lifestylesupportguru

Category: Wedding

Wedding Advice

As LSG followers will know, I recently attended a pre-wedding party. I had also been asked to contribute something to a video offering marriage guidance (no comments, please!) to be shown at the hen weekend. That weekend has now passed and I have been given ‘official’ permission to publish the advice. Please feel free to follow this advice or to pass it on to anyone you know who may be contemplating marriage at some point in the future:

Hi Lizzi,
By now you will know that your sibling has asked people to contribute a video on WhatsApp imparting advice on success in the marriage stakes. There were a few problems for me with this: 1) I’m not great with technology; 2) I hate videos of myself and 3) I’ve never been married! I am therefore sending you a picture of me as a little girl in full Welsh costume instead of a video – much more attractive! – and some advice in my role as the Lifestyle Support Guru, someone of whom I’m sure your mother has spoken – and if she hasn’t, she has been sadly remiss in her duties as a proper mother!

The Lifestyle Support Guru (LSG for the sake of brevity) exists only to offer advice and support to everyone as they travel through life, trying to make sense of difficulties such as how to make bread-and-butter pudding (and, more pertinently, why?) or the role of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage in ensuring that we can all sleep safely in our beds at night (the answer eludes me at the moment).

I shall keep this brief, since you will want to move on to the ‘proper’ videos of real people singing, dancing and generally enjoying themselves in anticipation of your forthcoming nuptials. I may well wear a Welsh hat and dance around the house on your wedding day, but I promise not to video it!
So, what marital advice can the LSG offer? Firstly, Jane Austen is always a good source of information on the subject of marriage (and, since she never married either, I feel I am in good company): “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Therefore, I hope you have found a single man in possession of a good fortune but, more importantly, that he is willing to spend that fortune on you! That’s the first point covered.

Secondly, look at your parents’ marriage and, in your case, use it as a blueprint. A joint liking for wine is a good start, but you must also have different interests, such as one of you enjoying obscure, incomprehensible foreign films and the other showing a preference for playing the saxophone (if Andrew doesn’t play the sax, may I suggest a course of lessons as your wedding present to him?). This will help keep your marriage fresh because you will always have something to talk about.

And, finally, remember to respect each other – if Andrew respects your opinion on all things and you respect his willingness to defer to you, you won’t go far wrong.

It only remains for me to wish both of you a long and happy marriage and a bright future.

How to Become Invisible

Invisible

A very good Sunday evening to you all from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Having returned from a weekend in Hereford, I can now share with you what I have learned from venturing into the wilds of the Welsh Marches area. You may well ask, ‘Why Hereford?’ And I will answer, ‘Why not?’ There was a reason for choosing Hereford which, simply put, was because the other place my friends and I wanted to go to was full!
So, what have I learned from my sojourn away? Well, I have learned how to BECOME INVISIBLE!!! This can be a very useful trick and one that came about quite accidentally, but it’s an easy one to learn, especially if you are female. Here are the basic rules:
1. Make sure you are the only female in your group.
2. Find a nice little pub in which to settle down to watch a day of rugby (having researched the pub the previous evening on a test run – notice that I didn’t say ‘a DRY run’!).

rugby

3. Sit down in a cosy corner facing the television. Now, here I need you to picture the scene, if you will… the four male members of the party are all seated on a corner bench seat around a couple of tables, while the female member is on a chair opposite them.
Now, having sorted the basics, this is how you BECOME INVISIBLE – a large group of young women in various forms of Welsh national dress will enter the pub and sit down behind the female member of your group, thus facing the male members of your crowd. From that point on, the female member will find that she has BECOME INVISIBLE and that she could be speaking in Swahili for all the notice that is taken of anything she may have to say, however important it may be (world debt, starving children, the price

garter

of a pint, that sort of thing…). She is not helped by the ‘leader’ (i.e., the bride-to-be in this hen party) occasionally raising her skirt to show off her garter (in the Welsh colours, of course!). A glazed look will have come over the faces of the males sitting opposite you and you could swear that tongues hung out at one point!
So how do you get rid of this INVISIBILITY, you ask? Well, all you need is for a group of Morris dancers to enter the drinking establishment. Yes, Morris dancers, dear followers. You will feel a bout of hysteria coming on as one of the Morris men, in all seriousness, asks one of the hen party, ‘Why are you dressed up like that?’ This comes from a man wearing a white frilly top, trousers tucked into his socks, bells hanging from his knees and his face blacked up!

Morris Dancers

The hysteria builds up further when, after you get talking to the girls – a very nice crowd from Cardiff, as it turns out – the bride-to-be tells you that she’s getting married in Marrakech in a couple of weeks and the only married man in your group says, in all seriousness, ‘Oh, we went there last year. It’s really nice.’ Somehow, I don’t think an almost-60-year-old man and his wife and daughter will have quite the same priorities as a twenty-something blonde getting married in Morocco! I shall simply say that his list of things to see and do didn’t really bring a gleam of joy to her eye!

And on that note, I shall say ‘Hakuna Matata’ – which is Swahili!
Sleep well, dear followers.

Pagan Wedding

Pagan pentangle

Well, here’s the Lifestyle Support Guru the morning after the Pagan Wedding with one or two photos and some advice on a) how NOT to upset the bride and b) how to make a Pagan Wedding go with a swing.
1. When the bride-to-be sends you a wedding invitation, don’t return the Reply Slip having crossed out and re-written your name on it, this time spelled correctly. You will find that your name is on the Seating Plan, but again spelled incorrectly – a different wrong spelling this time. One to the bride!
2. When the bride comes to say hello and says to you, ‘It’s Chris, isn’t it?’, you know you’ve upset her because she’s already met you 3 or 4 times and has never met Chris, who is blonde and wears glasses, quite the opposite of you! Two to the bride!

Large glass red wine

Large glass red wine
3. When seated at the table for the meal, try to take charge of the wine – two bottles doesn’t go far between ten people anyway, so when the woman opposite you pours herself a VERY large glass of red, looks at what’s left in the bottle, looks round the table, shrugs, says, ‘Shame to waste it.’ and pours the rest into her glass, you know you’re going to have a quiet night! Of course, you could go and purchase your own glass of wine at the bar, but you’d already taken out a small mortgage on the first one you bought!
4. If you are going to be an ‘official’ at a Pagan Wedding, you might create a better impression if you’re NOT wearing a ‘Bushmills, Irish Whiskey’ rugby jersey underneath your green cloak and twigs. Quite took away all the mystery.
5. If you are ever the officiating Druid (or Druidess in this case) at a Pagan Wedding, try to find someone who can help with the pronunciation of the names of some of the spirits – not including Bushmills, lol! – such as Euros. The Welsh among you will know that this is pronounced ‘Eye-ross’, not ‘Euros’ as in the money! Unless, of course, Euros is the pagan god of money?
So there we have it, dear followers – perhaps I should have found out beforehand that the bride is a White Witch, rather than upset her! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Wedding Advice

bride

LSG here with some WEDDING ADVICE! Having been to my nephew’s wedding on Saturday, I now feel qualified to help you make the most of that special day with the top 10 do’s and don’ts. Follow these simple rules and you will have a great time:

1. DON’T stand anywhere within the immediate vicinity of the bride if she is tall, slim, blonde and attractive, unless you are also tall, slim, blonde and attractive (and 26 years old).
2. DO hang around with the older members of the party – you will look much more at home (and you will understand the conversation).
3. When the evening party starts, DON’T keep asking ‘When are they going to play some proper music?’. (The Stones and Status Quo are not considered ‘proper music’ by anyone under 35,. And as for suggesting some Motown – DON’T!)
4. DON’T even think of getting up and trying to dance – you will give your age away immediately even if you followed the advice in 1.
5. DON’T wear white trousers if there is a glass of red wine within 50 feet – YES, you can guess what happened!
6. DON’T believe the advice that pouring white wine on spilled red wine gets rid of the stain – IT DOESN’T! All it does is make the stain pink instead of red and you feel sad at the waste of red AND white wine.
7. DON’T follow the advice of the person sitting next to you that rubbing salt into the stain will remove it – IT DOESN’T! All it does is make you feel a complete idiot while you sit there rubbing handfuls of the stuff into your trousers and when you stand up, it looks as if you’ve got dandruff of the legs when it all falls on the carpet.
8. DON’T make it worse by following the advice of the person next to you that spraying soda water on the stain will make it disappear. IT DOESN’T! All it means is that you now have a VERY wet leg and there is still a large pinkish stain on the trousers.
9. When going up to the bar to get a consoling glass of wine, don’t think you can hide the stain by holding your arm straight down and putting your hand over the bottom half of your thigh. YOU CAN’T! All it means is that you walk like someone who’s trying to do an imitation of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
10. DO have a good time – I did!