Impulse Buys

Yesterday, I took an early morning trip to Southampton for some serious retail therapy.  I was partially intending to buy some new clothes for work (which I succeeded in doing – hurrah!) and partially intending to go to Ikea for a few bits.  No trip to Ikea has ever resulted in only buying ‘a few bits’.  There was one evening I went up to Bristol with my dad to buy a cabinet and it consisted of driving up, buying the cabinet and going home; but even then he still bought himself a coffee and me an ice cream and in any case, it had followed a previous trip that week when they hadn’t had it stock, so really it was part of that previous trip.

Anyway, it’s become something of a joke between me and my parents that any Ikea trip always has to include at least one impulse buy.  Yesterday, a lot was bought on impulse, and I ended up spending rather more than intended.

One of those purchases was what I like to term “legitimate wedding expenditure” – a total of 72 floating candles.

Ikea FENOMEN floating candles. Image from ikea.com.

It’s got to be sneeze-free

Something important to know about me is that I am a walking disaster zone.  If something goes wrong, it will go wrong for me and I’ll end up on yet another medication or walking with crutches again.  The thing is that it’s never particularly dramatic.  I don’t break bones.  I’ve never had a really serious illness.  I have what I recently described to my dad as “a litany of minor medical fuck-ups”.

One of those minor medical issues is a variety of unreliable allergies; unreliable in that they’re usually fairly well controlled by antihistamines but just occasionally I’ll spend an entire day sneezing, my face will go bright red and my eyes will turn to jellied golf balls.  Definitely symptoms I do not want to be associating with my wedding day!  So I decided a little while ago that I didn’t want to use fresh flowers in my bouquet.  If something was likely to set me off, it would probably be the bunch of pollen-filled beauties sitting right under my nose.  One of my flower girls is unfortunately similarly afflicted with asthma and allergies, so I definitely don’t want to inflict it on her either.

The next question to ask is just what I plan to use instead.  Of course, artificial flowers are an option, but you have to swing the balance between the ones which look fake and the ones which cost a fortune.

Orchids are my absolute favourite flowers, but I don’t know whether we’ll be able to afford to incorporate them in the wedding 😦 Silk Orchid bouquet from weddingshopshropshire.co.uk.

Spotting the gems

Ever since I was a tiny child, I can always remember having a thing for ‘proper’ picnic hampers.  The ones that you’d see in old films where a couple walks up a hill, her summery dress blowing in the breeze, and they eat a beautifully extravagant picnic, carried in their gorgeous wicker hamper complete (of course) with a delicious vintage wine.

From madamenoire.com