Things have been very quiet on here lately, mainly because work has been nuts and we’ve been prepping for our honeymoon. Unlike most couples who head off for a few weeks on a beach, we’ve decided to do things a little differently.

Tomorrow at 6am we set off on our European Odyssey for the next three weeks. A road trip that will take in roughly 4,500 miles, 8 countries, 2 F1 Grands Prix and a drive around the Nordschliefe.

We’re both Formula 1 nuts and when Spa was restored onto the calendar this AND placed back-to-back with Monza - well, how could we say no?

We head out from Dublin Port over to Holyhead and then drive straight through England to the Channel Tunnel. First night is in Calais and then up in the morning for a mad dash across into Germany to the old Nordschliefe race track at the Nurburgring. Although the track is no longer used for Formula 1 races, it’s a popular spot for car enthusiasts to take their own cars around. While it would be nice to take the new Type ‘R’ around, we’re going to settle for being driven around it by a professional BMW driver in a nice new M5!

From there it’s on to Amsterdam for a few nights and then we drive down through Germany to Wiesbaden. My mum lived here for a few years in the 70’s so it will be nice to see it for that reason. We continue on to Innsbruck, taking the route through the smallest vertical section of Austria.

In Italy we then stay in Bergamo while travelling back and forth to the Grand Prix at Monza, where George is praying for a Ferrari 1-2. I said that he could have that one as long as Hamilton wins at Spa! After race day at Monza we are going to drive the traditional route from there to Maranello, the home of Ferrari. In days of old, people would try to race the telegraph home to deliver news of a Ferrari victory.

We will stay in Maranello for a few days and hope to tour some of the local factories - Ferrari, Lambourgini, Pagani… and perhaps balsalmic vinegar, parmesan cheese and lambrusco wine? Tempted yet?

From there it’s time to drive around the coast via Monaco and up to Aix-en-Provence for a night in a villa in the olive groves. Then a bolt up through France to Troyes, where I lived and studied for a year, for a brief night with my ‘french mother’. Troyes has great factory outlets, so perhaps a spot of shopping there? We have the car, after all.

Maastricht is the next stop on our tour where we use it as a base to shuttle back and forth to Spa for the Grand Prix. A little bit of rain and the redesigned track could give us a lot of fun! After this weekend it’s but a short hop back to Amsterdam to relax for the last few days of our break. We come home via Calais. Luckily we get back on a Friday night, so we’ll have the weekend to relax before we head back to work (urgh!).

All of this leads up to me saying that posting may be non-existent for the next few weeks, but at least you know why…

Oh God, I’ve been meaning and promising to post this for ages, and now that the wedding is out of the way I no longer have an excuse!

Our wedding was originally planned for 120 people, but as a lot of them were from overseas we ended up with 85 at the ceremony and meal. But anyhow, it was still kept to under €10k, which in today’s world is something of a miracle. I can’t guarantee that you can do the same for your wedding, but here are a few tips that might help (and a few geek notes along the way…)

Firstly, find out who in your friends and family you can tap for expertise. Send out a general call to all you know asking for advice, recommendations and suggestions for service providers. To that end, here are my top ten money saving tips!

1. I was able to ask my mother (grannymar) who is an excellent seamstress to make my wedding outfit, and as you can see - she did me proud!
2. My cousin, RichardM, is a wedding photographer. I didn’t want too many formal shots or any ’staged funny’ shots, so going to someone I was comfortable with was a great help, I could be completely clear with him. Most important advice here, have a clear list of any family/friends shots you really want and make sure they know they are needed. Give a copy of this list to the photographer, bestman and chief bridesmaid so that they can locate people in advance and therefore avoid stress for yourself.
3. My aunt is a florist so I was able to get my bouquet from her. Research in advance what styles and colours you would like and have an idea about the size - I went for side plate size (photos will follow soon), but what I hadn’t realised was just how heavy the bouquet would be by the end of holding it for an hour of photos.
4. Ask around and see if anyone knows a D.J. or band and compare rates. Try to see the band/D.J. at a previous gig if possible and give them any requests at least two weeks in advance. Having both a D.J. and band will push the costs up to well over €1000, we went with D.J. only and it was €350 for the night - a massive saving. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the music and the floor was crowded all night.
5. Make your own invitations. We went with plain card and designed and decorated our own, but you can also buy packs that come with invite, menu, placecards etc. Try and find out if anyone you know does calligraphy, always looks best on the placecards.
6. Take the headache out of doing your seating plan and managing your RSVP by using simpleseating.com it automatically takes people who you mark as not coming off the table assignment and displays everything in a nice visual manner. Also makes it easy to share your seating plan with your wedding planner / mother / groom wherever you are.
7. Check our the corkage charges at the reception venue. We found that it was cheaper to bring our own wine and let them open as many bottles as needed. I actually went to Lidl during one of their wine sales and picked up 24 white and 24 red and they went down a storm. Even if it doesn’t save you any money, it gives you more flexibility in your wine choice. We also brought soft drinks for the children and non-drinkers, hotels will normally not charge corkage on these.
8. Serve your wedding cake as your dessert. We cut the cake before dinner and then it was plated and served to the guests as dessert, which resulted in a saving of €1.50 per person to us! It may seem small, but all the little savings soon add up!
9. Decorate with helium ballons instead of flowers. Part of our hotel reception package included them putting flowers on all the tables, but I wasn’t sure about them fitting in with my colour scheme. I contacted a local party equipment firm (and availed of my work discount of 10%) and they decorated the function room for me for €250. This included a bunch of 4 on each of the tables, a small double arch over the cake table and a large twisty arch (solid ballons, no gaps) with flowers and netting behind the top table. I then completed the look by printing up my own menus, and designing my own favours (tall, solid bottomed shot glasses with little wedding themed stickers on them, filled with mini-eggs - because I hate sugared almonds!) and scattering little hearts in purple & silver over the tables (these were my colours).
10. Our biggest saving overall for the reception was doing buffet food instead of serving to the tables. We saved over €20 per person by doing this and no-one complained at all, in fact some people were seen to head up for second and even third helpings! People were able to pick and choose what they wanted from the hot and cold food selections, and they still served the top table so that the parents didn’t need to get up.

Get wedding insurance! Due to illness in George’s family, we were considering having to move the wedding date (luckily we didn’t have to). In the case of anything going wrong you’ll be incredibly glad that you bought the insurance. Shop around online and you can pick up coverage for a €20k wedding for as little as €200.Now for the geeky stuff as promised!

We used WeddingWishlist.ie to put together a nice little wedding website with the ceremony and reception info, accommodation, maps and our wedding registry. The choice of shops to choose from for the wedding is limited, but the cool thing is that you can also set up ‘Couple Funds’ which your guests can contribute to. We did this for our honeymoon hotels, grand prix tickets and our ‘new flooring funds’ for our new house.

Finally, on my blog I used a nice little applet from whenismywedding.com to count down the days to the wedding date - handy so that you can keep a track of just how many days you have left to panic!

I hope that this info is of use to some of you out there, and if you have any questions then just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them!

As the bride sneaks in a quick fag…

Photo credit: Triona Ryall (Bridesmaid)

Five years ago I was at a dark place in my life. Mum was ill and I had just quit both my job and my friends in Scotland and moved back home. Then you came into my life like a ray of sun, and I’ve bathed in the brightness of your love ever since.

You are my husband and best friend and these are my vows:

I vow to take care of you and comfort you.

I vow to stand up to you when I think you are wrong.

I vow to support you on the bad days and celebrate with you on the good.

I vow to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, and cry with you.

I vow to love you with all my heart and to always hold you in highest regard.

These vows I give to you today, and for all the days of our life.

I’ve had various drafts of this post floating around my head for a while, but I was pushed into action this week by a post by Flirtysomething (which has since been removed) - she linked to an article in the Sindo and asked if it was similar to one of her blog posts. Well, yes, it’s a bit similar, but the fact is if you talk to anyone about weddings in this country then those are the points and stories that are going to be told…

Flirty’s original post on the subject can be found here, and like all writing and commentary on the topic of weddings, tends to make me cringe. ‘The average cost of an Irish wedding is 25k’, ‘Couples going into debt’, ‘Competitive Wedding Syndrome’, etc, etc… Each and every bridal magazine we pick up is exhorting that we should have the best of the best at our weddings, hotels push their expensive packages and bridal gowns are getting more dramatic and more expensive every time I look.

I can’t believe the amount of money that people are spending on weddings these days. I can’t for the life of me consider in any way spending 25 or 30k on one day of my life… Why would you want to put yourself or your parents into debt for the sake of that? In planning my wedding this year, I’ve been focusing on three things:

1. Don’t turn into a bridezilla
2. Find a way to invite everyone that I & the hubbie want there on the day.
3. Keep the cost of the wedding to under 10k.

Not becoming bridezilla is a difficult one, everyone wants to have input into the planning process, guest list etc. The key thing to remember here is that the person paying for the wedding pretty much gets final say, so if you’re the sort of people that run to your parents for money, then you’ve all but given them carte blanche to control the proceedings. In my case, it was myself and my hubbie that were paying for the majority, so we’ve been the ones to make the decisions.

Another key point is to ask the two sets of parents to provide the names of the people they would like to see on the guest list, ONCE. i.e. they can give you one list of names and that’s their last chance at it. They will be worried about leaving people off, so will think longer and harder about it. Make it clear to them that the guest list is at your discretion and the names they suggest may or may not be rejected. An alternative is to suggest that they pay for the dinner/drinks of anyone additional that they wish to invite, this keeps you within your original budget.

Finding a way to invite everyone that the bride and groom want there is harder than it seems. You will often prefer one set of cousins to another, but it’s hard to declare that by sending invites to one set and none to others. The tradition in my family is to invite aunts & uncles to the full day and cousins to the evening. I made exceptions in two cases - my favourite cousin will be one of my bridesmaids and her sister is traveling over from the UK, so there’s no point in her only coming for the evening. Most of the rest of my cousins are a lot closer geographically speaking, so it will be easier for them.
As for the final point - how to keep a wedding for 120 people to under €10k in cost - well it’s a whole other story in itself, so I’ll keep that for a future post or two… Plenty of tips and tricks on the way soon!

Chocolate, Chocolate everywhere, way too much to eat!

Trying in vain to decide on what type of wedding cake I want…. too much choice out there! All I know is that I don’t want a traditional fruit cake, it’s really not my cup of tea!

Take a look at these and let me know what you think - which one makes you drool the most?

Set 1

Set 2

The interview went really well on Saturday, even if Susan didn’t let me talk as much as much as I wanted to! Everyone that listed in has been really positive and said that i got my points over really well, so I’m please with that - even if Ciaran says that Pat Kenny is the next step - I’m happy to do radio, I’m not so sure about TV!!

The hair cut is great as well, everyone seems to like it and I keep catching myself looking in mirrors all the time, which is great as I’d been avoiding them lately! I picked up the “tiara” for the wedding at the weekend as well, so I can’t wait to see what it looks like with the new hair!

Off to the gym tonight, I can really see the difference in the last week or so, my jeans are nearly falling off me - but there’s a long way to go yet!! I won’t go shopping for new clothes for a few months or so, might head up to Junction One to pick up some bargains - pity I didn’t start this a month or so sooner, then I could have benefited from the sales!!!!