The Missus has shared hers, so here's my vague recollections of the wedding day (evening to come later, once more photos online) as a starter before a few posts on the nitty-gritty of it all get written and the final photo album is uploaded. Bear in mind a) my memory is godawful at the best of times, never mind on the most emotionally dazzling, time-space-warping day of me life and b) we're likely to share a few of the same memories from the day, what with us being at the same wedding and all...
The first emotional wallop came when I was setting up the music system at the venue for the ceremony, the Scottish Book Trust, on the Friday afternoon (wiring stuff up, no heavy lifting thanks to throbbing muscle gristle), then testing out the volume by playing the first piece of music to be played after the ceremony, La Vie En Rose performed by Louis Armstrong, used to such swoony effect in Wall-E. As the trumpet echoed around the hall, I came very very very close to all-out blubbing like an eejit with joy, and a few tears still managed to sneak out.
I spent the night before the wedding curled up with my fiancee watching the always-adorable Studio Ghibli classic Whisper Of The Heart. It was pretty much the perfect antidote to the inevitable jumbled mass of anxious anticipation we were feeling that evening, a film that manages to be charming, funny, evocative and ultimately romantic.
My chums Hana and Dan (the latter being the best man) popped over to our flat on the Saturday morning to keep me company while the Lass went to have her hair twiddled about. Disgracefully filthy & bloody two-player action on House Of The Dead: Overkill was the perfect way to stop my head from bursting with nerves. After they left, there was a period of silent (relative) calm as I got all suited-and-booted before the Lass got back, looking in the mirror and feeling pretty damn pleased with myself, then giving my mirror-self a wee pep talk. Not sure if he listened though.
Mind you, it's worth noting that before this I came to the terrible conclusion that I didn't know how to do a really decent necktie, which is pretty bally pathetic for a 32 year old male and is surely an indictment of our broken society. Only YouTube could save me...
Seeing the Lass in her dress for the first time that day was always going to be a stunning moment - although I'd already seen her in it beforehand (superstition be damned!) the sight still knocked me for six. Just see the picture to the right there, taken just as we were getting ready to leave for the ceremony - fantastic! I silently congratulated myself on being a jammy so-and-so, and continued to do so for the rest of the day. Still do, really.
At half past one we reached the afternoon ceremony venue, the Scottish Book Trust, and saw the wedding cake - a metre-high baumkuchen from the mighty Falko Konditormeister - for the first time, along with all the catering, plants and decorations, and the feeling of unstoppable momentum was startling. I'd seen the baumkuchen in individual slices before, and had seen a full-size cake made by Falko on television thanks to Rachel Allen, but to see it in person - and to know it was for us - was quite amazing. I'd never seen anything else like it, and it was a pleasure to see the reaction of our guests to it - initially at the appearance, then later in the afternoon when it was served up and they were able to taste it for the first time.
Things started to move very quickly at this point - there must have been some local distortion of the fabric of spacetime. In those 30 minutes before the ceremony was due to start, people arrived (well, duh!). Slowly at first, then they seemed to cascade in and I felt more and more overwhelmed as I wanted to welcome and speak to everyone. Had we stuck to tradition and the Lass not arrived until the ceremony, leaving me to deal with all these people, I probably would have fainted. As it was, I came ludicrously close in the 10 minutes before kick-off. A mix of dehydration, social anxiety (I'm not great around large groups of people at the best of times) and a physical reaction to the gallons of adrenaline that seemed to be gushing through my body sent my pulse and breathing racing. It was horrible. I managed to get to my asthma inhaler and took a couple of puffs, but didn't seem to make much difference. What made it worse was the desire to be welcoming people as they were arriving, yet my body was stopping me, and I hated the thought that people might think this was me being deliberately antisocial or out of nerves about getting married. Not in the slightest - it was the fact there were people there watching it that brought the Fear. Which is ludicrous, especially in retrospect, but at the time it was bringing me to a halt. With less than 10 minutes to go and dizziness wrapping itself around my head, things were getting fuzzy and although I wasn't yet seeing stars I could sense they were in the post. Best Man Dan spotted this quickly and got me out into the fresh air, led me through some breathing exercises that really helped and waited as I splashed my face with cold water, glugged back a few cups of water and Got My Shit Together. I just regret that I couldn't have spent all this time greeting our guests and hope that nobody interpreted it as some weird commitment-phobe cold feet behaviour. Anyway, for that alone Dan proved himself to be the best Best Man I could've hope for. So from my wonky memory, let's see what can be recovered.
I remember the principal players - Lass, me, Best Man, Bridesmaids, Ushers, Celebrant - meeting in the foyer before walking into the hall and up the aisle... then it all goes vague. That local spacetime distortion reached critical mass at this point. I do recall a near-continuous refrain in my head - DON'T FAINT! DON'T FAINT! BREATHE! DON'T FAINT! DON'T FAINT! BREATHE! - that ran for pretty much the whole ceremony. The upside to this is that while I had been bound to burst into horrible tears during the ceremony because the whole thing was so bloody lovely, I didn't cry a bit as I was too busy willing myself to stay conscious and grasping the Lass's hand with both of mine as we sat listening to the celebrant and the readers.
I remember us getting everyone waving to Emily during the introduction of the ceremony, which was an immensely cool moment and went a long way to make my anxiety go away - it reminded me that, surprise, this is actually happy, good, fun. As for Emily, she owned the rest of the afternoon, charmed everyone she met and worked her usual magic in photographs - this is definitely one of our favourite pictures of the whole day, taken as she demonstrated her mastery of bipedal locomotion.
I remember the celebrant, Juliet Wilson (another internet find!) bringing the ceremony together perfectly, striking the right tone at every step. I remember the readers, and what a wonderful job all three did. The readings were A Birthday by Christina Rossetti (apologies for the purpleness of the linked page), Journey by Christine de Luca (scroll down to see it) and the following, taken from the end of Who Will Comfort Toffle? by Tove Jansson, she of the Moomins:
That says as much as words, perhaps, but only for a while
Since there are certain things that even smiles cannot express
"I'll write to you instead," says Toffle, "That's the answer. Yes!"
When Miffle reads the letter, which she finds a little tough;
Toffle's peculiar signature is difficult enough;
Her roses turn from white to red, right before Miffle's eyes.
Miffle falls into Toffle's arms, gives him a hug and cries,
"Forget the past and all your fears. Think of the super fun
That we can have. I'd love to see the beach, a shell, the sun."
So off they sail, two special guests on Fillyjonk's red boat.
The whompses wave and cheer to see the happy pair afloat,
And Miffle knows, and Toffle knows, that both have seen the end
Of fear and fright and long, dark night, now each has found a friend.
I don't remember getting up to read the vows - a miniature black hole swallowed that up - but I do remember finding myself standing there, beaming with genuine joy as the Lass read her vows, then reading mine, looking into her eyes as often as I could while doing so, marveling at the power of the words, the strength of speaking these vows out loud, and I loved how they sounded, how absolute, unequivocal, utterly binding. Who says men don't like commitment? Here's what I said:
Katherine, you are the best thing that ever happened to me. You’ve brought so much to my life and I want to spend the rest of my life together with you. I promise to be there for you, always and forever, to support, to hold, to hug and to love. I promise to be the very best husband I can be, to make you as happy as you make me, to share in whatever life throws at us, good or bad. In front of our family and friends here today, I swear my devotion, my commitment, my love for you.
Fragments now. Putting the ring on the Lass's finger - after requiring some subtle direction on which finger to aim for...
Signing the register, embarrassed by my shaking hand as I signed my name. Thankfully my signature is an indecipherable squiggle at all times, so the over-adrenalised scrawl was perfectly acceptable.
Quoting the League Of Gentlemen, just as I'd been planning all year. And the photographer caught it!
The ceremony ending, the sound of our guests reading the blessing, the first I'd been aware of their presence since the ceremony started - the world had seemed to contract into a small bubble.
Finding ourselves outside, giddy with relief. It's done! It's really done! We're married! EEEEEEE! A bit like the end of Return of the King when Frodo's got rid of the Ring, only the complete opposite really.
The music was always going to be very important for our wedding and I'd been working on the playlist since, oh, January 2008. There was even live music at the ceremony courtesy of two clarsach players playing adaptations of the Orkney Wedding With Sunrise at the start of the ceremony, then Always With Me by Yumi Kimura (the song that plays at the end of Spirited Away) during the signing of the register. Infuriatingly, I don't actually remember any of this - filming weddings doesn't seem quite so silly in retrospect.
Also, I'd lined up some of our favourite songs to play in the hour after the ceremony - tracks like Lemon Jelly's The Staunton Lick, Loudon Wainwright III's Passion Play, Bjork's Unison - but with all the photographs being taken outside and the music playing inside, nobody heard a thing! I had bought a rather splendid outdoor iPod speaker unit that looked like a bucket, but in all the faff of photos didn't get the chance to bring it out until later. However, there was a rather special moment when, photographs over, I went back into the venue to get said speaker, sync the iPod playlist up with where the indoor one was and bring it outside. The playlist at that point was at a session recording of Daniel Johnston and friends playing 'Go' on the Mark Riley 6Music show (a recording I'd 'taped' off the radio, and I sat down and listened to it. Maybe it's best it wasn't played to everyone, I suspect some would've found it too darn odd even by our standards,, but sitting in the empty venue as Johnston cooed the following seemed like the perfect coda to my single life:
So you think you've found the one
And she knows just how you feel
And you say that she's for real and she's fun
Well, that's all well and good
That's just the way it should be
To understand and be understood is to be free
So I think that you should go
Go on ahead
Take her in your arms and be wed
Go go go go you restless soul, you're going to find it
Go go go go you restless soul, you're going to find it
Oh, yes you did, you found it.
Once finished, I brought the musical bucket outside to serenade the guests (all enjoying the SBT's secret garden and the barbecue reception) with some supreme reggae and lovers rock - a full playlist will be published soon, just in case there's a single person out there remotely interested in what was on. As for the barbecue, that went down an absolute treat - there'll be a post about the food & drink of the wedding a little bit later (full of teases, this post). It was around this point I really felt relaxed, that everything was going to be fine with this wedding day, and really enjoyed myself, the luckiest groom in the world.
From there, everything swam along splendidly. I tried - and probably failed - to spend a decent amount of time catching up with friends and introducing myself to people I'd never met before, but the time flew by so quickly, so sudden. It's a cliche that married couples warn you of, but you never expect that hours could hurtle past like that. Must've been that spacetime distortion again. But I do remember a definite atmosphere of fun, of relaxation amongst our guests, that was exactly what the Missus & I had wanted from the wedding, and it seemed to end far too early. Some guests left, but most stayed as we marched on to the second part of the day - the evening reception. And that, my friends, deserves a post all of its very own...
Still, even if the day had ended at that point it would've been a perfect day - as it was, it just got even more perfect with the evening. The ceremony, which essentially was all that really mattered, was wonderful and heartfelt and true, as good a reflection of the staggeringly brilliant relationship I have with Katherine as could be made. We made our vows to each other, witnessed by those who matter most to us, in doing so closing the book on one part of our lives and starting a brand new one together. To have all those people there, to share it with them and to see them enjoy the food, drink and music we'd prepared for them - that's the blissful icing on an already glorious cake. Thanks, then, to the photographer, the celebrant, the readers, the best man, the ushers, the bridesmaids, the parents, the guests... and to the bride for making me officially (I can prove this with charts and graphs) the happiest groom in the world. Cheers wifey!
Recent Comments