If I had been a more clever blog planner, I would have today’s post live yesterday for Yorkshire Day! I’m saving my wedding posts for further down the line when our professional photos come in, but the lead up to the wedding was also super special. My mom and brother landed very early on the Monday morning and Sam (ever the legend) went to pick them up at the airport, whilst I started my last day of work. He hauled them around London and managed to set my brother up with a tour of White Hart Lane (my little brother is a massive Spurs fan.) By the time their tour ended, I was off work and we dragged their incredibly jet-lagged bodies around London on the number 3 bus to see some tourist sites before going home and allowing them to sleep.
Tuesday was all go – packing and getting to Kings Cross with an army load of luggage for our week up North. I’ll admit that I was very stressed about this period of time. Once your wedding dress has had it’s final steaming, packing it up for busy public transit and then the long train to Yorkshire on the hottest day of the year in England is a bit of a sanity strainer. We were able to show my family Platform 9 3/4, though we didn’t wait in the epic queue to pose for photos. And now I’d like to give Virgin East Coast trains a huge shout out – the conductor asked what was in my monstrous garment bag and when I replied “my wedding dress” we happily chatted all things wedding for a few minutes and when he returned to our carriage he came around with a bottle of bubbles and glasses for the whole family. It was one of the nicest things a stranger had ever done for me! We missed our connection at York, but the bubbles made it much easier to bear. Once we were in Scarborough, our families all met each other for the first time and the rest is happy history.
Wednesday was filled with some general wedding admin, spending time with my maid of honour (GB) who had arrived late the night before, and long walks on the shore. On Thursday, another bridesmaid touched down in the Borough, so we organised a day trip out to Whitby (I’ll blog about that tomorrow) so that everyone could get the taste of a different part of the coast. Friday was all wedding admin, setting up, etc as we did everything ourselves with the help of friends and family. We wrapped up in the village hall around 7pm and as most of our wedding guests had arrived up North by that point in time, we organised a pub meet up.
Besides a quick glimpse of York Minster and the York city walls, most of my guests were only exposed to the seaside which has its own very unique sense of character! Many, many ice creams were had on the sea front, not to mention fish and chips. We couldn’t have been luckier with the weather – in the entire time we were up North, it only rained for about half an hour!
I only had everyone here in England for a very brief time, but I couldn’t have been happier to have them here, mingling with Sam’s friends and family, and to have our lives finally fully merged together.
Have you ever dragged your family somewhere off the beaten path?
