My Little Love Story- Part Ten- Our Big Day.

Read Part One- The Day We Met- here.

Read Part Two- Getting To Know Each Other- here.

Read Part Three- Moving In- here.

Read Part Four- Just Friends?- here.

Read Part Five- My New Life Without You- here.

Read Part Six- Secrets- here.

Read Part Seven- I Love You- here.

Read Part Eight- When You Realise- here.

Read Part Nine- Our New Little Home- here.

When I went to sleep on the 19th December 2009, I went to sleep as a Miss for the last time.  The next morning, I awoke with the most incredible mix of nerves and excitement.  At one point I thought I was going to be sick with the anticipation of the days events.  Looking out the window I feared the weather was going to be bad as it had been snowing the past few days, but I need not have worried- there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining and the ground was covered in a blanket of white snow.

I had a wonderful breakfast in bed with my bridesmaids and I opened some presents from Mr E and a card that made me cry.  He had made me a wonderful photo book of 'Our Lives So Far' and on the last page he said 'In a few hours time I will be waiting for you at the end of the aisle to start our lives together.'  There wasn't a dry eye in the bedroom after we read that.

Soon we began to get ready, my Mum and her friend also came and the hotel was so busy with people running in and out of rooms.  My last morning as a Miss was perfect.  We drank bucks fizz, chatted and everything went well- there were no makeup disasters and my hair went up perfectly first time!

My Dad arrived and set me off crying again and we had some photos.  Soon it was time to walk downstairs so we could start the ceremony.  My heart was literally in my mouth as I heard the harpist begin to play 'Fields of Gold,' and myself and my Daddy took a deep breath and walked into the room.

The ceremony room looked beautiful.  We only had thirty guests to the ceremony as I wanted it to be intimate- there were candles all down the aisle and it just looked lovely.  Exactly how I had pictured it.  The setting for our wedding was a beautiful boutique hotel near where we lived.  We hired the whole place out so we could truly take it over for the day.

As I walked down the aisle I glanced at my fiancee, my companion and my best friend, and he had tears in his eyes.  When I reached the end of the aisle he took my hand in his and my nerves just evaporated.  The ceremony was lovely and the vows we had chosen really relected us as a couple, they were very personal indeed.  It passed by quickly and we had a big kiss to celebrate being husband and wife.  We then signed the registrar while our harpist played 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin ' and 'Walking In The Air' from the Snowman.  After posing for a few photos we walked down the aisle to start our new lives together to 'She' by Elvis Costello.

We had a champagne reception before all sitting down to have a meal together.  It was wonderful-nearly all of my closest family and friends were there and we laughed, cried and reminisced.  After all how often do you get all your family and friends together in one room?

My Dad did the most amazing speech that was one of the highlights of my day.  As we were just having an intimate wedding day, he had asked if he could just do a toast rather than a speech, the reason being is that he is quite a shy man.  It is funny because he owns a successful chain of estate agents but at personal things like that he can be a little shy.  My parents split up many years before and although they are on friendly speaking terms, I know my Dad was a little apprehensive about spending the whole day with my Mum's side of the family so rather than make him even more nervous we agreed to no speech.  At the start of the meal he toasted us as promised and that I thought was it.  Fast forward to the end of the meal and my Dad got up, pulled a letter out of his pocket and read me the most beautiful letter. He addressed it 'To my darling Katie,' and I can honestly say there was not a dry eye in the house when he had finished- he had everyone laughing till they cried and crying till they laughed.  As he had written it as a letter, he presented it to me in an envelope afterwards- I will treasure it for the rest of my life.

After the meal, around 5pm our evening guests began arriving- in total we had 100 friends and family to our evening do and as it was only four days until Christmas we had a fabulous big party.  We had hired a swing/jazz singer who sang lots of Michael Buble type songs and some lovely Christmas classics, we had a lovely buffet and everyone drank copius amounts of alcohol and had a great time.  We had two speeches in the evening, Mr E's who made everyone cry when he spoke about our love for each other, and his best man who made everyone laugh.  Afterwards we had a disco where we danced the night away and of course had our first dance.

I had said that I wasn't going to get too drunk as I wanted to remember the day, but while I only sipped on champagne during the day, in the evening I couldn't help myself and ended up drinking a fair bit with my friends.  Just enough to help me dance the night away and have the best time.  Our last two songs were 'Never Forget' by Take That and 'Fairytale of New York' by The Pogues.  My favourite moment of our entire wedding was when the Take That song came on- almost every single person got up to dance and we were all singing- it is probably one of my favourite ever memories.  Just thinking about it makes me get tears in my eyes.

 I am so proud of our wedding day.  It was exactly how we wanted it.  Intimate and romantic, yet in the evening just a really good fun night.  The venue was beautiful, very classic with hints of modernity and our subtle decorations just added to the whole atmosphere of the place.  Everyone got on so well and I will treasure the memories forever.  Although we got help in certain aspects especially from my Mum who brought my dress etc, we also paid for most of our wedding on our own, and I am proud of the fact we managed to save up the money to make it a day to remember.

You can't really sum up one of the best day's of your life in a blog post.  The emotions of it all, the little touches, the finer details.  That day I married my best friend in the world, and since then he has been nothing but a rock to me.  He is truly a wonderful man and I am so lucky that he chose me to be his.  He makes me a better person and he is so kind and caring- I aspire to be like him.  He would do anything for anyone and what he does for me and Mads is incredible- I don't know anyone else like him.  

Our wedding day was the best day of my life so far.  Until one year and four days later when two became three....