It’s been really quite a long time since we last posted an extract from our wedding diaries, probably because, you know, we got married and stuff. Much as the diary was fun to write… well actually it was fun seeing what I could get away with writing rather than the writing itself (although the consequences were occasionally painful)… diary posts such as “today I looked into venues then remembered that we were already married” somehow didn’t come across as a thrilling read.
However, there was one stage of the whole getting married thing we never actually properly got around to and that was the honeymoon. We did of course actually get married abroad and we did also have a brief (and very enjoyable) mini-moon in the lake district featuring highlights such as a flat tyre (no that’s not a metaphor), a flat spare tyre (still not a metaphor) and lots of peanut butter and badger sightings (DEFINITELY NOT A METAPHOR!!). But let’s face it, incredibly enjoyable though both our wedding abroad and the mini-moon were, both featured a quite substantial amount of rain, and so we figured that at some point we’d go somewhere warm and have a proper honeymoon.
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Our friendly neighbourhood badger
The trouble is that in the meantime it turns out that lots of other people have also wanted to get married and rather kindly invited us to record it for them and so only now, as our first wedding anniversary rapidly approaches, are we actually getting around to planning that proper honeymoon. However, it being so close to the anniversary we figured we’d make the most of it. We’ve considered various places, in fact pretty much anywhere that had a beach and access to some sort of big warm swirling mass of burning gas in the sky but are now seriously considering returning to the Island where we had the wedding itself: La Palma to enjoy the hours of relaxation that we didn’t really have that much time for in such a busy wedding week! It also means we might also be able to pick up some of the items that we spent hundreds of pounds on to decorate the venue with although that assumes we actually have some baggage allowance to do so.
And that leads me neatly onto the one problem with booking a holiday – the admin. We chose La Palma originally because of links we have on the Island making it much easier to arrange, but admittedly there are definitely easier places to get to. It’s such a small Island that not that many airlines fly to it, and although it’s certainly possible to get relatively cheap flights over, they’re very rarely direct ones, and those that are only tend to run about once a week. Of course going indirect isn’t really a problem, in fact we quite fancied the idea of spending a day or two stopping over somewhere else in Europe on the way, the only problem is that all of the websites seem to want you to choose your departure airport before allowing you to choose your destination… I DON’T KNOW!! Tell me where I can fly to my destination from and I’ll work out which one sounds interesting to me and which one I can actually fly to easily enough!!
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I realise I shouldn’t be complaining of course, after all I suppose we did make all our guests go through this same procedure… in fact through a bizarre series of events one of our guests had to go through the additional admin of getting himself a second passport mere hours before he flew but doing it for the wedding seemed somehow more worthwhile. I also realise I’m being a complete cheapskate…. there are direct flights available, it’s just that they seem to currently be about the same price as booking a luxury month long cruise on a yacht fuelled solely by caviar with Elton John performing as the restaurant pianist (yes I am hugely exaggerating before the tweets start coming in!) But the thing is I know there is almost certainly a much cheaper way to do it that can include a nice couple of days at another amazing destination and it’s just irritating to pay more than that when the only thing standing in your way is bloomin’ admin.
I also realise that this isn’t exactly coming across as the dream romantic honeymoon my wife may have fantasised about with that money-no-obstacle romantic approach, but if that’s what you’re thinking you’re forgetting one simple fact: I’m a Yorkshireman. And she knew that when she married me. But seriously, the less we spend on over-inflated travel costs the more we can spend on things like romantic meals at exotic locations… you know – McDonalds and the like.
So it’s a return to the old wedding-related admin role a year on from when I last had to tear my hair out because of it… and that bald patch was just filling in nicely too. Ah well, once the admin’s out of the way it’s time to well and truly relax with the wifey, and that’s a thought worth fighting for.
