Getting scarily close now...
Oh my, only a little over a month to go. The pressure is most definitely on. On Monday we went to check out the venue with Johanna, who's going to be taking pictures on the day. It was still quite nice, although it felt a lot darker inside now since it's so sunny outside, unlike in the autumn when we first saw it. She took a bunch of tests shots, all of which I looked absolutely terrible in. Must have some last minute plastic surgery or something I think...
On Tuesday we met for the first time with the lady who will marry us to discuss the whole event over. Oh yeah, I should probably reveal that, being as fickle as I am, we did in the end decide to cough up the extra cash and have the ceremony at the reception venue instead of the register office. What... I'm allowed to change my mind a million times, it's almost my responsibility as a bride. So far only the people who were supposed to be at the register office have been informed of this change, the rest of the guests will be treated to a little surprise when they get to the venue thinking that we have been married already. Unless they read this obviously. But yes, the registrar woman was very nice indeed. S and I probably came off as a bit thick as we hadn't really thought the whole thing through previously at all. She wanted to know where to walk and stand and all sorts and we had to kind of make it all up on the fly. :D I'm sure it'll be fine on the day... The ceremony is going to be slightly confusing as she's going to say everything first in Finnish and then in English, and apparently we'll say the 'I do' bit in English, which was news to me. Oh well.
And since I was boasting in the last post about having all my clothes ready, of course it's only natural that I've had a major panic attack since then and it's all changed. What happened was, I was originally going to wear this pink silk kimono type top thing, which to be honest is quite nice... but only with jeans or black trousers. Everyone I talked to seemed kinda weirded out about the possibility of the bride wearing either, so I bought these white trousers, which I thought would save the day. And tried them on with the top. And what happened? I looked like the love child of a moomin troll and a care bare. Seriously. It was bad, very bad. And it kind of ruined the whole thing for me, I just couldn't wear that top any more without thinking I looked like a giant marshmallow or something. Major panic. So eventually I did find something else to wear, and I'm quite pleased with the whole outfit now (I just hope not very many people are going to ask if I'm pregnant - the only minor flaw in the shape of the top), but of course this time around the top has quite a lot of black in it. But you know what, screw that. I have decided that from now on I will just refer to the fact that traditionally a Finnish wedding dress used to be black. So there. The whole white wedding dress thing came to Finland from France, via England, only in the early decades of the 20th century. Perhaps I'm just not ready to jump on that bandwagon yet. :P
Being too 'strict' about etiquette and traditions relating to weddings is just silly in general. When ever someone says to me, 'it's not customary to do that...' I think 'where?'. All modern western wedding traditions are just a big mish-mash of customs borrowed from different cultures in the first place, and the customs practised vary a great deal even between just European countries, not to mention around the world. I think all that matters is making the day relate to who you are and creating personal memories that will mean something to you, not following some rigid etiquette.
