The wedding season begins.

Ooh I’ve been a busy little bee since the New Year started. I feel like I’ve been all over the place but I’ve checked my diary and I definitely haven’t been – there must have been some strange glitch in my brain that’s making 2012 difficult to cope with so far.

I managed a whole 3 days back at work before I head off on holiday again. I can’t recommend this enough as it’s made January almost bearable and I see that we’re already in the second week which can only mean that pay-day is coming soon which is always welcome – especially because we get paid a week earlier in December which seems like an excellent idea at the time but means you end up eating dust in the run-up to January’s pay-day.

Anyway. I digress.

The reason for my little jaunt away so soon in 2012 was that I was heading down to a wedding. I know. They’ve started early this year. It is a mildly terrifying thought but I think we’re ok because so far there’s only 2 weddings booked in this year which is a much less horrifying prospect than last year.

The Person’s cousin was getting married so this meant I was faced with the prospect of being faced with all his family in one go. I’ve met most of them before to be fair, but there’s something about the thought of all of them in one room that makes your heart beat that little bit faster.

Trips down South can only mean one thing to me – massive expense because of stupid train fares – and I nearly died when I realised that I was looking at £100 ticket from Hull to the Sussex but thanks to the Megabus, which could get me to London, and booking train tickets from London in October, I managed to bring the journey in under £40. Although you pay the price by travelling for much longer time period – it’s a bit of a toss up at times.

I arrived late afternoon in Bognor. The Person gets mad when I call it Bognor because it isn’t really Bognor but for argument’s sake, let’s just call it that and let him rage away to himself when he reads this on his computer screen.

I am beside myself with the fact that his Dad’s house is literally round the corner from the beach. It’s a thrill that I think only someone who’s never grown up on the coast can have. I get unreasonably excited about it and within minutes of arriving I’m begging The Person to take me to see it. I’m so jealous that people have the sea right on their doorstep, it’s so wonderful.

The wedding was a little further away, near Balcombe, at the rather marvellous Highley Manor. Probably the best location for a wedding. Ever. All dark wood and big roaring fireplaces and leather settees and wing-backed chairs. The whole venue is hired out, so the rooms are all taken up by wedding guests too, meaning that you have the whole place to yourself.

The Person and I have been to a few weddings now so we’re definitely getting a feel for what does and doesn’t work as a wedding guest. Something that does work? Booze. And lots of it. The bar prices were actually a little bit frightening (£10.50 for a pint of Guinness, a gin and tonic and an alcohol-free beer – my little Northern soul blanched a little bit, we don’t pay those kinds of prices up here!) but there was nothing to worry about because they had allocated a generous portion of the wedding budget to keeping us liquored up, meaning that that round was the only money I spent that night. Always good in my books. Lots of champagne, lots of wine at the tables, free bar for part of the day for those people who don’t like champagne or wine = very happy guests.

Wedding favours came in the form of Lotto tickets for that night’s draw (unfortunately neither of us were winners although I haven’t heard if anyone else was lucky) and the tables were all named after 80s tv shows (we were on Duck Tales). Photos of the bride and bridegroom were throughout the venue and there was a little sweet bar for people to fill up on throughout the day and night. They had a band to provide the entertainment which was an excellent move, they had us all whipped up into a frenzy and dancing our socks and shoes off – it’s the first time I’ve been to a wedding with a proper band (minus the jazz band debacle of the New Year’s Eve wedding of 2010) and it was definitely one of the things that have been squirreled away in the girly portion of my brain that occasionally surfaces and thinks about what my wedding might look like if I ever get married.

(By the way, that whole providing your guests with lots of booze thing? Not so good the morning after when you want to put a gun to your head just to stop the hammering in your brain and are faced with an absolutely mammoth journey back home thanks to your desire to save money.)