Posts Tagged ‘wedding’

The undoubted highlight of my social calendar last year was the raucous week spent on Rhodes for Jonathan & Suzanne’s wedding. Although it fell during my somewhat extended blogging hiatus, I can tell you Lindos was lovely, we met lots of good people and had fun in rather epic proportions. Once back in Blightly I put together a little site for the photos, should you wish to view strangers getting married/drunk in Lindos: Escape to Athena (named after the classic Roger Moore/Telly Savalas war film which used several locations around Lindos).

Of course it’s never easy maintaining one’s sartorial elegance in warmer climes; the slightest fashion faux pas could even lead to one being mistaken for Johnny Foreigner. With that in mind I took it upon myself to put together a little fashion guide for the Groom and Best Man, well in advance of the wedding. I’ve kept the page in case it comes in useful for anyone else getting married abroad: looking cool at a hot wedding. Sadly Jonathan and Simon chose to disregard my advice.

What to do with those original high quality Royal Wedding mugs now Charles is set to re-marry? The ThroneOut Mint Charles & Diana Mug Conversion Kit could be the answer:

Featuring a sticker specially designed to fit over the face of the mad, deceased ex-wife, you can turn those embarrassing old collectables into something to be proud of again.

Since my rather inebriated post about Rob & Em’s wedding, I’ve rather neglected World of Badger. Obviously the last week was rather taken up with my gran, but I thought I’d do a quick-ish run down of the ‘highlights’ of the previous week. I will be making copious use of links to e-street, a rather cool site I read about years ago in Internet Works magazine, but only just got round to visiting. It’s one of those “look up a bar/shop/bank in your area” sites covering lots of cities in the UK and Ireland, but with a difference: it includes photos of all the places listed (and it’s also very well designed, has details of disabled access etc, maps, and is very fast).

On May 5th, the Bank Holiday Monday, I met up with Troy for the first time since his return from Les Arcs (some of his photos of his season in France are up at Planet Sub-Zero). After some Rolo Muffins and a few pints by the river in Putney (and a trip to the cash machine — I mention this uninteresting fact purely so I can point out that e-street even have a photo of Barclay’s cash machine on Putney High Street!), and a few more elsewhere, we popped into a black-Dell-machines-for-hire place to watch Rob & Emma getting married in Vegas via live webcam. Naturally, as the service was delayed (second thoughts?!) and we were paying by the millisecond for the machine, Si and I swapped between the wedding and the trailer for Matrix Reloaded. In our pissed state this got a little confusing, but we’re pretty sure Emma was kick-boxing in lots of black leather, and Rob ended up getting hitched to some guy he’d met on the Strip named Neo.

So after weeping at the spectacle of our best chums getting hitched, what else could we do but go out to celebrate? After a disconcerting “Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill, please.” — “Sorry the, the only Blenheim Crescent I know is in Notting Hill…”-type conversation with the cabbie, and a drunken chat to Simon H. on the mobile (if you’re reading this Si, sorry, we were a little tipsy), we eventually found ourselves outside the flat where Mel, Si’s mate from France, was staying. A couple of glasses of red wine later, we popped in for a meal at Mediterraneo, where we had some absolutely delicious spag bol and a super bottle of Italian red. Then back to Mel’s, before getting a cab back home.

The next day Troy and I did a little shopping (he wanted some obscure arthouse DVDs), then a little basking/people-watching in Soho Square and outside the Toucan. Then he dragged me along to see X-Men 2, which was surprisingly good fun, I have to admit.

The rest of the week was taken up with work, until Troy came over here on Saturday evening (10th May) with two bottles of cracking Grand Reserva Rioja. After that sort of start, the rest of the evening was inevitable… Guinness at the EDT and half a bottle of Absolut in the kitchen until the early hours. Utterly wrecked. I finally got up at about 1.30 the next day, with the foulest of hangovers, and we forced ourselves to head off to the pub with the Sunday papers to watch the Chelsea–Liverpool match (the less said the better). At least Troy knew a Hammers supporter to phone up, which did bring some much-needed schadenfreude. Still feeling like death-warmed-up, we went for an early-evening Mexican (alright, I admit it, I did try a hair of the dog pint of Guinness in Franklins too), and spent the rest of the evening watching TV (the highlight being Bremner, Bird and Fortune’s Beyond Iraq and a Hard Place — why the hell are they the only people on telly mentioning the PNAC?).

Right, that about brings me up to date.

Just in case you’re reading this Rob and Em, yeah, we saw it — me, Troy and Simon — and discussed it at length. Con-bleedin-gratulations. Lots of love and pissed best wishes, your mates.

Well I’ve been back from Rob’s stag do for a week now, so it’s about time I posted here. Briefly: got the train to Penarth on the Friday, and ended up going out for ‘a bite to eat’ with Emma & Rob that night. Unwisely, the ‘quick pint’ turned into several, and we had three bottles of wine to go with the curry… plus some G&Ts back at their place afterwards with Pat and Ali. I finally hit the hay sometime after four. Oops.

As a result, we woke up on the morning of the stag day with hangovers from Hell, and Rob had to nip off to Tesco for a chemical cork to put a stop to his severe case of the trots. The other stag do-ers joined us at the flat and karting centre in Newport, where we prepared for the Grand Prix with another group on a stag weekend (about 40 of us in all).

Frankly, the last thing Rob and I felt like doing was donning overalls, balaclavas, gloves and crash helmets then sitting next to hot, noisy engines for hours, but somehow we managed to survive four heats and a semi final. Team Badger’s tactics went to pieces under those conditions, going from ‘win at all costs’ to ’slow and steady wins the race’, and the best I could manage was two 2nd places in the heats. Pat, number 2 driver for Team Badger fared little better. As usual, I managed to find the dodgy kart, and found myself without brakes when taking up pole position on the starting grid for one race. Everyone must have been thinking ‘What on earth is that idiot doing?’ as I trundled off past the grid and around the course at 5mph. Thank God there was a steep incline, otherwise there could have been carnage.

In the end, only one of our group made it through to the final — Team Hopkins managed to stay in third position throughout the race, until he got confused at the last minute, and was robbed of third place.

We had a digital video camera with us, but as Rob’s got it with him in the States right now, hopefully these artist’s impressions capture the glamour and excitement of the afternoon.

The karting was great fun, but I have to say it wasn’t till we had pizza and chips back at Rob’s that I started feeling human again. The drinking started at about 7pm, first at the flat, then a swift pint in the Railway, before heading into Cardiff. For some reason (well, cheap rounds) we went to the Prince of Wales for several hours. Imagine a large old Victorian theatre converted to a bar. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Now imagine a large old Victorian theatre converted by Wetherspoons — devoid of character, full of people not-quite-fully-evolved-from-apes. Still, we had a good laugh, especially when Rob knocked over a table and smashed about thirty glasses. After the Prince of Wales things get a bit hazy… more drink, a bit of (not lap) dancing. Ended up in the Toucan Club, before getting a taxi back to Rob & Emmas, where Em (back from her hen night) got some nice footage of Rob asleep with a novelty chocolate penis in his mouth. Well, it has to be done, doesn’t it?

I stayed around until Monday, when I returned to London to find a horrible load of work waiting for me. Rob & Em set off for Vegas on Wednesday, with Fear & Loathing as their only guide. Doubtless they’ve spent the last few days slowly revolving round the bar at Circus Circus.

Anyway, had an email yesterday to say that the wedding will be taking place this evening (Monday 5th), 8.30pm UK time. Troy’s back from Les Arcs now, so I’ve arranged to watch the live video stream of the service with him this evening — if you want to tune in, you’ll find the happy couple getting hitched at The Little Chapel. I can’t believe Rob’s getting married.

I’m back from Neil’s wedding, which was absolutely great.

My journey up to Sheffield was fairly uneventful, apart from when my bags got stuck in the ticket barrier at Elephant & Castle tube station. Upon arrival, I sauntered off into the city centre, only to find that Sheffield doesn’t seem to have a city centre as such, more a random collection of streets. I was quite impressed by the city’s trams though — they ring little bells when they set off, which adds to their quaint, nostalgic feel — although I’m sure trams are a much more modern, far-sighted solution than the buses, tubes and trains we have to contend with in London. I (eventually) managed to find a shop to stock up on film and batteries for my camera, and lazily got a cab up to Neil and Nichie’s. Once there, Neil, Nichie, Paul and I chatted and had a few beers, before heading over to The Maynard Arms hotel, the venue for the wedding and reception. Quite a few guests had already arrived — some I knew already, most I didn’t. The ones I did know included Richard Darwent, whom I hadn’t seen for years, and so it was great to meet up with him, his wife Sharon and their 3-week-old baby Gwynedd. The rest of the evening was spent in the bar, catching up and getting to know people over drinks. Neil and Paul were staying at the hotel that night, but Nicola and I went back to their house, and ended up chatting, smoking and knocking back G&Ts until 2.30am.

Unfortunately I had to get up at 8am, and, frankly, had the hangover from Hell. Nichie went off to prepare, and I got a lift back to the hotel with Alison & Phil, friends of Nichie, who had come up from London. Neil, Paul and I spent some time setting up things for the ceremony, then tarted ourselves up in our swanky clothes. As I had the responsibility of taking the ‘official’ photographs of the wedding, it was at this point that my nerves started to kick in. The ceremony took place in the hotel’s ornate function room, but I can’t really remember much about it as I was busy trying to take photos. I’m sure it was lovely though… Afterwards we all made our way into the garden, which was beautifully sunny, and all the guests started knocking back the bucks fizz. Well, all the guests except me, as I was running around trying to get photographs of Neil & Nichie, on their own and with a million different groups of friends and relatives.

In an amazingly bad bit of planning, Neil & Nickie had arranged to get married at 2.30pm, which coincided with the Wales v England rugby international. As about 50% of the wedding guests were Welsh, and the rest English, every few minutes someone would come out with an update on the score (”England 29, Wales 10 with 20 minutes to go!”). It turned out to be a very happy day indeed!

After an exhausting hour of taking photos, I was finally able to swap my camera for a drink. At times it felt like a mini school reunion, catching up with a few people I hadn’t seen for years — as well as people I knew from the stag night. Next we went back into the function room, which had been made up for the meal. I was seated at the ‘ex-Stanwell School’ table with Richard, Sharon and Gwynedd, Kath Lee and her husband, Diana Youde and her husband, and Brendan and his wife. I felt very single and very childless!

Of course, I kept having to interupt my meal in order to get photos of Neil & Nichie cutting the cake, making speeches etc., but I was rewarded by an embarrassing round of applause and presentation of a gift. Once the formal photography was finally out of the way, I was able to get on with some serious socialising and boozing, first in the bar, and then in the disco. The next few hours are a bit of a drunken blur (odd moments of clarity include dancing badly to the Teardrop Explodes, and intentionally getting Tory-boy Paul into a heated discussion with Socialist Worker girl!), and the next thing I remember is everyone going back to their respective hotels, B&Bs and rooms. Of course, Paul, Richard and I decided that we clearly hadn’t had enough to drink, and joined the members of staff for a few drinks in the bar.

I felt surprisingly okay on Sunday morning, especially after a hearty traditional English breakfast (with double portion of black pudding). Quite a few of the guests, plus Neil & Nichie, assembled in the hotel bar, and I was persuaded to get stuck into a few restorative pints of Boddingtons. By mid afternoon, most people had said their goodbyes, and it was time for me to head off home too.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, and (please God) I’ll soon have the high-quality photographs to prove it.

I’ve now got the first part of the Stag Night photos uploaded (the disposable camera ones — haven’t got copies of the 150 pics Seymour took with his digital camera yet).