Getting knotted
Nine days to go – and today I will buy a tie.
My tie will match the colour of MOB’s dress (I hope). So we will co-ordinate while posing for photgraphs and sitting at the top table.
I haven’t brought MOB’s dress down to London with me, but I did think ahead and have brought a small item which, to my untrained eye, matches the colour of the dress.
All I need to do now is match my colour sample with a tie.
One advantage of working in the City of London is that there are no end of shops full of suits, shirts and ties, so yesterday I scouted around looking for suitable silk candidates.
One disadvantage of working in the City of London is that there are no end of shops full of incredibly expensive suits, shirts and ties, and I am not inclined to spend just under £60 for a tie.
So tomorrow I will cast my net slightly wider and hopefully locate yet more purveyors of silk neckwear of an appropriate shade of colour at reasonable prices.
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Adding and editing
Ten days to go, and I have committed my father of the bride speech to hard disk.
I wrote most of it a couple of weeks ago in a pub. On my way back from the office to my hotel I stopped for a refreshing pint and wrote the first draft on my second hand iPhone.
Last night I revisited the notes I’d written and in between refreshing the iPhone screen so I didn’t have to keep typing in the security code, I reordered them, expanded and expounded them and pummelled them into a more reasonable shape. I then practised the speech in front of the iPhone, which I’d now turned into a stopwatch.
I know that speaking in public takes twice as long as giving the same speech in a hotel room so I added two more paragraphs.
I then made a mistake. I looked at what other fathers have said at their daughters’ weddings.
Now I have earmarked half of what I have written for deletion and made notes about the three more paragraphs I need to add.
Earlier in the evening I’d rashly told MOB that I’d written my speech and she’s now looking forward to hearing it when I go home. So it’s a good job I’ve got a two and a half hour train journey before I get there – I just hope it’s enough time for the adding and editing.
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Unhelping
Only eleven days to go, so things are becoming slightly frenetic but last weekend I did my best to complete all the tasks I was set so I:
• Painted the kitchen offshot ceiling
• Painted the dining room ceiling and wall above the picture rail
• Stuck down the loose wall paper in the bathroom
• Cleaned out the small chicken hutch
• Ordered a condenser for the ancient Saab
• Cut out and drilled holes in the remaining hearts
• Bought, tasted and agreed on a red wine (that was a difficult task – and thankfully the impromptu tasting panel were in unanimous agreement)
• Took mad bad dog 1 for a socialising walk to terrorise the citizens of the local town
• Tested the photo booth camera (actually I tested two of them as we bought another one for 50p at a car boot sale on Sunday morning)
• Removed the ad hoc trestle table for plant growing
The previous weekend I wasn’t helpful. MOB and B told me this. They actually said “You’re not helping – go away before we thump you”.
They were sorting out the table seating plan when I came in. Most people were sat, but a stray family were placed in the middle of the dance floor, tableless. I looked at the plan and made a few unhelpful suggestions I also asked awkward questions which were not helpful. I didn’t help further by reorganising the seating plan so the spare family got spaces at a table rather than having to sit cross legged on the dance floor.
Having unhelpfully rearranged the seating plan I left just before the blows started raining down – after all MOB and B had spent all morning at it and I had done my bit of disorganising in half and hour.
So last weekend I tried to be helpful by doing as many jobs on the list as possible. However I did note that most of the changes I suggested about the seating plans have been kept, but there isn’t enough time to unarrange my rearrangements.
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Uncle Brians
Among the many who have not chosen to avoid the wedding are a plethora of Uncle Brians.
B has an Uncle Brian, although technically he is her great uncle but he has always been Uncle Brian. C also has an Uncle Brian as a relation (precisely what relation I confess I don’t know).
Another Uncle Brian will be coming to the wedding but this one will be there to entertain us. Actually it’s possible that the other Uncle Brians will be entertaining us as well, but we won’t be paying them.
Uncle Brian the third will be the DJ. However this version of Uncle Brian is a multi talented individual, listing among his many talents: balloon modelling, clown (plus car), musical entertainer, odd job man… in short he is capable of many different and varied things, however all varied things come at a price, and we are only affording a DJ, although the very concept of a clown making magical balloon animals while playing “Up, Up and Away” and driving around in his comedy car could be very entertaining.
Thinking about the possibilities, maybe all three Uncle Brians could entertain us simultaneously.
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Rejection
Being rejected can be difficult and may require years of post-traumatic therapeutic care. So we have been preparing for the return of the wedding invitations.
B, as you might have gathered, undertook a considerable amount of research while preparing for the impending wedding. This included working out how many guests should be invited so that the size of the tipis, the church and the number of reception meals could be planned with precision, especially as many costs are actually based on the number of people who turn up.
Although there are no hard and fast rules, a quick, unscientific poll of wedding related sites (OK, I just entered the phrase “wedding invitation refusal rate” into a well known search engine) has revealed how many people might not turn up.
The consensus would appear to be that it is safe to assume that between 15 and 20% of invited guests will not be able to attend, probably citing the following reasons*:
(of course the missing percentage say they will be delighted to attend).
So having completed her researches, and reinforced by various comments on both sides of the families that x would not attend, or y would be on holiday and z would be too ill, B concluded that it would not be unreasonable to expect that about 20% of the invitations she sent out would be declined for the reasons previously cited. So the wedding has been sized accordingly.
The responses to the invitations are due back before the end of this week. So far the number of declined responses can be counted on a single hand and I have calculated that these represent approximately 2.5%. Naturally the acceptances include everyone who we said would not attend.
It’s probably just as well we collected too many teacups.
* For the statistics quoted here I am indebted to Kellie.
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Siling it down
Twenty five days to go and life under the awning is mainly comprised of lists.
Most are lists of things to be done, but occasionally they are lists of essential things that need to be bought before the wedding. One of the latter was compiled by me…
Spark plugs
Contact set (or points)
Spark plug leads
Condenser
Naturally these are essential for the wedding, which can’t take place without them.
Of course you’ve probably already guessed that these are all the components of an ignition system for a forty year old car.
One which won’t start, but is destined to convey the bridesmaids to the church on time.
Maybe.
I can see the coming weekend stretching ahead of me full of memories, but it won’t be a complete experience unless it is siling it down with rain and I have to lie in a puddle.
… I’ve just noticed BOBajob is unreeling the hose.
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Flower fitting
Only a month to go and the flower faeries have been fitted.
B kindly invited them over to our house to try on a variety of dresses which had arrived from various mail order companies. Note that she invited them to our house and not to her caravan.
So we acted as the gracious hosts that we are and made sure that food and drinks were prepared and the mad bad dogs were locked up.
B turned up shortly before the flower faeries. I was disappointed that the faeries had not flown the short distance across the river to our house, but had instead opted for the lengthy road journey. Still I expect their parents may have been relieved.
Dresses were duly tried on, accompanied by cardigans, tiaras, shoes and more. Care was taken so that the rejected items were unblemished and re-packed ready to be returned. Everything was tried, just in case, but the second dresses matched both the shoes and B.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the adults retired to the garden to finish off the bottles of wine, the dogs sulked in the back garden and the faeries retired to the Wii to continue playing something Mario-like. Fortunately BOBajob who was supervising had not introduced them to Call of Duty.
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Wedding in a box
With only five weeks to go we took the wedding out of the attic and covered every surface in the house, then we filled the kitchen with empty boxes.
Then we* washed the teacups, sorted the candlesticks, grouped the decorations, boxed the linen, counted the sweets, bagged the lucky toys, stacked the cake plates, piled up the lanterns and surveyed the chaos. The dogs were worried, not about whether we had enough of everything, but because we don’t normally do this on Saturdays. MOB was worried that we didn’t have enough of something.
So we counted and counted again, and we were surprised by the amount of everything that we do have. We need about 120 teacups, we’ve got more than 300. We’ve got lots of lanterns and candlesticks. We’ve got a table full of sweets, and plenty of jars for them. We have several favourable thingys.
The empty boxes have now been disposed of, the reject teacups have been prepared for a return journey to the charity shop and the usable teacups have been boxed. A pile of cakestand plates is sitting in the outhouse waiting for holes. The lanterns now occupy half of the spare bedroom while the sweets occupy the remaining half. Other bits and pieces are still occupying household surfaces while a more appropriate location is found.
* When I say “we” this is in the sense that while I was busy outside reorganising the patio, with the help of the chickens, to make it flat and aligned, everyone else was busy inside. MOB & B washing, stacking and counting, C washing and organising his stag weekend and BOBajob stacking and playing online shooting games.
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That’s it!
“That’s it!” B exclaimed as we walked down the street in a small town in France. “Don’t let him see”!
“Don’t look!” she ordered C. “At what?” he replied not seeing what he was not supposed to look at. MOB and I were also trying to work out what he wasn’t supposed to look at.
B pointed at the window of a shop which contained an odd assortment of scarves, sunglasses, cheap jewellery and small presentation sets of the sorts of things that you would only give to someone if you were absolutely desperate, having exhausted every other present giving option.
“There, look, it’s perfect” she pointed at a brooch. €140 said the label to me, “it’s the wrong colour” said MOB.
“No, not that one, the one next to it” said B. €9 said the label, “Let’s go and look” I said, “It’s lunchtime” said MOB, “You know what that means.”
I knew very well what lunchtime in France is like. The shops close at lunchtime when workers are not working in offices and might be tempted to buy things in shops. The only thing that you can buy in France at lunchtime, is lunch, naturally.
Fortunately we had already bought lunch and eaten it leisurely so it was nearly 2pm. The notice on the door said “closed for lunch”, naturally, “12:00 – 15:00″.
We peered into the dark interior, the proprietor was obviously not eating lunch at the desk. “Let’s go for a walk round the town” I ventured, so we went for an amble (or a shuffle) around the centre ville and discovered 
a shop dedicated to archery, several parking places, quite a large number of shops dedicated to pampering your pets (no wonder all the dogs we saw in the town looked well groomed), and a number of other shops all shut. We also discovered an outside toilet (for men) built into the walls of a convent, a large church with venerable stained glass, at which we marvelled that it had not succumbed to the D-Day landings, and some swift’s nests.
By five to three we had returned to the shut shop. Only 5 minutes left to wait.
By five past three C was starting to get a bit impatient, and B was sitting on a doorstep at some distance.
At ten past three I went for a saunter on my own and discovered the toilet again. And that every other shop was open.
So at quarter past three we gave up and went back to the car. I suggested that we left town by the road past the shop, because it was now certain to be open.
Of course it was now open.
B was driving and deftly executed a very Gallic manoeuvre, with a sharp turn down a pedestrian street to park outside someone’s garage. I’m not sure what the parking restriction symbols actually meant but they didn’t look too threatening. “Be quick” said MOB & C in chorus.
B and I dashed up the road and startled the woman in the shop, who obviously wasn’t expecting customers. After explaining what we wanted she asked us to go outside and point at the item through the window. She reluctantly retrieved the item, I’m sure she was muttering about having to redo the entire window display now. B inspected, nodded and fished the money out of her purse. The woman tutted and sighed and returned a euro with a struggle.
Having got her afternoon off to a bad start by making a purchase we left her to reorganise her shop and returned the car.
The car was still there with MOB and C inside, obviously French traffic wardens have lunchtimes as well. Eventually we managed to escape the town after only circling the Centre Ville twice before we found a way out through the roadworks.
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Swallows
Invitation making
The invitations and their envelopes have been crafted and assembled by hand to create a miniature version of something resembling a “Jackdaw Folder” from my childhood. For the benefit of readers under the age of 40 – these folders generally had a historical subject and were full of facsimiles of documents associated with their subject. This is not a derogatory comparison as I always used to look forward to opening a new Jackdaw folder to see what things were inside it.
In the case of B’s invitations there is a small folder which contains, the wedding invitation, a small reply card, an envelope to return the reply card, a map with directions of the venue, an invitation to the reception and for a select few, an invitation to a post-wedding breakfast chez B’s parents.
The invitations are really quite splendid and everyone has admired them. Given all the traumas associated with them and the difficulty with which they were produced this is a good thing. I will not bore you with details of the wrong paper, the designer’s time, the wrong ink, the laser printer and the printer’s gout. But these all conspired unsuccessfully to thwart the printing process.
Just to show that all B’s effort has been worthwhile, one of the first little details I noticed was that on the invitations a bird is perched on a tree branch. But on those parts which refer to the post matrimonial celebrations the bird has taken flight.
And now the invitation replies are returning, like migratory swallows, back to the same room where they were originally inserted into the invitation envelopes.
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- More confetti on Twitter: @bridesfather
