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Published: February 28th 2011
On the morning of the wedding I was woke up with a kiss from Nikki, Nikki and I are extremely competitive, to the extent we even make wishing each other happy anniversary a competition, I knew that as soon as I opened my eyes she was going to say something along the lines of “Today’s our wedding day” so I had to beat her to it. After the kiss and before I opened my eyes I said “Happy wedding day” I heard Nikki laugh at which point I opened my eyes and whispered “I said it first” followed by Nikki saying quite loudly “No that’s cheating”. Ah what a great way to start the day lol.
We had to meet at the reception at 9am to go in to Kiruna to register our wedding and sort out all of the legal stuff before meeting Eva, our wedding coordinator, to speak about the details and timing of the wedding. I was a little bit worried we would have a lot of time just waiting around on the wedding day as we were sorting the legal stuff at 9am, meeting the photographer at 2pm and getting married at 4:15 (I know it’s
unusual to have pictures taken before the wedding but apparently that’s how they do things in Sweden?) but as soon as we’d finished with Eva we went for lunch and that’s when the nerves kicked in, not nerves about getting married but nerves about everything being on time and worrying about having enough time to get ready.
As soon as we got back to the room I started to get ready, this is when I started to really stress out, I had two hours to shave, shower, get dressed and get Nikki into her dress.....a corset dress.....which I had to do up at the back plus I had to tie my cravat & tying a cravat is not as easy as tie. Just before I got in the shower Nikki gave me a card, she should not have given it to me before the wedding, what she had wrote inside was so sweet I felt myself starting to well up, this is where another of my ‘wedding day fears’ started to grow. Have you ever seen videos on TV of the groom saying his vowels and as he’s saying the words he begins to cry and his voice goes
Me saying my vowels
Yes we are both crying at this point, I'm looking down to try to compose myself.all squeaky? That is what I was worried about happening to me and if I’m starting to well up reading a card I’ll definitely cry during the wedding!
Miraculously I managed to shave without cutting myself and style my hair (and actually like it) in a relatively quick time, now the time consuming part, helping Nikki into her dress. Her dress was ridiculously heavy and it took several attempts just to get her into it, when we eventually loosened it enough to get her into it I then had to fasten the dress with her in it, as time was ticking I could feel myself getting more and more stressed worrying about the time, I eventually managed to fasten it tight enough so that it would keep up & she would be able to breathe. Now I was stressed, I had tied a cravat at home but it took me so many attempts I lost count, by some sheer fluke I managed to tie my cravat on my first attempt without it looking like a child had helped me with it, we were both ready with 20 minutes to spare “Champagne?” why not, we popped open a bottle to
calm the nerves before heading to meet the photographer.
When we met Kent, the photographer, he spoke with us briefly before heading into the Ice Hotel for our photos. The photos seemed to fly by, every now and then a random visitor to the Ice Hotel would walk into the room we were in getting photographed and congratulate us, by the time we had finished in all of the rooms we were quite cold so had a 15 minute break to warm up before some more photos. Throughout the photos being taken Nikki and I could not stop burping because of the champagne, luckily the photographer didn’t notice but we kept having a little chuckle to ourselves every time we heard the other burp. After a quick stint warming up we went back into the Ice Hotel for some more pictures in the main hall way, this is where we were both looking forward to having our pictures taken, we had seen several pictures of weddings at the Ice Hotel and all of them were in the main hall. We managed to attract a little crowd of about 20 people all taking pictures of us, we almost felt like
celebrities lol.
Once the pictures were over we had a 20 minute wait in our room until the sleigh pulled by reindeer arrived to take us to the chapel, “More champagne?” why not, we had some more champagne and then the big moment had arrived, the reindeer was waiting outside, arrrggghhhhh.
We stepped outside, got into the sleigh and we were on our way, it was freezing, the champagne had not helped keep us as warm as we had hoped, when we arrived at the chapel I went into the church and stood at the front waiting for my bride to be. My nerves had completely disappeared due to the temperature, I began to shake I was so cold (or was it nerves?), the music began to play, a traditional Swedish song called Liekkas, meaning ‘warm’ by a local Swedish woman called Sofia Jannok, then in walked my beautiful bride. I know I had already seen her in her dress, all day long in fact, but when she walked into the chapel she looked amazing, as she got closer I could see she was crying, oh no here it comes, I could feel myself starting to go “Come
on Chris hold it together”, I had to look away from Nikki to compose myself briefly, then there she was stood next to me at the alter, this was it, I’M ABOUT TO GET MARRIED!
From here things start to get a bit blurry, the priest began to speak and all I could hear was Nikki crying, I was trying so hard to hold myself together and then suddenly out of nowhere I did it. I should have known better than to drink the champagne again after our uncontrollable burps during the pictures but clearly I didn’t know better, I couldn’t control it and it just came out, I burped during the wedding, It wasn’t a loud burp but it was enough for Nikki to know and start laughing uncontrollably.
After we managed to compose ourselves the priest asked for the rings so he could bless them, we made our promises to each other and as I started to say my vowels I turned to look at Nikki and my worst fear was starting to be realised, I began to cry whilst saying my vowels, luckily my voice didn’t go squeaky but I did cry quite a bit.
When Nikki was saying her vowels she was worse than me when it came to crying but she’s a girl, it’s almost expected isn’t it?
At the end of the ceremony the same song played again as we walked out of the chapel, I couldn’t believe it we were finally married, I AM A MARRIED MAN! The sleigh pulled by reindeer took us back to our room so we could warm up a little before our wedding dinner at the Ice Hotel restaurant.
When we arrived at the restaurant we had a gift and a card on our table from the Ice Hotel, in the centre of the table was an ice sculpture of a heart, everything was perfect, our six course dinner was served on a plate of ice and some of the courses consisted of caviar, fillet of reindeer and reindeer tongue. After dinner we got changed into our snow suits to go to the Ice bar for a celebratory drink and on our way we looked up and saw the northern lights again, how amazing is that, we got to see the northern lights on our wedding day, I took a few pictures before heading
into the bar, we were only inside for about two minutes before someone ran in “Quick, outside, the northern lights are really strong” we ran outside and when we looked up the entire sky was dancing with lights, about 80% of the sky was alight and the whole lot was dancing. A local man was jumping up and down “This is the best I have seen the lights in ten years!” we spent about an hour just looking up, what an amazing way to finish our wedding day. When the lights grew weaker we went inside the Ice bar to have a drink, at that point it was midnight so once we finished our drinks and decided to go to bed for our first night as Mr & Mrs Nicholson.
I know everyone is a little biased and everyone will think of their own wedding as the most amazing wedding ever but I genuinely believe that Nikki and I had the most amazing wedding EVER!
Since we took our vowels one of them was in use almost instantly, when we got home from Sweden Nikki got the flu, well I did promise to look after her 'in sickness
and in health' lol.
Note to all men reading this, if you think you other half is ‘the one’ and you haven’t done so already, propose to her, it feels fantastic being married.
Nikki's wedding day blog will follow in a few days.
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The Dangling Carrot
Lynneelou
Congratulations!
Hello Mr and Mrs Nicholson, What a wonderful memory you have. Your pictures are beautiful and yes I had a tear too, reading your story. Very romantic! Love the pics of the northern lights in your last blog too. Incredible! Good luck for your future as a couple and in your travels too. Best wishes, Lynne