Musing and getting grounded

I think Sun­day morn­ing is a good time for mus­ing, so that’s what I’ve been up to. (Think Win­nie the Pooh — that’s me today.) I’m also still in hol­i­day mode, slowly get­ting used to the com­puter again and think­ing about the Eng­lish Wed­ding blog and what excit­ing things I can write about next.

I read an arti­cle just before I absconded to Corn­wall about sim­pli­fy­ing wed­dings, and get­ting back to basics. In fact there were two — one from the BBC and another by Naz­zarena Arman, an Ital­ian wed­ding plan­ner. Both are thought pro­vok­ing and focus on the extremes we go to to have a great wed­ding, but give a good sense of perspective.

I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree with them mind, par­tic­u­larly the BBC one — my opin­ion is more ‘each to their own’ and if you can afford a big wed­ding, you should really go for it! There’s noth­ing wrong with hav­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of a life­time in style and lux­ury, just as there’s noth­ing wrong with a quiet reg­istry office ‘do’ and home for tea.

In fact this all got me think­ing I’m a bit of a voyeur when it comes to wed­dings. I love them — obvi­ously! I love the trends and fash­ions, the cre­ativ­ity and details, the magic that comes through the pho­tos I show on the blog.

But I think I ‘watch’ wed­dings in the same way I watch TV. Or my favourite bands. Or my sad pen­chant for Diag­no­sis Mur­der. I look for­ward to see­ing the next one, but it’s some­thing I’d watch and enjoy with­out doing the same thing myself.

From a busi­ness point of view, for me wed­dings are com­pletely inspir­ing. I couldn’t live with­out Style Me Pretty and Rock n Roll Bride. I love see­ing what trends are com­ing through for next year and plan­ning how I can inter­pret them in my own style.

From a per­sonal point of view, I squeak at excit­ing wed­ding pho­tos and any­thing new and pretty and sparkly. But if I were to get mar­ried? It’d be reg­istry office and home, I think.

So ok, enough about me, me and me. Why am I writ­ing this? Because I’ve been think­ing while I’ve been away about the whole issue of wed­dings going over­board and blog­gers poten­tially being per­ceived as fuelling the fire along with the wed­ding mags. So I want Eng­lish Wed­ding to get a bit of per­spec­tive and just be really clear about where I stand.

I’m off to write a few lit­tle posts or pages about Get­ting Grounded. My per­sonal thoughts really on how small a wed­ding can be, how not to bother with eti­quette, how to do spe­cial things, your way.

More soon.…

Claire x