Minsk to Mist

You know how, when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with a person you love, you envisage a romantic wedding party with flowers, a nice meal and the ultimate bliss? Funny how, in this case, the reality unmatches your expectations quicker than you unmatched that guy on Tinder who thought you would have been impressed with a picture of his genitals…

In one of my previous posts, I have already referred to the UK weddings as the most unhinged experience of my entire life. I still stand by it. While some bits of the wedding prep are utterly amazing (more on that further), the general feeling is that it is turning into a military operation but with flowers. (or maybe even no flowers!)

Here’s the thing:

Weddings in the UK are SHOCKINGLY expensive!

Funnily enough, they don’t become much cheaper if you cut down your guest list, so don’t even bother removing names from the list. Most of your expenses will come from non-variables such as flowers, cakes, booze, your wedding dress, your photographer, but most terrifyingly – your registrar’s fees! Might as well invite more guests within the set limit so that having as many people that you like as you can sweeten the bitterness of picking that tab up.

When I first moved to London, I felt ultimately flattered by Marc Zuckerberg as my Facebook feed was relentless at showing me deals on buying a flat in London. Now, it appears I have the word ‘billionaire’ written all over my face as vendors quote me unthinkable prices for stuff that I will only use for one day. After that, that stuff goes into a bin – or, best-case scenario, into my wardrobe, patiently waiting for the day when I learn how to sew and my creative side can come up with a way to redesign an old wedding dress into something more pragmatic.

£2,000 for flowers. (Add another two grand, and you can pay for an MBA module…)

£300 for renting ginormous ‘LOVE’ letters that look tasteless. (if someone wants to pay me that much to put those letters at my wedding, I am happy to consider it, though)

£800 in registrar’s fees – unlike anything else, I can’t even skip it! The point of getting married is to make it legal, and the only thing that I cannot take out of the equation makes me understand why in the US they get ordained online and marry their friends. (wish we could do that in the UK)

And the pinnacle of the UK wedding costs…

The wedding dress.

The one.

The only.

The thing that makes me want to give up on the MBA, learn dressmaking and go into the wedding dressmaking business, I might be better off then.

Is it really all doom and gloom?

Oh, of course not! I always try to stay optimistic at heart (can’t say I always succeed) and pay attention to the positives. And there’s plenty of these.

Take cake testing, for one. Finally, a wedding task with immediate rewards!

Or prepping the first dance! My husband-to-be is yet struggling to appreciate what a fantastic idea I have, but I’m not losing hope that he will be persuaded to go for it! (Between you and me, dearest gentle reader, given that the wedding is on Halloween, I’m thinking ‘start with a romantic theme and slow dance to it for a minute and then switch to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’).

Choosing music is another delightful wedding chore, as we get to sift through our favourite hits, see which songs we can use to commemorate the loved ones that are now sadly gone, reflect on our ancestry (I can think of a bombastic fun dance song in Belarusian!) and simply enjoy ourselves in that simple act.

And, of course:

Wedding checklists!

Boy, do I like checklists! To quote Sheldon Cooper, if there were a list of things that made me feel more comfortable, lists would be on top of that list. Checklists are the only thing that keep me sane at this point, even though the ratio between ‘checked off’ and ‘yet to be done’ is alarming. Honestly, I am at a point when I should probably put a ‘come to the wedding’ line item so that I don’t forget to show up!

So what is it that stresses you out the most?

OK, let’s start with the dress shopping…

This is probably one of those things I will be procrastinating on until the very last week of the wedding. Not because of the lack of time, although this is still a valid reason. But mostly because it’s too much pressure!

You look at supermodels wearing those awesome princess dresses – and it makes you feel like absolute rubbish about your own body. You look at the price of those dresses – and you wonder if you should start an OnlyFans account to be able to pay for it, as they somehow cost the GDP of a small country. You are absolutely overwhelmed by those options, but most importantly – the daunting pressure of having ‘the very special day’. Which you find ironic, given you have had that ‘special day’ once already, and you know for sure what sort of dress you absolutely do NOT want. That is, a type of dress you had the first time around.

Then there is logistics, which is exacerbated by the fact that I come from a … hmmm, how do I put it diplomatically?.. quite an exotic country, whose position in the middle of Europe did not preclude it from developing a notorious reputation causing all European neighbours to close borders and air traffic and harshen the visa regulations.

My maid of honour can’t travel with her current Belarusian passport despite living in Europe, and it remains to be seen if she can get a travel document and then a visa to come to the wedding. My mother is not coming for health reasons – although if there was a direct flight from Minsk to London, we could have probably found a workaround. Sending a 76-year-old woman with severe mobility issues and a complete lack of command of English on a quest I do every time I visit my native country (a bus to Vilnius with about 5 hours of waiting at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border, and then a flight to London, OR a 5-hour Minsk-Istanbul flight, followed by a transfer in one of the biggest airports in the world to hop onto a 4-hour flight to London) was something the doctors advised strongly against. Back in the days, a flight from Minsk to London took 3 hours.

And the most daunting of all is – bureaucracy.

If you marry a British citizen while living in the UK as a foreigner, you will most likely face a lot of fun quests that a born-and-bred Brit wouldn’t have to think about. For example, I’m planning to change my last name. Before I even start the challenge of changing it at the NHS, the bank, the Tesco clubcard, and tons of other things, I need to:

• Go to Belarus and change my passport there
• Update my details at the portal where they track my right to live in the UK (otherwise, I won’t be able to enter the country)
• Wait until the changes are accepted – which can take up to 10 days, so I won’t know for sure when I am coming back home
• Make arrangements in Belarus that they let me keep my current passport in the old name, as it has loads of visas that enable me to go to Europe and other countries (my Canadian visa is valid until 2033, and I’m not giving up on that!)
• Notify the Home Office of my new marital status and my new last name.

I’m kinda glad I didn’t change my name in the first marriage, otherwise, I would have had to do it all the same, just the other way round…

So where do we end up then?

The UK weddings are a ginormous mix of stress, excitement, decision fatigue and procrastination. Logistics are a nightmare, everything is expensive, and no matter how much you are trying to plan it, I bet £20 on something going completely wrong and chaotic on the day.

There’s a joke in my native country that, before you get married, you need to first redecorate your place together. If your relationship can survive that, it can survive anything in a marriage. Planning a wedding certainly does feel like a similar challenge. Except that, at least with a wedding, you get some cake at the end!