The perfect wedding?

Weddings have always been big business but in my day, you choose a dress and maybe some favours for the table, invites and perhaps a colour theme; flowers and bridesmaids dresses to match. I got married to my sweetheart in 1999, I was 25 years old. From engagement to wedding there were just 8 months; I can still remember being told on my first wedding dress shopping excursion that a made-to-measure dress took at least six months and there just was not time to get it all done! I had some firm ideas about our wedding - I wanted it to be winter, I wanted twinkly candlelight, I wanted sumptuousness.

via 100 Layer Cake

The venue where we wed has now gone stratospheric in price compared to then. It was around the time when British stately homes were cottoning on to the idea of becoming a wedding venue, so we got it for a pinch of what it would cost now. Goodwood House. I wanted to get married in a place that would still be standing in 50 years time, or maybe even 100...

via 100 Layer Cake

I now browse these 'impossibly' perfect wedding blogs like the beautiful 100 Layer Cake and my mind boggles at the number of choices and decisions there are. I mentioned this to my new and lovely blog friend Rhiannon who is getting married soon. She commented that there were just so many options, it was sometimes too much to behold. I am, in a way, pleased that on our big day things were pretty straight-forward. When I look at the photos, which were before the digital age, so we only have an old-fashioned leather-bound album, there is an old charm about them! We were just so young....like this couple - and that wallpaper, may I just say, is to die for...

via 100 Layer Cake

The thing is - for all the wedding beauty on the big day, there is still a marriage that follows. I sometimes muse about these fantastical weddings that are featured; how many of them make happy marriages? I really do hope many, many do. To start from such beauty can only be a good thing. Sometimes keeping it simple works the best; the un-engineered...just a kiss and off you go...