The Honeymoon

It seems like such a long time ago, but its not actually over yet, more of that later..

We had organised the timing of the wedding to fit around D's working times and he had been very lucky to be able to book a chunk of time off in August. We have, for the last several years gone to Amsterdam for the August bank-holiday weekend (in the UK) as there is a great (for us) arts festival on at this time. It is all free and there's some really wonderful and weird stuff going on. 

So, we decided that we wanted to get married on the saturday before our 'usual' Amsterdam weekend. We have been so many times now that we have been lucky to find a lovely apartment in a great location and when we got there this time the owners of the apartment had even bought us this..

Anyway, that was the second part of the honeymoon..for the first part D's brother and his mum had for our wedding present rented us a classic car for a couple of days (an Etype Jag, and a beautiful thing it was too)..I'm not really interested in cars but even I could appreciate this one..and they had also booked us a night in a lovely country house in Yorkshire..want to see some photos?

 
This is the gable end of the hotel, the gardens were beautiful and we had a lovely sunny and dry time there so we sat and had a picnic we had taken on the first day just enjoying our surroundings. The first floor window you can see was our bathroom window, you cant see the bedroom one but its to the right of the bathroom.


I have also added pictures of our room, it is likely to be the most luxurious hotel room we ever stay in and I would really recommend the hotel!

Amazing room

More amazingness

Really wish I'd moved that charger lead now! Strawberries and Champagne..mmm









  It was a lovely relaxing couple of days and will always be a fantastic memory for us..as will the second part of the honeymoon which was our stay in Amsterdam. 

  As we have been many times I suggested that we try and do some different things than just our normal 'stuff'. I did a little research before we went and came up with visiting a Jenever bar-the equivilent of Dutch gin..except this place has hundreds of different types

http://www.wynand-fockink.nl/en/home-en 

it might look like a bit of a dodgy e-mail link but believe me its not! These are two of the drinks we tried, D had an old jenever and I had a raspberry one. I can't say that I liked D's but mine was amazing, as were the two that the bar man made for us next. The drinks are served in a tulip shaped glass and filled to the very top, so full that you cannot lift it and you have to bend over a take a sip also known as 'bowing to the barman!'

Not sure who Deryck is...

We also went to a lovely rooftop bar on the top of a big department store right across from the royal palace and sat enjoying the sun. 
We went on the ferry across to the old harbour and generally relaxed and recovered from the stress of the last few days. 

So that was that..we had jokingly called our honeymoon(s) our mini and midi-moons...as we were hoping to get to New York again next year..however, things have taken a bit of a different turn and D is going to Wisconsin at the beginning of November for a couple of days..so, we decided to see what we could afford and arrange and we are going to New York next week and then onto Wisconsin...for our maxi-moon!


 

Final wedding 'bits'

I cant believe it was only or indeed was as long ago as a month..five weeks..

In my defence, I have been absent (again) as I have had a horrible virus that D then got straight after and we have both been wiped out..so I'll try and do the final bits of wedding stuff and get it out of the way.

We had a really fabulous day, I had got up to the Registry Office last time, with our choice of readings and music.

Following the ceremony, we came back to our home and had food, drinks, champagne, cakes etc with our family and friends. This was exactly what we wanted..the whole idea of a big party, with a disco and all that goes along with it would simply not have been us. So, instead people came here and we had a room with 'normal' food-what I mean by that is the normal buffet type food you would expect. (we had this provided by caterers who were here when we got back from the ceremony). It was great to not have to worry about it. We also had the wedding cake positioned in this room. D's cousin made it for us, I know I have talked about this before but she did a truly amazing job-bringing the various parts up to the house and assembling it all the afternoon before-even needing step ladders to put the last tier on!

She would probably want me to tell you that the cake was intentionally wobbly! Rather than a traditional bride and groom topper we had an Alice in wonderland themed 'Eat Me' topper to go with all the other Alice themed things like 'Drink Me' labels on the champagne and beers, a dormouse in a teacup, a 'mad' chandelier made of teacups and a flamingo, a mad hatter hat with 'in this style 10/6', bunting made from playing cards..ooh and some large white pom-pom 'roses'..some which were partially painted red.

In the next room-where we had music (our own playlist of songs that mean something to us, or just that we really like) we also had another cake, and I'm really upset I didnt take a picture of this one. It was three tiers of cheese decorated with figs and grapes.

In the next room, we had a sweet bar-again no picture, what was I thinking!! About a dozen jars and bowls with a variety of veggie sweets-I decided to forgo a colour theme as there were a lot of veggies attending the wedding-my husband (!) included.

Outside we had a small gazebo with bottled, canned and home brew  beers again, no picture. 
We had great weather-even though thunder had been predicted, it was beautifully sunny all day until about 9.30pm when there was an almighty thunder storm and the beer tent/gazebo had to be abandoned until the next morning when we found it wedged inbetween various walls!

All in all it was a great day, and pretty much exactly as we wanted..if I could have changed anything I would have made it longer!
And here's one of our favourites from the big day..

Next time..the honeymoon..!