Moths and mail

The second installment of my wedding description is on its way, but I want to wait until I have the official photos on cd. The photographer has sent them, but they've been lost! It seems most likely that what happened is that someone got the wrong package (ours) by mistake, but for some odd reason just kept it. What someone else can want our wedding photos for is beyond me, but that's apparently the way it is. We wrote to the photographer as soon as we first found out there might be a problem, and he promised not to delete our photos and to send new cds if the first ones never showed up. Since then we talked to the post office again, and found out, as I have just described, that it seems unlikely we'll get them. But since it's their mistake, they will of course pay the extra expenses the photographer has making new ones and sending them. So tonight I'll email him again and ask for new ones, and hopefully we'll have our photos reasonably soon.

So that's one thing which annoys me. Another thing is moths! Some nasty little specimens of this disgusting species have decided that our cupboard with flour, spices, etc. is a good place for them to live and breed. When we first found out, we took everything out of the cupboard and washed it thoroughly, removed any moths and offspring we could find, and threw out anything we though might be infected in spite of not seeming to be. But alas! it was not enough. The nasty little things have returned in full force. So we have now resorted to chemical warfare. Once again everything has been removed and checked for signs of being moth-infected, and anything even remotely suspicious thrown out. But this time it has all been put in well closed big boxes, and the cupboard has been sprayed with poison (the lady who sold it to me assured me that if we washed the cupboard afterwards we would be safe keeping food in it again). So has other places where the moths might reasonably hide, like the edges where the walls and the ceiling join. All moths encountered in the process have been killed. And the food is not going back till we have repeated the process a few times! This time the little invaders are going to be taught never to try taking over our storing space as a breeding ground again.

On a more positive note, we're getting new bookcases today, and soon, probably in the weekend, we're intending to get a cat.

Wedding - Part 1: Preparations

I'm starting the full account of the wedding now. It'll be split up into several parts, and here's the first one.

Friday 27/6:

Stefan had taken Friday off, so that we could both be there for the last preparations. We started out by packing strawberries, berry mousse, chocolate cream, sugarpaste and several kitchen tools and going to Stefan's mother's place to assemble and decorate the wedding cakes. The cake layers were already there, since they'd been stored in a freezer in the basement, and Stefan's mother had taken them out to thaw the night before.

So we worked away putting mousse, strawberries and chocolate cream between layers of cake. We had brought the form that the layers were baked in so that we could assemble the cakes in it to keep them straight. However, it turned out that we couldn't just take it off immediately after assembling one cake and then use it for the next one; it had to stay on while the cake was in the fridge for a while to harden a bit. So we had to make two extra forms on the spot - luckily we had transported some of the things in a cardboard box and could cut the box up and make forms out of it. After assembling the cakes, they had to be covered in white sugarpaste and then decorated with leaves and flowers made of sugar paste coloured green and blue, respectively. I rolled out the white sugar paste, and Stefan put it on the cakes; I coloured the green and blue paste and rolled it out; we helped each other making the leaves and flowers; and I put them on the cakes. Finally, we left the cakes in the fridge to be picked up later on. Here's a picture of one of the cakes (unfortunately the berry juices flowed out a bit at the bottom as you can see):




















I had planned to iron Stefan's shirt and a little bit of my dress (something would stick out a bit and needed to be pressed with a steam iron to stay in place) after we had finished the cakes, but it had taken much more time than expected, and we had to go get the flowers for the table.

So we went to a bus stop, and took the bus to Alberstlund station where we had to change to another bus. There was, annoyingly, half an hour to wait which we spent eating some kebab for lunch. Then on to the other bus and off at the flower place where we picked up the flowers which were campanulas and looked like this once they were on the table:
















I had my very own little bridezilla moment when we picked up the flowers. The woman who was at the counter was not the same one that we had talked to when we ordered the flowers, and she wasn't quite sure if the flowers standing on the table were ours. However, the note lying by them and the talk I'd had on the phone with the woman we talked to first made it clear that they were ours. This woman kept asking if they were ours about ten times, though, in spite of the fact that I'd said several times that they must be. So in the end I raised my voice and said "yes, they are, I told you so already!" quite angrily. I apologised right away, though, and the woman from when we ordered them came to the counter right at that moment and confirmed that they were indeed ours. I was really stressed, or I'd never have yelled at the woman - even though she was rather annoying.

We got back home and had time to sit down for a short time before my grand parents were to arrive. They hadn't seen our flat, so they were going to come by around 17 and have a little to eat together with us, and then drive us and the table decorations and such to the wedding party place where we had to pick up the key at 18 and start to lay the tables and get everything ready. My parents and brothers were going to meet us there at 18 and help too, but just after we got home from the flower place, my dad sent an sms saying they were stuck in the train at Odense. Someone had left a bag, and of course in these terror frightened times such a thing means the police have to go there and check it out with a robot designed for that purpose - a robot which first has to be transported there. So my family would be delayed quite a bit. I panicked somewhat when I heard it, but my lovely Stefan calmed me down. And then my grandparents arrived and I had something else to think of. We ate a small dinner, packed the things in my grandparents' car, and went to the party place, a sort of village centre at a small village that's actually inside Albertslund (since Albertslund was built around some villages that were there already when they built the town). This is it, from the outside:















Well, we started working, setting up tables and laying and decorating them. The final result was like this:





























My family got there an hour or two late, and Stefan's sister and her boyfriend also arrived during the evening, as they were going to help transport all the food, wine and other things, to the party place in their car. The tables were pretty much finished by then, but there were lots of things to be done yet, going back and forth to our place and Stefan's mother's for things and putting them in fridges, on shelves, etc., so we weren't finished until sometime around 22, I think. A few pictures of preparations:













































When we were done, I still had the ironing that I didn't have time for in the afternoon left. So we went home, I did the ironing, and then we went to bed, setting the alarm clock so that I could get up and be ready to be at the hairdresser's next morning at 8. And as Friday ended, so does part 1. More to follow soon!

How to get very very tired

If anyone wants the recipe for getting very tired, physically and mentally, this is it: Go on a canoe trip for the weekend, then spend Monday attending a funeral. For a little extra, add a 3 hour journey at both beginning and end.

It was all nice, though. Good canoe trip with friends, excercise and beautiful scenery. And we saw owls. And the funeral, though of course sad, was beautiful, and it was good to say goodbye and good to see so many others we knew gathered to do so.

So when will you write about that wedding?

It's been 12 days now since our wedding, we got to see all the official photos and a few of the unofficial ones, and we've been on our honeymoon trip to Brussels. So when will I finally write a good long blog post about the wedding?

The answer is: Sometime next week?

Why not before: Well, a combination of being busy and being sad.

Thus this post to explain why and give a short update about what I've been doing since the last post.

We spent Sunday cleaning the place where we had the wedding party Saturday, and going to another town (an hours drive or so away) with my sister in law and her boyfriend (I have a sister in law! How cool is that?!) to lay my bouquet on Stefan's father's grave. But I already mentioned that, didn't I?

Monday we cleaned our own apartment - a little. Some of our friends had been in to pour rice everywhere, move some of our stuff around, write "congratulations" in tooth paste on our bathroom mirror, and other nice things, as is the tradition. Also we had a whole heap of presents. So something had to be done, and we cleaned up most of the rice on the floor (there's still loads of it left on shelves, in cupboards and in drawers) and moved stuff so there was actually a little free space on the floor. And we did a bit of laundry and packed our bags for the honeymoon.

Tuesday we started the honeymoon. We got to Brussels, found our hotel, checked in, got some food and looked at the town a bit. The next days we looked much more at the town (and at another one, Brugge, where we went on a one day trip). In brief, my opinion of it is: It's a very nice and cosy town, the food and beer is great (as expected), Belgian's like making people get lost - especially in museums - and they have some beautiful churches. We tasted lots of beers, saw a very traditional brewery, went to several museums and churches, and walked surprisingly (but not unpleasantly) much.
And now for the feeling kinda sad thing. Because we also got bad news from home while there. On Monday, a friend called Stefan to tell us that another friend of ours had committed suicide. He wasn't our closest friend exactly, but we both liked him very much, and he was a guest at the wedding too. So Monday we'll be attending his funeral :(

As for the being busy part, I'm going to go sail in canoes with friends this weekend. Not the best timing for me, especially not now after the sad news, but I'm looking forward to seeing my good friends in Jutland. And I'll stay with one of them an extra night, from Sunday to Monday, since the funeral is in Århus.

So, when I've completed my canoe trip and said a proper goodbye to a friend who'll be missed very much, I'll probably be ready to tell all about the wedding, with lots of pictures. Till then, this little update will have to do.