Friday 8th May 2009, 19:23
From bachelor to husband
Scuse me. Before I begin this blog, let me put my slippers on and throw on my favourite cardie. For oh yes, I am a married man, and am therefore now resigned to a life of comfortable footwear and woollen tops that will disguise an ever-increasing paunch, as I undo all the dietary goodness from before the wedding and let myself go entirely.
Alright, early days for that, but yes, I have returned from honeymoon and a three-week blog absence. A blog post can't really do it all justice - a lovely, lovely wedding day, with sun and everything, and a brilliant honeymoon. So given that I can't do it justice, allow me to try and do it justice in bullet-point form. I may enlarge on some of this in future posts, but for now, here are the highlights as they occur to me...
- Thu night before Sat wedding - 3 hours sleep.
- Fri night before Sat wedding - 4 hours sleep. Everything from redoing table-plans to racing around the county delivering menus, picking up cakes, practising first dance, etc etc before the wedding rehearsal on the Friday evening. Then a fine slap-up meal with the parents before theoretically early to bed. Of course nerves (and last-minute editing of a surprise video we were playing in the next day) got the better of me, and sleep was limited.
- The day itself. Arrived at the church in good time, and ooh - is that a pub down the road? Well if you insist, just a quick whisky to settle my nerves. Saw half the wedding guests down there. Nice to be cheered along pre-ceremony.
- Bang on the dot of 1pm, the music starts, we all stand, and my lovely bride appears at the back of the church. A wonderful moment I'll never forget. It all went a bit hazy there for a bit.
- The service continued marvellously and lovelily, with a wonderfully delivered sermon by the vicar we 'flew in' due to the church's vicar's holiday time. His sermon consisted of apt and useful advice for us as a fledgeling married couple, as well as various insistences that his own marriage was doing fine, honest. Like listening to the Rev Alan Titchmarsh. A veritable good egg.
- It was a ceremony of friends' talents - we had friends who played the organ, did the readings, did the prayers, and even Zoe's friend Daniel from off of the London West End stage sang a beautiful rendition of You Raise Me Up. There were vows (learnt, oh yes), much joyous relief when signing the register (during which Liz the organist played, among other others Huey Lewis's The Power of Love, and Roxette's Almost Unreal from the Super Mario Bros movie), and then we walked out of the church to a wonderful piece of music called Leo Hac Nocte Dormit, by Titus Phiti. Let me know in the blog comments if you've worked out what that is.
To be continued, with the reception...