Let’s not talk about the five hour marathon packing session and dusky drive to Gloucestershire the day before. Nor is there much to report on the very enjoyable dinner with Tony, Liz, Chris (Escamillo Escapillo) and Charlotte (Lavender) on the Friday evening at the Egypt Mill.
No, let’s get straight to the wedding day itself, before the ceremony. I chatted with the groom, Scott, (Manolete) on the right and his best man brother Paul (Belmonte) with baby Jack, centre.
I wasn’t drinking two glasses; I was holding Daisy’s glass while she took the pictures. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Daisy’s big sister, Hilary (Ermintrude) came round looking for Chris (Carlos Aruzza), who was chatting with his brothers and sisters, more or less in front of our eyes.
“I think he’s on his fifth or sixth glass of wine, underneath that table over there”, I said, pointing the other way.
“Oh God, he isn’t, is he?”, said Hilary, in max-stress mode. Perhaps I’d chosen the wrong moment and the wrong person for that particular joke.
After that, we were soon ushered in for the wedding itself.
The registrar told us that we could take pictures as we pleased, but that the pictures should not be posted on social media until after the celebrations. This statement caused some confusion among some of the more senior guests, unfamiliar with the term “social media”.
Scott decided to explain in simple terms what social media is.
It was probably just as well that Scott explained it, otherwise several senior folk who didn’t even know what the term social media means, mostly probably would have, inadvertently, posted lots of stuff to social media during the embargo period.
Meanwhile I, who had not given the idea of live Ogblogging the wedding a moment’s thought until that announcement, suddenly felt an almost insatiable urge to post stuff to social media that very second. But I resisted.
Scott was clearly in contemplative, nay perhaps even deep meditative mood during the official ceremony itself.
The wedding ceremony itself went pretty much entirely according to plan. There was a short round of applause when we got through the “does anyone know of any reason why this wedding should not take place” bit.
The registrar asked Scott to confirm Amy’s name at one point, claiming that Scott might not have said it absolutely right the first time. Daisy, I and everyone we spoke to afterwards were convinced that Scott got it right first time; we agreed that the matter should have gone to the TV umpire rather than Scott having to replay the point.
Little Penny, Paul and Mish’s first child, was the flower girl for this wedding, sitting up front with the maids of honour. Penny asked lots of questions during the ceremony which was rather sweet.
Then, a reception and of course the official photo shoot. Has to be done, but not my favourite bit at weddings. In any case, that day in Nailsworth, it was quite chilly standing around waiting for your slot.
After the shoot, the very tasty wedding breakfast, served after some short but sweet speeches, including a very succinct and eloquent best man jobbie from Belmonte Paul:
There was just about enough time between the meal and the dancing for Daisy and I to dash back to our room and change into our dancing outfits.
Like many good sports matches, the dance was a game of two halves. First up was a live band, Men@Ease, fronted by Jerry (Ami’s dad) and his partner Christine. They performed mostly 60’s and 70’s covers and were very good indeed.
I thought it was a really nice touch from Ami’s dad, doing an hour or more’s set on her wedding day. From Ami’s point of view, of course, it eliminated the possibility of “dad dancing misery”.
Realising that someone needed to do embarrassing dad-type dancing (otherwise the whole event wouldn’t have been a proper wedding), I picked up that baton, so Daisy and I danced like crazy for most of that set.
Mercifully (or sadly) we have no photos from that part of the evening…yet. The official pictures, we are assured, will be ready soon and will no doubt have caught me and Daisy in the act.
After the live music, a DJ picked up the mantle with some more up to date sounds. Daisy and I continued to dance for quite some while, teaching the youngsters a thing or two about stamina and modern dance moves…some moves so modern that the youngsters had probably never seen anything quite like it before.
Anyway, the whole event was super.
It’s a shame we don’t (yet) have any pictures of Daisy (Janie) to show you from the wedding. But we do have, from 2013, a rare bit of selfie-style-video from the very first time that Ged and Daisy met Ami, when we went down to Bristol almost exactly four years before the wedding. Someone had shown Janie how to use the video feature of her smart phone and the rest is history.