Weddings

A few months ago I had the pleasure of attending my brothers wedding. I love weddings, the whole atmosphere of the day, the speeches, drinking too much free wine, grabbing extra glasses of champagne, dancing until the night ends and waking up with a stinking hangover the next day. This has mainly been my experience of weddings however this was my first wedding where all of my 3 children were invited… now that is whole other kettle of fish!

Weddings are a long day for the best of us and for kids it’s no different. My plan was to make sure the kids had naps at various points to get the absolute maximum out of them however I don’t believe they got the memo – well Sofia definitely didn’t. She was a flower girl (a very cute one I may add) so was required to walk down the aisle before the bridesmaids along with the others looking really cute and angelic. In the practise I had nearly cried she looked so cute and she wasn’t even in her outfit. She did it perfectly then however on the day she decided a 5 minute nap from the brides house to the church was a brilliant idea. She then wouldn’t let go of me and the only thing that distracted her were the balloons so I made a quick getaway so I could actually watch the bride walk in and see my brother bawl his eyes out. In they come and all I can hear is “ball ball”, she is in line being coaxed down the aisle by the balloon. Each of the bigger flower girls had a helium balloon tied to some garland and Sofia wanted them – all of them. She then spent the first 15 mins of the service running over to each girl pestering them until they gave her the balloon, pulling the garland off, running to her dad in triumph to only let go of the balloon and it float up to the high ceiling. This happened 4 times! Note to self – Sofia can’t be trusted with keeping hold of a helium balloon.

For kids, well especially mine, food is always on their minds. So when Zac hadn’t ate for about an hour he was starving! I was texted as I was arriving at the church to bring a coco pops bar out the car for him, he ate it like he hadn’t ate in days (whilst slacking on his usher duties). But that wasn’t enough, he then moaned on and off during the service how starving he was and knowing that the next food he would eat was canapés at the reception we needed to take action. I can’t get zac to eat much apart from chorizo pasta never mind a smoked salmon canapé. So we were those people who diverted to McDonald’s drive thru on the way to the reception! Crisis averted, for now.

We arrived at the reception and were directed to where there was an arrival drink and canapés, in front of the beautiful Manor House. However there was just one problem everyone was standing on a gravel path. You might think what’s wrong with that? Well Sofia is currently obsessed with playing with stones so she was in her element. She was picking them up, putting them in her pram, throwing them, you name it. However the worst bit was her sitting in them and making a pile on her white dress! I couldn’t do anything about it, the damage was done. People thought she was funny, cute, however they didn’t have the task that fell to me of getting her to leave the stones to head to the marquee for food. This ended in me carrying her under my arm with her kicking and screaming – oh and I was wearing heels. How neither of us ended up injured was a miracle.

Photos are such a big part of the day and I was set on getting a lovely family photo of us 5, Sofia had other ideas. She wouldn’t get any photos which required her to stay still or be held for more than 3 seconds with us let alone the official ones. I can’t wait for my brother to receive all his photos and the big family photos not to feature Sofia as she had made a run for it before the photographer could capture it. Our attempt at a family photo of us 5 was never going to work as Max was asleep when we decided so we were off to a good start. They pretty much went like this,

I learnt several things from this experience:

1. They all looked very cute dressed up smart however white on children doesn’t end well.

2. Don’t expect to make it to the end of the night.

3. Bring flats!

So in my opinion the moral of the story is:

When you’re invited to a friends wedding and they say if you really want to bring the kids you can. SAY NO!! Family weddings are an exception as you can rope your relatives in to help.

FYI I started writing this the week after the wedding which was September 14th and it’s taken me this long to finish!

P.s. Congrats Laura and Ciaran we enjoyed our day really!