Introducing Keith

I am pleased to welcome a very special guest to Dreaming of the Country today.

Meet Keith

Keith is my big brother and that’s why I can get away with posting pictures like this of him. It’s a little sister’s prerogative to be annoying after all.

Keith is a great brother, and he’s also a great pastor of a church in North London. Josh and I were so pleased that Keith agreed to conduct our wedding for us, and he delivered one of the best wedding sermons I have ever heard. I’m not just saying that because I’m biased (or because it included eating KFC in the middle of a wedding service), but because I can still remember every point clearly, and all the advice was great.

Anyway…over to Keith…

I guess we all judge success differently: some of us are much harder on ourselves than others, some have greater aims than others. But in the blogging world how do you know ‘you’ve arrived’? I reckon it’s when you’re invited to write a guest entry on your little sisters blog. If you follow Rachel’s blog closely you will no doubt be aware that there is quite a long list of things that she has promised to blog on at some point – but never seems to get round to it. So when a recent entry had a reference to the sermon I gave at their wedding, with the promise of a future blog on the topic – I thought I’d get in there first. This fast food guide to marriage can be read alongside Mrs. M’s Marriage Tips.

 

1) Fish and Chips – Feelings and Choices: Love is a choice and not just a feeling. Love means that I will choose to act a certain way even if I don’t feel like it.

2) Burger King – Bedtime Kiss: There is a verse in the Bible that says we should not let the sun go down while we’re still angry. In a marriage it is important to say sorry, and to put things right quickly – certainly by bedtime at the latest. Going to bed with your relationship right is more important than winning the argument.

3) Pizza Hut – Practical Help: Marriage is a partnership in which both partners must play their part – and this doesn’t involve watching TV while your partner does all the cooking, cleaning and ironing!

4) KFC – Kindness, Forgiveness, Compassion: Be Kind – may seem an obvious piece of advice but how often when we open our mouths do we forget? When Jesus had compassion it led to action, and when we see each other in need it should spur us to action. A marriage (or any other relationship) without forgiveness is never going to work, because we all make mistakes and we need to be ready to forgive and to be forgiven.

Well – Rach and Josh – congratulations on 2 years. Good to know that after more than 17544 hours you remember something I said. Thanks for inviting me to write, and if anyone is interested, drop in and feed the fish at www.milkandnosugar.blogspot.com

Guided Tour

I suddenly thought the other day that I’m always posting pictures of places we visit, but I’ve never really posted pictures of where we live and where I work. I like to be able to imagine people’s surroundings when I hear them describe their lives (because I’m a bit of a stalker like that), so here we are…have a quick visual tour of my life…

Congratulations!

Many congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs King, whose lovely wedding we attended on Saturday. Not that they will be reading this – they will be off sunning themselves somewhere nice on their honeymoon I imagine!

The day brought back lots of memories as it is the first full wedding we have been to since our own. I cannot believe our first wedding anniversary is a week today. How the time has flown by.

The wedding on Saturday made we wish we could have ours again, but I have to keep reminding myself that, although our wedding day was probably the best day of my life (clichéd but true!), the general time was quite stressful and emotionally upheaving. In reality Josh and I are even more happy now together than we were then, so I need to stop being envious and enjoy being a one year Mrs!

 

Seeing Hannah plan her wedding also made me think how differently I would do our wedding if I had it over again. Don’t get me wrong, our wedding was perfect and I loved every part of it – it just wasn’t particularly environmentally friendly. It’s only really been in the last year since we have had our own home that we’ve really started playing out the idea of living simply. Our wedding wasn’t overly extravagant, but we did have most of the traditional ‘bumph’ which isn’t really necessary and just costs lots of money and wastes lots of resources. I definitely think that my mind-set has changed to such a point now that I wouldn’t even have thought of having some of the stuff we had, which really wasn’t necessary.

Anyway, my favourite part of the whole day was the service where we made promises to each other and to God in front of all our friends and family and I will remember it for ever. It’s that that sticks in my mind, and not the flower decorations!

Wedding Bells

Firstly, congratulations to all those that we know that have got engaged recently.

I don’t know if its just we are getting ‘to that age’, or if 2008 is going to be an exceptional wedding year, but we know of at least six couples who have got engaged over Christmas (the majority of which will be marrying in 2008 ) and another two who have their big day in a matter of months! I need to get my frocks out!

There is a wedding in church here in 30 minutes. I made the order of services for them, so am feeling very nervous in case something is wrong in them!I’ve already had to reprint them once because of a stupid typing mistake so I will be happy when the service is over and nothing was in the wrong order or mispelt!
I am going to slip out and watch the wedding with a friend who is getting married in July. We had a fun time last night going through all my old wedding planning stuff. Made me wish I had a wedding to plan again!

To all those planning your weddings, don’t get stressed about it – cherish it because you only get to do it once and it’s over really quickly!