Little me

I was tagged by Being Brazen (ok, everyone was tagged!) to post a picture of myself when young. I scrounged in my scans and found two. So here they are! Apologies for the bad scanning quality.

This is me at around 3 years old. I know when I was four I started nursery school and I had much longer hair, so I must be around three here. By the way, I still have that knitted Pink Panther somewhere!


And here's me and Sister Ruby Slippers on my first day of school. January 1985; I was five and sister RS was nine. Notice how I'm holding my brand new little schoolcase like I'm proud of it! Yeah...I got over that fast.


Ah, the simple days...

Down the Yellow Brick Road Part XII: Cake and Family

"Kiss Me, new wife!"
"Yes, but you're pulling my veil out with the roots of my hair..."
(This happened a lot. A long veil is not a good thing when a lot of people want to hug you.)

Mr Ruby Slippers and I decided we wanted to serve the cake in the garden after the ceremony, instead of at the reception. Why? Well, firstly, it gives everyone a nice snack if they're peckish after the ceremony. Secondly, the photos turn out prettier if they're outside in a leafy garden instead of inside a dark hall. Thirdly, no one eats the cake if it's served with dessert, because there's enough dessert there without cake too!

I might have mentioned before that the cake toppers were actually our first wedding purchase (aside from booking the venue). I couldn't be more pleased with how awesome they were! Everyone loved them!


They even made our ugly cake look good...um...okayish.

Quick kiss before we cut the cake. We kissed a LOT that day. Which is as it should be!


Apparently this cake-cutting thing was quite hysterical. I have no idea why! But I found a lot of things really fun on that day that I wouldn't normally...


Om nom nom...Bridezilla eat Groom's face!


I will say that the cake didn't taste as bad as it looked. We decided on two layers: on top, a vanilla layer with lemon curd filling, and a standard chocolate for the bottom. I specifically wanted the light-coloured layer to be the one I had to eat, in case any bits got stuck in my teeth! Haha.


I don't know what Mr RS was whispering to me, but clearly he was being a very naughty boy:

A naughty boy that I wanted to kiss again, though:


Time to show off some more Ruby Slippers!


Bring on the family photos! First Mr Slippers and I posed with his parents:

Then we added his sister:

Then we posed with my parents:


And added MY sister:


Are we seeing a pattern here? Now, put it all together, AND:

(I totally just started singing: "When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!" Damn Julie Andrews).

Mr Ruby Slippers and I do not have big families. Between us we should have eight grandparents, but every one of them died more than ten years ago. MIL Ruby Slippers is an only child, and my Mom's only brother died in 1987. FIL Ruby Slippers has one sister who died a few years ago, and the other one decided twelve days before the wedding that she would rather go on holiday than come to the wedding she had RSVP'd to. I was pretty damn angry. Finally, my Dad came through and produced the only parental-sibling at the wedding - my Aunt Ethel and her husband (who, by the way, nearly didn't make it back from Italy, where they were organising my uncle's pension, in time). Her two children (sounds odd, since they're in their thirties, but they ARE) couldn't make it because the one didn't want to travel from the UK with her small baby, and the other one is an important doctor type who had conferences and other things booked in Europe, dahling. So despite the meagre family showing, I decided to take a photo with everyone related to me. This is it:

From left to right: My Uncle Robert and Aunt Ethel (my Dad's sister), my great-aunt Maureen, who was married to my Gran's brother, and is the only living representative of my grandparents' generation (probably because she was much younger than my great-uncle), My Mom's cousin Pam (whom you saw in earlier pics), my mom, Mr & Mrs Ruby Slippers, my Dad (such a kidder), my sister and her husband.

Mr Ruby Slippers had a photo with all his work colleagues. Computer nerds never looked so good:

I organised a picture with my two oldest friends, Monica and Priya. I realise that the fact that we met in our first year of high school (that's 8th grade to my US readers...our high school has five years, whereas as far as I can gather yours has four) isn't as exciting as being friends since we were three years old, like some people's wedding recaps seem to contain, but still, it was great to have them there.


When I think about how geeky the three of us used to be, I'm surprised we all turned out looking so good! If I had ever scanned in any of those pics, I might feel like sharing them. But luckily I haven't. Let's just say thick glasses (Priya and me) and weird short hairdos (Priya and Monica) were the order of the day.

Finally, since we had discovered some time earlier (thanks, Facebook!) that my friend Henni (whose sister was the florist) was old friends with my landlady and makeup friendor, Mel, we had a picture with them:

From left to right: Henni, The Ruby Slippers', Stan (Henni's business partner - they own a dvd rental shop), Mel and her partner (and our landlord) Graeme. I swear Henni is not a giant - we must have been standing on a slope!

And that's it for the group pics! I really wish we'd gotten a huge picture of everyone there, but in the hurly-burly of the wedding excitement, I forgot all about it. Oh well...

Previously:

Part I: The Night Before
Part II: Salon, Supermarket & Judy Garland
Part III: Setting Up
Part IV: Prettifying
Part V: All Bridalled Up
Part VI: For the Boys
Part VII: Going to the Chapel and We're...
Part VIII: Meanwhile, Back at the Chapel...
Part IX: Down the Aisle
Part X: Readings, Vows & Tasty Treats
Part XI: Man and Wife

What now?

For weeks I've had this annoying, listless, "I don't know what to do now" feeling about the wedding. In fact, I really wanted it to be closer so that I could the heck ON with it and do the last minute stuff! Now it's 23 days away and that's beginning to look a little...scary.

What I really want to do is organise the table lists so that I can print all the place cards and table name listings for our hanging crystal lists. But I can't DO that because apparently we didn't invite enough people to our wedding, and in order for us to keep to our minimum of 70 (we couldn't get the venue without paying for 70 people) we have to create a B-list. Which, frankly, I didn't think was necessary to begin with because everyone has been saying All Frikkin Year that they would definitely be there, and when it comes to crunch time suddenly they have to go visit their son in Ireland or go organise their Italian pension or stay behind because their daughter has an exam that day. Blah, blah, whatever, all I care about is that you're not coming. And not only am I disappointed that you're not coming, I'm flipping out because I now have to find a replacement for you who is not going to be offended that they weren't invited first time round.

So far it's not going well. Three couples on the B-List have declined; not, I think, because they were offended and all "You didn't invite me originally so now I'm not coming, nyeh nyeh!", but because they genuinely can't make it. Because, you know, it's in TWENTY-THREE days. So we have one more couple and one single who need to confirm, and then I have noooo idea who to fall back on. I might have to delve into my facebook friends list and invite arbitrary people from high school, or something. :-(

This really sucks. I know I have a small family, but the fact that none of them (aside from my parents and sister, and one Aunt who is actually my Mom's cousin) are coming is a little sad. But I'll be damned if I'm paying for dinner for someone who isn't even there! I might have to ask the singles to drum up dates...because no matter what, we're paying for seventy people, so they might as well be there to eat it, even if we've never met them.

Sigh. Who knew it was this hard to get people to share in your joy and eat a free meal and have a fun party?