I missed yesterday's post, though I can't say it has resulted in an avalanche of enquiries from my anxious friends and relations, demanding to know whether I am All Right. We left the house early yesterday morning to go to a wedding, and by the time we got home it was gone midnight and I'd missed Monday's deadline, even if we hadn't been so tired that the only thing either of us wanted to do was go to bed.
I could have written something about flowers in advance, saved it as a draft, and quickly pressed Publish before going out, but I didn't. We were keen to get on the road, and I didn't so much as switch my computer on before we left. I could have written something about weddings in advance, and in fact I did, but with the intention of posting it when we got back. Even though only about three people read the blog, and one of those is my mother, still advertising the fact on the internet that you are going to be out all day feels unwise. There's nobody here, come and burgle our house, take your time. Of course that's what most people do who are on Facebook, as they post their holiday photos in real time.
The wedding was in Herefordshire, which is a lovely county but a long way from Essex, and when the invitation first arrived I thought we we'd have to stay over there, which would have meant two nights, as we'd have been too early to book into a hotel before the ceremony, and it would have been rather late by the time we left the reception. Which would have meant finding someone to look after the menagerie and all my pots and seed trays. Which realistically would have meant booking a house sitter, in which case was it worth extending it to three nights and having time to look at a garden or two? But this is such a busy time of year with our garden and the bees, that didn't seem a great idea even though Hergest Croft is one of my favourite gardens, not to mention the ballooning cost of the whole enterprise. Then the Systems Administrator said that we could get out and back in a day, and I thought that if the SA was up for the drive that solved a lot of problems.
The wedding was held in a magnificent converted stone barn with a view of rolling green hills and sheep baaing in the middle distance. It was a relaxed affair, in fact it was the only wedding I've ever been to with a lacrosse game going on during the drinks and canapes stage between the ceremony and the wedding breakfast. That was because the groom is a lacrosse coach, but participation was optional so we didn't, what with the SA's dodgy knee and my dislike of team sport or anything involving balls and running. But we did manage to catch up with the family news, and were introduced to our latest great nephew and great niece. There were a lot of small children there, and they behaved extremely well, with just a few squeaks and no tantrums at all. And driving back the same evening gave us a gentlemanly excuse to miss most of the evening party, which suited us since evening dos with bands are wasted on us. The music is always so loud you can't hear anything anybody says, so conversation is at an end, we can't dance the night away because the SA doesn't dance, and I hate loud noise anyway. I like dancing as it happens, but I can't grumble because the SA has never danced, or even pretended to.
Journalists with lifestyle sections to fill love to write articles about the cost of holding and attending weddings. Obviously it's a more exciting story if the total is as large as possible, and so they always assume that you buy a new outfit, but I wore exactly the same dress, jacket and hat as I wore to the last family wedding three years ago, relying on the fact that nobody notices, remembers or cares what middle aged aunts wear, so long as they look clean and vaguely festive. It's not as though my niece and nephew are going to sit down and compare wedding videos, memories of their special days ruined when they uncover the horrible truth. OMG, I can't believe she wore the same outfit to my wedding as she did to yours.
Weddings can be weird. I wouldn't go so far as Matthew Parris, who wrote a few years ago that once he reached an age where he realised that his remaining stock of weekends was finite, he would rather not have to waste any more of them on going to weddings, but if you're going to make the effort as a guest then you would like to have a reasonably good time. I know it's the bride's day, but if you've given up your Saturday or the entire weekend, maybe travelled a long way, forked out on a hotel and a new hat and bought the happy couple a toaster, it's galling to be made to queue in a corridor for half an hour after the service with nothing to eat or drink while the bridal party faffs about. Thank goodness the receiving line appears to have gone completely out of fashion. And now that neither of us are office drones we don't have to go to office weddings. I was taken to one many years ago by the SA, who was working at the time with the groom. They went to the pub together after work, but we'd certainly never been asked round to supper or Sunday lunch, and the first and only time the SA and I ever set eyes on the bride was on her wedding day. So I have no idea what we were doing at their wedding, other than making up the numbers.
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