Do you remember the first time?

What a tune!
So P and I got married exactly one year and one week ago. It was the most perfect wedding that you could ever imagine. Truly.
There was the tiniest bit of drama in the lead up- I lost the table plan cards, Paul ordered more but they weren't ever delivered (well we think they were but the evil witch living in P mum's and dad's old flat threw them away). So the day before, I ran around with my mum buying wedding-y coloured card and the world's strongest glue that ended up burning through my freshly painted nails! My mates D and K, my brohter's girlfriend and my mum were meant to be having a chilled night with a take away but we didn't end up going to bed until after midnight after me finishing the table plan at 11pm!
The following morning was pretty dreamlike. The week before had done nothing but be overcast, drizzly and grey and as the weather was one thing that I couldn't control or change, I refused to look at the forecast. No one was to tell me what the weather was going to be like either...Haha! Someone at work, entirely harmlessly shouted across the staffroom that it was going to be sunny at the weekend. Despite rage frothing, I donned my serene bride face and thanked her for cursing the wedding for telling me. I needn't have worried, it was the most gloriously sunny day- if I believe in that sort of thing, I would think it was a present from my Grandad. The sort of end of September day with that low golden sunlight that causes solar flares.
As my mum was having her hair done that morning, we headed off to Eltham for her to have pretty Mother-of-the-Bride hair sorted and me to have my nails repaired. There was another lady having her hair done in the nails place whose daughter was getting married the same day and a lady who was sharing the same wedding day! The hairdresser/nail place is just down the road from Demelza House, a children's hospice. Just before my nails were finished a tiny birdlike lady came in carrying a child of probably about ten years old to have his hair cut. It was very sobering to see such a juxtaposition of three women celebrating one big day and a woman who was taking each day as it comes.
After that, everything passed in a bit of a blur... probably due to the amount of prosecco drunk and the usual whirl of photographers, videographers, hair and make up.


Sarah + Paul from Mark W Brown on Vimeo.
This was our day in a nutshell. Pretty epic really. Yes, that is the seating from the Olympics in the background!
The thing is a wedding is just one day: whether Paul and I had got married or not, we would still have a strong relationship. Sometimes that closeness slips when you live together. You're always there and things don't get talked about. The deep and meaningful, the inside jokes get replaced by conversations of what to have for dinner, whose turn it is to take the puppy out or whether we've remembered to feed the cats. It has been a while since we were able to spend some time where it was just the two of us and it hasn't been in a hospital or at a doctors.
We did during our anniversary, with a lot of alcohol, two chance meetings with a random grandson of James Hunt and a trip back to the restaurant where we had our first date. P pointed at the coffee place where I suggested we had a coffee before the date to see if I could stand being around him... There was a bottle of champagne waiting for us and we also had a very pregnant front of house member of staff waiting on us. The ultimate irony...
I think I upset P the night before when we were sitting in our favourite pub and I said that it hadn't been the happiest of years but not due to him. I truly am very lucky to have such an awesome husband who I quite like being around. He had hurt me a little when he had made a comment about how we hadn't tried for very long, which is true. It has only been a year but we've lost three pregnancies in the time that we've been trying! Three pregnancies! Two before we were even trying and then three when we put the effort in! It has been a really tough year- dealing with psycho neighbours, buying our first place together but I am glad that he is there, still grumbling at the world with me. Despite that comment, I mentioned that I wanted him to start making decisions rather than always saying he just wants what is right for me. So he said that he wants to be tested to check that there is nothing at his end that could possibly be causing any issues. It would make the path so much clearer- either that we decide to adopt if everything is going a bit too wrong to consider anything else or that we try again if things are just bad on my end.
Main thing that I've learnt from our anniversary weekend is that I must make sure that P and I really spend time together where he's not on a Gooners website and I'm not playing Sims. We need to make time to talk more as otherwise we'll end up just with a pretty video and some wonderful photos and not a lot else. We have got an awful lot and we should celebrate it daily and not just when the big days come around!