Wedding dress shopping

OK - lets start with a subject upper most in my mind at the moment - THE WEDDING! Not just any old wedding of course - my wedding - OUR wedding!! There is apparently a title for women getting married, and it's Bridezilla......... whether you intend to or not, most women turn in to this creature. I think I'm on that road..................................

Lets just re-wind a little here! I never for one moment thought that I would ever be re-marrying, not to SOH or any one for that matter. But being married is really quite important to me, that feeling of being properly together, and given my reunion with God it's become even more important for this to happen. SOH has in his words 'always managed to escape' (!) this union but together we are both very much looking forward to this happening. Oh, by the way the big day is March 20th next year.

Anyway - back to the dress! I have spent many hours looking on the Internet, and I had very firm ideas on the type, colour etc, etc....... so with this in mind, my new Salcombe friend Theresa and I set off to a very well researched shop in Exeter - La Bella Bridal. I wasn't over impressed with the name (!) but as soon as we entered the shop I guessed we would be ok. Walls of gowns in every colour under the sun, dozens and dozens of of white/cream/ivory etc. Not content with that, there was an upstairs 'salon' with even more dresses. Of course, you all know by now that I'm no shrinking violet in getting what I want so I duly issued the (lovely/patient/kind) assistant with my list of wants, hates and absolute colours I didn't want! She listened, got out the stuff I wanted - tried it on and guess what? I hated them................ So what have I bought? Well,you're not knowing that - but all I will say is this.... It's an Italian design, it's sophisticated, elegant and quite beautiful! Both Theresa and I shed a few tears - according to the saleswoman a sure sign it was the right one!! The dress won't be here till about mid February........ yes, mid Feb! It apparently does a tour of the world before it gets to Exeter - I think it gets made in Italy and goes via America and the Far East???

What else in my life at the moment, well I've had a text today from my darling son to say he and his wife are on their way home from a well deserved holiday in Spain - bronzed, fat and relaxed. Despite the fact he's far from being a teenager, in common with all Mum's I worry about him so it's nice to know he's home again and ok. Talking of holidays, SOH and I have been looking at a few days away in November for my birthday and so far Prague is top of the list..... as long as we don't hit a dreaded stag night out there! We've looked at some great 5* hotels for which we can have 4 great nights whereas if we went to the Cotswolds it would be the same price for just 2 or 3 nights - bonkers isn't it!!

Salcombe has had some really odd tides this last week, really extreme ends of the scale - the tide was out the furthest I've ever seen it last week, and yet again when its up its like there's no split between the land and the sea, just like you could walk on to it! Talking of the sea, we had a power boat race in Salcombe this weekend - it was really great to see something like that first hand but it was very poorly attended.

I'm sitting here typing feeling a bit sore and sorry for myself as I walked outside the pub this morning in heavy drizzle and before I knew it I'd slipped and fallen. No cuts or scrazes, but hurt pride - particularly as it's not a great advert for the landlady of the pub to be seen falling arse over head outside their establishment!! Anyway, at least I know I was sober..........

We're almost ready to unveil our new Autumn/Winter menu and I have a local chap coming tomorrow to help me add the menu's to the site, change bits of the website and make it much more current...... I am ok at doing most of it, but terrified at touching the wrong button and deleting the whole site! I like to look at the site stats every now and then to see how we're doing and it's amazing to see that we regularly get 30 hits every day! So, even more important to keep it smart and up to date!

I might even add some music - perhaps just not 'Here comes the Bride'...........