Fun Day!

Today was officially Jen & Sal's day of fun. Sal's started off less fun with a trip to the gym while I sat in the sun in the back garden making more order of service. - almost finished now. I was also listening to the Hairspray soundtrack which I turned the volume down on after I realised there were quite a few people walking past the back wall and it was on very loud, while I didn't definitely hear any comments I did think there were possibly one or two people suggesting that they weren't appreciating the music as much as I was!

Fun day moved onto Spa treatments at the Hotel, Sal had the facial while I had the back massage (and I'm aching a little bit from it now), after we'd relaxed for a while we moved onto find somewhere for lunch. We ended up at Frankie & Benny's with good intentions that we were both going to have salads but then the menu came and we changed our minds very quickly - Sal took a little bit longer than me but then went for the pizza....and the cherry crumble, while I had the chicken sandwich....and the waffle with ice cream..... it was lovely!

Lunch was then followed by shopping and then an evening of order of service making. Not the most fun end to the day but we did get them finished at least. I have my task list for tomorrow, while Sal has her hair appointment I'm making myself useful collecting the hoop from the bridal shop, the pottery that they painted on the hen day, a few more shopping things to do and waiting for Mum & Dad to arrive later in the afternoon. My main task is to keep Sal calm...hopefully I'm doing ok on that one so far!

Dress Collected - Tick

I think I've finished everything I need to do on my list of wedding things before I go to Sal's. Laraine has shortened my dress for me so now I don't need to hitch it all up just to be able to walk in it and I've been to collect it this evening. Now I just need to add all these things that have been collected to the list of things to remember to take with me, I don't think Sal would be too impressed if I arrived without my dress!

I've got a lovely long week off work to look forward to now so that we can get all the final tasks done before the wedding. I don't think there's too much to do - but it sounds like I hadn't completely handed over my order of service duty and we'll be finishing those off when I get there. Only 9 days to go now :)

New Hair

After the hair trial last weekend didn't go quite as planned I've decided to leave my hair down for the wedding but get it cut shorter. I described to Kirsty, the hairdresser what I wanted - as instructed by Sal before I got there. At one point Kirsty did check with me that I was ok as I think there was a rather pained, scared, unsure etc look on my face, to which I replied 'It's very short isn't it?' I suppose it was a bit late then for her to stop so she just smiled and carried on chopping!

Thankfully she did a great job and I'm really pleased with it, 3 weeks for it to get a bit of length back and then it should look good for the wedding.

Wedding Preparations

As it's a bank holiday weekend I added a days holiday in on Friday and travelled down to Sal's on Thursday night. It turned into a weekend of wedding preparations mainly so we have collected the wedding dress (it's lovely!), made all the place cards and all the outsides of the order of service are ready. We've also met with Simon who's arranging the band to discuss music and been to the hairdressers for a trial to see what we're having on the day. Sal's hair looked lovely, I tried to have it a bit curly but ended up looking more like Annie with really tight curls so have decided against that one!

As the weather was so good this weekend then we've also had a trip to Hillier Gardens on Sunday morning, it was the start of the annual Art in the Park - I'm not sure if that's the official name for it I might have made it up - so we spent a couple of hours wandering round and finding the expensive pieces that we'd never buy and then went for scones in the coffee shop.


We didn't manage to tie in my weekends here with a Hen Night in Southampton so the girls will be taking Sal out in 2 weeks time and then in 4 weeks and I'll be back for the last minute preparations.

Eurovision

Tonight was the annual Eurovision evening at Gillian's. I'm always amazed at how much Eurovision history Gillian can remember, if you asked her which country won in 2003 she'd be able to sing the song and probably recall most of the outfits that were worn that year as well.

I had pointed out to her earlier in the week that the semi-finals were on TV so by the final on Saturday she could give a description of each of the country's singers, outfits, dance routines and songs. As always there were badges, scoring, whistles and a box of chocolates to win in the sweep stake. As there were 5 of us then we had 5 countries each, so as each one performed we cheered for our countries.

As there was a change in voting rules this year then it made it so much more exciting to watch the scoring and when the UK gets points it's even better! A respectable 5th place for the UK and I'm pleased to say that for the second year running I won the chocolates - Go Norway!

New York, New York...Part 4

Monday turned out to be another early morning, which was probably good because we needed to pack before another breakfast at Cranberry Cafe. The weather forecast once again wasn't great so we set off for the Rockefeller Centre and an indoor tour of NBC studios. There wasn't much to the tour, a history of NBC, a visit to the Nightly News studio next door to MSNBC and a make up room. We'd already toured the gift shop as we had an hour to kill before the tour started so we set off for Carnegie Hall for the second tour of the day, collecting Sal's now incredibly sparkly ring from Tiffany's on the way.

We collected tickets at Carnegie Hall but had time to go for lunch before it was due to start. We had a lovely lady called Sheila Weinstein show us round, the tour was changed slightly as they would normally spend time looking round the auditorium but the Minnesota Orchestra were practicing for their performance that evening so we were able to sit and listen to them practise for a while. After the tour it was back out into the rain and back again to the Cranberry Cafe to satisfy my craving for hot chocolate. We stayed for two cups as the rain was worse and it didn't seem worthwhile doing the last thing on the list which was to go to Central Park so we'll wait for a better time of year and go back for that one in the sun.

It was soon time to collect our bags from the hotel and head to the bus station to get the bus back to the airport. The whole check in experience this time being much smoother and faster than 3 days earlier leaving time for a little shopping at the airport. I don't remember the flight back much, I was asleep before we even took off. I woke up after an hour as the food was coming round so had something to eat and watched He's Just Not That Into You and then fell asleep again, woke up for a croissant for breakfast and then again in time for landing.

So now it's back to work and planning for when I can go again!

New York, New York...Part 3

It pretty much rained all of Sunday. After our usual start to the day with breakfast in the Cranberry Cafe we took the subway to the end of the line at South Ferry and took the ferry from Battery Park over to Ellis Island. We'd decided not to bother with getting off at Liberty Island, having taken all the pictures of the Statue the day before and as it was pouring down we just stayed on the ferry to its second stop at Ellis Island Immigration Museum. As we didn't have any ancestors to look for in the records we just looked round the exhibits instead, downstairs are the statistic based exhibits with all the facts and figures. Upstairs in the Great Hall there isn't much to see but the hall itself is an amazing looking room. Off one end deceptively hidden by what we thought was a mirror and ignored it the first time, was a trail of rooms following the experience of the immigrants when they came to Ellis Island - medical tests, legal questions, mental tests etc.

After leaving the ferry back in Battery Park we walked in the rain up to the World Trade Centre and to ground zero. From seeing the view of the skyline you can see where the twin towers are missing from the picture and it's amazing seeing the space on the ground that two huge towers stood there, there doesn't seem to be enough room somehow. We walked through alongside ground zero to the Winter Garden at the World Financial Centre, and after a bit of shopping stopped for a bit of chinese for a late lunch. My learning point for the day was always go for what you want off the menu, I thought it was a shame to all order the same main course so I went for angel hair pasta and veg which was a bit bland and then had to steal some Lemon sweet and sour pork from both Mum and Sal's plates.

We got the subway back uptown for a bit of shopping in Bloomingdales, take Sal's ring into Tiffany's for a clean, and a quick look at St Patrick's Cathedral and Grand Central Station and then back to the hotel for a rest. By 9pm Sal and I were very settled in the room and ready for staying in for the night but Mum persuaded us to get up as planned and we walked over to Rockefeller Centre to go to the Top of the Rock. We'd decided to see the city from here at night so that we could see the Empire State lit up, this was only half successful as the fog covered the top of the Empire State so we could only see as far as the band of lights. The view of the city was great though and we were pleased that Mum had insisted that we get out of bed!