“I want it like this, but not..." - The eternal struggles of the creative bride

Have you ever been shopping for a nice dress, or new pair of shoes, and you know EXACTLY what you’re looking for, but you just can’t find it? No matter how frustrating, and how much it just doesn’t make sense – (But all I want is a high-neckline black maxi dress with a lace trim. Jesus, how difficult can that be??) – the aforementioned item just does not materialise. And that is because it doesn’t exist.

Because you invented it.

Here lies the eternal struggle of the creative bride-to-be.

If you’re wedding planning with the H2B, you’ll at some point reach that stage – (after all the frolicking under the blankets, grand ideas of a ceremony in a huge castle and cocktails aboard a yacht on the rolling waves) – where you start to assess The Theme.

The Theme is a frustrating little bastard, designed to make you slightly bonkers during the planning stage.

“Oh I absolutely LOVE that cute little gingham pattern, let’s use it on the table plan.”

“But that will totally clash with the contemporary, black-and-silver-monochrome-thing we’ve done ‘til now.”

“Bollocks, yeah. Of course it will. Oh what a fecking shame.”

Cue despair, misery and depressive episodes, because your wedding day won’t include ALL the things you love.

"The fiancé loves his geeky comic books and superheroes. I’m more of a classic literature kind of girl. So we decided to marry the two - some weird Marvel-Darcy sort of hybrid..."

Here’s a top tip: Ditch ‘The Theme’. It’s too restrictive and mind numbing. Do what makes you and your H2B happy and you’re onto a winner.

But please, please – keep some control over matters, or you’ll end up with a wedding breakfast resembling a car boot sale.

That said – we do have a theme. Or at least, we started off with a theme. The fiancé loves his geeky comic books and superheroes. I’m more of a classic literature kind of girl. So we decided to marry the two, and came up with some weird Marvel-Darcy sort of hybrid.

The common theme incorporated a lot of lace, hessian and natural tones, to dampen the wild, wacky colours of the other half’s favourite comic books.

And that was it – no steering off track (we once had a HUGE row about incorporating bottle corks into the mix. Wow – apparently that was NOT on his agenda. The whole thing was nearly called off) – so to keep the thing from going astray, we decided to do the whole thing ourselves.

Figures.