In which I'm all about that sunset

I went to a wedding and took a bajillion pretentious pictures of myself in the sunset. Because I felt awesome, and that's what I do. I had the best time at the weekend. The wedding was beautiful and intimate. The weather was amazing, despite being in Wale,s which is pretty often wet and windy. I stayed in a hotel on the sea front that was cosy and lovely and the light streamed into the room. And I met some wonderful people, and enjoyed a delightful amount of wine looking over my university town. So you know, all the positive adjectives were happening.

Also isn't Buffy dramatic? What's going on with Faith eh?

What's the you say? You know exactly what's going on because you watched all 7 seasons when you were 12 and what on earth I am talking about? 

Well, then. I guess some of us have some catching up to do! Yep. Basically that. For the last month of so I've been watching Buffy having missed it when it was actually 'a thing' and it is now on Netflix. It is such a good show! I get why all the people love it now. But I keep making the mistake of thinking it's a comedy because of all the repartee and humour and such, and then people die and my jaw completely drops. It just keep doing hugely dramatic things and then I'm like 'but but but, this is meant to be funny!' I just don't learn. Also, I love Spike, poor poor unappreciated Spike.

I really like the composition of this photo and the little bit of sun poking through the beams, but my face is just disappointing.

There was sun in my eyes ok? I couldn't actually look forward of I just look like I'm dying.

The wedding took place at the National Library of Wales which is just a fantastic location, And where I wrote my under graduate dissertation.

We went up the hill in the little victorian built vernicular railway, which I actually find kind of terrifying, but I distracted myself with taking pictures of the sunset over the sea.

View from the cart.

Actual shot of the Bride and Groom, the really important people on the day.

P.S. Nope, still not in Japan - that's Thursday! I did manage to fit in another blog post in the end. Now I feel a little bit like that thing when you say goodbye to someone and then you have to walk down the street together, but you've already hugged and then you are like ummm, do I hug again, or did that count? So don't worry guys, no hugging is required.

In which love is real

 

This year a lot of my friends are getting married (nine weddings!) and I've been thinking again about ours.

One of the hardest choices we made for ourselves was choosing wedding hymns. We wanted to pick things that we theologically agreed with. That's pretty a pretty big ask for such liberal picky questioning folk. We ditched the very tuneful 'teach me to dance' for the creepiness of "For I was made for your pleasure. Pleasure" (*shudder*)
And whilst I love the poetic sounds of  "Immortal, invisible, God only wise" I felt that it was a bit inaccessible with all it's 'thous' and 'lauding' and 'wither and perish' weren't quite for that mood.

So we talked about this with my Dad and out of the blue, he produced this awesome hymn. It was one neither of us knew, but the lyrics were incredible. It's the most feminist badass wedding hymn we could imagine:

Let love be real

Let love be real, in giving and receiving,
without the need to manage and to own;
a haven free from posing and pretending,
where every weakness may be safely known.
Give me your hand, along the desert pathway,
give me your love wherever we may go:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.

Let love be real, not grasping or confining,
that strange embrace that holds yet sets us free;
that helps us face the risk of truly living,
and makes us brave to be what we might be.
Give me your strength when all my words are weakness,
give me your love in spite of all you know:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.

Let love be real, with no manipulation,
no secret wish to harness or control;
let us accept each other's incompleteness,
and share the joy of learning to be whole.
Give me your hope through dreams and disappointments,
give me your trust when all my failings show:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.

Copyright: Kevin Mayhew Ltd., Stowmarket, Suffolk, P14 3BW (www.kevinmayhew.com). Written by Michael Forster, dedicated to his father Eric Foster.

I just want to make some enthusiastic noises about this. This is a Christian hymn that celebrates equal love. And I'd like to highlight some key lyrics that amaze me for their rare brilliance.

"Let love be real, in giving and receiving,
without the need to manage and to own;

Let love be real, with no manipulation,
no secret wish to harness or control;"

Soon after I got married, someone told me that that Andy and I respected each other too much, because the man should be in charge of the woman, and yes, told me off for my pro-equality attitude. It was a moment that fired me up and really hurt me for a long time, I had thought better of them, and I have no time for that kind of crap that thinks that men oppressing women is some God-given right. And yet there it is in this rare Christian hymn, a celebration of love without any of that patriarchal bullshit.

"A haven free from posing and pretending,
where every weakness may be safely known."

That's too far from Tumblr posts by kids who long for a best friend to eat pancakes with in the morning and who'll read their favourite stories to them under blankets when they're ill. It practically encourages guys to let go of the whole 'I must be manly and masculine, because of my ever-present man-ness,' and just have a friendship. It's freaking beautiful.

Let love be real, not grasping or confining,
that strange embrace that holds yet sets us free;

To some people marriage is a terrifying tethering, an end to freedom. For me it's a bit like a well operated scientific study: you can experiment with all the other things and keep one variable constant.
The security we have in our relationship gives us flexibility in all the other aspects of our lives, because no matter where we go or what happens to us we have each other. 

And that security has been so true in the last 2 years, it's hard to explain exactly, but I concentrate on myself more and have greater confidence to be the person I've always wanted to be. I've written before about becoming who I always imagined I could be, whether that means I can get the haircut I've always wanted. I can demand more from my job. I can yell at cat callers in the street. I can feel damn sexy every day. Now I would travel, I would do something on my own or with him. I can think about career moves. I can give myself permission to be myself.

Because he is there, and no matter how mad life gets, or the ways I grow and change, we "accept each other's incompleteness, and share the joy of learning to be whole."

In writing all that, I'm still talking as though it is about romantic relationships, but it was actually a son, writing to a father as a eulogy. The Internet told me so. This is fascinating because when you look at it again, it makes me think of it for real as about love itself, the very concept. It's not being hetero-normative, it's just talking about love as the kind of stuff that makes us all better people. And I just wanted to share it for the delight in somehow how radical that message can be.

 As always all props and copyright for these photos go to Nom & Malc of Mustard Yellow Photography.

In which there are even more wedding pictures

So the post about the wedding were dwindling away, and real life has very much returned to my world. However, there are still left over bit and pieces that we have to do. Get new passports, change our names on everything, and of course make the photo album. Our photographers were utterly amazing and sent us 1300 photos! It's more than we ever imagined there would be, but  they are amazing. We wrestled it down to 200 for the album after going through them over and over. I thought today would be nice to share a tiny snippet more of the top selection. Last time we only had the sneak preview, so I am going to share a few more of the moments that you didn't see. Especially the cake. Because if you do read this blog a lot you might remember the posts about the cake-making and testing or how to make an origami bouquet. You might remember my wedding planning montage so now you can see all those final bits of making, happening in the real world

Wedding rings, in the box Andy used to propose to me with.

So that's what the boy were doing in the morning.

I wrote a little love letter to Andy to be read on the morning of, and delivered to him in this little tin.

Shoes! With hearts on them!

Me, reading from Now We Are Six at our first ceremony.

Jumping right to the second ceremony.

Parents.

Apparently I really like pictures of shoes

I love this picture! I love it so much it's going to be the cover for the wedding album.

Pimms. Mmm.

We had some giant games.

And a giant parachute.

There was in fact a bit of a games theme.

Kingdom Hearts themed centrepieces, which took forever to make. I do love Kingdom Hearts.

The guestbook. Also a lot of work. I layered origami paper over each other on the page behind, then cut out our names and the date with a craft knife. Then glued together.

It's the cakes! Exactly what you've been waiting for I am sure. Aren't they just the best? My mum made these!

There was dancing

and briefly sushi. People ate that so fast I barely managed any myself.

And more dancing!

So there we have it. As I said, that's down from 1300 so I'm not showing it all and perhaps my choices were a little odd. However, I hope you are interested/amused/entertained/confused by the things you have seen.

In which there are books and love

I don't like to harp on about the fact that I just got married too much, but it has left me with a whole host of fun photos to share and if not going on about the wedding, I want to share the location of our honeymoon because more people show love this place.

I am sorry if this is just be spamming with you my holiday pictures, but it's mostly books. Just to keep it exciting I put a few pictures of me in there too... and then chocolate!

So where we for all this? It's a little town in Wales called Hay-on-Wye. It's excusable if you have never heard of it, unless that is you are fond of books. In which case, I beg you to take a little holiday here too. The town is famous for its bookshops. There are 30 second hand books shops in this little place. One in a cinema, one just for crime, two for children's, one for gardening books, outdoor, indoor, huge or cosy. All the books you can dream of. It is a tiny place really, but it was absolutely perfect for our holiday. We did very little at all, but bought lots of books!

In this bookshop they had an entire basement of sci-fi books! All the books you can see here, and then another aisle full of them.

That same bookshop had a cafe we had recommended to us which served incredible food. Like chocolate and cardamom ice cream.

Indeed.

Oh my, folios. All those books across from me? Folio editions. I die from the beauty.

We ate a dinner out in a lovely deserted pub. We got served directly by the landlord who took our drink orders all night and lazed in massive armchairs. I'd been saving this dress for the occasion. I love a form dress with pockets!

This town was crazy about penguin editions. I am generally just crazy about matching books.

Perfection.

Crime bookshop.

Picnic by the river with some classic sci-fi.

My sister got us this lunchbag as a wedding present and I utterly love it!

This was the dinner I cooked up for us sitting outside with champagne in our little holiday house.

Yes, an outdoor bookshop. This one just had an honesty box.

Finally: The haul. 

After visiting a mere twelve of the bookshops over the week the above picture shows the final stack (bar about 2 I think that we got as leaving!) that we came away with. The day we left was swelteringly hot but we made it back to London with our bags packed with wedding outfit, cards, presents and books.
For those interested it included: Folio E Nesbit books, vintage Bunty annuals, hard bound art books on favourite painters, Clive Barker children's horror, lots of John Wyndham, Anne McCaffery and Tanith Lee, a book on the treatment of madness in women, a dungeons and dragons book and some more unusual folklore-inspired tales.