It has been another busy week chez zoolyweds, and one at the end of which we find lots of progress has been made, but we’re also considerably poorer than we were at its start!

A lot of the work this week has been of a musical nature.

We’ve come a long way towards arranging all the tracks for both the coach and the reception, and indeed last night the tape for the trip up to the zoo was actually recorded. A slight hiccup came at the end when it emerged that, even though the two sides’ music supposedly totalled the same length (give or take five seconds), the second side of the tape ran out before the music did. But I’m an optimist who’s hoping we’ll get to the zoo before the tape runs out anyway so here’s hoping no-one ever hears how the tape ends. Then no-one will ever know my mistake… oh, except everyone reading this. Whoops.

The music for the coach journey home is coming along nicely, and the background music for the evening meal is ready. Most work is needed for the rest of the evening’s music, but even that has at least been narrowed down to a manageable pool of potential tracks.

Most excitingly, the special piece of processional music for the ceremony that Edith has put into a cello duo arrangement is now not only finished being written, but has also been recorded and mixed (she played both parts!). You’ll have to wait and see what it is on the day.

It will hopefully be preceded by some classical music we have on order, following a recommendation. This has been dispatched so we’re just hovering at the letterbox, waiting to find out if it’s up to the task!

Edith’s recording will be one of the particularly attractive downloads on the new zoolyweds site, which will launch on the day of the wedding, probably at 17.30.

This will see the site move from its current main role – helping us organise things and keep everyone informed of what will be happening on the day – into a new role, acting as a kind of record of the day.

Those of you attending the wedding will be able to come back to the site and, for instance, find out the name of that song you heard on the coach at 14.15 and wondered what it was called, or have a look at one of the readings from the ceremony to remind yourself how great it was!

And of course those not attending will be able to relive the day as if they were there, or something.

To this end, we’ll be throwing open just about the whole zoolyweds site to everyone, without a login, when the new site launches. So those of you who haven’t been able to log in and see what’s going on will at last find out what you’ve been missing.

Don’t worry, though, guests: the login system will still protect your contact details from public view, and enable you to keep them up to date so we can keep in touch more easily!

We’ll also be unveiling an online photo-sharing community into which we will welcome every last photo you can be bothered to show us, for a comprehensive record of our day. The details of this will be available on the new web site, and it’ll be great to be able to see as many of our guests’ photos as possible when we get back from the honeymoon!

The official photographer’s photos will also be available online after a few weeks, with the opportunity for anyone to order prints of any they particularly like, over the internet. Again – guess what – details will appear on the new site. We’ll also send an e-mail out to let people know when these are available – hence the need to keep your contact info up to date!

The photographer has now been paid for his services, and the zoo have too, hence my comment about us now being rather poorer. It’s money well spent in both cases though, so we don’t really mind!

This new web site I keep mentioning is actually the other main thing I’ve done this week – after all, although it launches on the day of the wedding and is written in the past tense, we obviously won’t actually be nipping home to write and publish it after the ceremony, it’s not really the done thing. So the new site is just about ready to go now, with the exceptions of the parts where it refers to things we haven’t actually finished arranging yet. Prioritisation? I’ve heard of it.

Speaking of which, I’d better get on with something completely different, that’s rather more useful. In fact, I’ll stop writing this load of uninteresting rambling for the consumption of an audience of 60, and go and write my speech instead. Oh, did I say ‘completely different’?