Mum and Dad were here for the day yesterday to look after Davies and Scarlett. They went to Arundel and walked round a lake and fed ducks and moorhens, back to their house for lunch and then went to visit Great Granny before finishing at McDonalds for tea. Scarlett went to bed about 11pm and Davies was still awake at midnight apparently. Unsurprisingly they are both quite tired and pale today but it seemed to go well. I’m sure whole days and evenings with grandparents are commonplace for many children but it just isn’t something that’s really happened before and I know Mum and Dad were nervous, the children were apprehensive and I was bloody terrified! 😆
The reason for the day with grandparents was that Ady and I were off to a wedding. It was one of Ady’s workmates. I’ve met the groom about four times and the bride just once before. It was a church wedding with a huge reception – probably about 200 guests I suppose. The service was very long and the vicar took the chance of a full congregation to spout on at length. I guess it’s wrong to complain about too much mention of the religious side of marriage at a church wedding but there were lots of glazed expressions and the various small children attending were very restless and noisy. The vicar also tried his hand at a bit of lecturn stand-up which was quite ill advised – Jack Dee he wasn’t! 😆
There were a couple of readings and then after the register had been signed a group of about 25 children from the bride’s school (she’s a teacher) came and sang ‘One moment in time’. Not one of my favourite songs but it was just so moving and beautiful. I cried! Even needed a tissue! What was amazing was aside from transfixing all the adults every child in the congregation just fell silent and listened too. It was just perfect, made me want to become a teacher and get married again just so I could have that at my wedding! 😆
Outside then for photos – they were very lucky with the weather and it was mild, sunny and blue skies. We then left for the reception venue. On the way Ady and I had a brief detour into Rustington as my very high shoes were already crippling me just from the small amount of standing up in the church. We failed to find another pair in my tight budget of a tenner but probably looked quite entertaining to the other shoppers wandering about the shop dressed in all our wedding finery trying on shoes :lol:. We arrived at the hotel still before most of the other guests but all the rest of Ady’s workmates were there in the bar so we joined them.
The wedding was meticulously planned and one of those grand production affairs with wedding fairs and consultants and all sorts. It always stuns me how much people pay for weddings and how everyone gets sucked into the jargon surrounding it. At one point the father of the bride came into the bar to tell us there were ‘welcome drinks’ in the hotel reception – not just drinks, welcome drinks 😆 The choice was winter pimms or bellini so naturally I had one of each 😉 .
There was then further photographing including one where everyone was ushered out of the bar and into the small courtyard because ‘the photographer is on the roof and wants an aerial shot’. It turned out he wasn’t on the roof at all but was in an upstairs bedroom leaning out of the window. We finally got to go in and sit down then (there was a sort of MC for the evening of one of the hotel staff who did lots of banging on tables with a spoon to draw attention and announcing things so he told everyone ‘the bride and groom and their families are now ready to recieve you’ which explains why it’s called a wedding reception, never really thought about that before) and the room looked beautiful. There were little pink bags for the women and little white boxes for the men crammed with silver chocolates and lots of glitter and confetti.
The speeches were next and went on for a long time. Other than one small chocolate (I brought the rest home for Davies and Scarlett) I’d not eaten anything all day so the welcome drinks, glass of pink champagne (tasted just like Christmas in a glass :)) and couple of glasses of white wine started to have an effect quite quickly. I wasn’t the only one and the noise levels generally were pretty loud with people taking silly photos with the disposable cameras on the tables and chucking the table confetti at each other 😆 We were on a table with two couples from Ady’s work, the bride’s aunt, uncle, cousin and his (pregnant) partner. We finally had the food, which was lovely (goats cheese tart, roast beef, chocolate brownie) washed down with yet more wine and were then encouraged to go and ‘relax in the bar’ by the MC guy while they prepared the room for the evening bash.
We entertained ourselves by trying on the hats that a couple of our party had worn to the wedding, chatting and drinking even more wine. It’s all rather blurred after that and I didn’t manage to have any more food and missed the cutting of the cake (along with several other people) but Ady went and witnessed all that and sampled the evening food which he tells me was lovely. He stayed in the bar chatting and watching the football while I hung out with Brett, one of the ushers and Stacey, who is on maternity leave and trying to decide whether to return to work, seriously considering Home Ed and is the sister of Sian who I work at the library with. We had a great time, spent ages on the dance floor (I had drunk enough to numb the pain of my shoes, am feeling it today mind you!) and were generally the rowdy, enjoying themselves enough for everyone section of the evening guests!
There was an area of the room set up as a mini studio with camera and printers where you could go and have photos taken and printed off to buy there and then so at one point a load of us went to have that done. We didn’t buy one (£10!!!!) but Stacey kindly bought one for us which has now been installed in the loo at home. We ended up staying until the end at 1am and then dropping a few people home on the way home so didn’t actually get home until nearly 2am.
I was completely finished by then and went straight to bed but Ady sat up with my parents having a coffee or two before they left. Full set of photos on flickr