We have Homer Simpson playing at our wedding...

Dad got an email from the ceilidh band which will be playing at our reception over the weekend. They were asking him to confirm that they'll be fed and watered during the evening, so he wrote back, telling them they would be able to have the hog roast with the guests, and that soft drinks, tea and coffee will be provided. The church centre isn't licensed so he told them what we're telling all the guests - you're welcome to bring your own alcohol, but we're not providing any for the evening.

They wrote back to say "no, we want beer and you have to provide it because it's in the contract".

Dad looked at the contract and it does say that the band should be provided with fruit juice or beer as requested. However he was a bit miffed because this means that the band is effectively asking for better treatment than the guests if they get alcohol supplied and everyone else has to bring their own.

He asked them why they wanted beer and was told "it's the same with all musicians". Dad restrained himself from writing back to tell them that there are three musicians in his imediate family (me, Mom and little brother), and we all manage to play fine without alcohol.

Actually I'm doing the band a disservice - apparently the drummer doesn't drink alcohol and will be happy with tap water. The rest will get beer as requested, but it will be beer that's been left over from various visits, not especially bought beer. Can't have the band having special treatment, and it's not like we're not paying them enough to cover a couple of cans of beer each...

Advice for caterers...

A word of advice to any caterers thinking of catering a wedding:

If the bride's father is vegetarian, make sure you have a good veggie menu.

Our caterer seems to be okay now, but we had a bit of a struggle trying to persuade him that we needed more than a jacket spud as a veggie option for the evening while the non-veggies are tucking into a hog roast.

I was on the verge of asking my parents for his phone number and going a bit bridezilla on him, along the lines of "This is my wedding and you have to feed my dad or we're taking our business elsewhere!"

His eventual proffered veggie option - pizza - is acceptable, but something like a bean burger or butternut squash burger would have been much better.

Guest lists dilemmas

We, like every other couple getting married I expect, have been having an issue with our guest lists.

Even without the lists provided by both sets of parents of people we really shouldn't forget to invite, we have a lot of people travelling from quite a distance to the wedding.

While some of those (like the best man!) were people who would be invited to the wedding breakfast anyway, some of them weren't, but if they had to leave early then they wouldn't be able to come to an evening do. They also wouldn't know the area at all, so they couldn't just pop home for some lunch and then come back for the evening.

Combined with all the children that our guests will be bringing, the numbers jumped quite quickly. At one point our list was something like 60 adults plus 17 children.

It would be so much simpler if we'd grown up within 10 miles of each other and never moved anywhere else! :-)

How expensive are flowers?!

My sister-in-law offered to help with any bits of research I wanted doing for the wedding - venues, hair stylists, and so on. So I decided to take advantage of her offer and ask her to find out what sort of flowers will be in season (and so comparatively cheap) in November.

I'm really not too fussed about the type of flowers I have in a bouquet. When I was first thinking about the wedding, before we had a date, I was imagining a spring wedding and thinking a wildflower bouquet would be nice. I'm not really into the very formal arrangements, and I wanted something simple but pretty, and fitting in with the colour scheme which is mostly dark green. That, I thought, would make it simple because any flowers would go with the colour scheme!

Sister-in-law came back with a list of flowers which would be in season - (top row) narcissus, bouvardia, (bottom row) agapanthus and september, which I believe is a type of aster.

Because she went to a florist to make enquiries, she thought it would be rude not to get a quote as well. The reply - £75. When she told me I was flabberghasted (which is a fabulous word that's not used often enough). I couldn't believe that a simple bunch of flowers would cost so much. It reinforced something that darling beardy man (aka fiancé) has been saying all along - as soon as you mention the word 'wedding', whoever you're talking to will double the price at least.

So having discovered how shockingly overpriced the flowers are, I'm not seriously considering doing them myself.