10 years!

 It's 10 years since CBC and I got married!

It's really hard to believe!  We look a LOT younger in the photos.  

We have enjoyed looking at our photos from the wedding this morning.

Yesterday (the actual day), we went over to Kent to have lunch with our friends from Music camp and played music with them. It was a joyous time. Then we went over to me Dad, Stepmum and sister's and had dinner and played board games. It was great fun. Our celebration will be in Switzerland.

If you would like to see it, here's the posts with the accounts of the wedding day here:

The Big Day- before the wedding

The Big Day- the ceremony

The Big Day- onto the mansion!

I am very thankful for 10 years of marriage. 

I am grateful for fun and laughs and music. I am thankful for understanding each other's jobs. I am thankful that we like vegetables! I am thankful for walks and cycling and for times of rest. I am thankful that we are both teachers and get to spend our holidays together. I am grateful for time and family. 

CBC doesn't read my blog nowadays but if he does, I love you. xx

A

What I wore for the weddings!

Hi there!

Thank you for your interest in my wedding outfits!

I am going to reveal which my choices were but before I do, let's remind ourselves of the choices:

Well, I can reveal that Lulu guessed my choices correctly for both venues although I did change my mind for one:

Here's what I wore for the church.

This was voted as their favourite by Lulu and Alison Dormouse.

It's the Monsoon silk dress that some thought too wintry.

You can see me outside the church here: dress is a little skew-whiff!

It was a really comfortable choice for me as the silk felt really nice and I felt comfortable with the longer length.

To accessorise it, I wore my Alex Monroe Posy Loop necklace, my Aldo sand-coloured heels and swapped to pink flat ballet pumps with ankle straps. I wore my Jenny Packham fascinator from my own wedding and earrings from my sister's wedding plus 3 sparkly beaded bracelets.

I wore my little pale blue sparkly cardigan with beading detail.

Since I stopped attending this church, they've completely changed the church grounds so they are grassed and are gardened beautifully and were in flower!

The wedding was a delight and it was so nice to spend time with old church friends.  The music we played went really well although the vicar accidentally missed out the 2nd hymn, Love Divine, so we ended up doing an instrumental version of it during the Signing of the Register which seemed to take an inordinate amount of time.

My choice for the second wedding was originally going to be number 4, the much-aligned and disliked blue lace dress (thank you to Anca and Vix for their vote for it!) but I saw most of the comments before we set off for that wedding and somehow, it put me off it a bit. It DOES have a thick lining, I should point out- it's not ACTUALLY see-through, it has a beige lining!

Instead, I decided to go for number 2, the Lala land white dress as voted favourites by Sheila, Luise, Ang, Vix, Dormouse, Phyl, Bev, Gretchen Joanna

Here I am at the Derbyshire venue (Dovecliff Country House Hotel)

To accessorise, I wore a charity-shopped blue linen cobweb lace cardigan from Monsoon originally and the same pumps I wore later at the previous wedding plus my Jenny Packham fascinator again.  Jewellery-wise, I wore a charity-shopped Aurora Borealis necklace and star earrings.

This wedding was also really lovely.  The brides seemed very happy and in love and as our friend is a musician herself, there was some excellent string quartet music and a great harpist!  CBC's reading went well.  One of the quartet players turned out to be a girl I used to go to Youth Orchestra with  and haven't seen for 25 years!  We had lots of fun and it was lovely to be staying at the hotel so we didn't have to traipse home!

So that's what I wore!

Hope you are well!

xx

What shall I wear for the weddings?

Greetings my Possums!

Hope you are well!

I'm well thank you, enjoyed a week at home with a few outings out for various reasons.

But firstly, believe it or not, I am going to TWO weddings within the next 3 days.

Tomorrow morning is my friend M's wedding at my old church, back in my home town.

CBC and I are playing all the music for the ceremony. He on piano, I am on flute. We are playing the processional, recessional, signing of the register music and all the hymns.  

Then, on Monday, we are heading up to Derbyshire for the wedding of his PGCE friend at a secular venue where he is doing one of the readings.

As usual, I never buy anything SPECIFICALLY for a specific occasion BUT I am a sucker for a pretty dress so I always have things waiting in the wings for their time to shine.

I have many more dresses suitable for a wedding in my wardrobe but I wanted to wear something that hasn't had a chance at a wedding before so I thought I'd take you through my candidates for the two weddings and as a bit of fun, I'd love you to comment stating:

a) Which two choices you like best?

b) Which two you think I have chosen. Remember, one is for a church wedding tomorrow and the other is for a non-religious venue.

I'll talk you through my choices and I will reveal at some point next week, which I chose!

1.  This bottle green dress with flowers on comes from Laura Ashley (before they closed, sob!) and I bought it brand new from Char, who used to blog in her Instasale last year in lockdown.  It feels beautiful and has a lovely low v-neck back which is very flattering. The material feels luxurious and although it fits me perfectly, it doesn't feel restrictive. Not sure what material it is- a blend perhaps? Not been worn ever by me.

2.  This white dress with pink roses is also from Laura Ashley though I found it in a charity shop about 10 years ago. It's 100% cotton, has a full circle skirt and feels really cool and wafty.  Fun miscellaneous fact- this dress features in Lala Land, the movie! Emma Stone wafts out in it and gets into the car with Ryan Gosling- it features for about 10 seconds! When we saw the movie at the cinema, I said to CBC, "I've got that dress!". He didn't believe me and I finally found a screenshot it and he conceded I was right! It's a LITTLE see-through so I have to choose my underwear carefully! Was worn for 60th birthday party around 5 years ago.

3.  Number 3 is the longest of the dresses and is originally from Monsoon but I bought it in a charity shop around 3-4 years ago very cheaply.  It is made of 100% Jacquard silk and feels deliciously cool and wafty but fits me perfectly. I wore it once for an evening flute concert.

4.  Number 4 is from Joanie Clothing and I bought it secondhand for £8 around a year ago. I've got a little tale about this dress.  I saw it on their Instagram about 3 years ago and it was called the KEZZY dress!  I was so excited to see a dress called Kezzie, even if the spelling was off.  It also reminded me of the most beautiful dress from a designer brand called Self Portrait that I fell in love with at my sister-in-law's wedding a few years ago.  Anyway, it was £40 or so and I couldn't justify buying it and wasn't sure about sizing etc.  I didn't buy it and sort of regretted it.  Fast forward to randomly searching eBay and I found it brand new with tags for a measly £8- was enough to help me take a risk on it! It fitted! It's not had its debut yet.

5.  Yes, number 5 is the same dress as number 4 but I thought I'd add in this coffee-coloured silk shrug (charity shopped Monsoon about 15 years ago) to show you how I would wear it in the church IF I wore that one!)  

6.  This is my most recent purchase- I bought it new from a shop called Pink Lemons in Padstow last week and it is made out of recycled Sari silk and feels deliciously soft, cool and wafty.   Not been worn yet.

7.  This dress was bought secondhand from a vintage sale at an art gallery in Leigh-on-sea and it comes from Linea at House of Fraser. It is 100% silk and has fluttery sleeves and a woven ribbon tie waist. I wore it last year for mine and CBC's 7th anniversary meal.

8.  This dress is from Miss Patina and is made of cotton and was bought brand new but second hand from eBay around 4-5 years ago. It is very fitted and I can only JUST still do it up which makes me sad but once the buttons are done up, it feels fine.  It was worn for a Christening around 4 years ago.

So.... these are all my choices, so now it is your chance to share what you think I SHOULD wear for both weddings and what you THINK I'VE chosen for both weddings!

xxx

A Royal Wedding Outfit

Greetings!

Oh, what a sunny day it has been!
At school today, we had a special dress up day today in honour of the Royal Wedding.  It was 'Dress as a Wedding guest for the Royal Wedding'.  In case you are stuck under a rock, this is because Prince Harry and Megan Markle are getting married tomorrow on the 19th May.

It was a joy to come to school and see all the children dressed up in their prettiest dresses and smartest suits and similarly, the staff.  Generally, our staff dress quite casually so it was great to see them in beautiful dresses, fascinators etc.

I looked through my extensive portfolio of dresses and was planning to wear a turquoise silk jacquard long dress from Monsoon that I bought in a charity-shop last year.

However, this morning, I changed my mind and chose something else.

The dress I chose, I AM SURE was worn by Emma Stone for one scene in Lala Land.  I remember going to see it at the cinema and saying, "That's MY dress!" as she sashayed out the house into a waiting car with Ryan Gosling.

Here is the only picture (the one on the right) I can find of it online. What do you think? Is it the same one as mine?

Image borrowed from Pink Villa

Don't you think it looks like mine?

I bought this dress (Laura Ashley) from a charity shop a few years ago and have worn it for a few garden parties.

 I paired it with this pink chiffon hat which was also bought from a charity-shop a very long time ago- when my Mum got married, I went to find a hat to wear and came back with 4 hats- 2 from charity shops and 2 from a hat shop!

 For accessories, I chose a pearl collar necklace from Dorothy Perkins that I always seem to wear with this dress, a pearl and fabric rose bracelet from Primark and some Pearl earrings.
I wore some gold Tescos flip-flop style sandals because I wore some shoes that rubbed several layers of skin off the side of my foot and it has spent the whole week generally being gross and being irritated by whatever shoes I wore so these finally gave it a chance to just air it!

At lunchtime today, we had a lovely time as we planned a Royal tea party and all brought different elements for the lunch/tea.  We had a staff photo in our finery and mingled, eating delicious things.

In the last half an hour of school, we got all the children out into the Playground for an assembly where we awarded prizes to Best Dressed, sang the National Anthem and my Drumming Club entertained the masses as a marching band. It was a joyful day!

Occasionally, it is really nice to do something different like that!

What would you have worn for a royal wedding outfit?

xx

New year's swing fling!

 I thought I'd better share the New Year photos before the sight of snowflakes and Christmas tree became too unseasonal - we didn't get many good photos of our new year's Lindy ball.

Here we are at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel near Heathrow.

 I wore my 2nd wedding dress- the one from Vivienne of Holloway- it was surreal that the last time I wore it was my wedding day.  I teamed it with some old white brogues from Primark, my Punkypins snowflake necklace and my Crown and glory white net wired headband!

CBC wore his tweed wedding waistcoat (he bought the waistcoat before any other part of his wedding suit because it has a lovely turquoise back to match the Bridesmaids) and tweed trousers plus his wedding shirt I think!

We enjoyed the dancing, we were a bit nervous at first because we didn't really know anyone (eventually I saw 3 guys I knew vaguely from my time at the Holborn hop class).  CBC is very good at dancing with new people and helping them learn some new steps. There were taster classes at the beginning but I think the more experienced people could do more to encourage and dance with the less-experienced. There's always a slightly clichey feel to  social dance floors.

The hotel was very nice, the dance floor was a good size and surface although  there was no bar in our function room.  When we headed down to the bar, the drinks were EXTORTIONATELY expensive.  The bar service was also appallingly slow- we were 3rd in the queue at the bar and STILL waited over 15 minutes to be served.  In that time about 20 people had queued up behind us.  When we came to pay for our 'Hendrix single gin and tonic' and apple juice with soda it cost £16.80!?!?!?!   I didn't buy another drink- just drank water from the free jugs outside. To be honest, that's what I prefer when swing dancing anyway!

The hotel room was comfy, I slept very well and breakfast was excellent, although I confess to wanting to murder the previous occupant of the room who had set 3 alarms on the radio for 6am, 6.10am and 6.15am which, after going to bed at 2.15ish, I was not ready for!  I had to hunt down the radio on the dressing table in the dark and try and turn it off whilst plotting the demise of this unknown person!!!!!


It was an enjoyable new year, we were glad, especially considering it was such a last-minute decision!

xxx


Linking to I will wear what I like with Catherine at Not dressed as lamb

Advent Day 7- The hyena, the Christmas tree and the sneaky 70's outfit!

Hello there!

Today's Advent picture is of our Christmas tree!!! CBC was away this weekend in the dreadful floods up north - it took him some 12 hours to reach Northumberland but luckily he made it there ok and came back, arriving with a real Christmas tree and wreath!

It was rather exciting to dress it with our ramshackle assortment of decorations, many of which just generally hang around our house! We didn't put a Christmas tree up last year, so it was exciting to do it this time, particularly as I'd spent most of the weekend cleaning and tidying the house!

 I thought I'd show you a close up of one decoration: the er, most Christmassy animal, the hyena.  This decoration holds some memories for us. When we got married, we planned a treasure hunt around the grounds at Valentines Mansion for our guests.  Many of the clues on the sheet were play on words to get to the location to find a letter but the first clue was this Hyena. The clue was- this is the noise I make!  Guest were given maps of the grounds and hopefully realised they were looking for the ha-ha to find the first clue!  He ended up on our Christmas tree the first year we were married as we didn't really have any decorations and just searched around the house for things to put on it. We've built up a few more!  It was time to Christen the Faberge style eggs which we found at my Grandad's house but obviously didn't use last year!Everyone else has stacks of decorations so didn't want these but I knew we had a decoration deficit so snagged them!

CBC being away, meant I took advantage to wear this 1970's vintage dress.  He doesn't really like it at all, it looks a bit matrony and the first time I wore it, we were going up to London to meet some of his hip friends and of course, I dressed eccentrically just for that reason (not, but that's what I'm sure he thought! Was pure coincidence!)

I teamed it with my Mum's 1969 navy felt floppy hat and a different belt and brooch which you can see tomorrow!

I couldn't believe how mild it was yesterday! I wrapped warmly in this for the Christmas fair with a polo neck underneath, thick tights and boots and roasted most of the day!

Hope all is well with you.

Kezzie xx

Linking with:

Gorgeous Patti with Visible Monday
Judith, the fabulous Style Crone at Hat Attack

Fezzes are cool

Newsflash in my life is my sister-in-law got married!

Ok, so let's launch into TARDIS Tuesday first.  

Simply, my itemage for this week is the humble FEZ hat. As sported by Matt Smith in Series 5 of Doctor Who for about 10 seconds before it was blasted into oblivion by River Song.  Whatevers.  I'm Kezzie. I wear a Fez now. Fezzes are cool.

It was my sister-in-law's wedding on Saturday and a great day was had by all.  The fez was one of the props in the Photobooth.  I immediately pounced on it like my life depended on it. 

The whole day was wonderful.  My sister-in-law and her husband (woop, woop!!!!) put in SUCH a great deal of thought to it and despite the fact I had a whopping-great headache for much of the day, I had a great time.

I haven't really got permission to post photos of the wedding party but here's a lovely shot of the beautiful bride without showing her face. She looked beautiful and considering she does not like having her photo taken, she did SO well and was radiant and cool! Her outfit was beautiful- SO simple and elegant. Under that funky leather jacket, she had on a lovely lacy shrug over the top of her Grecian-looking dress.

The venue was the Amadeus Centre in West London, Warwick Avenue, Little Venice area.  It is an old church (not used for worship now- is used for wedding receptions though not licensed to do weddings- they did that bit the day before!) and it was a lovely blank canvas with beautiful features such as the organ, gallery and pillars.  It is a neo-classical building.

The ceiling was strung with tiny fairy lights in canopies and foliage and flowers ran all round the woodwork.

The couple, esp my sister-in-law didn't want all the attention of walking down the aisle so they sneaked up the aisle whilst everyone was still not seated. I myself was hovering behind them in a panicky way with a glass of water for her best friend who was doing a reading, thinking I was quite possibly ruining the ceremony. Luckily not!

The ceremony was very simple but moving.  I felt a little tear fall out of my eye as her best friend sat sniffing beside me!

After the ceremony, we went downstairs for drinks. You can see the bottom left picture shows that room which had more fairy lights all down the walls and some funky vintage touches such as two battered leather armchairs and a fireplace facade. 

Apparently the groom came home to find the bride drilling into a cardboard box with an electric drill (he described it as "I love coming home to find you doing something weird!". I thinks he was making the card box!  As you walked down the stairs, a gallery of mock-framed decal stickers revealed themselves to be childhood photos of both of them.  Such a clever idea.  Easily stuck, easily removable.

When it was time to eat, we went back upstairs to the main 'church' part which was now decked out with 3 long tables.

Every place had a wedding scratchcard and a Kinder egg! What a fun idea! Bottom right- some clever person on another table discovered you can join up Kinder egg plastic boxes in a ring and made a large necklace! You can guess therefore, that I went around collecting the rest to do the same! I came home with about 50 of them- I intend to make eggs shakers with kids at school!

You can see another photobooth moment top left.

My lovely Father-in-law gave an incredibly touching and downright hilarious speech! Well done WOMOTM, you succeded in making us laugh and cry simultaneously!  The groom AND bestman also did a really good job! It's unfortunate the bride's new name has lots of puns attached to it which he exploited in his speech!  

The food was incredible! For starters, we had these HUGE platters of mezze food- mozarella, proscuitto, salami, asparagus, butternut squash, olives, parmesan, rocket, (f)artichokes, fennel and huge trays of breads. There was enough to feed an army. Sorry,no photos as I had gone off to try and have some air for my headache when it was served. I was sitting next to CBC's aunt who advised me to take double headache pill types (she's qualified!) and I felt much improved from that point onwards.

The next course was chicken in parma ham with 3 types of veg and roasted potatoes.

Finally, the best of all was dessert.

They appeared with martini glasses and bowls full of mini-smarties, chocolate buttons (proper ones), popping candy, roasted nuts, sprinkles 100s and 1000s, flakes, strawberries, jelly tots, banana slices and jugs of hot chocolate sauce. 

We all salivated in glee and then they brought round bowls of Vanilla ice-cream.  Sufficed to say, er, we indulged! Yes, those are both mine.  Lastly, Kinder dog trapped behind glass looked eerily big!

After that, we adjourned downstairs for tea and coffee whilst the caterers cleared out the tables and reset the hall for dancing.   I snaffled all the Kinder egg containers (and a few toys) I could since I knew they'd just end up in the bin (cue mortified rolling of eyes and embarrassment from CBC who HATES it when I go all Eco about stuff going in the bin.

This amazing male singer sang hits for hours from that point onwards, as we had tea and all for dancing.  

We had fun in the photobooth, dancing, chatting (I totally LOVE the bride's best friend. She's also a Primary music teacher and is SO nice. We said we'd stay in touch to share ideas!). There was more food in the evening- mini pies, cheese, crackers and bread and er, I ate my bodyweight in shrimp sweets. 

Eventually, we had to get home, after escorting certain relatives (who shall remain nameless!) back to their hotel!  Even then, beautiful bride was cool, collected and the most charming host.

I wish I could share photos of my lovely family (inlaws) but I haven't asked permission, so I'd better not. It was SO nice to spend time with them and I just wish I saw them more!

So, what did I wear?

I wore the 1970's fluttersleeve (30's inspired according to lovely Curtise-thanks for that!) dress I bought recently.  It has a double layer with a scalloped hem and sleeves.

Here's WOMOTM's picture.CBC wore his wedding suit with a different cravat.  It is very fitted around the waist but I love having such loose sleeves. It felt simple and elegant.

I did contemplate a Stephen Jones lilac Cloche hat to go with it, but instead decided to wear my Jenny Packham 30's inspired beaded feather headdress (this was what I wore for my wedding) since I knew we were in one venue inside largely. I chose it originally so it could be worn as a sort of 'fascinator' for other weddings.

You can see it here

Added an arm party of bracelets that were all presents at some point

A lilac cropped cardie and finally my Irregular Choice Bed of Roses Ponelope (sic) shoes

It was an incredible day, one I was so glad to be part of and I was very happy for me lovely sister-in-law and new husband.

xxx

Linking to Visible Mondays with the lovely Patti.

TARDIS Tuesdays with the fabulous Maricel

Creative Mondays with the gorgeous Claire Justine.

And of course BEDM with Rosalilium (Elizabeth)