For once, I got to spend the whole weekend with my ridiculous busy best bud. If she's not marking mountains of school books (she teaches horrific-sounding year 3s) she's having to go and look at wedding venues or to in-laws for roast dinners. I suppose that's how life is when you're a grown up (lol?) Anyway, I booked her in a while ago and made her promise to be free for the whole weekend and so, we had a right delightful time.

Saturday involved a shopping trip to Stratford Westfield - ya know, we pushed the boat out and ventured further than Oxford Circus on the central line - and a ridiculously huge 'snack' at TGIs. Not even a lie, we ate so much that for dinner we were both physically craving cold, crisp lettuce and not much else. I think when you've been trying to be healthy for a while (I really have been trying), your body doesn't react at all well to  a greasy carb-y overload. They say the key to sustaining a healthy lifestyle and loosing weight the right way is about changing your mental attitude towards food so maybe I'm getting there. I really did feel so sick and bad for all of about four hours.

As my treat - and a thank you for picking me as a bridesmaid - I booked us into the see the Wedding Dresses: 1775 - 2014 Exhibition at the V&A Museum on Sunday. 

We arrived early and weren't allowed in straight away so we wondered around the Exhibition Road area in the glorious sunshine and admired the houses we would buy if we were millionaires - to the point where we were discussing extensions and home improvements. Bless us. Oh, and having clearly moved on from the food-trauma of the previous day we decided it was only right to go for a Pret lunch and finish off with some Millie's cookies. WHY DO I DO THIS TO MY CHUBBY SELF. I mean, shout out to the praline & salted caramel cookie I could have eaten 10 times over, but still, I need to stop.

Anyway, the exhibition was really excellent. I was pleased we got 2 for 1 on the tickets (through an offer from notonthehightstreet.com) because at £12 each it's quite an expensive show for the size of it. Some posh types were walking about tutting about the cost but we thought that the actual wedding dresses there were pretty amazing. The displays included Gwen Stefani's and Kate Moss's dresses, plus the bits of written blurb were interesting and not too 'museumy' even for a heathen like myself. There was a short red-faced, cross-looking security guard following me about to make sure I didn't take photos but I managed to sneak a few shots when she got distracted by other people breaking the rules. Here's some of our faves from Jenny Packham and Vera Wang aka THE DREAM.