Concurrent Activity – Organising a Wedding in Four Weeks

So let’s rewind a little bit. As previously mentioned Kady and I had already planned on getting married in Kefalonia in Jul 11. When we got the bad news at the Spire Hospital, pretty much our first conversation as we walked out of the building was what we were going to do about advancing our marriage. We were obviously pretty shocked by what we had been told and realized there was not a moment to waste. We had decided by the time we had even gotten to the car that we were going to drastically advance the date of our wedding. Over the course of the next couple of hours we had agreed that the new date would be 1st Oct 10, some 4 1/2 weeks away, talk about setting ourselves a challenge.

What followed was a frenzy of planning! I went straight onto some major doses of various drugs as well as emergency Whole Brain Radiotherapy. This induced chronic physical fatigue but the drugs also brought false mental energy. Sleep went out of the window and I found myself only getting 3 hours a night. Sounds pretty horrendous and at times it was but it did mean that I was able to hammer out roughly 20 hours a day producing dozens of spreadsheets and word documents. That’s how we did the planning bit, I was getting very confused at times with the drugs, lack of sleep and the sheer time pressure. If I hadn’t documented everything there’s just no way I could have kept track of things.

Kady worked ferociously hard, producing invites, getting her dress sorted, dealing with friends and family who all threw themselves into helping us out also. One of the best things she did was fend off the barrage of emails and phone calls from me which although all done with the best intentions was contributing to make me feel worse. She did amazingly well and I am so proud of her. She of course didn’t have the drug induced mania that I did and just how she coped with all that as well as her own personal feelings about the situation I just don’t know. If you ever need a crash course in short sharp wedding planning then we are your people.

It of course wasn’t all us. So many work colleagues, my boss, an old friend of mine who is a former Army Padre, our families, our close friends did so much, the list is endless.  Suffice to say we were completely overwhelmed by the help that we got. It just goes to show there is so much good human nature out there.

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Quite a number of the guys who worked for me were phenomenal in volunteering to help us out also. They didn’t have to do anything but through their good nature they built and equipped a huge marquee in only two days, without that our wedding reception just couldn’t have happened! We were so grateful to them as I know from bitter experience that putting up tents, despite the joking about it, is the absolute last thing that soldiers like doing.