The story of the wedding dress 👰✨

Back in November I received an unusual email completely out of the blue. A lady was trying to track down her late mum’s wedding dress and believed that mine (currently sitting up in the loft) was it! Let me explain…back in 2019 I bought a vintage wedding dress from an online shop and planned to wear it when we married in 2020. However, covid happened and our plans were of course completely disrupted! We still got married (eventually) but it was a low-key affair with just a small number of family members and so I made the decision to not wear my dress and save it for the belated wedding reception party that we thought might happen at a later date (a decision I came to regret). Well we all know how long the restrictions lasted and all the while my dress stayed abandoned on its hanger, never seeing the light of day.

Fast forward to November 2022 and I get this email. The lady had got in touch with the dress shop who then got in touch with me to say she was hoping to buy the dress if I was willing to sell. We messaged back and forth and I knew that there was no way I could say no as it obviously meant so much to her, but at the same time it was sad that I never got to wear it and after all this time Ed still had no idea what it looked like! So we decided that we would have a photoshoot with it, to create the special dressed up photos we didn’t get to have at our wedding. My sister Ellie came along and with just a couple of phone cameras discovered her hidden talent for wedding photography 😂 seriously though she did such a good job! We were also lucky with the weather as the rain mostly held off (unlike on our actual wedding day haha) and this was literally our only free day before the courier came to pick up the dress later in the week. It was sweet to be able to include Jethro in the pictures too, and when he wasn’t being photographed he enjoyed sitting in his carseat just gazing up at the trees.

It was surprisingly fun to prance around pretending we'd just got married and to recreate some of the classic (cheesy) poses 😆 and considering we had no plan, no hair/makeup done, no fancy camera, and just stopped somewhere on Dartmoor with a baby in tow, I think it went pretty well! We were so excited about how the photos came out and wanted to share them back in November. But we decided that we would keep them a secret so that we could surprise our families at Christmas and it was definitely worth it (tears were shed!) 😭❤️ 

Speaking of Christmas, my next post will be a recap of the festive period (baby’s first Christmas!!) but I just couldn’t wait any longer so share these pics first xxxxx

Blogtober 2022 - Day 29 ☕

Yesterday Jethro had his first visit to the bonsai nursery...despite that big yawn I think he enjoyed himself! Future bonsai boy in the making 🌳 It was his first outing wearing the hat I knitted and it's so cute but kept slipping down over his eyes haha. 

After the nursery we headed to Stone Lane Gardens where there was a sculpture exhibition on (turns out I didn't actually take many photos of the exhibition pieces oops, clearly more interested in mushrooms!) It was one of those magical sort of days where you stumble across somewhere new and it turns out to be a bit of a hidden gem! I'd recommend a visit if you're near Dartmoor, but the exhibition finishes at the end of October so perhaps wait until next year as it's an annual thing.

Stone Lane has National Collections of birch and alder trees. Here I am rocking Jethro to sleep in perhaps the most idyllic setting for a woodland nap:

After a(nother) picnic lunch on a well positioned picnic table, and after settling the baby into his cosy sling, we headed off to explore the garden. 

You know I can't miss a mushroom photo opportunity, especially when there is amanita muscaria about! 

🍄

All in a row.

Some of the stone statues, like these deer, stand permanently amongst the trees:

Acorns and moss.

Ed in the silent space 🙏

Identifying trees.

Fallen leaves that look like confetti on the ground.

Another strange looking fungus (looks like purple minced beef lol). One day Ed and I will get round to becoming knowledgable mushroom hunters so we can ID them as well as just admire them! 😄

Humungous gunnera leaves are always fun:

And we we are, at the start of the sculpture trail. Or the end for us as we realised we'd done the whole winding route backwards 😆 but it didn't matter!

Before long we were back in the car, Jethro was hungry after his sculpture garden snooze and the grandparents consulted the map to plan the route to our final destination of Chagford. We almost didn't make it out of the carpark though when the car tyres were spinning and slipping in the mud 😯

Jethro's first cream tea experience (he agrees that although we are in Devon, the Cornish way is in fact the correct way), and my first time trying whortleberry jam. 10/10 delicious rating 👌

An excellent day full of Devon delights, I felt like a tourist even though I've lived here forever! 💛

P.S. Now that I've completed this post nice and early I've got the afternoon free to tackle my next job - making an apple crumble! 🍏