Friday 22nd May 2009, 10:39
The Reception, part 2
After the inappropriate comments, submitted by my own mother, on the facebook version of this blog (shudder), I'm finish off the tale of the reception, picking up from us playing in that video I mentioned and linked to (it's on www.paulandzoe.com - thanks, best man Jon, for setting that up. Bless 'im.)
I should add that no one knew about the video - we tried to make it a wedding day of surprises, from The Lion Sleeps Tonight as the recessional music at the service (well done those who deciphered Leo Hac Nocte Dormit to get that) to Zoe receiving a signed photo of Colin Firth, to the best man's key bit mentioned in the last post, to the video, to the first dance...
We'd been taking a dance lessons - not necessarily perfecting us as dancers, but choreographing a little something to the soundtrack of folk singer Nancy Wallace's version of You're The First, The Last, My Everything (with a bit of Barry White thrown in for good measure). If you don't know Nancy wallace, and you probably won't - do go give her a try on itunes now. Her cover versions are very sweet.
After the first dance is the first time you really get to relax at your own wedding, so then we hit the bar, or when there were just too many people between us and the bar, had a sip of brandy from my hipflask. Lots of catching up with old friends and family, the odd drinkie or two, a cigar, and ultimately some proper Cornish pasties dished out, shipped up from a genuine Cornish pastyerie. Yum. Cornish flags, Cornish tartan napkins and very sweet Cornish mice (toy versions of) completed the Kernow influence. All this to the soundtrack of Charlie Baker and his swing band, who were brilliant all night, with a slight dip when I stupidly took the mic to do a wrongkeyed version of Mack The Knife. And everything was going so well...
The night ended with the customary dances with our parents and parents-in-law, and the customary dragging-up of an elderly relative by a young booze-laden friend to boogie to Baby Got Back. All kinds of wrong.
Anyways, a fine day, with only lip-service paid to it here, but then try as you do to relive it (we've got videos of most of the above events from 3 different angles, and have seen all at least twice), one's wedding day best lives in on in the memory, and it certainly shall. Before the wedding loads of people said to us, "Just remember that in all your planning, something will go wrong. Probably something little, but something will." Well nothing did. All went to plan - it was perfect, and we wouldn't have changed a thing. Apart from the key to Mack The Knife, maybe.
One more nuptial indulgence blog post will follow (the honeymoon - edited highlights thereof, you'll be pleased to know), and after that I promise normal non-wedding-based blog service will resume...