However throughout the process of planning a wedding and all the learning we’ve done throughout I’ve wanted to finish it all off by writing a blog about my perspective of planning a wedding and maybe even throw in some helpful advice for those who may end up planning one in time to come.

The Beginning…

So we got engaged last July in Italy and knew that we wanted to get married this year…in fact we’d pretty much picked a date before we were even engaged! During our second week in Italy (the week after our engagement) our friends Tim and Wendy came out to stay in a nearby villa with their daughters and naturally having seen the engagement on Twitter they offered congratulations and advice.

There have been two pieces of advice that helped us immensely throughout the wedding planning and the first came from Tim in Italy. Being a minister Tim has helped many couples as they’ve prepared for their wedding and his advice to us was simply ‘be selfish’, informing us that there’s so many people who have preconceptions about how a wedding ‘should’ be that it’s easy to get bogged down trying to please everyone and that you need to remember that it’s your wedding not anyone elses.

This advice was enforced by a few other married friends of ours too and certainly proved absolutely invaluable…it meant we had to do some difficult things and make some difficult choices but looking back whilst we’d change the attitude of some towards us during our wedding planning I wouldn’t change any of the decisions we made in planning our wedding.

Generation Gap

It’s amazing how weddings differ and I guess what was fairly unusual (historically) about our wedding was that Jo and myself did all of the planning ourselves, between us we designed table decorations, picked colours, designed invites and did pretty much everything in between. For me this joint effort really reminded us of our similarities…there weren’t arguments about ideas it all just came together organically. There was so much unity between us in our planning Jo said it seemed odd buying a dress without me!

As we flicked through the photos last week and reminisced on the day Jo glanced at the image of the room and remarked ‘that’s what success looks like’.

Involving Friends!

One of the nicest things about our wedding was the amount of our friends that were involved. As part of the service we invited a selection of friends from all the parts of our lives to pray for us which was a really special moment, we had friends leading worship in a band, Stuart being our master of ceremonies and leading some games (the best reception idea ever, I might add!), and Steve driving is very nice Audi as a wedding car.

On the other side we also seemed to have a collection of people involved who were also Christian, our flowers were done by the churches’ flower guild, the cake baked by a lady at my parents church and our photographer went to a friend of Jo’s church but was also a professional photographer (http://www.bexphotography.co.uk…highly recommended…fantastic photos and top bloke).

On top of this Tony who led the service has known me since I was 11 and known Jo a few years too as we’ve gone to midnight mass and led their youth work on the church weekend away on one occasion.

All of this really made the day mean so much more…if you can get mates involved it’s fantastic…don’t get caught up with professionals get caught up with what means something to you!

Wedding Preparation

The most difficult thing to find time for when planning a wedding over distance was time for wedding preparation…we found a couple of opportunities. One in the form of a fantastic afternoon with St Andrews’ Church and the second on a lovely evening with Phil and Christine (the minister and his wife of Jo’s Sheffield church).

We’d also set out to read ‘The Marriage Book’…which we failed miserably!

My Final Advice…

Whilst I could ramble on forever about our wedding and preparation, our struggles and celebrations there’s just a couple of things I’d like to finish with…firstly my top 4 pieces of advice for planning a wedding:

1. Be Selfish - You’d be amazed at who has what ideas about weddings but you need to be able to tell people to butt-out, ask yourself what the two of you want as a couple and stick to that. For us this involved making some difficult decisions and discovering sides of people that neither of us liked but we know in doing that we were able to have the wedding we wanted and not be looking back now with regrets (thank you to all our friends who listened to us and prayed for us in our difficult situations)

2. Personalise! - Forget tradition…as an addition to advice 1 it’s your day so plan what you want…I hope that people walked away from our wedding saying ‘that was very Jo and Mark’ so make that you’re aim…and plan together (as a couple), you probably won’t regret it.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask - Money is a massive issue with weddings and we saved some by having people we knew get involved whether it was cars or cakes and actually in having people we knew do things it made the day mean a lot more. There’s nothing like having a good friend drive you from the church in his car…if nothing else you don’t have to start the awkward conversation with ‘Been busy?’.

4. Make Time For Yourselves - Jo and myself spent a year pretty much just talking weddings and probably neglected us too much…try and make time for things other than weddings. I once heard someone say that for every 1 hour of planning you should have an hour for yourself…it’s far more difficult than it sounds!

Finally to finish this massive blog post I want to publicly thank my parents who were fantastic throughout the whole wedding process…they visited the venue, painted twigs, created a ‘wedding room’ in their house and were genuinely fantastic.

I put them all online yesterday which you can view online here however my favourite by a long shot is this one (although I don’t really know why!)

In 4 days time (Saturday) Jo and me get married! It barely seems like yesterday that we got engaged in Italy and after much planning the ‘Jo/Mark’ wedding plans are nearly done…I made a last phone call today to the reception venue, sent a few final e-mails, checked out cake progress and spoke to our DJ and other than writing a grooms speech (in which I’m told I can’t make incest jokes…although I thought pointing out having 2 sets of parents at a Norfolk wedding being novel would be amusing) we’re ready!

Jo’s been doing a few last minute bits and pieces of prep too and the last major things now are just to meet with Steve (who’s kindly driving us) and have a rehearsal on Thursday night, then doing a few bits Friday and eventually having a few beers with Joel and some others Friday evening.

Whilst I’m sure wedding photos will surface on this blog Jo and myself are also planning to write a ‘wedding blog of 2 accounts’ in the next few weeks where we shall try to be as open and honest about our experience of planning a wedding…hopefully adding some tips, frustrations and an insight into how we planned our wedding.

I’ve also been thinking about doing a blog on spiritual warfare and how it linked into our wedding prep which may surface sometime next week if I have time to write it before the wedding…it may sound like an odd combination but it feels like it makes sense!

Anyway there’s a brief wedding/life update…if you’re coming on Saturday please don’t bring confetti…we have bubble…and pray for us (and good weather).

For Lucy’s 21st a group of us headed up to the Hull branch of ‘Napoleons’ to celebrate! The only experiences I’ve ever had of gambling come from 2 very different perspectives.

The first perspective is that of the tacky gamble…I grew up being taken to holiday camps (which I might add I enjoyed) and spent my teenage years near Great Yarmouth and all these places are filled with amusement arcades tempting you in to throw 2p’s down a chute or to pay 20p to attempt to win a child-manufactured teddy bear from a rigged machine (yes the cranes are fixed!).

The second perspective is right at the other end of the scale and come from watching television shows like Hustle when they attempt to con a huge casino where people have more money than sense…dressed in their suits and using their casino jargon the Hustle team would attempt to con casino owners without being caught by the security.

Thankfully Napoleons is far more like the Hustle casino than the Great Yarmouth arcades but it’s a very different world to that I’m used to. My parents have never really had money to throw around and being a Christian I’ve grown up with fairly sensible teaching of money yet a fair amount of those in the casino had evidently not had this upbringing.

There’s something very surreal about watching someone throw £50 (of tokens) on a 1 in 50 chance number on a roulette table and not be remotely phased that they’ve just lost £50….there’s equally something surreal about watching someone win £150 and throw it straight back on.

The nice thing about the whole experience was that we didn’t spend the whole evening losing money but we had a very nice 3 course meal first and a few drinks (good old diet Pepsi!) before exploring the Casino area with the £5 of chips we got with our meal.

I guess the important thing before doing any form of gambling is to limit yourself and think sensibly about things beforehand…whilst many Christians would argue that gambling is wrong I believe the bible merely teaches that the love of money is wrong…so gambling is fine as long as you’re sensible and it doesn’t come before God (or your family…bets vs meals is silly!).

Armed with my £5 of chips I headed to roulette and fairly quickly got the hang of it and equally as quickly lost my ‘free’ chips so I took some time out before spending another £5 and that was it. The roulette was fun but it was far more luck than judgment (as are many of the games in a casino).

So all in all I really enjoyed my Casino trip…I won’t be becoming a regular but it was a great night…certainly more sociable than a night club.

and how did I do with my 2nd £5?

Somehow I managed to win several times and cashed in £25 and walked away with a profit! Good times!

I first saw The King Blues back in September as part of Hull’s ‘Freedom Festival’ where they played a set of about 5 songs and got the whole of Queens Park (about 2000 people) to shout ‘F*** the BNP’ and whilst the sentiment is nice I wasn’t sure that a park full of families was the place for shouting it…perhaps ‘We don’t like the BNP’ would have been more appropriate.

Last night after the usual mix of good and awful support acts the King Blues took stage…lead singer Jonny Fox launched into the first song dancing around madly with his ukulele whilst the rest of the band joined in.

The band continued through an energetic set including ‘Underneath this lamppost light’, ‘Mr Music Man’ and ‘Let’s hang the landlord’ mixed with passionate speaking about how the people have the power…ringing true to the anti-facist vibe of the band. They also played some new songs including ‘Headbutt’ which has been on their Myspace fo a while now, like headbutt all the new songs took a more heavy punky feel about them.

All in all a fantastic gig…the passion and energy from the band really made the gig!

I have a love/hate relationship with London…I got quite used to the business of our capital city during my 3 years studying with Oasis with the more-regular-than-I’d-have-liked trips to London…catching a 7:15am train, rushing past the slow moving crowds at Kings Cross Station and shoving my way onto a tube train which could only be described as a business-man mosh-pit.

Whilst I didn’t amazingly enjoy those early mornings, long days and the general business of London I do look back on that time with some fondness…largely the sarcastic comments we’d make during lectures to each other…10 youth workers in 1 place is not a good combination as we seem to put on the persona of the young people we work with!

However despite my dislike for busy places London is a great place to visit occasionally…it’s crawling with interesting stuff to do and places to do and on Friday myself and Jo went down to London to ride the eye and go on the boat cruises (the Christmas present I got for Jo after she talked about wanting to visit London properly).

The London Eye was the view from the office block where I had lectures and so actually riding it was an interesting experience, we had a beautifully clear day and so could see for miles and miles from the top and the experience of being inside this pod looking down upon London was great…although a glass floor may have been the icing on the cake.

Surprisingly though the river boat was my favourite bit of the day….we took the boat from the London Eye to Greenwich and the commentator on the boat was fantastic…he was informative but at the same time interesting mixing his facts with pub guides, sarcastic comments and a generally dry sense of humour.

The other part of London we spent some time in was Camden Market…we visited Camden back in January and the market there is fantastic but continues my love/hate relationship with London. The hundreds of stalls are great to browse through, the smells of the Chinese, African, Mexican and numerous other foods are fantastic and make you hungry and some great little shops hidden within the madness.

The problem with Camden is that all the sellers are very pushy which tends to put me off having a proper browse because you feel under pressure and whilst for many people I suspect this sells plenty for me it just puts me off and I wander away!

The best bit of Camden was this independent music shop on the main street full of records and CD’s…I walked away with Blood Sugar Sex Magik (Chili Peppers) and Welcome the night (the Ataris) for £1 each…bargain!

To conclude this post here’s some photos….

I haven’t really updated my blog on wedding stuff much largely because we have a wedding blog but I thought today I’d give a very brief update!

We have so far organised: church, reception venue, meal choices, guest list, suits, website, photographer, flowers and invites. We handmade all the invites (video blog below) and posted them about a month ago. In the last few days we’ve sorted our order of service, finalised the worship band and I’ve sorted out the bans being read here in South Cave.

All in all doesn’t feel like there’s much to do…bring on July

Here’s the video blog...more over at www.markandjoanna.co.uk

My taste in art seems to be a little bit odd….for example I LOVE the artwork attached to Less Than Jake’s album ‘Anthem’ which is very pop-art in style and when I was in London I took a couple of moody photos (photo 1 | photo 2).

I quite like odd, empty, desolate or quirky pictures and so on Friday whilst down the bomb shelter (as you do) in South Cave I took this photo which I really like.

Now alongside this I’ve been mixing loads of my own songs and wanted artwork to go with them so that there’s a booklet when I upload the whole thing because I love album artwork and love being able to read the lyrics….so I’ve added the above photo to some lyrics and I really like the outcome!

Whilst I love marmite and love this idea I am a little cross about the prospect of a marmite cereal bar and the reason behind my anger and upset is quite simple…ME AND HEIDI CREATED THE CONCEPT FIRST!

Back in September (link) I blogged about our attempt to make Marmite flapjacks which I believe this cereal bar is obviously trying to be…so if you buy a Marmite cereal bar in the shops remember the concept was here first!

From Baking With Heidi & Marmite

I have since watched series 1 and 2 as well and I find that with Skins I become more attached to the characters than with other series. Skins has this trend of focusing an episode on a character and whilst the other characters appear in that episode it gives you a chance to get to know that character and it’s always struck me as clever that whilst you focus on a character a wider storyline is going on.

Having said that I’ve felt disappointed with series 4 as it’s aired over the last 6 weeks, the characters haven’t developed much and whilst the writers have aimed for a darker side they seem to have lost the merging of characters within the episodes. However my urge to blog on Skins comes from watching episode 7 where the series have suddenly got good and back to how Skins should be.

So who’s watching this series of Skins? What are your thoughts so far?

I’ve been going to gigs since I was 17 and it’s the first gig I’ve been to with seats and so even upon entering the venue there was a very different vibe about this gig, City Hall in Sheffield is a lovely venue quite a contrast from the sticky floored O2 Academy in Sheffield I last went to in November to see Bowling for Soup.

The crowd were warmed up by musician Charlie Winston who, whilst being a very talented musician didn’t quite do it for me…not sure why….however this didn’t take any anticipation away from the arrival of Newton.

With some light background music Newton Faulkner casually strolled onto the stage, picked up his guitar and burst into ‘Intro’ and ‘Badman’ from his album ‘Rebuilt by Humans’ before continuing to go through the majority of songs from both his albums with a few quirky sections such as a short cover of ‘you spin me right round’ and concluded the gig with his famous 1 man cover of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘I’m not giving up just yet’.

Throughout the gig there was something very refreshing about the gig, Newton joked, made some comments, explained what he was doing and even tuned his own guitars giving the impression that even though he is really well known he is still a pretty humble man.

For me as a music geek my favourite thing about the gig was the transparency. All but 1 song was played by Newton all on his own combining guitaring, tapping his guitar in a variety of places and using a series of pedals to play strings, synths and a variety of other noises (oh and he used a cassette at one point!). To accompany this one man band was a couple of cameras positioned so you could see him doing everything showing that Newton Faulkner is truly a musical genius!

All in all one of the best gig’s I’ve been to and Newton Faulkner is well worth going to see!

I had a nice new years eve last night with Jo at Ben and Laura’s lovely new house with some other friends playing some games and having a nice chilled out time.

It’s bizarre to think that we have ended the noughties (as they call them), it only seems yesterday that I was staying up till midnight for the first time in my life waiting for the new millennium and here we are 10 years later!

2009 has been a good year, I’ve driven to Italy, finished uni, graduated, got a job, moved house and perhaps most excitingly got engaged!

2010 is going to be good…this time next year I’ll be a married man…exciting stuff!

As for this blog I hope to continue posting a mix of interesting and mundane things that catch my eye and post lots of new thoughts etc.

I hope all of my readers have a fantastic 2010!

Tomorrow Jo comes to South Cave and we’re off to a 3 course meal at church tomorrow night which I’m looking forward too…gonna have to find my tie!

Finally in this very short update my blog now snows…appropriate I felt for the season and weather…I’m hoping to take some snow photos tomorrow!

Disclaimer: I am definately straight, Jo is a female and this post is very much tongue-in-cheek