One year ago today

This time last year

When I wrote yesterday of all the things I should be doing instead of making mushrooms, I should have added “sorting out my wedding photos” to the list. It’s almost a year now since I got married, and the photos are all still languishing on my laptop, unsorted and unprinted. I keep starting to go through them, but there are so many that the task seems insurmountable. I also find it disconcerting looking at so many pictures of myself.

This, though, is one of my favourites:

Just me and my niece, walking hand-in-hand by the River Thames, like we usually did at weekends…

(This is especially for you, geckogrrl, because I promised you a pic almost a year ago and never did show you one.)

This time last year, I was putting the finishing touches to the dress my niece is wearing in that picture, and sorting out last-minute details for my wedding. I’ve just been reading through old emails, and all mine from the weeks leading up to my wedding had headings like:

• ‘What are your five favourite songs?’ (the replies were used to fill up the iPod for the wedding reception, although we didn’t use it in the end as the Elvis impersonator we had booked for an hour enjoyed himself so much he sang all night);
• ‘What are we going to do about shoes for the flower girls????’ (we bought some lovely little shoes from bHs – they have a great selection of dresses and accessories for child bridesmaids);
• ‘What about cardigans?????’ (bought them online from M&S. Oh, I miss M&S…);
• ‘Hen night!!!!!!!!’ (less said about that the better. The smoking ban had just come into effect in the UK, and half my “hens” spent the night outside, smoking, and those of us that were left inside were pestered all night by a load of geeky IT bods who were having an office do);
• ”Aaaaaargh! Stressed!!!’ (seemed to be used for lots of different things….)

I’m sure the nearer it got to the wedding, the more question and exclamation marks I used.

Anyway, I made these dresses, using a Vogue pattern, no V7819. I was particularly fond of the sash – I made it from the bridesmaid dress I wore at my sister’s wedding, which I thought was a nice touch. But you’ll notice there’s no sash in the pic above. That’s because on the day of the wedding, my niece took one look at the sash, let out a wail, and refused to wear it. My sister valiantly tried every trick in the book (threats, tears, shouting, bribery) to get my niece to wear the sash, but, in the end, my niece’s 2-and-a-half year old will prevailed, and the sash was left behind. Such a shame, as I think it took longer to make the sash than it did the dress – fiddly thing.