Play-doh and pencils, getting prepared for marriage

It was with trepidation that we drew up to the car park in Great Bentley, ahead of our full day in the church with the vicars and other couples getting married this year. We’d already had a mini-barny in the car, I was worried that his distaste for spending the day under the watchful gaze of The Almighty, casting judgement on our preparedness for marriage, would spill out all over the church floor.

And so it was that we were to spend the next 7 hours of our precious Saturday reflecting on what it means to be married.. And the first question the group was asked – why are you getting married to this person? – was directed at the person whose name began with the letter at the start of the alphabet – A. Oh good, that’s me then…

So we cringed and blushed our way through that first ‘baring our souls’ ice-breaker – I’d already shed my first (and not my last) tear of the day. We sipped our teas and chomped through plates of biscuits and all started to relax, and our facilitators stepped up with their bright smiles and presentations on ipads and the meat of the day began…

What followed was quite a suprise! It turned out to be a fun, interesting and enlightening day, delivered by one of the loveliest, warmest, funniest and most welcoming group of people I’ve met – all of whom were involved with one of two parishes in the local area – Food for thought and something to explore more? Maybe…

After amusing welcomes from our lovely facilitators we were introduced to ‘Rob Parsons’. Rob wrote a book called the 60 Minute Marriage and the bulk of the content for today is discussed in his short book that we can all read in 60 minutes (and I did, two nights later). We’d be getting a copy of the book later, and Rob would crop up throught the day…

So onto the first session – Communication – here we split into groups – the drawrer and the communicator – one partner drawing a replica of a picture seen by the other partner – hillarious. We then completed a short survey and compared answers and discussed, in private. This was the first time that we have seriously discussed how we communicate. It was insightful and reassuring. And GOOD to talk.

Then we discussed time. How many hours a week do we think we eat, sleep, work, play, watch TV, shop, etc and how much time do we think our partner spends? Compare and contrast. This kicked up some rumbles amongst the other couples and reaffirmed that we are pretty aware of each others’ time and agree.

Next up, family. We cleared the tables, got out the play-doh, separated girls and boys and had to ‘make family’ on a plate. Then we came back together to view the artistic interpretations and listen to the creative explanations!

I think lunch was next and a chance to chat with other brides about the lack of ideas for bridal entrance music…

After lunch we talked about trust, leading each other blind-folded around the church and churchyard. Up and down uneven church steps and swaying spikey tree branches. Then onto resolving conflict, leaving behind ghosts of behaviours taken on from our parents, past loves or other influencers (enter the knowledge of Rob Parsons).

The final topic was our wedding vows. This was my favourite session. We had our vows written out and we reflected on the meaning of each and every line. I knew instantly that I need to learn these and recite them on the day by heart. It enables me to fully engage with them. It was quite a profound moment.

Finally we went into the church and were each handed three strands of coloured cotton tied at the top. We were encouraged to plait them into friendship bracelets, potentially to wear on our wedding days. As we sat on the pews, plaiting away, some readings from the bible were read – suggestions for the day – one around the three strands of love, the husband, the wife, and God. It seemed fitting. And the plaits are in my colourscheme 🙂 I may wear mine.

Throughout the day we also watched slideshows and heard experiences and shared stories which added to the context and relevancy of the topics covered.

Before we left we were handed Goody bags with chocolates, a small bottle of wine, leaflets, a tea towel and a candle, also a photo taken earlier that day of our play-doh creations – a lovely touch. We all left exhausted but I also felt energised and happy with a new vigour to continue planning.

Overall it was an amazing day. Not at all what I expected, and it has made me more excited, more sure, and it’s provided more depth to my understanding and, yes my preparedness for my future marriage than I could ever have hoped for when walking into that draughty church earlier that morning.

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Getting dark and getting things done

The clocks have gone back, and it’s now dark most of the afternoon. The temperature has dropped and the pavements are slippery with wet frosty leaves. We are delving head-long into winter and at this time of year I fancy “making like a hedgehog” and curling into a ball under a huge pile of warm leaves at the bottom of a garden. Hibernate, I mean.

However, it turns out, quite against the odds, that this last month has been pretty darned productive really, and I’m not quite sure why, perhaps down to a series of activities that I had lined up as we started to reset our clocks, kind of a preventative barrier of achievements to fuel me through these months.

Progress on my to-do lists:

Wedding planning. This is quite a bizarre one, it turns out, after my initial panic of “the big event”, I kind of relaxed a little, went along to the Wedding Show in London, entered a few competitions, tried on a dress at a local shop, and somehow, just over a month later I have purchased my dress – for less than half the original ticket price (freak closing down sale), won a honeymoon to Tobago for next April (nevermind that the honeymoon is before the wedding the point here is ENTER COMPETITIONS – people win!!!), decided on my wedding venue, almost completely by accident (driving home from the obvious one, I stumbled upon a little charmer – more soon…) ans started my wedding theme/idea scrapbook, thanks to a weekend at home with the gals and a copy of Bridesmaids to fuel the evening.

Oh and I found the perfect idea for my wedding cake – Rainbow cake – going to practise making it myself for my alternative Christmas this year (held on 1st December, since I’ll be in Costa Rica for the 25th…)

Personal development. Always a favourite of mine, an addiction to learning, improving, discovering. I went to an amazing event “The Future of Travel” at the School of Life which gave me a completely new perspective on travelling and gave me an insight into the pain that I sometimes feel connected with my intense desire to travel. It made me understand the origins of the need to travel and see things (ticking things off the list) – connected to history and The Grand European Tour of the aristocracy – one for another post some time, but good to realise my desires are rooted in history and not some weird internalisation of something else!

I also attended an amazing Women’s development course on Powerful Communication led my the company Aspire. This was a really amazing day, covering key channels of powerful communications, understanding the differences between feminine and masculine communication. But the key part of the day for me was the intense emotional connections I made with the women in my group. It was crazy! I think it was connected to an exercise we did where we spend a few minutes reeling off positive first impressions of each other and then asking the focus person to chose one of the qualities to amplify to become a more powerful communicator. It was an incredibly intimate and intense experience and I think it caused us to bond intensely in that short period of time. Anyway, again another blog post, but it was truly amazing.

Back in September I signed up for an online course called Unravelling. This was an interesting 8 week online course built around taking photos and writing assignments based on various aspects of your self and over time you unravel different parts of your life and being. This is all done in the safety of a private Flickr group where you can share your thoughts and experiences. I started off at full speed with this task, loving the photo assignments, struggling slightly with the written ones, but then after about 3 weeks I ran out of steam. I was trying to work out why it wasn’t working for me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s incredibly powerful and brilliant for some people, but just not for me at this time. I think it’s because it was too introspective – too much delving around in your past and issues, which felt like it was draining me of energy. I’m attracted to something that ENERGISES and INSPIRES me POW POW POW! So I kind of let it fizzle out for me, and I didn’t knock myself for doing that. Not the right time for me, not what I need right now. I need energy, almost like RAVELLING! I’m actually reading a book at the moment which is 100% what I am all about – it’s called The Firestarter Sessions and it’s completely AMAZING. So much so I don’t want to finish reading it. In fact I want to stalk the lady who wrote it and force her to coach me, I just want to be around her. She’s inspiring me to put together an online course myself to do with energising and inspiring creativity, rather than introspection. Different strokes for different folks.

Performing. YES we got back on the bandwagon. After a quick pow-wow at the start of October with two of my most fun-loving and up-for-it gals from Shimmyshimmy we decided that yes, we could pull it out of the bag and do a Shimmyshimmybangbang bellydance performance at a local open mic night. So we lined up our specialty spooky bellydance action for the Halloween night special and did it – it felt GREAT! It’s been about a year since we last performed and it was so nice to be up performing again, even if it did mean trying to move around on a teeny tiny stage whilst battling with fake bats hanging from the ceiling. Rock on Christmas open mic, Santa Baby Miss Piggy style here we come!

Work. And I finally seem to have found a bit of a breakthrough way of organising myself at work – a colleague sent through an amazing link – you have to watch the I Love Lucy clip – it’s hilarious – and then do the Ready, Doing, Done wall chart – it’s working a dream for me at the moment – I’m getting the important stuff done and everytime a new project comes in, I write it on a post it and have to get up (stretch) and put it on the chart, Blue Peter style – it gives me visibility of all my projects, is a little bit creative and makes me get up off out of my seat, if only for 10 seconds!

So perhaps I don’t have to curl up into a little ball and hide under those leaves after all. The creeping gloom and penetrating chill of an English winter can be testing at this time of year. By making small and steady steps and keeping interested in the world around us, and dreaming of those sunny places that still exist in the world, we can hop skip and jump through the frosty streets and blow a big raspberry at the murky sky. It may be dark but we’re still getting stuff done!

My Jack Pumpkin

p.s. Happy Halloween!!

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