The Wedding

Prepare yourself for many photos. Amazing days in amazing venues demand them.

The wedding was held at the Hillbark Hotel which is quite ridiculously beautiful inside and out.

Gem's mum is a florist and an absolute artist with flowers. Aren't they stunning?

You know what I liked best about the day? Not the venue or the style or the beauty of it all, though they were all pretty impressive. It was the fun that shone through everything. Ken and Gem are really perfect for each other and they have exactly the same sense of humour. Some weddings might have been ruined by silly faces in the photos or everyone wearing fake moustaches or the bride's nan heckling during the speeches but I can't imagine this one would have been complete without all of those things. Maybe there were a few tears - it's my big brother getting married, I'm allowed a sniffle! - but mostly there was lots and lots of laughter. Perfect.

Yay, Mum and Ken. I love both of these photos so I can't choose between them.

You all saw what I wore in my last post but as I've finally managed to get the picture of my face uploaded without the evil black eyes, here I am! Ahhh, the power of MAC. I really must learn how to do the flicky eyeliner thing by myself as I flipping love it.

Me before getting frocked up:

Me and the mothership, both frocked up in the photobooth. I want a parasol.

Me, 'tached up. I suit them! It's really freaky.

Clearly genetic though. This is my Dad:

So that was the wedding. The most excellent of excellent days.

The bride and groom are now off honeymooning in Vegas and Mexico, the lucky devils!

The Wedding Outfit

*SOUNDS THE WEDDING KLAXON*

My brother got married on Friday. It was a truly marvellous day from start to finish and I'll be blogging properly about it all later on in the week but as I have a bajillion photos to sort through, you may have a quick outfit post in the meantime.

I knew what I'd be wearing ages ago - hark at me blogging about it in June but I'm so pleased that my plans turned out well. I LOVE this dress. Even more so after I made the bold move to chop 4 inches off it and alter the halterneck a wee bit. Isn't it pretty? And the shoes are gorgeous too. And the seamed tights. And the bows. And, well, everything really. Told you I loved it!

The venue was flipping beautiful but as is the way with old buildings, somewhat on the dark side. Also I was in a hurry and had to rope in the mothership to be my photographer, hence the photos are all a bit dark and not fantastic. Just ignore the slightly dodgy pic quality and tell me I look gorgeous, plskthx.

Oh my god, how fun is it to wear an enormous petticoat? No-one told me about that part! Ok, you need more space to sit down but it looks ace and dancing is way more fun than usual!

You know what else is fun? Sparkly accessories! Lovely Sophie at Crown and Glory made me a big old bow to go in my hair and a matching tiny one to go on my bag. How cute are they?!

Dress, petticoat, belt and jacket - Vivien of Holloway
Shoes - Vivienne Westwood/Melissa Lady Dragon
Bag - New Look
Hair & bag bows - Crown and Glory
Jewellery - inherited and charity shop!
Seamed tights - M&S


ps - I would totally dazzle you with a picture of my beautiful makeup here but Blogger is playing silly buggers with some sort of Halloween "fun" thing and whenever I attempt uploading the photo, it turns my eyes black. I am quite annoyed.

Yet More Hideous Frocks

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy, time for more ugly frocks! It's been a while since I last seared your retinas with utter hideousness, hasn't it?

This lot are all in the ASOS sale, should you wish to purchase one. I really hope you don't.

Why? Whyyyyyyyyyy? Didn't we leave this sort of thing behind a long, long time ago?

It even looks cross from the back.

*shakes head*

I do not like the smock frock. I especially do not like this one with the weird cut out shoulders. Anything that makes a pretty, slim model look terrible is not something that I am tempted to purchase.

Don't think "sexy" is the first word I'd choose to describe this frock but the ASOS folk clearly disagree with me!

Yeah. Hmmm....

I can see how some people would like this. Not me, obviously. I don't do weird animal effect prints (#wardrobezoo is something else entirely). But what is going on with her body?? Have they bizarrely photoshopped her?? Is it an optical illusion caused by the dress?? I can't believe anyone has a waist/torso that actually looks like that.

Not entirely sure why having a dropped armhole is considered an attractive design feature? Anyone with boobs is going to have some scandalous moments in this!

This, dear readers, is £175 worth of nastiness.


I'll leave you with the two I entitle "Star Trek Extras":

My Favourite Podcasts

I love a good podcast. Some people work better with music in the background but I work better with chatter going on. If the radio is boring me, on goes on a podcast. My phone is stuffed to bursting point with them, to the point where I've had to delete scores of them, but these are the ones that have remained untouched.

I love 'em.


Answer Me This

Um, it kinda does what it says on the tin. Helen and Olly (and Martin the Sound Man) answer questions that listeners send in. There's a certain amount of etymological discussion and myth busting but there's even more utterly random stuff. Just as a quick example, the last episode featured the British Museum, crayon eating, the optimal marshmallow to hot chocolate ratio, Dragon's Den and the painting of the Kennedy kids in Neighbours, plus the usual amount of awesome jingles. It's always funny, often rather rude and sometimes a bit bonkers. As I discussed with Sophie last week, it clocks in around the 30 minute mark so it's the ideal soundtrack for one of my rowing machine or swimming sessions. Can't get bored with exercise when you've got something to keep you amused! Although it's maybe better suited to rowing than swimming as snorking with laughter in the pool tends to make you look like a bit of a weirdo...

(If you're wondering how I listen to stuff when swimming, it's courtesy of the best gadget in the world, my waterproof MP3 player. Honestly, everyone should have one)


Kermode & Mayo's Film Review (aka Wittertainment)

Oh I love these guys. They've been doing film reviews and discussion on BBC radio for over ten years now and this is basically their Friday afternoon Radio 5 show, with some podcast extras (hello Jason Isaacs!) chucked in for good measure. It's a fairly simple format - discussion of the UK box office top 10, interviews about upcoming films and then reviews of this week's releases - but it works perfectly. I think you do have to like a film critic to listen to them this much and I love Mark Kermode so I'm quite happy, but he may irritate you. Or you may be like my friend Lee who finds Simon Mayo so annoying he's had to stop listening. But hopefully you'll enjoy the bickering and the truly epic film ranting.


Empire

This belongs to the film magazine of the same name. You may well ask why I have two very similarly themed podcasts in my top 5. There's only so much you can say about films, isn't there? Well, no. They're very different beasts. Empire is a bit geekier and has a slightly more sci-fi bent than Wittertainment, plus they do talk about tv shows a bit as well. The benefit of it being a podcast rather than a podcast of a live radio show is that they can get away with being swearier and indulge in random discussions about general film related stuff. Thoroughly good fun!


The snappily titled DBSA podcast

This features Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Jane from Dear Author talking about books. Specifically romance books. If you don't like them then this probably isn't the podcast for you, but if you like books and you're partial to a bit of romance, I'd encourage you to give it a try. These two seriously know their stuff and the episodes that feature reader questions and Sarah & Janes's suggestions and recommendations are excellent. So are the rest of them though! Lots of interviews with readers, authors, editors and publishing types as well as much general book chat.


A Good Read

If you've read any of my Blogging Good Read posts then this podcast will seem very familiar to you. The host invites two different guests every week and they each pick, read and discuss a favourite book. YAY BOOKS! Literally the only bad thing about this is that it's not on all the time. As with a few Radio 4 podcasts, they share it with another show on a similar topic and although it's also about books and therefore still good, Open Book is just not as interesting as A Good Read! My favourite episode is from a couple of months ago where These Old Shadesgot chosen. I literally squealed with glee when I heard two big manly sports journalists/comedians discussing how much they loved Georgette Heyer.


So those are my top 5. I listen to flipping loads of others but I'm always on the hunt for something new so if you have any recommendations, let me know!

Time & Tech

I'm always a little intimidated when I see tweets saying "just scheduled blog posts for the next 3 months. Yay!!"

My initial reaction is always "woah, REALLY??", accompanied by a mixture of being massively impressed yet slightly sickened by their organisation. Mostly I'm gobsmacked these super-efficient bloggers have the time to write that many posts at once. Do they write super fast? Write really short posts? Already have a massive stock of beautifully edited photos?

Not that I've ever sat down and timed myself but I reckon a blog post can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 4+ hours, depending on interruptions/how helpful or awkward technology is being/how many photos need editing etc. I'm better and faster when I get into the swing of things. Like with any creative project, I find that as soon as I've started on one thing it sparks off all sorts of ideas. This is where a good notebook is essential, or all those fantastic ideas swiftly disappear into the mist. Where I tend to fall down is finding the time to get things written up and having the equipment available to do it on.

My problem at the moment is that my blogging is restricted by available technology. I'm the happy owner of an iPad and much as I love that for internet browsing, social media and games, it's not ideally set up for blogging.

Neither is my netbook which is getting a bit old and knackered now. It's so hard to edit photos properly on such a small screen, plus it really needs a serious sort out as it's painfully slow at the moment. I mostly use my work pc to blog on (again not the speediest machine in the world but at least it's a proper size) and that means blogging time is restricted to my lunch breaks, or after work. There's only so much you can squeeze into that time period!

This is me when Blogger and PicMonkey both decide not to play ball. It happens often.

I'm plugging along nicely at the moment and have forced myself to be a bit more productive and get things written up and scheduled. It's definitely helped. That feeling that blogging is a chore and that I'm way behind on things hasn't hit me for a while. Weekends start to get quieter for me at this time of year and it seems a shame not to curl on the sofa and get some blogging done. It's going to require a new machine though! I've been looking at Acer laptops and Acer tablets as they seem reliable and reasonably priced (a winning combo, especially so close to Christmas!) but then an ex-colleague popped into work the other day and she had a fab Microsoft Surface tablet with a keyboard/cover thingy and it was so nifty I want one of those too! Decisions, decisions...

How much technology does one girl need?