After happily ever after

By Petah | Published: May 9, 2009
Our first dance

Our first dance

I have been married for three weeks and one day. The last Australian left just one week ago and already I can imagine why so many couples get knocked up so soon after getting married. That’s not to say that I want a kid or am hoping to get pregnant any time soon - don’t worry Guy (or Mum).

On average, most couples spend 18 months planning their weddings, we did ours in three. That means for the past three months every waking moment has been focused on the BIG DAY. We’re married now and although we haven’t yet had our honeymoon, I find myself lacking purpose. I am no longer juggling a list of 10 things that need to be taken care of, there isn’t the buzz of knowing that my parents and friends are on their way from their points around the world, the big party has happened and the thank you card have mostly been sent out.

The good thing about getting married is that nothing changes. You wake up next to the same person that you’ve been with for however long beforehand. The bad thing is that suddenly you have all of this time on your hands. In the past week I’ve decided despite the current economic crisis that it would be a great idea to buy a flat in London, looked at flats online, fallen in and out of love with about half a dozen realising we can probably afford a place in our area, only to be stymied by the fact that we don’t have a 15% deposit, I’ve also researched other methods of getting a deposit (equity schemes), organised my pension scheme (how grown up) and started looking into private health care. I also found time to make pesto from scratch, bake savoury muffins for lunch (and salads to complement them in the mornings), return the emails to my neglected friends, see a press screening of Star Trek and drink afterwards, cook dinner for a friend and negotiate the finer points of my new work contract.
What next? Clearly I need a hobby.

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A bridezilla and a shotgun wedding

By Petah | Published: March 15, 2009
Bridezilla

Bridezilla

Guy and I have been engaged for six weeks. In that time we’ve managed to book the wedding, reception, rings, favours, invites, not to mention sort out all the legal stuff that goes along with marrying a foreigner (me).

The average wedding supposedly costs somewhere in the vicinity of £22,000 and takes 18 months to plan, figures that are astonishing to me. We are getting married in a month and for somewhere around a tenth of that cost.

Weddings can get pretty crazy, I went to the National Wedding Show a month ago with Kat, Gemma and Gill and strangely enough on the day it became de rigueur to speak of dresses below £1,000 as being “reasonable”. I’ve come to the conclusion that once you mention the W word to a supplier they figure that you’ve lost all sense of perspective and they figure they can double, nay triple the price of whatever it is that they’re selling. When I read Vogue and hear them describing a £1,000 coat as a good investment, I use the highly logical cost per wear calculation which goes: price of item/number of wears = cost per wear.  That way a £1,000 coat is not so expensive, because at two seasons of wear it comes out at a mere £2.7 per wear. However, a wedding dress that you pay £1,500 for but only wear once, is rather less cost effective.

I am not a big weddings kind of a girl and I always imagined that I would get married in a casual dress. However over the short planning period, the dress has been cause for most of my bridezilla moments. Sudenly those short breezy casual dresses have lost their lustre.

However, the traditional wedding dress really only has a few variants, there is straps vs no straps, different gradations of fluffy skirt and lace vs some kind of silky, shiny satiny thing. The rest tends just to be frosting. Otherwise, they all seem kind of samey.

In my six weeks of looking at wedding dresses, I have not had a single desperate, gotta have it and can’t live without it moment about any of them. There have been dresses that I’ve liked more than others, but I’ve not had that feeling. With the standard wedding dress taking somewhere in the vicinity of six to eight months to buy and alter  (or so the wedding books tell me), this has become a particularly stressful situation.

The dress somehow metastized into a giant portent of disaster, a sign that a wedding could not be organised in just three months, that my perfect day, would somehow be imperfect. I needn’t have worried. As I’ve not been able to find something off the peg, some friends of friends have stepped in and I am very excited that I will be wearing a couture gown! Made to measure seems like such a rarified thing, but I’ll keep you up to date on the whole process.

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Stockholm: not for boozehounds

By Petah | Published: February 23, 2009


Stockholm is a beautiful city of storybook buildings, romantic bridges, great pie and the strangest alcohol purchasing system I’ve ever seen. Basically, if you want to buy alcohol you have to go to something that resembles a state run Argos for booze called the Systembolaget. The state-run monopoly regulates the sale of alcohol to: “help limit the medical and social harm caused by alcohol and thereby improve public health.” You go there, you get your ticket, write down which wines you want and you wait, wait and then wait some more. Anyway ,we were only in there to get one bottle. Guy made the epic error of not carrying his passport with him, so that when he couldn’t provide proof of grown-up-ness she couldn’t serve him. Turns out she wouldn’t serve me either, as I would be providing alcohol to Guy, who in the state’s eyes was now a minor. Anyway the scary bulldog lady behind the counter summarily kicked us out.

Other than that, Stockholm is a wonderful city. One thing I would reccommend for Stockholm and for most cities is the Wallpaper City Guide. You should probably use it in tandem with a more comprehensive city guide, as it doesn’t always give you details on all of the tourist attractions. However, it does provide a guide to some of the more stylish things to do and see in the city, with suggestions of where to go from locals. I suppose the concept is to provide a more authentic experience of the city. I see it as more an idea of where to see and be seen, rather than where you can pick up some dodgy tourist tat.

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Going to the chapel and we’re goinna get married

By Petah | Published: February 22, 2009
Where Guy proposed to me

Where Guy proposed to me

The last month has been dizzying, but wonderful. Guy proposed to me at the end of January in Stockholm at sunset, on a bridge near the castle with a gaudy plastic ring.  We celebrated with raspberry pie and champagne. It’s been a challenging few months, while we’ve been trying to figure the best way to make sure we get to be in the same place. It’s wonderful to finally know where and how we’re going to live together.

It’s been quite exciting telling everyone and it will be even more exciting when my family and some friends come over to celebrate in April (yes, April this year, the April that is less than two months away).

My engagement ring

My engagement ring

Aside from getting engaged, Stockholm was wonderful, however very cold. It is a very pedestrian city and we walked everywhere. However, everything took about three times as long as we would need to stop every half hour for amazing Scandinavian hot chocolates to warm up! The city is gorgeous, with fairytale architecture and cobbled streets, but that is a separate post. I’m  now trying to figure out whether I will become Petah Cocker, Petah Marian-Cocker, Petah Cocker-Marian, or just keep Petah Marian. Part of me feels as though I would be giving up part of my identity if I give up my name, as well as being terribly old fashioned. What do you think?

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