Wedding envy

One of the most lust-worthy weddings EVER. Sigh.
Beautiful Aisling, captured by Simon Fazackarley, via Rock My Wedding

So. Yesterday, I announced that this week would officially be known as wedding week here on the blog. Unfortunately, I only decided that this week would be wedding week about three seconds before I wrote and published that post. "It'll be fine!" I thought. "I have LOADS to say about weddings! I love weddings!"

And it's true, I do love weddings, even now. I still subscribe to a couple of the more awesome wedding blogs, and I follow a few more wedding industry tweeps than I care to admit. I figured I could churn out a week's worth of wedding-related goodness in my sleep, no bother. 

One post in particular that I thought would be a piece of cake to write was something along the lines of "If I could do it all again, what would I do differently?". I've written elsewhere that some aspects of wedding planning literally reduced me to tears, and that my wedding wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination (because, um, perfect doesn't exist). One inescapable consequence of continuing to read the odd wedding blog (and especially keeping up with Lillian and Leonard's blog - oh, the swoon-worthiness!) is that I am still being bombarded with images of beautiful, stylish, imaginative weddings that, on a purely aesthetic level, blow mine completely out of the water. Major wedding envy. Surely, then, there must be lots of things I'd like to change, if I could go back?

Well all I can say is, thanks blog. Because of you, I have had this Kylie Minogue song stuck in my head ALL DAY.

This is so embarrassing. Not the Kylie Minogue part - there is no way I'm the only one who was obsessed with Kylie circa 1989, a.k.a. the Jason Donovan Years, do not even lie - but the wouldn't-change-a-thing part. Have I no imagination? No ambition? Am I so utterly smug and narcissistic that if some unspecified deity granted me the power to travel back in time, thus simultaneously disproving the chronology protection conjecture and causing my head to explode, there isn't ONE TINY THING I would change??

Honestly, I racked my brains. I did.

First, I considered the obvious - the dress.

Erstwhile objects of my affection.
Michelle Roth 'Maya' and Stephanie Allin 'Kelly' and 'Agi'

Every season, wedding dress designers unleash a whole new crop of silken beauties to shamelessly tempt and seduce us. There is always, always, another dress waiting just around the corner that is more beautiful, more elegant, more glamorous, more flattering, more perfect. The dreaded You & Your Wedding forums (yes, that's right - that's where it all started. I'm even more embarrassed now) are packed with dress wobble after dress wobble; women who are filled with regrets and insecurities, wondering if they should have picked this dress or that dress, held out a little longer for The One... it's exhausting.

Sure, other dresses have caught my eye, and my imagination, in the year or so since I have been aware of these things. I'm sure many of them would have looked just as good, maybe better. The point is - who knows? And more importantly, who cares? I don't believe there is One Dress for me any more than I believe there is One Person for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm really quite fond of Fin, but it strikes me that it would be an awfully big coincidence that the one person in all the billions of people in the world who could possibly make me happy just happened to turn up in the right place at the right time. Seriously. What are the chances?

Besides. I looked hawt in that dress. Job done.

Spellbinding. Celia's stunning wedding venue shot by Cathryn Farnsworth via A Practical Wedding.

Well then, if not the dress, what about the venue? Would I opt instead for a dreamy, fairy-lit landscape? An elegant city townhouse with high ceilings and twinkling chandeliers? Perhaps a snow-covered castle?

Are you kidding? Our venue was thirty seconds from my house! Best decision ever! Moving on.

Coolness personified, Elsie's big day by Arrow & Apple via ♥elycia

Okay, now we're getting to it. If I could change one thing, one teeny tiny thing, maybe it would be the bridesmaids' dresses. They were just so... green. I mean GREEN. Perhaps the decision was made too quickly, perhaps I ought to have splurged a bit more, searched harder, chosen something that wasn't so obviously a Bridesmaid's Dress.

But then I never would have been compelled to make fabulous floral sashes for the Green Bridesmaids' Dresses, in an attempt to make them look a bit less Green.

And then I never would have found this picture, hidden inside the last remaining copy of the July issue of Wedding Ideas Magazine on the shelves of my local supermarket last week:

That's right, it's my lovely ladies in print once again. That's twice, for those who are keeping track. They're like totally famous and stuff. Although I would just like to point out that, whilst they are indeed clever bridesmaids, it was *me* who actually made the fabulous floral sashes. You know, me, the bride? The one who isn't even in the picture? Not that I'm jealous, or anything...

I suppose what I'm trying to say, in a roundabout and semi-coherent way, is that Kylie Minogue and quantum physics are both bang on*. I can't go back in time, and even if I could, I wouldn't change a thing.

Me and Fin, and a boy looking jealous of our ice cream, by Lillian and Leonard

*Possibly the most bizarre sentence I have ever written.

What about you? If you're already married, would you change anything about your wedding, if you could?