Getting Hitched!

So there I was on New Years Day, laying in bed feeling slightly queasy after a late night with mums peach flavoured fizzy stuff and Jools Holland, and Jason appears before me on one knee!  Bearing in mind Moglets compact layout, I thought perhaps he was trying to get back into bed in a strange and unusual manner.  But no - in one hand he was holding out a ring!

I won’t go into all the details of who said what because quite frankly its private, but suffice to say it all ended up with me wearing a ring :-)  Bearing in mind our situation and how lots of money spent on big diamonds right now probably isn’t the best use of funds, Jason chose the ring accordingly and bought me a mood ring from Claires Accessories!  But that said, its heart shaped and perfect fit and as he says, gives him advance warning of when to stay out of my way!

We did initially talk about getting married asap, maybe making it back to the UK in time for the end of January or Valentines Day.  But after looking into the practicalities of things we’d need to do beforehand, like applying for a licence and sending them our birth certificates etc (which are in the loft in our house in Suffolk), we realised that we couldn’t move quite that fast.

So we spent some time talking about what kind of wedding we’d like.  I’ve never wanted a big church wedding with the puffy meringue dress and armies of bridesmaids, and Jason wanted to keep things small too, so that’s one thing we agreed on up front.  I know it sounds a little cheesy but I’ve always though the scene in Braveheart where the two of them are married by the priest in a wooded glen by moonlight is perfect.  If me and Jason could stand on our own in a place that feels special and marry eachother with no-one else around, and it still be legal, we’d do it.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way things work these days.  Generally, you can have a wedding in a church, or a civil ceremony in an authorised location, like a stately home or a posh castle etc.  However, within the UK you can get married in a humanist ceremony in Scotland.  The Humanist Society has been around for a while now and, since 2005, you can have them perform a ceremony for you which is as recognised and legal as any other ceremony you can have.  And it’s a totally free-format function, and without a doubt much cheaper than church or civil ceremonies - so everyone’s a winner! :-)

Once we’d discovered the existence of Humanist ceremonies, we both felt much more relaxed and at ease about the whole notion of a wedding.  I love the idea of being married to Jason but the thought of a big wedding ceremony is far to close to public speaking for my liking, and I avoided that like the plague when I was at school.  And seeing as how you cant really be married without having a wedding, I thought for a little while we were a bit snookered.  But Humanism came to the rescue, and its all turned into a bit of a runaway train since then!  We decided up front on a few key elements of a wedding that we’d like to maintain, and Jason had his input in the initial stages on some things and on others said he really didn’t mind too much either way - I chose to take that as him trusting me to get it right rather than disinterest in most of the details :-)

So, the pages on this Getting Hitched section are set up to reflect the elements of the wedding we’ve chosen to retain.  In some cases there wont be lots to say at this stage, and in other instances there wont be a pages added until after the wedding because I don’t want Jason seeing things ahead of the day.  But it’ll all get there eventually :-)