Planning, plotting & scheming

OK so the big news of the weekend was not, as I explained earlier our trip to either the wedding or even Festa de Avante! but rather the news that me and S have now (almost) got a date for our wedding.

I really don't want this blog to turn into one of 'those blogs'* and at least recently I've tried as much as possible to avoid it just being about me and my life and attempted some kind of more general impression-giving blog. Almost an anti-travel blog if you will - not that this is in anyway supposed to dissuade people from visiting Portugal, quite the opposite in fact, but rather it's supposed to be something of an antidote to those fluffy, romantic travel guides. Even those 'hip and happening' guides like Le Cool and Wallpaper naturally tend to hype a place and I just want to document my view from the street. This is the travel blog equivalent of Bill Hick's 'The People Who Hate People Party'.

Anyway, S and I have been engaged for 9 months and we really didn't want it to be one of those engagements that go on forever as some kind of semi-permanent state that is meant to avoid any real kind of commitment. In the back of our minds of course we have always had the thought of the Portuguese Wedding and all that that entails and we're really not very traditional so it was until this weekend something like an unspoken agreement that when we did it it wouldn't be a traditional affair.

All the thought of weddings this weekend brought the whole thing to the front of our minds and considering that we don't want a traditional wedding we accept that there will have to be a hell of a lot of planning involved. Not least getting my crowd over from the UK, a job which it's best to give as much notice as possible. There is also the small problem that we don't want to do it in Lisbon. We figured that if we do it out of town, in the countryside then we can invite a bunch of people for whom the travel and fuss will be too much and therefore only those who really love us will make the effort.

There are other general aspects of weddings that we want to dispose of too, there will be no 'top table', everyone will sit around together and can talk together so there will be no sense of 'the chosen few'. We also don't want the usual starter, main course, desert meal preferring instead to have a big barbecue with enough food to feed a small army. Our wedding will have to have speeches too, which although traditional in the UK isn't here in PT. There's also hope that we can get some friends to play a few songs with their band as well as having a DJ (it will have to be someone I trust implicitly otherwise I will be doing it myself).

In terms of dress code we're desperately trying to think of how to word the invitation so that everyone doesn't turn up in suits and their Sunday best. This is a fact that S's dad was very happy about. S says she has her dress already planned and so I'm going to have to start thinking about mine soon.

I'm sure I won't be able to help adding the odd thing in here about this whole process which is unavoidable but I'm sure it will give me opportunity to have many more insights into Portuguese life and culture.

*By one of 'those blogs' I of course mean those tedious blogs full of, "Thursday - washed my hair", "I wonder if she really loves me", that kind of rubbish.