Monday 18th May 2009, 11:56
The Reception, part 1
I did promise - over a week ago now - to finish logging weddingness with the reception. So excuse a bit more nuptial indulgence while I put some words down here for posterity about it...
One thing I meant to add to the previous church-based post was that during photos after the ceremony we patented the 'slow pan' - all and sundry were in a semi-circle taking photos, so by us slowly shuffling around to look at everyone, they could get ready and get a nice picture of us all in turn. Only problem is, cos of the feet-shuffling, in most of the photos I've got turned-in feet, so I do look a tad like I just got off a sunshine coach, but hey ho.
The reception venue was a good hour from the church - longer than ideal, but actually it gave my blushing bride and I a brilliant chance to catch up before rushing around for the rest of the day. And drink brandy from my hipflask. Lots of wonderful beep-beeps from the wedding guests as they overtook us, the occasional beep-beep from random unknown cars, and the occasional sour-faced humourless driver who clocked eyes with us when we turned around to try and place a beep-beep but got the car wrong.
At the venue - a very sweet country barn - the sun shone for our photos, and during the mingling time we had a fine string quartet, two of whom were friends attending the wedding anyway, and another of whom it turned out was a fella from my year at school. What are the chances? Well, high, given that I knew the other half of the string quartet through school too, but for a second it seemed coincidental. The quartet was great, playing a nice mix of Mozart and the Back To The Future theme. Heck yeah.
Our mums prepared a lovely photo album of the two of us ageing through the years for people to browse while we roamed the grounds having photos taken of us in a variety of romantic wedding poses. And speaking of photos, when we sat down to dinner, a lovely wedding gift awaited. A gift-wrapped pressie, and we undid it to find a photo-frame containing a photo of us outside the church, post-ceremony, from just a couple of hours previous. One thoughtful couple had raced from the church to Boots, got the photos printed up, framed one, wrapped it, and raced back to the reception venue, so that when we went on honeymoon we'd have a lovely photographic reminder that it was all real. It does happen a lot that honeymooning couples feel it was all a dream because they don't see a photo of the day until they get back two weeks' later, so sure enough it was indeed a welcome and lovely gift that served to remind us of it. Well done, Kate and Al, and bless 'em - it meant that they were the only people missing from the group wedding photo, so thank you guys and we'll have to copy and paste you in. They sacrificed their photo moment so that others may have a photo. What good eggs.
After a lovely dinner came the speeches (48 minutes of them, for those that like to know - and well done Kate for winning the speech-length sweepstake...), which were a perfect mix of heartfeltedness, gratitude and a few laughs. Slightly more laughs than planned, but I did mean it seriously - if the guests took my comments as a 'joke', then whoops. I typically waffled on for 25min (no one gave me a red light so I didn't know when to leave), and speech highlights include my best man asking "any women who may have a key to my house to return it now", causing half the women at the reception to approach my table and plonk a key in front of me. The implication was that I was some kind of womaniser, although when my pal Tim then got up too, that proves that I'm not just all about the ladies. When the bride's mum got up to return a key too - well I feel it was all a little too revelatory. Quote of the day was also from my best man: "Zoe is a psychologist, a nurse, and now a loving wife, and Paul badly needs all three."
A little more on the reception will follow, but for now here's a video we played into the reception, charting our lives, relationship and some old 'cute' photos...
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=188362055194&ref=mf
OR
http://www.paulandzoe.com/video.php
What can I say - we love Roxette.