Wedding Belles

This weekend we went to the wedding of T & A, friends of the boyfriend from university, and sometime checkers of the authenticity of the dinosaur fossil we have hanging in our lounge, what with them being paleontologists. The wedding was up in the countryside in Shropshire, with the ceremony at Ludlow Castle and the reception at the groom's parents' farm. The farm even provided free accommodation with loads of us, including the happy couple, camping out in the wildflower meadow - a gorgeous setting although murder on the hayfever front. It was an absolutely wonderful day, the couple were beautiful and overwhelmingly in love, the ceremony was touching, the party was well stocked with food and booze, and what better way to end the day than by staggering back by torchlight, over a bridge across a little brook and to your waiting tent in a field?

I have loads of photos, of course, but this is my favourite of the enchanting couple, with the bride attempting to net a small child with her veil:

 

She spent a remarkable amount of time larking about with us, for which we felt most honoured, given how in-demand the bride and groom are:

 

Here's our little group, all dolled up, though the boys have a pathological inability pose without gurning, but then we were all saying "halloumi":

 

Not that the boyfriend and I are really that much better...

 

Just call us Mr and Mrs Gormless.

I do love my hat. I shall say it again, I do wish there were more opportunities to wear hats.

 

Just as well I love it as we took the smaller of our tents with us, and I had to sleep with it perched on top of my feet all night to stop it getting squished.

Of course once we got back home, much discussion ensued regarding the things we liked (most of it), the things we were less keen on (not much), what we want to steal (ha ha) and what we'll do differently. Diagrams were drawn. New spreadsheets were created of timings (there are already a few spreadsheets knocking about already). Our main area of discussion on Sunday evening revolved around the music for the ceremony. The boyfriend had an inspired idea for the walk in, which I'm sure we'll stick with (it's a surprise so don't ask), but the walk out is proving more difficult. We have essentially discovered that we only like music that has some combination of the following, non-wedding-y attributes: minor key, depressing lyrics, frankly abusive lyrics, general mournfulness, startling intros that will cause our guests to have heart attacks, unsuitable tempos, loud guitars, overdone electronica, pseudo-orgasmic yelping, suicidal lyrics, and lyrics about relationship breakups and/or paranoia. Oh, and that doesn't mention any concept of religion at all, not even as a passing reference, for example the use of the word "heaven", even once. This is a requirement of the UK civil marriage ceremony, that no religious connotations be included at all. Fair enough I suppose, and it has saved millions of wedding guests in this country from the horror of Angels by Robbie Williams, which doubtless would have been the mainstream choice without that rule (it is for funerals, I've read). We couldn't find a single suitable song by any of our absolute favourite artists, not R.E.M., Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Patti Smith, Pink Floyd or Fleetwood Mac, though I begged for a few of them either for comedy value or in the way of hope over experience. We now think we have a good contender: something happy by a band we both really like and have even seen together on that album's tour, although we have plenty of time to come to hate it. Now have to wait for the venue open day in October when we can see if the distances to walk match the timings of the songs. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, huge congratulations to T & A, and enjoy your monsoon honeymoon in India!