It finally happened! Swamps & Matt got married! I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to share this with you all, and if you’ve been following Swamps’ Sagas Of A Tattooed Bride, then you’ll understand that it had to wait and be the first wedding on Marry Me Ink for 2014!

I’ve absolutely loved sharing Swamps’ journey with you all, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! Here’s the final instalment!

Firstly, I would like to apologise for how long it has taken me to share my pictures from our big day. I swear I have only just about gotten over my jet lag, and 24 hour fight from our honeymoon. So, now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the bit fat ‘W’. Wedding. Wife. That’s right. I am a WIFE! That is taking some serious getting used to.

When you first get wed, every body you see asks you “How’s married life treating you?” In all honesty, it is exactly the same as boyfriend/girlfriend life, only we are about 12k poorer. Nothing changes, and hey, why would you want it to? Things were great before, and they’re great now!

So, before I fill up the entire blog with LOTS of photos for you all to have a mosey through, I will share a couple of my wedding day experiences with you…

If you’ve been super nervous leading up to the big day, like I was, trust me, on the day you will be so much calmer. You get to the stage where you can’t do any more so what is the point in even stressing any longer. Embrace that, take the time to sit down, chill out and just watch a bit of TV. The rest of the day is so hectic that you will be glad you had a little sit down.

Do not settle for anything but perfection. So after spending a year choosing and altering my ‘perfect dress’. The week before I was due to pick it up I decided I didn’t like it any more. I was so scared to admit it. It had cost SOOO much money. However, in the end I decided I would just try on another one. This is when I learned that actually you do know when you’ve got the one. So I managed to buy a new dress, thanks to mummy and daddy coming to the rescue and get it altered all in the space of about 4 days haha! I clearly like living on the edge. It was the best decision I made in the whole wedding process. I was so much happier with the new one. Don’t be afraid to be a diva. It’s your wedding day after all. 

Disasters do happen. After running 10 minutes or so late, which by the way is a bride’s prerogative, one of our bridesmaids’ dresses ended up with a bust zip. By this point I was starting to think ‘uh oh, im about to get wed and I am SCARED’. Soooo, we just whipped out a bit of cotton and sewed my beautiful bridesmaid Natalie right in. Who needs to take off a pretty dress anyway?!? Job was a good’un. No one noticed. Most of all, we laughed. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. See the funny side. It’s not a big deal.

People will tell you that it was the best day of their entire life. Everyone you will ever meet will say the same. I’m going to say something REALLY controversial. It was a great day, but I couldn’t say it was the best day of my life. So much goes on, you spend so much time having your photographs taken, and following the structure of the day, you don’t get to enjoy it in the same way a guest does. Don’t let the fact everyone says it’s supposed to be the best day ever make you wonder if actually your wedding was rubbish. It had a lot to live up to, and essentially all that is important is the ceremony. The rest is just ‘trimmings’. And, what ever you do, don’t skip the photos so you get to enjoy your day more. It goes SO quickly that you need the photos to actually remind yourself that you were even there.

Talk to as many people as possible. I went into the day thinking “Sod it, I’m going to have fun, if people want to talk to me they’ll come over”. On the day, I felt very different and I did try and to speak to as many people as possible, whilst still having fun and enjoying as much as you can. You just do not have time to speak to everyone. People were leaving, and I hadn’t successfully said hello to them yet. This made me SO SAD! I could have cried for a good two weeks afterwards. The guilt is overpowering. So, do your very best to speak to everyone. But don’t lose sight of the fact your day is exactly that, yours, and make sure you do what you want to as well.

If you can, hire a photo booth. It went down like an absolute STORM. Our guests were literally queuing to use it. It was worth every single dime. We used Booth Star, and they were incredible. They took care of everything. We opted for a vintage photo strip. The super lovely owner of the company Damon was our ‘booth butler’. He put the first strip of photographs into our guest book, and made sure each guest wrote us a little note to go with it (which admittedly got a little drunker looking as the night went on). The guests got to keep the second strip. It avoided that awkward passing around of the guest book, where no one knows what to write. It was the best thing about our day, and I am SO glad we decided to spend the extra pennies. It is the perfect keep sake.

We had a fantastic day, I think! I remember virtually nothing, however, I do remember the actual ceremony. It was truly overwhelming. Your whole life seems to come down to one moment. It is like no one else is in the room with you at all. I don’t remember seeing a soul except for the people who were doing readings and our witnesses. It is truly one of the strangest days you could possibly have. It’s like no other you will ever have. 

I must say I much prefer being at a wedding as a guest than being the bride. I feel like I am the only person who feels this way, but surely I can’t be?! Maybe people just don’t tell the truth as the peer pressure to have ‘the best day of your life’ is too much to deal with. However, I honestly couldn’t be happier that I am now Mrs.Bee. Getting married to Matt was the best thing I have ever done, and I am super excited for all of the adventures that we have ahead of us. It’s really easy to forget that it isn’t really about the wedding. That’s just a day. It’s the rest of your life that will be ‘the best thing ever’. Having someone to share your experiences with is ‘the best thing ever’. Just keep that in sight when things are feeling stressful, or difficult or overwhelming.

So, the moment you have all been waiting for. Our pictures… I do hope that you like them and that they give you some ideas for your big day. I feel so proud of how our wedding looked. It was the cutest thing evs – but then again I would say that!?! Matt Bee did  a super good job of putting it all together on the day. You end up just buying lots of bits and don’t really know how they will come together on the day. Thankfully, ours looked so lovely when it was all put together. I hope you like it as much as we did….

When you look back on all of your pictures I do hope that you remember your days as fondly as I do. It was a truly special time to be able to fully commit yourself to your one and only in front of all of the people that love you the most.

I would just like to thank everyone for following our little wedding journey. The biggest of those thank yous going to Rach for having this super lovely blog, and for the opportunity to share my experiences with everyone. It is another little treat for the wedding scrap book and I will look back on this as an experience I will never forget.

Its been super fun, and I cannot wait for another lucky bride to be in my shoes this year sharing her adventures with us all again!

I hope that I may have been even the tiniest bit helpful to you lovely brides to be and I will you all the luck in the worlds in your weddings. I hope you have the most fabulous days you possible could.

Its been emotional, literally.

SOOOO much love and kisses,  Mrs Bee <3

How amazing do Laura & Matt look? If you’ve been following their story during 2013, be sure to leave them both masses of love. It’s been such a wonderful year for Marry Me Ink, and Swamps’ has been one of my favourite parts! Thank you SO much to them both and to both of their wonderful photographers Claire Basiuk and Cinnamon Stewart for sharing with Marry Me Ink today!