Inside The Wardrobe - Embrace The Lace

I have been SO out of the loop with "My Friday's Fancies". Holy cow. It has been weeks. It's normally one of my favourite posts of the week! But with the wedding, the half marathon, the fever (read: the Hiatus), and Wedding Week on the blog, I haven't had the time!

So if you're new around here (or just forgotten), I do a British version of Friday's Fancies called "Inside the Wardrobe". My only rule is that the clothes/shoes/accessories HAVE to be from UK stores. No American stores allowed! #ExpatProblems

This week is all about lace!

Personally, I tend to stay away from lacey items. They look gorgeous and girly, but my brain just goes "Crap, you have to hand wash this?! Well that's not happening..."

As I get older, I should just embrace (the lace... had to do it!) the fact that clothing items need tending to and I should be a big girl about it.

Anyway, that being said........

 Dress . . Flats . . Bag . . Earrings . . Neckalce

When I saw the dress, it immediately reminded of Blair Waldorf circa Season 1 (whenever that was. I was in high school. And the CW had a writers strike somewhere in the middle.) I definitely channeled her while creating the outfit... Minus the big headband!

I like reserved look of the dress. I mean, I'm usually all about the V-necks! But I recently bought a Peter-Pan collared dress that was a bit covered up at the top and realised I can broaden my horizons.

And I'm in love with the necklace! (I actually have it!) The chain changes lengths; it goes well with everything!! 

Let's talk lace: How do you pull off the look? Make it girly? Edgy? What do you think?

(Link up with My Friday's Fancies)

WTF Wednesday - British Edition

I love the idea of WTF Wednesday posts. They always put a smile on my face!

So here's one of my own! Not a weekly WTF segment... Just some things that I found that entitled a reaction of WTF... In England!

I was walking around Tesco with no intentions of finding anything weird (except the occasional horse meat product... yes, obligatory horse meat joke...) when I happened to find 3 things that caught my eye.

#1

Llamas?! Different flavor llama crackers. And appropriately dressed llamas for each flavor. Well actually, I don't know what a yellow scarf has to do with cheese. But I won't question your choice of outfit Mr. Cheese Llama. (Are these llamas made of horse meat? Kidding... I know, overused horse meat joke....)

#2

These are GOLDFISH! The fact that they're calling them Finz here is just hilarious! (Well, I'm probably the only one who finds it hilarious.) How did I go nearly 4 years without seeing these?!

#3

Five quid for Lucky Charms, anyone?? That doesn't seem over priced at all, does it?! (Sarcasm) I am now typing into Google "5 GBP to USD" and that box of cereal is a whopping $7.51!! They're magically delicious exorbitant! 

Do you have anything you want to add to WTF Wednesday - British Edition today??

Walk Down Memory Lane

I've loved to write throughout my whole life without even knowing it. I've kept many journals, notebooks, "e-journals" throughout my whole life.

To be honest, I didn't have anything useful to say in these journals when I was 8 years old. Except maybe "Today I ate some gummy worms. We learned long division in school and I stink at it. I'm going to marry every member of Nsync."

(Clearly I was one of the coolest kids around.)

And then, my high school Live Journal account was my place to unleash my inner nerd. I was all like, "zomg I luvvv marching band, ATL bandos whatsuppppp! LAWL 97 on my chemistry test today, hollerrrrrrrrrrr! Colorguard rox my sox off!!!"

(Again, I was so cool.)

But when you feel obligated to write, like for school or in a daily eventful journal, it loses it's fun sometimes. I have so many notebooks that go from "really really detailed entry about my day" to "here's some poetic song lyrics because I don't feel like writing about my day" that happens in about a months time. 

So when I saw this from College Prepster, I was intrigued to say the least. I had no idea what a "One Line A Day" journal was. Or if you even can get one in England.

You can. And I'm obsessed.

It's one of those things where I was kicking myself for not finding out about it sooner! I mean, five years ago, in March 2008, I was 17 years old and a couple months away from graduating high school. Imagine being able to look in a book or online journal (I checked my old LJ account... no entires for the entire month of March unfortunately) and see what you were doing on that exact day for the past 5 years!

I'll show you a bit of how it works, because I was confused when I first read up on these.....

I just picked random blank pages to show you... My birthday!

There is a page for every single day of the year (including leap year, how ambitious of them!) with 5 different 20__ spaces for you to fill in the year for the next 5 years. There's a few lines for you to write a brief entry about your day next. If you maintain it, you'll be using the same journal for 5 years and get to see what you did exactly on each day!

This is perfect for someone like me who tends to half-ass journals or diaries after a few days/weeks/months.

And like I said, I almost wish I had found it sooner! It would have been amazing to have this while I was newly engaged or planning the wedding. It's still a great time for me to start this, being a "newly-wed" and all!

So far, it's been really easy to keep up with! I've had it for a couple of weeks now. I don't feel dread when I remember to write in it (you know, feeling like you have to write an entry but don't feel like it) or feel any obligation to maintain it. It has just become part of my nightly ritual. Those few lines fill up fast, too! (The diary itself is small... About the length of my hand.... Think of like, the size of a hotel drawer bible or something!) Writing only takes two-minutes TOPS at the end of the day.  

Of course, I had to share it with fellow bloggers! Obviously we like things like journaling, recapping our day, and quirky little things like this!

(Note: Not a sponsored post. I purchased with my own money and am simply sharing because it's something I think you'd like!)

Are you the journal/diary type? Do you keep up with them despite a busy schedule? Is the "One Line A Day" Diary something that sparks your interest?? Does the feeling of a 5 year memory book sound daunting to you??

Letting A 22 Year Old Loose Around Hogwarts

I told you last week that I went to the Making of Harry Potter Warner Brother's Studio Tour.

Mind = blown.

It's much different than anything I had ever seen before, and blew my expectations out of the water.

Everything is there. Every inch of the tour is covered in props, costumes, sets, secret hidden snitches, etc. I probably missed a lot of stuff, but also found a lot of stuff too (like the sword of Gryffindor is up on a shelf in Dumbledore's Office... It's so discrete and hidden up there!) 

I took about um-teen thousand pictures that day, but I'm just going to show you a bit of my favorites!

(And if you know me at all, you know that I don't even have to add the "paid for this tour on my own", "am not being sponsored for this", "all opinions are my own". Seriously, I'm a Harry Potter fanatic. It's been my life since I was 11. And all of the above quotes are true anyway.)

(Oh and side note, I say this every time there is a photo-heavy post... My camera is crap. It takes pictures underwater but no part of this tour was underwater so.... Sorry!)

The Great Hall. The real set. A-freakin-mazing! So many costumes, including the Hogwarts robes through the years of filming!

Gryffindor Common Room with costumes from the 3rd film. Filled with props and random trinkets. Literally could have looked in there for hours. (By the way, did you know that the character Dean Thomas is a West Ham fan?! The things you learn in the studio tour....)

Dumbledore's Office with everything in it, including the Pensieve and the Phoenix entryway. These are the robes from Richard Harris, the actor who played Dumbledore in the first two films. The robes of Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the rest of the films) are in the Great Hall.

I've always had a soft spot for the Goblet of Fire book and movie. It's my favorite book in the series and I think I've read it the most times out of all of them! This is the Triwizard Cup and the egg clue from the movie. I freaked out when I saw them!

And look! The top of the egg clue is an owl!! I read the little paragraph on the side of the display where it mentioned the owl opener at the top. Of course I had to get a pic!

Snape in his potion's classroom. I always had faith in Snape throughout the books. I knew he had to be good somehow... Fun fact, I wrote a letter to Alan Rickman (the actor who played Snape) and he sent me his autograph! I was fangirling for years....

The Knight Bus!! The inside was seriously impressive considering it's just a bus! (P.S. it always bugged me that in the movie, Harry didn't tell Stan his name was "Neville Longbottom" on the bus.... In the book he does...)

Privet Drive. The first ever thing you see in the HP films is Privet Drive. It brought me back to being an 11 year old and loving the first film. Fun fact, I've watched the Sorcerer's Stone so many times, I know every single word without the movie even being on... I can start reciting it right now if I wanted to! ("I should have known that you would be here... Professor McGonagall....")

Diagon Alley was probably my favorite set to visit on the tour. It's probably one of my favorite sets in the film anyway! They had every shop from the film and even from the book that you probably never see or hear of in the films.

Ollivanders! The wand shop!

This was seriously impressive. It a model of Hogwarts! But they explain how in the movie, any shots where they go over top of Hogwarts or show it not close up, they've filmed this model. You'd think it was all computers in the movie, but it's not! It's crazy! They have little TVs showing you different parts of the film and how they used this model to film it.

Oh and yes, I'm on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team now. Duh. (When I was younger I actually thought about what position I'd play, and I'd definitely be a Chaser!) This was not only a photo opportunity, but a video opportunity as well! They had you soaring around in the TV screen through London, over lakes, around Hogwarts; it was AMAZING!

And if you didn't already know what a big nerd I am, well now you do! 

Seriously, I've been to the Island's of Adventure Harry Potter theme park, and this was a million, no, trillion times better. I also went with people who weren't particularly fans of Harry Potter, and they loved it! The tour takes about 3 hours, but it doesn't feel boring or time consuming at all! And in the middle, they have Butterbeer! Which also tasted better than the Butterbeer in the theme park to be honest! I had a blast to say the least!

What do you think? Would you spend a few hours here in HP world??

My Wedding Day

Day 5 is everything about my wedding day, which was the 8th of February 2013.

For the last day of Wedding Week, I thought I'd do a Wedding Day Recap. I've read race recaps out the kazoo (and re-read the good ones) but I've never really seen a Wedding Day Recap.

So here we go. Everything you wanted to know (and probably loads of random stuff, too) about the day I married that lovely man with an accent.

(I won't go through all the random getting ready stuff.... But anything amusing or funny that happened I'll tell you!)

I woke up super early that morning. I didn't even set an alarm, but it was clear no one else was awake. (By the way, me and my entire family were staying at Alex's parent's Bed & Breakfast. So when I say no one was awake, I seriously mean no one out of the 15+ people at the house were awake. And Alex was staying there, too, but in a separate room so we wouldn't see each other. He was leaving early to get ready anyway.)

There was a feeling in my stomach that I immediately thought was nerves. I thought, "Oh, I'm finally getting nervous! It's my wedding day!!"

The more I sat there thinking about it, the more I figured out I wasn't nervous..... I was hungry. (Is that normal??) I couldn't leave to get food though because Alex hadn't left! It was agreed the night before that I would stay inside my room until he left.

(He finally left and I ate breakfast in case anyone was worried.)

We'll fast forward to the actual wedding now...

Part of the "Civil Ceremony" process is meeting individually with the registrars to talk about the ceremony and go over the scripts. While talking with them, they said they've never met someone so calm before. I said "I feel like I should be nervous! But I'm not!!" They were shocked.

We were getting married upstairs at the venue, so I would have to walk up the stairs and wait on the landing until they were ready to play my music.

The assistant registrar looked at the time and said "Oh you have a few minutes to wait so just relax."

Not even 10 seconds later (not an exaggeration!), my music starts playing. She gestures for me to finish walking up the stairs and I'm like "I THOUGHT YOU SAID I HAD A FEW MINUTES!!!!!!!!"

Oops.

I immediately burst into tears. Full on ugly crying.

(By the way I picked "Waiting for the lights" [an instrumental piece] from the Disney movie Tangled. Don't judge. It was perfect.)

I walked down the aisle with my dad and my uncle on either side of me. I know that's not customary (trust me, it caused lots of drama, so you don't have to tell me twice!) but it's what I wanted. I didn't care what everyone thought. It was my wedding! If I said I wanted to walk down with 2 penguins by my side, I would have wanted support! 

Anyway, my dad and my uncle had to drag me down the aisle. I kept stopping because I didn't want there to be pictures of me bawling my eyes out. And they both said "you're not going to stop crying, so just keep going." They were right.

I didn't even see anything. I didn't see any guests or where we were. I didn't even hear any music. I saw Alex. And he was laughing at my ugly crying face. I didn't even see what he was wearing. He could have worn a banana costume and I wouldn't have noticed. I was too busy mentally telling him "I know I look a hot mess. Don't judge me. Don't laugh because it's making me laugh. Oh and btw I love you."

I'm crying and smiling. I know, it's not a good look for me.

What you need to know about me is that when I cry in front of people, I laugh. I get really uncomfortable and just start laughing. It's very strange. But it made all of our guests laugh because I couldn't stop laughing and crying at the same time.

The registrar had a hard time keeping the guests quiet because they were laughing (in a good way!) at me laughing and crying. She said "I can tell this is going to be a funny one!" 

When it was my turn to speak (the vows) I was fine, because I was concentrating so hard on remembering what she said and what I had to repeat. When Alex spoke, that's when I lost it. Because I had nothing to concentrate on. I had time to remember "OMG I'm getting married!" 

Sneezing? No, just laughing and crying!

I'm really happy that our guests and registrar were so patient. I was afraid all my blubbering would annoy them, but they understood my very strange ways.

Part of a civil ceremony is signing the paperwork in front of everyone (and having the witnesses sign). Guests weren't allowed any pictures during the real signing, but they brought a fake book for us to sit at and pretend we're signing. I found that hilarious. Like, "we're signing stuff! How romantic!"

Alex isn't really signing.... He's a good actor though!

Finally, we were husband and wife!

And could eat our amazing cupcakes!!!

Everyone came up to us downstairs and said that the ceremony was exactly like our personalities. I was slightly embarrassed over my ugly crying, but everyone said that if the wedding didn't go like that, it wouldn't have been our wedding! 

We had our wedding meal (which was a roast dinner) and I wore about 7 napkins on top of me so I wouldn't spill anything on my white dress.... It worked though!

After that, it was time to party!

I was so excited for all of our other guests to arrive. I was on such a high from the day that I couldn't wait to share it with everyone!

(Little did I know how much my cheeks would hurt after smiling so much!)

We were taking loads of group pictures with family and friends. Alex wanted a "Stag Do" (Bachelor Party) picture with all his friends that went with him. They got their shot and then wanted one with me in the picture. They said they'd pick me up and lay me across everyone's arms.

So on the count of 3 they started to pick me up. Well, I think only about half the guys were paying attention, because my legs and torso went up up up.... and my shoulders and head plummeted to the ground! Imagine my surprise! I'm getting dropped on my head at my own wedding!

Luckily, my head never reached the ground. I was too busy holding up my strapless dress to notice. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the event (that I know of! Some lazy person might upload one to Facebook soon. I will keep you posted!).

This was the Plan B picture for when the first one didn't work out.

We had a blast regardless. And then there was cake in my face.

 

Purely an American tradition, didn't you get the memo, Alex?!


And then we danced!

(All of these pictures look like I'm a pro at making ridiculous faces. I promise I'm normal sometimes!)

I tell Alex all the time that he is a terrible dancer. He IS a terrible dancer! I didn't think it was possible to be that bad. When we practiced our first dance, he was bad. Then when it came for our real first dance, I was a train wreck! You'd think someone sewed my feet on backwards. I blame it on the fact that I couldn't pirouette or leap in my dress, you know, show off me real skills. But I actually can (well, that's questionable nowadays) dance!

That was our wedding day. Like I said yesterday, it went by so fast. I know planning it and budgeting for it and dealing with guest drama is hard and overwhelming. But trust me, it's worth it! It was the best day of my life by far! He's my best friend in the whole world; I couldn't imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else.

Thank you for tuning in to Wedding Week to see my adventures, advice, and across the pond comparisons! I hope you've enjoyed reading about it; I know I've enjoyed reliving it!