The day before the wedding, Sarah (my bridesmaid) and Pete, Liz, Hannah (flowergirl) and Thomas came down from Nottingham to stay while Colin went down to Reading to stay with friends. One meal in and Pete decides to leave us girls (and 1 year old Thomas) to do 'girly stuff' and disppears down to Dean's for games while I help Liz bathe the children and put them to bed. Not long after this, while Sarah was helping me put the table plan board together, Liz walks into the living room looking extremely worried and annouces that they've forgotten Hannah's dress this being the flowergirl dress that they've been promising her for months that she can wear today. Now at this point I'm not about to panic about this and just go with a change of plans but apparently a promise to a 3 year old that involves being dressed up very prettily to be the flowergirl at someone's wedding is not one to be broken so Pete gets called back and heads up to Nottingham for the long and lonely drive home with the promise that he can stay overnight and make his way leisurely back down in the morning. We finish the table plan and then get a trial run going of getting the dress on me and laced up sufficiently tight - very important!
The next morning the hair and make up lady (thanks Mandy) arrived at 9:20 so from then on I was sat getting my hair curled, make-up done and nails painted, with just a short break for a snack. Mandy left at 12:30 after also doing the bridesmaid's make-up and we then went in to dressing overdrive, with both me and Sarah trying to get dresses on, and Pete and Liz trying to sort themselves and the children out. The car arrived on time at 1:15, and following a small incident involving Thomas falling over and grazing his face on the drive, we were finally off, arriving at Lains Barn at 1:50, which despite Col's insistence that I was early was actually the time the registrar had told me to arrive so we could get the paperwork done before the ceremony.