#WeddingWednesday - Fake tan and Mother of the Bride

I'm really getting into the swing of wedding planning now and enjoying it. Around Christmas it just felt like this huge mountain to climb but now I get to help people decide what to wear (I'm talking Mother-of-the-bride) I am loving my role as bride-to-be! In fact, the past week has been awesome! Mum (previously known as Catherine to me but that's for another blog entirely) and I hit the shops last Friday to get her kitted out for her impending role as MOB. It's early, I know, Rich and I aren't getting hitched until October, but this year there is a lot going on - my sister is due to give birth to her 3rd child in a couple of weeks and Rich's family are having an epic family reunion in Canada. Both events, though vastly different, require a lot of planning and commitment.

My brother David got married about 18months ago and Mum was clear she wanted something "different" to wear for my wedding than for what she'd worn for Davids but after a few uninspiring dresses were passed in and out of the fitting room in one shop we had an emergency MOB pow-wow in the car,

"I think we should keep looking - by the time we get to July there will be summer holidays and then we'll hit September and it'll be the wedding before you know it."

"I agree - let's go to Harrogate."

So peddle to the metal we zoomed off in Mum's little red fiat. About 2 minutes after entering the next shop Mum appeared around a corner clutching a dress with a grin as wide as the San Francisco bridge. That was that. She tried it on, looked phenomenal and we were back on our way to Halifax in no time. It was a truly special day - again, one that I hadn't anticipated. To have that day, just us, was wonderful. Another job has been crossed off the list and the visual image of my mum in the dress, the colour of the material and accessories, means that I can picture the wedding in my head in even clearer detail. Which for me being a visual person is heaven!

There's an old tradition that the MOB gets to pick the colour of her outfit first, then the Groom's mother picks her outfit colour. Navigating theses old traditions is weird - do they still matter? I've heard people say "It doesn't matter, wear whatever you want." But we all want to be individual and our clothes are our way of doing that. So with a few texts and conversations here and there the MOB and Jennifer, Rich's Mum, will be wearing different colours come October.

What else? We've done a mock-up of the seating plan and are going for a tasting session in a couple of weeks. I just want Fish and Chips - what happens either side of that I'm not bothered. And I'm still thinking of my general bridal get-up after someone looked at my pasty skin this week and said

"You are getting a spray tan for your wedding, aren't you?"

Me and spray tan, fake tan, indeed normal tanning have never really gotton on. After a summer working in a bar in Marbella during uni I was so brown when I came back I looked like a wooden sideboard. It might have had something to do with the carrot tanning oil I was using....After that I've never really been able to tan so pale and interesting it is. Sali Hughes' book "Pretty Honest" has a wonderful chapter on Bridal make-up. I love this paragraph:

"Ringlets on straightening-iron devotees, fake tan on pale skins, sickly pastels on those rarely seen without bold lips and dark sultry eyes. Padded bras on flatties, elaborate fake hairpieces on short hair. Enough! A wedding day is not the time to play at being a flaxen-haired virgin from a Disney fairytale. It's the time to look your most amazing."

And with that you have your answer to the tanning question.

Til next time...x