To have and to hold

Yesterday the Vol-in-Law and I went to the wedding of a friend of mine. I worked very closely with him on a project for over two years and I had known him before we started working together on the same thing. During that time, I can't remember how many gals he cycled through. But quite a few, and usually inappropriate. Then he started dating this new girl - and in looks and personality she couldn't have been more different than her predecessors - but more different still - my friend actually seemed happy.

Their wedding was lovely. After nearly a week of bad weather, cold and grey and wet and blustery, I was really worried for their day. But the sun started to shine, and the flowers were blooming - and it was a beautiful day (if perhaps still a little windy).

They got married in an old country church by an exuberant country vicar. Their reception was in a real village hall.


country church

They had done some really nifty touches for their reception, including homemade bunting in green and pink calico and gingham - and they had placed crackers at every place setting. If you haven't seen crackers before - they' re basically a cardboard tube filled with little party favours, including little paper crowns and a joke and wrapped with decorative paper. But best of all, they have a little explosive charge. You pull them with your neighbour - they "bang" (only a little bit, not so much as to be scary) and then if you get the tube - you win the prize. (But there's enough to go around, so everyone shares).

Crackers are more of a Christmas thing - not a wedding thing - but it worked really, really well. They'd chosen the musical kind - each cracker contained a numbered whistle tuned to a specific note (there was a full scale represented on the table). There was also a sheet with numbers printed on them - enabling you to play (if you followed the order and blew on time) Love, Love Me Do, Here Comes the Bride, and other such romantic favorites. Our table was dreadful! Really dreadful! We didn't produce one single tune effectively, and we did try.

This saddened me, because I had brought crackers with these same favors to Genderist's big Christmas breakfast morning that her parents throw each year when I was in Tennessee two Christmases ago. They took to them very well indeed and were able to blow out recognizable Christmas carols. At the time, it seemed just what you should be able to do, but I look back on that episode now with a new-found admiration.


They also had bubbles...


and love hearts