?

In shock

I got made redundant from my job of eight and a half years yesterday.
To say that it came as a bit of a surprise is an understatement.

I know there's no such thing as a job for life but I was busy in my last job and looking forward to the future.

I'm still in a state of shock today but have started to look to see what the market has to offer comparable to what I currently do. And the answer is not a lot. Not that I have a CV anywhere anyway. That's long gone on some old PC.

Since my financial stability is now up the creek the marriage arrangements, honeymoon and house moving have now been put on hold. Great timing, eh?

If it wasn't for the support that my other half has given me I'd be in such a state right now, though I'm sat here at home alone now, still shaking and so sad.

*sob*

A Date With Destiny

Things are slowly ticking ahead with the wedding preparations. We've heard back from the church (pictured) and been given a number of dates in August.

So far, all being well, Saturday 16th looks to be the ONE.

It all becomes a lot more real now that we have a date. It's as if a countdown clock has started and now we have to get everything sorted before it hits zero!

Next steps are to meet up with the priest next week and to start visiting possible venues around the area this weekend that won't break the bank. (Not so easy when the church is in Mayfair!)

We've set ourselves a budget and in a flurry of organisational genius I've come up with a long list of eveything that is likely to cost us something and estimates for how much each is likely to be.

It's not going to be a big wedding, mind, with 50 being the maximum number of people. This could fall further to as low as 35 depending on if people are around in the middle of the holiday season. But then less people equals less cost (we hope!)

I've chosen two best men as I've two best mates and it wouldn't be fair to choose between them. One can sort the speeches etc and the other is a good organiser so I hope that as a team they can get all their bits sorted. Not that I know what their bits to sort out yet as I've yet to look that up!

On the flat selling front, I continue to have viewings and one "very interested" buyer but no offers as yet. Similarly we've yet to find a house we like either so that's a big flat blank.

If nothing else it allows me to concentrate more on the wedding arrangements and there are a lot of those to get through!

163 days to go!

Progress report

Yes, it's an exciting random picture of a building!
This one's right by London Bridge.

No progress on the moving front at all, despite the price drop.

I'll have to see if I get any viewings at all on the weekend. As it stands the woman above me has decided to keep her flat at the same price that mine was just lowered from, so I can only see that that will make my flat look more attractive. Until she sees sense and changes her mind, that is!

On the wedding front, we've written off a letter to the church where we'd like to get married. It's in Mayfair (very posh, I know!) but it is a beautiful church with a hugh stained glass window behind the altar. The other half loves stained glass windows! It also excudes a certain spiritual calmness, so I very much like it. I got a call back from them to confirm receipt of our wedding request and apparently someone will be back in contact with me next week.

I am a bit worried that at this rate we'll be married but not living together!