If We Got Married Again

Roy and I are coming up to our fourteenth wedding anniversary. FOURTEEN YEARS! Our wedding was lovely, magical and has provided us with so many memories.

We talk sometimes about renewing our vows and Roy especially wants to whisk me off somewhere sunny to do it (probably for our twentieth). We also talk about how we would get married if we could choose again. We’re not saying that we didn’t love our wedding as it was however if we were to get married today we’d do things differently. For example:

The Photographer
Our wedding photos aren’t very good. We hired a budget photographer, didn’t do enough research and felt the guy who took our photos didn’t actually listen to what we wanted on the day. They aren’t awful, they just aren’t very good and as such, they are in an album in a cupboard somewhere. We don’t have a decent bride and groom photo we could put up on the wall. We’d definitely do better with this next time.

Location
We married here in Thirsk, our home and the place we love. We married in the gorgeous local church. It’s hard to imagine marrying anywhere different to this and it was so right for us at the time, however, we have joked about eloping and a few of our family have gone off and got married by themselves and it seems very romantic, and a lot simpler!

Food
We had a lovely “proper” dinner when we were married, a carvery type thing and it was great. When my sister was married years later she had a barbeque. With hindsight, I think that would be great, or a pizza and pasta type of thing. I love pasta. Yes, definitely pasta.

Theme
We didn’t have a theme as such but boy would be if we were to get married again now. Even then we wanted a fantasy-style wedding but it never really came off. Think Dungeons&Dragons, meets elves, meets more dragons and you’ll be close. I think I would make an awesome elven princess.

Memories
As before, our official photos weren’t brilliant although there were some fun snaps taken by other people. We’d definitely veer more towards this sort of thing the second time around. I love the idea of an open photo booth (rather than trying to squeeze people into a box) and being able to laugh at and share funny and awesome photos after the fact.

Flowers
Our flowers were absolutely gorgeous on the day and worked perfectly with our colour scheme. If we were to get married again we’d love the same lady to do our flowers. We’d maybe choose different flowers though, to fit into our fantasy theme.

Honeymoon
We went to the most amazing place for our honeymoon, Findhorn in North Scotland. You really have to know the place to really appreciate it. I lived nearby as a young child and going back and sharing it with Roy was amazing. He loves the place. I think this time, however, we’d skip the romantic horse riding lesson which resulted in an allergic reaction that had me looking like the elephant man and in A&E at one point.
Yup, we’d miss that out.

Your wedding day is just one day however it should be a great day, a fun day, a memorable day and should be how you want it to be.
Would you change anything about your wedding day?

A Scented House

We are smelly people in that we love a house that smells (nice). While I would love to have the time to ensure that the house constantly smells of fresh baked bread I haven’t sadly. I’ve done everything in the past from putting tumble dryer sheets down the back of the radiator (this works actually but you get bored of the same smell fairly quickly) and placed fresh flowers everywhere (Roy and I like different floral smells and living in what looks like a florist can get expensive).

Herbs from the garden have been used to scent the house however they don’t last long and with rooms with high ceilings the scent doesn’t seem to fill the room like I’d want it to.

diffuser

What I do not like are air freshener sprays, gel thingies and other air-clogging artificial smelling home scents. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried everything from the humble plugin to the mighty revolving motion activated sprays however none of them feel natural and I don’t suppose any of them are as healthy as we’d like to think. My youngest has sensitive skin and things like sprays don’t tend to do him any good.

My favourite scent provider of choice at the moment offers a range of scented candles and more which I can use to fragrance my home safely and without selling a kidney on the black market. I use a variety of candle types and air fresheners from diffusers to wax melts and enjoy the memory-invoking scents they provide, as well as the longer lasting yet not over-powering fragrance.

I always had candles burning BC (before children) however floating candles, and hot wax don’t necessarily work well with curious toddlers. Our home now (which I adore!) boasts fabulous fireplaces in the living room and dining room, our room as an original fireplace feature and even the kitchen has a useful mantelpiece over an original bread oven, all of which are fabulous places to house my candles.

My current favourites, not least because they are inexpensive and last well are wax melts. I like a mixture of scents from lavenders, jasmine, freesia and citrus scents and use these regularly. I’m not one for vanillas however the range of Christmas scented melts available is fabulous, from Christmas Tree to gingerbread. I like a scent that captures my mood, the season and which lifts a room ideally.


For rooms that I would like to have a constant yet not over-powering scent a diffuser is a good choice. Reed diffusers diffuse perfumes gradually as the scent travels up the reeds. We have one in our room which provides a pleasant but not over-strong scent all day long.

Candles are the traditional format and I enjoy both tealights and larger candles (all of which are great for giving as gifts too). I look forward to lighting a candle and enjoying the warm glow as well as the scent it provides. A candle can motivate me depending on the natural oils used or even calm and relax me.

yankee Xmas

Clearly I am something of a scent tart! I can never get enough of candles, wax tarts and so on which makes me easy to buy for! My question for you today is: What is your favourite scent and why? I’m not sure I could pick an absolute favourite myself as so many smells mean so many things however I would be curious to see what your must-have fragrances are!