Evie Hart: The Wedding Count Down

So once everything was sorted, i tried my hardest to just go with the flow and enjoy the actual wedding count down...

Louis, his best man and his good friend were all travelling down to Poitiers in a van packed with wedding supplies, their only instruction was to collect all the alcohol we needed enroute... (yes i did worry about putting 3 lads in charge of our wedding drinks!) I was travelling down to Luton with my bestie and Mommy Hart to meet my other bestie and her little boy ready for our flight to Paris, in the run up to wedding week we had so many little stresses that looked like they may go against us.... The weather was not great on and off rain which was not ideal for our beautiful chateau wedding, there was huge riots and strikes going on in Paris and other parts of France and to top it all off the European football championships were on so there were so many uncontrollable stressed coming in to the equation which was not good for my general OCD anyway....

So the boys made it over to Calais, my bride tribe and i had made it to our Paris apartment and although the weather was still look miserable i felt like we had safely gotten on to the roller coaster so i may as well try and enjoy the ride; Paris is my favourite in the world, i cant really describe how it makes me feel its almost like im home when i am there, we stay in the same apartment almost every time, we know the neighbourhoods ect i just love it so to be able to take 2 of my besties and my mum was one of my favourite parts of wedding week, we wondered around the area we stay in, we got drinks and picked up chinese food from our favourite place on the corner and just took in the parisian atmosphere, people watching from our apartment. I was hoping to take everyone on a little tour of Paris but with the terror attacks still being quite raw and having a precious little human with us, it was not a risk i was willing to take.

We woke up the next morning and got ourselves ready for our train from Paris to Poitiers, it was all starting to feel real and my nerves were slowly starting to kick in, i felt like i wasnt 100% in the room my head was always somewhere else; we managed to get on our train in time and had plenty of snacks for a train picnic so we could just sit back and relax... then i had a call from Louis, they had been pulled over by the police and had started to have their alcohol confiscated... Apparently they had banned the sale of alcohol in France because of all the trouble linked with the football and 3 lads in a van full of alcohol obviously rang alarm bells, as the booze was being unloaded they thankfully managed to find a English speaking officer who explained to them what was happening and after some explaining of their own and some examples of how they werent off to watch the football which included fascinators, wedding outfits and venue decorations (not to mention most of the alcohol was Champagne..) the policeman kindly agreed to let them keep the alcohol and carry on their way..Phew... I was seriously starting to worry our wedding was tainted.

Our train arrived in to Poitiers just in time for the rain, i had to collect our hire car (which was a 10 minute very rainy walk to the car hire shop), then meet Emma our videographer at the train station and take us all to the Chateau... whilst driving for the first time ever on the wrong side of the road! Other than cracking one of my very beautiful wedding nails everything went fine and we made it to the chateau as it stopped raining to meet the wonderful Tiphaine; i still got the same chills pulling in to the drive way of the chateau that i had every time before and to have my friends there to see it with me was so surreal.

We walked around got clued up on everything and then were left to it... my only heartbreak was the Tiphaine told me we couldnt use the beautiful wooden tables i had seen on Instagram outside... i felt quite broken as the long wooden table for our wedding breakfast was my vision but there was too much to do to dwell on it for too long, we would just have to come up with a plan B.. or a plan cheeky.

The boys arrived and we unloaded everything (honestly i cannot thank our wonderful friends and family enough for all the help they gave us setting up the chateau and just in general being wonderful and being there for us) then a few of our earlier guests arrived as our official invite date was not until Friday as we wanted a extra day to get everything set up but there were a few guests travelling down to Poitiers in motorhomes so we said of course they were welcome to join us when ever they arrived, we collected our other besties from the airport and then the real fun began... we danced and drank the night away it was amazing just to have a chilled relaxed night before the entertaining began the following day, there were quite a few sore heads the next morning and we had made our way through a big chunk of the alcohol that was supposed to be for the wedding but the memories we made that night were completely worth it.

But there was no rest for us wicked ones and breakfast was delivered bright and early along with our Citroen 2CV which we would be using for some filming as part of our wedding film.