Wedding Wednesday: TWO Wedding Days?!

Somewhere along the line, between booking our perfect reception venue and checking we had all of the right ID documentation to do the actual getting married thing, somebody booked August the 8th at our local registry office.

I shouldn't have been surprised; I'm aware of at least three other brides who are sharing my day, and local brokels (I went for local brides and local yokels there because I'm CLEVER) probably chose the date for the same reasons I did. It's a weekend. It's the school holidays in both England and Scotland. It's 08/08 which is nice and neat. August is a popular wedding month. I get it, I get it, and I shouldn't have left it so late to get this stuff finalised. So, this morning, I spoke to my local superintendent registrar and she informed me that the 8th of August was all booked up, sounding pained and uncomfortable as I'd just revealed that I'd already booked my reception.

"Oh, that's okay" I said. Easy, breezy, beautiful. "My reception isn't like a proper reception. It's just like people getting together to celebrate. It doesn't need to be on the same day. Just, like, some time within the next week or something would be cool!" I surprised myself with the ease at which I said these words. Not as much as madame registrar, who sounded very confused, spluttered a little bit then said "is the 7th okay?"

And here's why it is:

• We get to enjoy not one, but two wedding days. It's a wedding weekend, y'all!
• We have now cut our special day in half. Meaning, the busy morning and the busy afternoon are separated. Meaning, we have time to process and the stress level has just been slashed.
• We have a moment to step back and take in all of the best moments, instead of getting caught up running from place to place to make things on time.
• Our reception is a 'blessing ceremony' anyway. I'm not even wearing my dress to get legally wed so, really, the wedding day that everybody is going to see (only immediate family invited to the legal bit) is our proper special day that we wanted to share with anyone.

A year ago, the very idea of this situation arising would have filled me with panic. But as this wedding lark has gone on, I've come to appreciate the singularity of it all. I'll never be engaged again. We'll never get married again. We'd never have had a wedding day again but, guess what? Now we've got two. And we've got two whole days to soak up the happy. :)