Wedding Planning: “It’s Research, Honest”

It’s never too early to start planning your wedding – especially when that planning involves a holiday. 

I guess that this isn’t really wedding planning – it’s more I want to go on holiday with my other half and seeing as we’re engaged, we may as well say we’re scouting for a honeymoon location (partially true), I’m sure we can get away with that. 

On a more serious (and wedding-y) note, this post marks the first in what should be a long series of wedding planning posts. At eighteen I don’t quite feel old enough to get married, but in five years time (2018, which would be my ideal year, I think) I’ll be 23, and I think by that point I’ll feel ready. May as well start preparing now!

I am the least-organised person in existence, which is why I’m starting now – because, if I start now, there’s a chance I MIGHT be organised in time for 2018. Seriously, my “planning” so far has consisted of putting songs in a Spotify playlist entitled “Wedding” (I got the free trial of Premium yesterday and I love it, but not sure I’d pay £10 a month for it), and attempting to figure out Pinterest so I can make a mood board. I failed, so the mood board is out of the window. Oh, and I searched on Tumblr for “Winter weddings”. That’s pretty much the only productive research I’ve done.

Back to the “research” holiday – I want to go to Ireland. I don’t know why, but this summer I want to go to Ireland with my other half, and if it’s nice I’d quite like to go on honeymoon there – not too expensive, and it looks quite pretty from what I’ve seen. 

So, today marks the beginning of my wedding planning. We’ve got quite a few years (and a LOT of saving up!) to do until then, but I’m already feeling just a teensy bit excited! 😉

Review: “The Lion King”, Manchester

Venue – The Palace Theatre, Manchester

Seats – M34 and M35, Grand Tier

Cost – £25 each

 

Wow. Where to start on this one? This is the first musical I’ve seen twice – I saw it for the first time in London in 2008 with my school, and then for the second time yesterday, and it affected me a lot more this time – I got quite emotional at some parts! With the exception of the people sitting around us – a woman behind who kept rustling packets constantly, and a horrendous family in front who couldn’t control their kids and ended up – during the most emotional part – all standing up so the daughter, who’d decided to sit as close to the middle as possible, could go to the toilet. As if that wasn’t bad enough (go in the interval or hold it in!), they couldn’t just get up and walk, they had to talk about it and keep shifting around. It didn’t ruin the song for me, although I’m worried that it may have done for my other half, whose birthday present it was.

The cast was incredible, but sitting so high up in the gods, it sounded a little quiet. Again, that’s not a fault of the cast or the theatre, it’s just a fact that we knew would happen when I booked the tickets. It doesn’t ruin the experience whatsoever, the only reason I’ve included this is just to say that if you want the best sound quality, I’d say go and sit in the stalls or even further towards the front of the grand tier.

My personal highlights of the cast were Meilyr Sion – a Welshman playing an African bird (originally portrayed as very English by Rowan Atkinson) with a Scottish accent! Those little bits of playing on the fact that Zazu was now from Glasgow were hilarious; I won’t say what they are in case anyone is reading this and plans to go and see it.

The songs were incredible; “He Lives In You” was just incredible and even made me shed a few tears. Harmonies were incredible and a couple of songs in there that I don’t recall seeing in the London production really added to it – I was a little disappointed at first about the omission of “The Morning Report”, but the musical doesn’t lose anything by not having it in there – that’s just a note that if you’ve seen it and loved it in other versions, it’s not in the tour version so don’t expect it! Music is fantastic.

Staging and costume… wow. I’m a theatre and performance student so although I am a techie at heart and prefer the technical side, I was looking at it more from a performance point of view this time, and I was blown away. My other half is the big techie and he can be quite hard to wow, but every so often as a new, intricate piece of costume was unveiled (his particular favourite were the giraffes, I think), or some of the set was brought on (Pride Rock and the elephant graveyard are incredible, but we were both amazed at the pools of water – if you go and see it, you’ll understand what I mean), all I’d hear from him was a breathless “Wow”. He was absolutely enthralled by the technical side, but I think the performance aspect wowed him too – the choreography was incredible, mixing dance with stage combat for some of the fight scenes which made it incredible.

Oh, and just another warning – we all know Mufasa dies. It happens in the film, it happens in the stage show, and we’re all aware of that fact, and if you weren’t, you need to be told now anyway. Mufasa’s death is like the “Bambi’s Mom dying” for our generation (or for me, anyway, because I always preferred lions to deer and never cared that much for Bambi), and it is done so well in the stage show that you may find yourself feeling a little emotional.

Some of the bits may be scary for younger kids, but I can guarantee they will love “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”, with the incredible costumes and puppets and dancing in it, and if what I saw when we left the theatre is an accurate representation of most kids, they’ll absolutely love it! It’s a fantastic family musical and I couldn’t recommend it more strongly! It’s at Manchester now until April 30th (not sure what availability is like on tickets), then it goes to (I think) Dublin and Birmingham. Tickets are fairly good prices – if you’ve got the cash, go for the stalls or the front of the circle, but if not, being in the dress circle (we were one row in front of the very back of the dress circle) doesn’t really have a  massive negative effect on the effect the performance will have on you. Leg room in the dress circle is very restricted, but it’s worth it to watch this show!