Tag Archives: Weddings

The 10 Pros And Cons Of Saying “I Do” With Two Kids In Tow

Ass Monkey and I took our sweet time getting married.

We were friends for 10 years before we finally twigged that we might actually fancy each other and then spent another 10 years figuring out how too live together romantically.

He and I are both very independent and headstrong people and really, our relationship shouldn’t have worked. Technically we should have blown it with all the bull-like head-to-heads we’ve had over the years.

But like stubborn bulls that we are, we kept demanding that the relationship work and I’m so, so glad that we did.

For out of our scrappy early days has come this deep, deep love and respect for one another which lead to our fab wedding day on December 8th.

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We had such a ball getting married but really, Jacob and Eva were the stars of the show (even though I could, at times in the weeks leading up to the wedding day be heard complaining, ‘Why the F*CK didn’t we do this before we had kids?!‘)

The logistics of planning a wedding when you have two small kids were pretty bonkers and stressful at times to deal with but ultimately, the universe conspired to give us the journey that was intended for us and we really wouldn’t have had it any other way.

5 Cons To Getting Married With Kids In Tow:

  1. Visits to the family GP will increase tenfold – every time you want to do something important, like register for your wedding certificate or buy your wedding rings, a child will get sick (we still don’t have our official rings, fact!)
  2. Free time is scarce – all of your organising has to be done at 10pm when the kids are finally asleep or during that hour or two peace you get when they are in school. This will result in your house falling into CODE RED disarray, the one where even the dog is judging you because of the state of your jacks.
  3. Everything is last minute – you can’t buy them any clothes until the last minute because they won’t stop bloody growing! So you’ll dash to Debenhams a week before the wedding and PRAY that they have some decent stock left (and then you’ll hit Next, Dunnes, TK Maxx, H&M.. they’re not easy to suit shop for!)
  4. Keeping kids happy at weddings costs money – we forked out for goodie bags, activity packs, childminders (AKA The Department of Children’s Happiness), hot chocolate, kid-friendly sandwiches while the adults were having canapés, a Photo Booth.. and we could have kept going. But it really worked out because I have it on good advice that the 13 or so kids we had with us on the day enjoyed themselves maybe even more than the adults!
  5. The day-after is pretty grim – I may have had ‘a couple’ (thousand) glasses of Prosecco at our wedding and I was in a world of pain the next day. Cue all my regret about buying tickets for the kids to see Santa at Tayto Park that afternoon. Thankfully, the elves took over my parenting responsibilities for a couple of hours.
Could they BE any cuter?!

Could they BE any cuter?!

5 Pros To Getting Married With Kids In Tow:

  1. They keep you grounded – there is no time for being a Bridezilla when you have two kids who take priority over everything else in your life. If you have to cancel your hair trial because your two-year-old is getting her back teeth and has been up all night then so be it!
  2. They remind you to relax – most of my focus in organising the wedding was to keep the kids involved and happy. Adults will complain until the cows come home about anything and everything but kids will just be so happy to be together with their friends and cousins that they simply get on with enjoying themselves. We could all do with taking a leaf out of their book.
  3. They are just so excited – in the lead-up to the wedding Jacob was constantly asking questions, counting us down to the big day, checking the mail box for RSVPs and planning his very important job of bringing the rings up to his dad. We thought Eva didn’t really get the whole thing until I put a long hooded coat on one day to go out into the rain and she told me, “I like your wedding, mammy”. She got it on some level.
  4. They are so proud – I was keeping the emotions at bay on the morning of the wedding until I walked downstairs in my wedding dress to meet my dad.. and Jacob started off an unprompted round of applause in my honour. Where would you get him?!
  5. Kids truly make a wedding – there is most definitely a cut-off point where they don’t need to see Uncle Harold having a row with the bartender who is refusing to serve him triple vodkas at 1am but.. the morning of, the ceremony, the DANCING – they are a priceless addition to any wedding day.

**Thanks for all your well-wishes for our wedding day, it was the greatest of our lives. There are plenty more stories to come!**

Have you checked out the super cool new Mum’s Box yet? Go have a snoop!

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10 Reasons I Am Totally OK With My Kids Growing Up

I know that as a parent it is my inherent duty to bemoan the fact that my kids are getting older.

I am obliged to look at old baby photos or hold up little tiny babygros that they no longer fit into and wail, “Why? WHY must they keep growing?!”

And I DO do a lot of that (especially with those pesky Facebook memories that they throw up every day).

But there are also some cool things to remember that are GREAT about your kids growing up:

1. Getting themselves dressed

The Art Of Dressing A Squirming Toddler When There Are Four Minutes To Get Out The Front Door is an art I will not miss. Jacob is happily dressing himself at the moment and I am happily letting him. One down.

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2. Entertaining Themselves

Finally, my kids are starting to really play together which is giving us parents all sorts of free time to ourselves. We had our dinner and an entire conversation yesterday while watching our kids racing each other to jump on their bean bags. They didn’t interrupt us for ten whole minutes. Bliss.

3. Getting Out Of Nappies

I have been the happiest mum ever since Jacob started using the toilet himself, and as of a week ago, he doesn’t even need my help in there any more. Now we just need to getting madam fully on board with the potty training and we are set.

4. Getting Out Of Peppa Pig

My daughter is launching a Peppa Protest at the moment and we are FINE with that. I am really tired of that little piggy with her foot-stomping and her treating her parents and little brother like crap. We have moved onto Dora with her lovely Spanish and number-learning. Praise be!

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5. Choosing Their Own Clothes

We have suffered Sock Rejection for long enough – I can no longer cope with fighting with my kids over wearing things that they’re not into. Roll on the independence of choosing what they want to wear on a daily basis and owning it. Eva fully rocked a Minnie Mouse pyjama top all day yesterday and was thrilled with herself. So be it!

6. Buggy Free Time

The buggy is great and handy for lots of different situations – like a quick trip to the shopping centre if you need them to be contained, or when on hols and you need them to be comfortable and shaded by the hood and parasol. But on a daily basis, the buggy is SUCH a pain in the HOOP to get in and out of the car and strap the little ones into. Plus, I am far happier for them to be on their feet and get the exercise they need. So.. our current one is off to SVP, yippee!

7. Feeding Themselves

My kids obviously still need plenty of coercion when it comes to dinner time in terms of getting them to sit down long enough to eat it. But they are well able to feed themselves and bring their bowls over to the kitchen sink when they’re done. If only they were old enough to wash the dishes..

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8. They’re Kind Of Over Us

It used to be SUCH a panic to get out for a date on the rare occasions that we did. I used to have to wear my dressing gown over my going-out outfit to disguise the fact that I was planning to leave them with a babysitter and then literally try to escape out the front door unnoticed. These days, it’s “Are we having a party? Is there chocolate in the fridge? See ya later”. Love it.

9. Helping Out

NOT that we’re into child labour (YET) but it’s so great when the kids start helping to clean up after themselves. Jacob is starting to be really good at putting all his toys away at the end of the day (WHERE did all that Lego come from) and Eva has formed a close bond with the hoover. Staff! We have staff! Whoop!

10. Finding Out Who They Are

Every other week, we are seeing more and more who our kids truly are as little people. Jacob is becoming a real dude who is crazy about construction and mechanics, with a side order of mischief thrown in. Eva is more and more affectionate all the time and has just started whispering “I love you” into our ears.

We can wait to see what the next year will bring!

This article first appeared on fab parenting site HerFamily.ie 

Getting Married: The Hen Party Special

I’m really taking the piss with this whole hen party situation.

First I didn’t want one and now I reckon I’ve had about three.

There was an ‘accidental’ hen party on a micro scale a few months ago when me, my mum, Nicola and Rory (my bridesmaid and bridesman respectively) attempted to go shopping together in town on Saturday afternoon.

That ended up like this:

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(That’s Nicola, by the way, our bridesmaid. You couldn’t get her out of her shell if you tried).

Then I decided that I would throw on a show – a night of music, comedy and a few songs written for Alan that I would sing to him as a KIND OF hen party.

That ended up like THIS:

I can’t say too much about the night, other than that I couldn’t speak for a full week afterwards, everyone in The Marker Hotel was asleep by the time I got back to it circa 4am, alone, in full ‘Hen Party’ attire and had to explain to the concierge that I had not, in fact, been ‘ordered’ by anyone staying at the hotel.

And THEN my sister-in-law Claire mentioned that she had a friend who owned an apartment in Marbella.

“I’m listening”, says I.

So off we trotted – me, mam, Claire and my other sis-in-law Nicola for a few days celebrations in the sun.

It was my first time to ever visit ‘Marbs’ and I have to say it was one of the best holidays I have ever been on.

I obviously can’t say too much about that either (for issues of National and International security) but suffice to say that we drank everything, talked about everything and managed to get some much-needed warmth into our bones.

Now that I still have just under three months to go to the actual wedding, I’m seriously asking;

Surely there’s time to fit in one more, isn’t there?!

 

How I Am Failing At Planning Our Wedding (Part 2)

In April of this year, I wrote a little Wah Wah about how I had little or no time to organise our wedding because builders, parenting, work – WAH WAH WAH…

At that time, there was 8 months to go before we said ‘I Do’ and the areas I was most concerned about were the following:

  1. Registering our intent to marry
  2. Getting wedding rings sorted
  3. Buying a wedding dress
  4. Sending out invites
  5. Booking a honeymoon

With 3 months to go until The Big Day, I am pleased to tell you that I have TWO out of those five things currently sorted.

Registering our intent to marry was THE CRAIC.

I rang the registrar’s office and got chatting to Sylvia.

“You’re getting married at the zoo!” says she.

“We are” I replied.

“And what do your parents think about that?!” she asked, gravely.

Yes, seriously. I asked her what it was to do with our parents exactly and so we swiftly moved on. I am now in the possession of a marriage license and so that’s the end of having to deal with Sylvia.

As much as I love to try on an ole dress or two, I’m not really comfortable with being strong-armed into buying a €4000 wedding dress that is in a sample sale and has been tried on by half of the north side.

So I found a lovely lady in London who was selling a Valentino dress that she had bought for her own wedding and changed her mind about.

The Mothership and I hopped aboard a plane to London of a morning, zoomed over to The Pilot Inn at Greenwich Village, tried on the dress, bought the dress, met our gorgeous friends Stephen and Paul for cocktails and flew back to Dublin that evening.

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BOOM.

I am yet to convince La Fynes that he will be exchanging SOME sort of ring at our nuptials, I haven’t sent out a single invite, we can’t decide whether to chase sun or snow for our honeymoon but..

.. three months is LOADS of time, isn’t it?

*opens bottle of wine*

5 Ways I Am Failing At Planning Our Wedding (Part 1)

You may not have heard the news, but I am a promised woman (hard to believe, I know).

For precisely one year now, myself and Ass Monkey have upgraded our relationship status from ‘Surviving Parenthood’ to ‘Parenting While Planning A Wedding’.

Engaged

Actually, that’s not entirely true. We got engaged and well, did precisely nothing about the whole wedding bit for ages.

A few things got in the way; our family business Dynamic Cater Care got crazy busy, I took a great new job at HerFamily.ie and both of the kids got the fucking chicken pox (it’s official title).

Just when things were starting to calm down after Christmas and we might have had some space to make plans, we took the deranged decision to hire some builders and let them have at a house extension on our home. You know, instead of just chilling out for a bit.

So as of January 8th of this year, we have been living out of bags at my parent’s home (which we are eternally grateful for, OF COURSE), and there has been little or no room for any major wedding decisions.

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With 8 months to go to the ‘I Do’s’, I can safely say that we are in the total shits with regards to the following:

1. Registering The Marriage – yes, apparently it’s not good enough that our intent to get married is in our heads, we actually need to do some paperwork too. Will someone please do it for me?!

2. Wedding Rings – AKA persuading Ass Monkey that he does, in fact, need to wear one. The stubbornness is strong in that man.

3. The Dress – No, I didn’t ever dream of ‘the perfect wedding dress’ when I was a little girl and no, I still don’t have any idea what I want. There may be a little shopping trip to London planned with The Mammy next week so it might be ok. I’ve loads of time, right?! (gulp)

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4. The Numbers – This wedding may well comprise me, Ass Monkey, the kids and the dog at this stage since we have yet to send out any actual invitations. Can’t we just do it by text?

5. The Honeymoon – Planning a honeymoon when you have kids throws up sets of problems that you obviously wouldn’t have to contemplate otherwise. We keep swinging from ‘Let’s go somewhere amazing and live it up while granny minds them!’ to ‘Oh god we couldn’t leave them for a week, we’d miss them too much!’ And so there the decision stays, unmade until inspiration strikes.

Anyone?

Are you planning on getting married this year? Share your planning stories with me – misery loves company!

 

Guest Blogging at HerFamily.ie

It’s nice to get a little compliment now and then. I can vouch, as the primary caretaker of our two kiddos at home, that the full-time working Ass Monkey has never said ‘Hey, thanks so much for locating those socks we’ve been missing’ or ‘Wow, did you change the bins in the jacks? You’re amazing’.

We all do things so automatically and so regularly that it is simply what it is – just that thing we do that no one really notices. So when I had an email from Sive O’Brien at new super cool parenting website HerFamily.ie to say she’d been reading my l’il blog here and liked it…well, needless to say I cracked open that box of After Eights I’d been saving for a special occasion. When you write a blog, you’re never entirely sure that anyone is actually reading it (so yes, I actually just do it because I LIKE it. Unlike how I feel about cleaning the jacks).

HerFamily.ie launched this morning and I will be their guest blogger for the week. My first piece (i.e. gripe) is to remind you all that no, Ass Monkey still has not yet asked me to marry him, the consequences now being that I will some day probably have to walk up the aisle in similar fashion to this lady:

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You can check out the full blog at: HerFamily.ie

Happy New Year, monkey faces x