So, over the last few months I’ve written quite a lot about the rollercoaster that has been planning our wedding.
Everything from the thrill and excitement when Stu first proposed to the stress of would our dream day ever take place, all the way back round to the hope we got again when we decided to reorganise for 2021.
Well last week that light at the end of the COVID tunnel got considerably dimmer for Stu and me when we listened to the latest Boris announcement.
Now, I’m not going to lie, the majority of the things he said didn’t really affect me…10pm curfew on a night out actually sounded not too bad and the fact my hair and beauty treatments could still take place was a BIG relief!
However, when he said weddings were now restricted to just 15 people, my heart did sink. Naively, after we rebooked the wedding and more restrictions got lifted in August with Eat out to help out, I sort of felt like we’d been through the hard bit of Coronavirus and now we could just look forward to our dream day. I had no idea that by putting off our wedding we were going to be in worse position than when we started.
The worst thing was though, as I heard the news, I didn’t feel sad in the same way as I did before. I just felt frustrated, frustrated that despite the months of telling myself it’s just a wedding and I’m just lucky to have my health and a job etc that I was still getting sad…frustrated that the rules didn’t make sense, why could I go out for dinner, go to a church service but I can’t get married?…frustrated that I should be Mrs Burnett now.
I hated being a brat and people thinking that I was just consumed with having a huge circus wedding too. When Stu and I decided to reorganise it was our way of regaining control of the day into something we wanted and when we heard the announcement from Boris we felt like that control had been snatched right back away from us.
Thankfully, that week we had already organised a meeting with our wedding planner at the Queens Hotel anyway. With all the uncertainty we had considered reorganising it but then I said to Stu it was probably a good idea to keep it just to get an idea of what our options were…and I’m so glad we did.
The night before the appointment, typically practical Stu had written out a long list of questions for the wedding planner. Me on the other hand had taken the more, I’ll go with the flow approach.
Driving into the carpark and walking into the beautiful Queens lobby, the excitement with the wedding instantly started to return as we remembered how we felt when we first booked the venue.
Feeling positive, we then met with our wedding planner who couldn’t have been nicer explaining how flexible they could be with the new guidelines and the different options available to us , if we did have to have a smaller wedding.
Leaving the hotel Stu and I then went for a celebratory wedding planning drink ( aka Costa) where buzzing from the caffeine and wedding excitement we discussed how cool our COVID wedding could actually be.
Now, I know there are still seven months until our big day and I’m sure between now and then there will be a lot more highs, lows and confusing Boris announcements…but now I know what will be will be as long as there is Stu and Ali.
alanaburnett 
Alana, I presume you mean the Queen’s Hotel in Southsea. near the front. I used to stay there sometimes and liked the place. I stayed when I worked as a Marketing Manager at FB House. Guess who got my Job? your Father, ask him.
Yes that’s right. Oh wow, small world. I’ll ask him ☺️