Dom Davis (The Blog)

The Zozo and I have wildly different tastes in music, which is hardly surprising given I tend to listen to fairly fringe stuff where a single track can encompass an entire genre. Now you’d think that this would cause big problems when it comes to agreeing on music for the wedding but it has, in fact, made it easier, the rule being roughly this: If it’s on my iPod it’s not being played at the wedding¹. Instead we’re picking things from a list of tracks that Zo thinks would be good that I think are fun too (see, works out well for me ).

One such track is a version of the theme to this years mass vuvuzela concerts in South Africa called, I’m lead to believe, “Waving flag” or “Wavin’ flag” depending on the version, of which there are bloody millions. Not all versions are equal either. The one I want is the one that has the line “now wave your flag” repeated during the chorus. The versions I have downloaded thus far have an alternative lyric at this point which makes the song unfit for purpose in my view. Unfortunately the preview for many versions of this song on iTunes does not include the chorus so it’s difficult to tell which version I want.

Undeterred and unwilling to blindly download version after version looking for the one I want I simply asked Google. Google pointed me at YouTube who confirmed I wasn’t making this version of the song up and gave me an artist name. iTunes said no. This is what we would describe as “a bit of an arse” and will necessitate me procuring the track from elsewhere, possibly ‘borrowing’ it from YouTube as I think I have the tools to turn it into an mp3 from a YouTube video

¹Self imposed rule. The Zozo has not made any such proclamations but I bet you she’s glad I have

On Saturday I went to pick up my precious which is very shiny, very comfy and very much in a drawer because apparently I’m not allowed to wear it until I’m actually married. Bit of an arse, but who am I to buck tradition?

Anyway, as part of the contributions to the cost of the wedding thing that parents are want to do, my mother had given me a load of old jewellery to sell with the proceeds going towards the ring. One piece was the wedding ring my father had given my mother when they got married. Since he can’t come to the wedding (being, as he is, somewhat metabolically challenged) I thought it was rather fitting.

Still trying to work out what to have engraved on the inside of it. Options include:

• 09/10/2010
• IX X MMX
• Dom & Zo, 09/10/2010
• 1286636400

Answers on in a comment please (“One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them” has been vetoed, so don’t even think it”)

For those of you not paying attention I’m getting married in a little over 2 months, besides, unless you’re reading this on an iPhone there’s even a little thing down there on the bottom right telling you how long until the wedding [or, if you're really late to the blog and reading this too far into the future, how long we've been married for], so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Anyway, getting married, so I needed to get a ring. This has not been an easy feat, which is odd since I knew exactly what I wanted: a 6mm heavy court ring… in 950 platinum… costing a small fortune.

I was also looking at some rings that deviated a little from the traditional rings: black zirconium oxide, titanium (as one of my friends said: “Nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a ring made from a lightweight, blast proof metal”), ceramic, that kind of thing. These were quite funky, much cheaper and stood out a little but I worried that, while I thought they were cool now, I may look at it in 10 years time and go “what the hell was I thinking?” If you’re going to be wearing something for the rest of your life you want to be sure you’re going to be happy with it for the duration

By this point The Zozo had already found and ordered her ring, solving the ‘platinum is frighteningly expensive’ problem by going for palladium instead which seems, to all intents and purposes, to be the same as platinum^1,2,3 but nearly 1/4 the price. In the end I decided to go the same route and ordered a 6mm heavy court ring in 950 palladium, a move that cut the cost of the wedding by 1/3rd in one fell swoop (yes, wow ).

The ring is now waiting at the jewellers for me to pick up tomorrow (yay!) whereupon I shall take it round the corner to the engravers to have something put on the inside. Not entirely sure what that will be yet, shall have a ponder tonight.

¹OK, granted, if The Zozo goes shoving her hand into a container of concentrated acid her wedding ring is not going to survive as well as her engagement ring but, at this point, we’ve got much bigger issues to deal with so I think we can let that one slide.

²And yes, it’s going to melt before the engagement ring, but again, bigger problems to deal with at 800C, like dying.

³Weighing less is A Good Thing™, now stop being pedantic.

Tomorrow I’m up at 06:00¹ to drive down the coast to Horsey where, apparently, there is a windpump looked after by the National Trust. It appears that there is an important distinction between a windmill and a windpump since doing a Google search for Horsey windmill does not yield the National Trust website. If you take a different tack, go to the National Trust website and search for Horsey a result for Horsey windpump pops up. Go back to Google an search for Horsey Windpump and the NT website pops up first.

I’m all for pedantry and yes it does pump water not mill corn so it isn’t a windmill per se but you’ve got to face it, show anyone in this country a tall round building with a bunch of sails on the front of it and they’re going to go “it’s a windmill”². Now, if that person were computer literate, connected to the internet and wanting to find a tall round building with a bunch of sails on the front in a specific location such as, picking a place at random, Horsey they’re going to search for “horsey windmill”. They may have their nomenclature entirely wrong but you still, ideally, want them to find your website (even if you start the page with “Actually, it’s a windpump you uneducated heathen”). Making then work to find the page really is just poor marketing.

Anyway, I shall be at Horsey for before sunrise³ in order to learn how to take photos of windthings which will hopefully prove useful for the wedding when we’re staying at a windB&B (formerly a windmill).

¹What does the ‘o’ stand for? Yup, oh, it’s only 20 minutes earlier than I usually wake up

²If they don’t I’ll pretty much guarantee they’re an anorak

³07:38 since you ask

Yesterday The Zozo and I went to go see the registrar to be grilled on how well we knew each other and get everything booked for the wedding. These days everything is done online and the registrar just fills out a form on the computer, hits print and you’re away… except that just after they’d printed my form the network went down. Not useful since they still had The Zozo to do.

A few minutes of confusion ensued with cables being checked for looseness, things clicked on screen, things tried and then tried again to see if they’d work a second time all of which culminated in the trainee heading off to see if anyone else had the same problem and the registrar searching for the old school hand completed forms.

Having witnessed all this I had guessed that it was the internet connection that had died and, knowing there were builders doing work in the offices, I put two and two together and come up with unplugged or cut cable. Sure enough everyone else in the building was suffering from the same problem and the builder was summoned to see if he could shed any light on it. He couldn’t, and he was sure he’s not unplugged anything important.

At this stage I decided to step in and ask if, by any chance they were working near a box, probably blue, with lots of blinking lights and lots of cables coming out of it looking like the network cables we could see in the room. On seeing the network cables the builder went ‘ah, I know what you’re talking about’ and headed off downstairs again. 30 seconds later everything was working again. I’m betting he’d plugged in something he now realised to be important

I was under the impression that weddings were these hideously complex, fantastically expensive shows where the veneer of ‘The Perfect Day™’ was spread thinly round the climax of months of grief. Thankfully I am wrong, or more to the point our wedding isn’t going to be like that.

Tip number one for a stress free day is a small venue. Why pay for a large venue that will cost a fortune and increase the likelyhood of one or more of the guests having a drama when you can have a smaller venue that is every bit as lovely (if not more so) and much cheaper. Less guests mean less cash, less worries with seating plans, not having to worry about things like a top table, dance floor, DJ, etc. All in all A Good Thing™.

Tip number two is to phone the registrar on a day distantly removed from any where they may be moving office or any other such activities. Admittedly I failed with this bit, choosing instead to try to phone them on Friday just as they’d finished packing up to move office. Monday they were closed and Tuesday (today) the finally opened at a bit before 10 but were unable to secure my booking because they needed paying and the card machine wasn’t up and running. Given we’d found the perfect venue on the perfect date there was no way I was letting any bugger nick our spot so I jumped in the car, drove to their office and booked in person. I’m hoping that will be the most stressful event of the whole wedding planning process (I’d rate it about 0.4 on a stress scale of 0-10).

Tip number three, and one I’ll be sticking to rigidly, is that although there is a maximum number of guests we don’t need to invite that number. If anyone who is invited is not happy with any of the arrangement we’ll cheerfully uninvite them and put the money towards the honeymoon.

So the date is set, registrar booked, venue booked, photographer sorted, makeup sorted, dress in the process of being sorted, suits sorted, flowers paid for (but need to be sorted), cake is pretty much sorted. All that’s left to do really is choose the menus and say ‘I do’. Got 9 months to sort that out