We had our meeting with Father Geoff last weekend, which all went great and he was really pleased with how much we'd already planned for the ceremony.  Then on Sunday morning we went to the family service at the church, where Geoff pulled out his guitar and played a song and got a few people to make man shapes out of plasticine to explain his discussion about the bible, and we actually really enjoyed it and were so pleased that Geoff would be marrying us on our wedding day.

Then at the end of the service, Geoff dropped the bombshell that he has been at Gosfield Church for nearly six years now, and the time has come for him to move on to another church!  We spoke to him after the service and he assured us that everything would be fine, and he wanted to tell us at our meeting but he had to do the announcement to everyone at church first.  It's likely that he'll be moving on at Easter, but there's always a chance that he may be able to come back to do our wedding, so we're both really keeping our fingers crossed tightly that he can.

Everything else is moving along swiftly now too!  We've put down a deposit on the suit hire and we've had a look through our florist's portfolios to get ideas for flowers.  I stopped at my chief bridesmaid's house last night and we spent the evening with two of my other bridesmaids, gossiping about the wedding, the hen party and reminiscing about old times.  Six months and eight days to go...

We had a lovely Christmas with family and a great New Year's Eve with friends, and last weekend we spent another fantastic evening with friends in Lincoln for Matt's surprise birthday.


Now that's all out the way, the countdown to the wedding is really kicking off!  We've put together our (mammoth) list of everything to get done over the next few months, and this week we received our six-month planning portfolio from Spains Hall; there's so many questions to answer!


Matt's been working hard on planning the honeymoon and summermoon, of which I know very few details, and all my lunchtimes and train journeys to work have been spent researching things and making lists and designing things.  This weekend we're heading back to Essex as we've got a second meeting with the vicar, to discuss the hymns and readings we've chosen for the service.


In other news, Matt says thank you to everyone for all the birthday cards and messages, and we have placed our first advert in a magazine for Aqua Rose!  The Starting Twogether East Berkshire edition.  We are also shown on and linked to the www.startingtwogether.com website.  All very exciting!