I am amazed by the power of Your grace
I am amazed that You took my sin and shame
Restoring hope, restoring dignity
Your grace covers me

I'm overwhelmed by Your love and goodness
I'm overwhelmed that You took my brokenness
Amazing love, how can this be?
Your grace covers me
Your grace covers me, oh

Saving grace, washing over me
Saving grace, that made a way for me
I was lost until You rescued me
Your grace covers me

I just watched a report on child marriages. I've watched numerous documentaries on the subject before but this made me think 'what can I do to help?'

I don't know. I want to help. But what can we do? It's a hideous, sickening custom. There are 1m women in Bangladesh alone who are entirely incontinent due to giving birth in poor conditions when they were under a healthy age for childbearing. Many of these women are abandoned by their husbands and families.

I'm not going to swear here but if anything has ever made me want to swear, it's this.

Many of the families say they have to marry their girls young because dowries get more expensive the older the girl is (the older they get, the less desirable they are as wives which is why the dowry goes up). However, I was thinking - would it not be possible to create a charity/fund to pay to the husbands' families when a girl over the legal age of marriage is getting married? That way, poor families can keep their daughters in education and allow them to live out their childhoods.

I realise this isn't the only cause for child marriage but it's one of the most common ones in some parts of the world and gah I just want to help so much. Why is this form of slavery not acted upon? These children are given to people who rape and beat them and forced to perform menial chores and give them children. They have no education or opportunity to leave. How is this not slavery?

Sob.

Excuse my squinting but it was both sunny and windy which didn't make for a good combination. Also, check out my shoes of awesome. Actually, just generally my outfit of awesome.

Yes, I have been told I'm adorable.

I am so upset I want to cry. I am too ill to carry on studying with this course for the Open University and I thought I could defer without them charging me twice but apparently not. I can't afford to pay for it twice and I certainly don't want to see my efforts come to nothing. I am just so fed up and sad now.

Finding a dress like this in my size is hard. Finding a dress like this in my size for anything less than, say, £150, is harder. Although I did pay more for it than I planned, it was still about the same as most of my other vintage dresses which are just day dresses and not quite as pretty.





So of course now I have to work out how to style this. Does this mean I need new shoes? Gosh, I hope so.

I will post more pictures when I get around to it but at the moment I'm washing all our clothes and unpacking the suitcases whilst the husband goes out to get food. Heh.

I just don't listen to that much music that is going to get people out of their seats dancing. At the moment, Michael and I are putting together our reception dance music list and having trouble because - well, neither of us listens to much dancey stuff. He likes geeky music and Coldplay *yawn* and I like lots of 30s & 40s stuff but mostly things that just ain't good for the kind of dancing that people expect at weddings.

SO.

What do I do? So far I've got some Glenn Miller/Benny Goodman but not huge amounts, a bit of Blondie and then a bit of classic rock'n'roll & some 60s girl groups. What else should I do? I still want music that is 'me'!

And meh, Michael can sort his choice out himself. But he's not doing so well. His musical tastes are mostly dire.

I cut my hair the other day so I've been fiddling with it to get some kind of idea of how to set it for the wedding day. I will definitely be doing pin curls after learning that my usual hair rollers are far too small for shorter hair - by which I mean that, with shorter hair, the curls are less bulky and therefore more tight and turn my hair into crazy frizz. So pin curls it is. Here I am showing off my first set of pin curls in the new hair but mostly just posing in my wedding veil (which I made myself, hence why it's a bit crummy. But never mind, I like it anyway).





It's less than five weeks to the big day now and I have to design the order of service, make, print out and cut out the place names (they're so nifty, I will post one here) and wrap all the favours, as well as buy the things to go on the tables, make more confetti and just generally spend huge amounts of time thinking about wedding things AND try to learn some basic Italian (at least 'do you have anything gluten free' so I can not roll around in agony for a week). Gah. I know I have enough time but I DON'T LIKE WEDDINGS and I would like to not have to think about them for a solid month.

My beautiful girl lost her battle with cancer
1998-2011