Wedding Diary – My Last Week as a Single Lady

I am editing this post-wedding, on our 2-week anniversary, sat on the plane to French Polynesia via LA for our honeymoon.  It’s been a manic few weeks, a manic few months, and actually a manic year, and sometimes I wondered why I’d started a blog. At times I stressed myself out thinking that I would never have time to update it ever again – but I always did.  It’s been a welcome outlet for me during my planning process, and I’ve really enjoyed the journey!  I plan to continue blogging, and even though my wedding has now passed, I still wanted to share what my final week as a single lady entailed….

Sat 16th April

We were back to yoga today after 2 weeks off.  It was tough (but good), however I was keen to push myself to get toned for the honeymoon (the time for toning up for the wedding has been and gone!).  We went for a brunch at Canteen at Canary Wharf afterwards to refuel, then I ended up taking a nap in the afternoon!  We’ve both been so busy recently that we’ve been exhausted with life, never mind all the wedding stuff.  After my nap, we settled down at our computers and went through our lists; from the running order, to all the payments, the ceremony details, food lists, drink lists, and any other lists that we could find (mostly mine), until around midnight. 

Sun 17th April

As my hen do was so long ago, my sister and MOH organised a bottomless prosecco brunch at Jones and Sons in Dalston today as a last hurrah before I got wed.  We planned our hen and stag dos around 6 months ahead of the wedding so we could make them into a proper holiday with our nearest and dearest, and make the most of them; time and money wise.  The brunch was bottomless food and drink, and I think it would be fair to say we took full advantage of it!!  My sister had made some cute and very cool dinky decorations and party pieces, but we got a bit carried away and we forgot all about them...  We ended up deeper in Dalston afterwards, drinking too many espresso martinis.  The day started at 11am and I got home around 7pm in an Uber, a little worse for wear!   

Mon 18th April

Today was not a great day.  I felt quite hungover, despite being home by 7pm yesterday, and had a terrible sleep last night from the combination of drinking too much alcohol and too much caffeine.  On my lunch I chased the venue to confirm the final running order and times for Friday and Saturday.  Instead of having a wedding cake, we asked all of our London friends to bring a cake they had baked (instead of a present).  This, in itself, was not easy to coordinate for drop offs between Friday and Saturday, but we wanted a more relaxed and personal feel to our day. 
(We ended up creating a buffet style ‘pudding garden’ – wait until you see the photos!) 

Tue 19th April

My penultimate day at work before the wedding, so I started taking home all the bits I had been collecting under my desk for weeks – various Amazon packages and some random bits of décor kindly donated by our marketing department!  In the evening I finished off one of my final DIY projects; stamping flags for our favours – on one side it has our ‘Adie and Laura’ stamp, and on the other it says ‘Thank You’.  I designed the logo for ‘Adie and Laura’ myself on Photoshop and had it made into a rubber ink stamp online (rubberstamps.co.uk) and the ‘Thank You’ ink stamp was kindly donated by my sister, which she used on her own favours.  (Take a look at her wedding here – it was amazing!)  

Wed 20th April

My last day at work!  I went for lunch with a friend to celebrate her birthday and had a last pre-wedding catch up.  I was scared that no one would end up bringing cakes on Saturday, so in preparation I had pre-ordered some cute ‘Mrs & Mrs’ cake pops from Costco a month ago, and thankfully they arrived in one piece today.  Out of office on and phone set to voicemail, I dashed home from work to start working on my own creations for the pudding garden.   

Thu 21st April

Although I was off work today, I was up early and frantically ran around, organising last bits and baking cakes.  My friend Rania from the Custom Cake Boutique gave me an awesome idea for our pudding garden when I saw her last at A Most Curious Wedding Fair.  She had such a cute stall. As well as her gorgeous wedding cakes taking normal pride of place, she also had lots of little cupcakes and muffins hanging on string above where you entered her space, like an enchanted secret cake garden.  I thought I could create something similarly cool, but I didn’t want to waste man hours on making cakes that no one would actually eat, so I popped over to Tesco and bought a few sharer boxes of mini donuts and cupcakes and spent around 3 hours stringing them.  The rest of the day/evening was spent organising all of the various décor cluttered around our tiny east London apartment into very strictly labelled boxes and bags (Favours - Dining Area; Strung Cakes - Pudding Garden; Giant Party Poppets - First Dance; etc etc).  

Fri 22nd April

With everything organised into piles yesterday, we got an Uber with all the boxes and bags in tow to the reception venue around 9am.  Our venue has been amazing, and I only had to give them some style direction and a running order, and they did all the décor for us.  We planned on getting some wedding photos done at the tube station at Angel, as we were keen to avoid the usual cold wedding photo poses, so we enquired on our way back on the tube.  To our complete surprise, we had to call TFL to get permission.  Although it is super short notice, thankfully they made a last minute exception and granted us a permission email for tomorrow!  A few hours later, after that was all sorted out, we settled into the hotel and bumped into a few arriving guests along the way.  After 9 long hours back and forth to Islington, I went for a shower around 3pm and then my sister dropped off a basket for our ceremony confetti and bubbles, then we went to get our wedding mani and pedicures done.  From then on in my phone started to go mad with sweet messages and well wishes but I was already quite overwhelmed by this point!  After a torrential downpour, we Ubered it up to The Library pub, where we met the rest of the wedding party for a private pre wedding dinner, followed by a free-for-all drinks reception afterwards in their private lounge.  We wanted to have a drinks do the night before to ease us all into the wedding, plus a lot of people had travelled to be with us for the weekend, so it was nice to have a pre-wedding get together.  We were so thrilled and touched that so many people could be with us for the weekend!  I planned to leave to get my beauty sleep at around 10pm, but didn’t end up leaving until after 11pm!  I left feeling super overwhelmed, but it was definitely a great warm up for the wedding! 


.. then we got married, and lived happily ever after! 

Stay tuned for an official ‘wedding announcement’ with a sneak peek at some our wedding photographs, then a ‘real weddings’ type post spilling all the details afterwards.  (Honeymoon updates underway too!) 

I still plan on blogging to share all the invaluable knowledge I picked up on my journey, but just never had time to post.  I have lots of ideas and genius money saving tips that I want to share, not to mention a stack of ‘real weddings’ piling up.  Have a look at my Instagram and Twitter for daily updates too. 

More coming soon, I promise!   

Lx