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I still need a wedding icon...
May. 10th, 2009 10:03 pmI am sooooo ridiculously tired. I'm getting too old for this going away for the weekend malarky!
I spent the weekend in the New Forest attending the wedding of friends from university. The bride is one of my dearest friends and she actually met me and her husband at the exact same event, the Cardiff Rag three legged pub crawl September 2000. She clearly came out of it rather better than me. I got a few very good friends but she got a few very good friends <i>and</i> a lovely husband.
Any long term readers of this esteemed LJ page may remember this particular couple getting engaged two years ago. The groom proposed in a zorb ball, the bride said yes and then they were chucked down a hill. A very cool story to tell the grandchildren. However, for a couple who got engaged in such an alternative way, the wedding itself was very traditional.
My story starts at 7am on Saturday morning. I am not know for my love of early mornings, especially not at weekends, so it was a bit of a shock to the system having to get up at 7am and get straight in the shower. However, I managed it. I caught the train at 8.35am and was at Wimbledon by 9.10am which was ten minutes late but it didn't matter as my lift was taking ' the scenic route' from Tooting to Wimbledon. We had a really good journey down to the New Forest. There wasn't any traffic or roadworks and we were there by about 11.15am. Plenty of time to grab a quick lunch before getting ready. We decided to sit outside on the green next to the hotel to eat. I learnt that New Forest ponies aren't shy of humans and are pretty cheeky. A very pretty grey pony sneaked over while I was eating my apple and stuck its head right in my face. I ended up giving it the core of my apple as it was making me a bit nervous. I'm not used to being in close proximity to large semi-domesticated animals! My friend took a photo of me looking extremely uncomfortable. The ducks in Beaulieu are also confident. When we sat down to eat our sandwiches we developed a fan club of four ducks staring us out. Fortunately, a noisy toddler started running about and scared them off.
After lunch we made our way back to our very nice (and very expensive) hotel to get ready. At this point my 'roomie' arrived and we made plans to travel to the Church. In hindsight, 12.45 was possibly a bit late to leave for a 1.15 ceremony. We were almost the last to be seated and had to squeeze in on the ends of rows. The ceremony was held at ( All Saints Church, Fawley ) the lovely 12th Century Church attended by the groom's family for generations which is unfortunately now next door to ( this ) The photo on Wikipedia doesn't do it justice. It is truly hideous with lots of yucky, smokey chimmnies. What a shame for such a pretty country church. Anyway, I digress. Fortunately, for us, the bride followed tradition and was a little bit late. She'd kept the details of the dress top secret so I was really excited to see it at last. She looked absolutely lovely. The dress was perfect for her and the diamante flower details gave just the right amount of sparkle without being at all tacky. She also had a proper veil over her face which seems to be unusual nowadays. The service was very, very traditional and simple - Bridal March on the way in, welcome, hymn (which I didn't know), introduction, bible reading (the one they always do at weddings read by the groom's mum), hymn (which I didn't know - but my roomie knew this one so I copied her!), marriage, hymn ('Give me Joy in my Heart' - I knew it, hurrah!), reading (non-religious poem read by the Bride's mum), rrayers (brief), blessing, signing of the register (choir sung at this point - more about them later), Wedding March on the way out. Two things were notable about the service. First of all the choir which soldiered on valiently despite only having seven members and secondly the fact that the vicar asked us to wave from side to side during the chorus of 'Give me Joy in my Heart'. Everyone joined in but we all felt that clapping would have been more erm... joyful. Saying that, the organist played particularly slowly so it probably wouldn't have worked very well. After the choir stopped singing their solo nobody was sure whether to clap or not, and there was complete silence. I felt awful for them. Admittedly, they weren't the best choir in the world but five of them were children and they tried really hard. On the way out my friend told the choristers holding the collection plate that their singing was very good. The little boy started explaining that there were normally more of them but lots had decided to go somewhere else. He was then told to be quiet by the choir mistress. Ooops! We decided that the missing choristers were probably at an event called 'The Fawley Funday' which we passed on the way. It seemed to involve an inflatable obstacle course. Anyway, I digress once again.
Loads of photos were taken outside the church. The bride and groom left in a gleaming Bentley and everyone else followed them back to the hotel. We then had drinks in the beautiful hotel gardens whilst yet more photos were taken. I think this wedding involved more posed photos than I'd ever known before. This was where the bride's brother really had to put in some effort as an usher as he was responsible for finding people missing from photos. The bride was instructing him from the top tier of a three tiered garden and he was dispatched to find random people. The worst was the 'friends' photo as it involved a huge number of people and it was difficult to remember who was missing. The Best Man was only remembered at the very last moment! I'm really looking forward to seeing the photos, they should be excellant. The bride and groom both have lovely smiles and are ridiculously photogenic.
The next step was dinner. I'm really glad I wasn't one of the waiters as we were quite crammed in and it quite a mission navigating the tables. We had crabcakes with rocket and posh mayonnaise as our starter, then lamb with greens and those nice creamy potatoes as the main course. It was very, very good. The hotel may have been expensive but the food was excellant especially for serving such a large number of people all at once. After the main course the cake was cut. The cake was also very traditional. A simple three tiered fruitcake with royal icing and decorated with real flowers. We then had the speeches. Lots of betting on the length of the speeches was going on amongst the groom's friends. Hmmmm. They were good though. The bride's father told us about her life achievements and was clearly very proud, the groom was a bit emotional and the best man kept it clean. After that we had panacotta, summer fruit compote and an almond biscuit for desert or in the case of my friend's very fussy boyfriend, who was sitting next to me, an almond biscuit. He didn't eat the starter either. What a shame. Anyway, after dinner we had tea/coffee and cake (just in case we hadn't eaten enough already - but I still managed to force a bit down despite the fact I don't like fruitcake!) whilst the room was being cleared for the dancing.
The first dance was to 'We've got all the time in the World' by Louis Armstrong. The bride is a keen dancer and they'd practiced a proper routine. It was pretty good. The floor was stolen however by the bride's brother who was dancing with a sailor. I'm not sure who the sailor was but he was very drunk and the bride's (very heterosexual) brother was not at all happy about the situation later on in the evening! After that we danced, and danced, ate cheese from the ginormous cheese board, and danced some more. I think I danced almost solidly from 8.30pm until 11.30pm. The music was mainly seventies stuff at the beginning and then old skool dance stuff once the older people had retired for the evening. We attempted to re-create our Flashdance routine from the wedding complete with lift! There is video evidence lurking around someone. Oh dear! The dancing concluded with New York, New York and everyone filtered off to bed. Lots of people left to go to local guest houses but we were staying in the reception hotel so we stayed up chatting to the bride's brother, the best man and a very drunk bridesmaid around a real log fire until 1am.
It was a lovely day. I couldn't have been happier. I hope the bride and groom feel the same. They're off to Croatia for a week now so I'll have to ask them when I get back. A special mention has to go to the groom's little niece and nephew (aged two and nearly one) who were absolute stars all day. They were the only kids there and they weren't at all annoying. They spent most of the reception walking various relatives around the grounds. It made me feel tired just watching their parents rushing around after them.
Now I'm tired and I have to go to work tomorrow which frankly sucks. Oh well, life goes on.
I spent the weekend in the New Forest attending the wedding of friends from university. The bride is one of my dearest friends and she actually met me and her husband at the exact same event, the Cardiff Rag three legged pub crawl September 2000. She clearly came out of it rather better than me. I got a few very good friends but she got a few very good friends <i>and</i> a lovely husband.
Any long term readers of this esteemed LJ page may remember this particular couple getting engaged two years ago. The groom proposed in a zorb ball, the bride said yes and then they were chucked down a hill. A very cool story to tell the grandchildren. However, for a couple who got engaged in such an alternative way, the wedding itself was very traditional.
My story starts at 7am on Saturday morning. I am not know for my love of early mornings, especially not at weekends, so it was a bit of a shock to the system having to get up at 7am and get straight in the shower. However, I managed it. I caught the train at 8.35am and was at Wimbledon by 9.10am which was ten minutes late but it didn't matter as my lift was taking ' the scenic route' from Tooting to Wimbledon. We had a really good journey down to the New Forest. There wasn't any traffic or roadworks and we were there by about 11.15am. Plenty of time to grab a quick lunch before getting ready. We decided to sit outside on the green next to the hotel to eat. I learnt that New Forest ponies aren't shy of humans and are pretty cheeky. A very pretty grey pony sneaked over while I was eating my apple and stuck its head right in my face. I ended up giving it the core of my apple as it was making me a bit nervous. I'm not used to being in close proximity to large semi-domesticated animals! My friend took a photo of me looking extremely uncomfortable. The ducks in Beaulieu are also confident. When we sat down to eat our sandwiches we developed a fan club of four ducks staring us out. Fortunately, a noisy toddler started running about and scared them off.
After lunch we made our way back to our very nice (and very expensive) hotel to get ready. At this point my 'roomie' arrived and we made plans to travel to the Church. In hindsight, 12.45 was possibly a bit late to leave for a 1.15 ceremony. We were almost the last to be seated and had to squeeze in on the ends of rows. The ceremony was held at ( All Saints Church, Fawley ) the lovely 12th Century Church attended by the groom's family for generations which is unfortunately now next door to ( this ) The photo on Wikipedia doesn't do it justice. It is truly hideous with lots of yucky, smokey chimmnies. What a shame for such a pretty country church. Anyway, I digress. Fortunately, for us, the bride followed tradition and was a little bit late. She'd kept the details of the dress top secret so I was really excited to see it at last. She looked absolutely lovely. The dress was perfect for her and the diamante flower details gave just the right amount of sparkle without being at all tacky. She also had a proper veil over her face which seems to be unusual nowadays. The service was very, very traditional and simple - Bridal March on the way in, welcome, hymn (which I didn't know), introduction, bible reading (the one they always do at weddings read by the groom's mum), hymn (which I didn't know - but my roomie knew this one so I copied her!), marriage, hymn ('Give me Joy in my Heart' - I knew it, hurrah!), reading (non-religious poem read by the Bride's mum), rrayers (brief), blessing, signing of the register (choir sung at this point - more about them later), Wedding March on the way out. Two things were notable about the service. First of all the choir which soldiered on valiently despite only having seven members and secondly the fact that the vicar asked us to wave from side to side during the chorus of 'Give me Joy in my Heart'. Everyone joined in but we all felt that clapping would have been more erm... joyful. Saying that, the organist played particularly slowly so it probably wouldn't have worked very well. After the choir stopped singing their solo nobody was sure whether to clap or not, and there was complete silence. I felt awful for them. Admittedly, they weren't the best choir in the world but five of them were children and they tried really hard. On the way out my friend told the choristers holding the collection plate that their singing was very good. The little boy started explaining that there were normally more of them but lots had decided to go somewhere else. He was then told to be quiet by the choir mistress. Ooops! We decided that the missing choristers were probably at an event called 'The Fawley Funday' which we passed on the way. It seemed to involve an inflatable obstacle course. Anyway, I digress once again.
Loads of photos were taken outside the church. The bride and groom left in a gleaming Bentley and everyone else followed them back to the hotel. We then had drinks in the beautiful hotel gardens whilst yet more photos were taken. I think this wedding involved more posed photos than I'd ever known before. This was where the bride's brother really had to put in some effort as an usher as he was responsible for finding people missing from photos. The bride was instructing him from the top tier of a three tiered garden and he was dispatched to find random people. The worst was the 'friends' photo as it involved a huge number of people and it was difficult to remember who was missing. The Best Man was only remembered at the very last moment! I'm really looking forward to seeing the photos, they should be excellant. The bride and groom both have lovely smiles and are ridiculously photogenic.
The next step was dinner. I'm really glad I wasn't one of the waiters as we were quite crammed in and it quite a mission navigating the tables. We had crabcakes with rocket and posh mayonnaise as our starter, then lamb with greens and those nice creamy potatoes as the main course. It was very, very good. The hotel may have been expensive but the food was excellant especially for serving such a large number of people all at once. After the main course the cake was cut. The cake was also very traditional. A simple three tiered fruitcake with royal icing and decorated with real flowers. We then had the speeches. Lots of betting on the length of the speeches was going on amongst the groom's friends. Hmmmm. They were good though. The bride's father told us about her life achievements and was clearly very proud, the groom was a bit emotional and the best man kept it clean. After that we had panacotta, summer fruit compote and an almond biscuit for desert or in the case of my friend's very fussy boyfriend, who was sitting next to me, an almond biscuit. He didn't eat the starter either. What a shame. Anyway, after dinner we had tea/coffee and cake (just in case we hadn't eaten enough already - but I still managed to force a bit down despite the fact I don't like fruitcake!) whilst the room was being cleared for the dancing.
The first dance was to 'We've got all the time in the World' by Louis Armstrong. The bride is a keen dancer and they'd practiced a proper routine. It was pretty good. The floor was stolen however by the bride's brother who was dancing with a sailor. I'm not sure who the sailor was but he was very drunk and the bride's (very heterosexual) brother was not at all happy about the situation later on in the evening! After that we danced, and danced, ate cheese from the ginormous cheese board, and danced some more. I think I danced almost solidly from 8.30pm until 11.30pm. The music was mainly seventies stuff at the beginning and then old skool dance stuff once the older people had retired for the evening. We attempted to re-create our Flashdance routine from the wedding complete with lift! There is video evidence lurking around someone. Oh dear! The dancing concluded with New York, New York and everyone filtered off to bed. Lots of people left to go to local guest houses but we were staying in the reception hotel so we stayed up chatting to the bride's brother, the best man and a very drunk bridesmaid around a real log fire until 1am.
It was a lovely day. I couldn't have been happier. I hope the bride and groom feel the same. They're off to Croatia for a week now so I'll have to ask them when I get back. A special mention has to go to the groom's little niece and nephew (aged two and nearly one) who were absolute stars all day. They were the only kids there and they weren't at all annoying. They spent most of the reception walking various relatives around the grounds. It made me feel tired just watching their parents rushing around after them.
Now I'm tired and I have to go to work tomorrow which frankly sucks. Oh well, life goes on.
