leyton.org

We didn’t have a wedding list for our wedding. We’d set up home together years ago, and couldn’t really think of things we really wanted to ask for. So instead of getting “best” crockery we’d not use very often or at all (we both much prefer informal meals), we instead encouraged guests to make a donation to either Macmillan or the Alzheimer’s Society. These are both causes that Frances and I support. Alzheimer’s and cancer has affected our families and friends, and supporting these causes through our “wedding list” seemed a great way to help.

This week we finally got around to sending off the donations, cheques and tax-efficient donation forms we’d received. We’re absolutely delighted to report that we raised a grand total of £572.50p for Macmillan, and £322.50p for the Alzheimer’s Society.

So a massive thank you to everybody for their generosity!

• www.macmillan.org.uk
• www.alzheimers.org.uk

Well, it’s now a done deal. A little over a week ago last Saturday, Frances and I finally (after 8 years together) tied the knot, and got married. We were in a beautiful setting in the Trossachs, with (thankfully) wonderful weather, and surrounded by friends and family. We really couldn’t have asked for a better day.

We got back from our honeymoon on Sunday evening, which involved a few nights over in North Berwick, and then a short break to Iceland. Because they’re on my camera, a quick selection of snaps from our Iceland break are available on flickr, and I’ll be writing a bit more about that at a later date. It really was a wonderful break, and a wonderful place, but redefined the word expensive. And I thought I’d gone prepared, and had currency fluctuations on my side…

I’m in the process of getting thoughts and pictures together from the last few weeks, but as we’re back to work now, it’s going to take a little while to do. Details will also appear on our wedding website richardandfrances.com.

One item that I was really quite keen to post up was the wedding cake topper we had made. We’d kept it as a secret from everybody until the day, when it took pride of place on top of our cake. Frances did the hard work of hunting out the style we wanted, and eventually we settled on Lily Tsai. We really wanted a ‘life like’ look, having seen something similar at a wedding last year, rather than the ‘characters’ that were offered by many in the UK. We had an amusing evening taking close up pictures of faces and the pose/setup that we wanted was all part of the fun. And Frances enlisted a shop assistant to get a picture of her in her dress. Pictures of this were kept away from me, and even when the topper arrived, she kept her dress covered up, so I didn’t even see it myself until after we were married!

So Frances is shown in her wedding dress, with rose and thistle bouqet, stood atop a C++ and SQL programming book to get her up the same height as me. I’m in my wedding outfit, but with running shorts and shoes, clutching a pint of Deuchars (That part of the pose shot was the really tough part). Unfortunately it went a bit pink in the manufacturing process. Behind me is an Apple Mac laptop. The screen has a ‘root #>’ prompt (which is, I assure you, a riotously funny computer joke)

We’re delighted by the result, and it’s got pride of place in a cabinet in our front room. A lasting memento of the day. The picture also has Frances’ bouquet to the left, and one of Frances’s family buttonholes. Her family wore thistles, me and my side wore roses.

Plenty more detail about the wedding in the coming weeks.