Eeny Meeny Miny Mo

As the days stroll by and we eat into 2010, we grow inevitably closer to England's World Cup destiny, my 30th Birthday and of course, the day Stephanie and I get married. Exciting times for us indeed, but it in the last few days the excitement has just upped a notch or two!

Since I last wrote, Stephanie and I have settled in nicely in our new jobs, so that they now just feel like jobs and have lost the "new" element, such is life. In the past three months we've made new friends, learnt new things and have had lots to contend with, like getting burgled and having to buy a new car whilst sorting out the insurance on the as yet unfound old one. Gillingham being relegated, Liverpool missing out on the top four and the start of the World Cup which saw the usual delirium as the nation obsesses about the national team.

It would have been easy to write about any of these things, but Twitter and Facebook make my life easier, I can say something in 140 characters and a click of a button, I can do it reactively and "live". So sitting down writing a blog about, in the scheme of things, not very much, hasn't been worth the while. But, with the wedding plans coming to fruition I now have a very valid and exciting reason to write!

Stephanie and I, invites sent, suits ordered, dresses made, shoes brought, menu's chosen, flowers booked, cake in the oven and goodness knows what else came to an alarming halt in our wedding plans when we came to "themeing" our table names. Rather than Auntie Maureen sitting at table number 1, we thought we could name the tables after something, which is all the rage apparently.

So we thought of things, rubbish things mainly, named after birds for example, but who would want to sit on the "blue tit" table? Or named after aisles in Safeways where we met. The "Frozen Food" table anyone? We thought about it, threw some stuff around and got nowhere very fast, until we sat and had a chat with my Mum and Dad.

They said that they would like to send us on our honeymoon and asked us where we would like to go. Stephanie and I looked at each other, and well, what can you say? If you say, Hawaii, thinking the world is your oyster and they say "we was thinking more this country", you end up looking a bit greedy, or if you try and be polite and say "Prestatyn is nice that time of year" they could equally turn around and say "excellent, Prestatyn it is, although we was thinking somewhere a bit more exotic like Aruba" then you've ended up looking rather stupid. So we did the sensible thing and said "surprise us".

With the honeymoon now sorted as well, we were still left with the table predicament, yet somehow I had the genius idea of combining the two.  With Gatwick being the top table, the other tables could be named after places and during the course of the wedding day, we'd have a grand "reveal" and learn which "table" would be our destination!

Stephanie was sold straight away, which left Mum and Dad to be convinced. Easily done, they loved the idea as well, although not convinced with the top table name we changed it to "London", and ironed out a few more of the details - which will be revealed on the day!

With the plan settled, we needed to ask Mum and Dad to provide us with 8 places, one for each of the tables so that we could, firstly let the Little Silver know who is sitting where, secondly create the relevant decorations and finally, do some research into where we might be going so that when we get there we know a little bit about the place!

Every since the plan was finalised, Stephanie and I have been ruminating as to what the "places" could be. We were pretty much in agreement that they would be European City breaks, as part of the deal was that Mum and Dad would be having Oliver for five days. So we've since been talking about Barcelona, Vienna, Prague and Rome getting ourselves hyped up and talking about all the sites and sounds.

It finally reached a crescendo on Monday night of this week, Mum sent me a text saying that she would be sending me an email with all eight table names. Stephanie and I sat there all night watching the football, waiting for the "you've got mail" icon to finally put us out of our misery!

As we sat and read through them and I had told Stephanie where they were, we sat there stunned, overwhelmed and both of us peed ourselves just a little bit with excitement! Not only did we have our one of eight, we were also told that we are actually going for seven days, and not to worry, Mum and Dad would still be having Oliver!

What started off as a minor predicament, we've ended up creating a monster of excitement and intrigue, as Mum and Dad have managed to carefully compile a list of places that if you went to just one, it wouldn't matter in the slightest that your not going to any of the others!

Now that I've been given the perfect excuse for reasons to write about something over the next few weeks I'll be researching each place and revealing the "candidates" one at a time just as an attempt to build some anticipation for those not yet in the know.

More importantly, it gives me a little respite, the chance to think of the words, how on earth do you say thank you to parents who make there kids dreams come true?