The day before I was due to fly out to Sam and Rob’s wedding I realised I had thought of everything – outfit, present, Isle of Man etiquette – except where I would actually be sleeping. Ted stepped in and gallantly offered me a patch of space in his tent, though I kept picturing Adina’s beautiful pale dress covered in cow pat, blowing away across the Irish sea, or speared with a sharpened turnip by a superstitious mainland folk-fearing local. Luckily the groom’s kind parents had laid on a little dormitory for some of the other strays that had blown in over the previous few days to bed down for the night, and this is where I ended up after landing at 10.30am from a particularly hairy flight with the dubiously named Aer Arann.
I’m not generally scared of flying, but those little propellor planes freak me out. I like my planes big and butch, ideally accessed through a nice, carpeted umbilical cord walkway so you forget you’re even on a plane, and then someone serves you nuts and you feel a smooth pulling sensation as it takes off, you read a chapter of Joan Collins and drift off to sleep.
This one only had 20 seats, 0 resistance to turbulence and 1 Irish air steward who looked so distractingly like a chubbier version of Kian from Westlife that I went to the wrong end of the plane, then had to apologetically squeeze my way back down the tiny single aisle to my seat, to a symphony of tuts from the 20 held up passengers.
Perhaps on the steward’s request, they played Westlife’s Flying Without Wings as we took off and landed, which I couldn’t decide was touchingly patriotic or hilariously tasteless. A little later, when we were hurling through the air and I was getting hungry, he minced up the aisle to my single seat at the back to tell me they’d unfortunately just run out of bagels and would I like a….? Ooh sorry, no, that’s all they had. (If you’re reading this, Shane, I hold you personally responsible for my hangover the following day, aggravated no doubt by the absence of my preparatory blotting paper bagel).
After landing, there were a couple of non-specific hours to fill, where I tried to make myself useful by pottering over to the Bride’s house next door to help paint a sign (watch someone else paint a sign) and water the centre pieces. Sam was wandering around in semi-bridal preparation state, hair twisted up, make-up done but jeans still on: ‘I feel like I’ve swallowed a brick’ she said. Then it was back to the Groom’s house for a spot of lunch, getting ready and helping the ushers pin roses to their morning suits, before heading to the church.
It was a very moving ceremony. Aside from the fact that you can’t really beat the history these two have (lifelong friends, neighbours, boyfriend and girlfriend), you also had the addition of the Groom’s mother, a trained singer, serenading them, a priest who was also a good friend (‘welcome to the marriage of the boy and girl next door’) and a Bride who was wearing a dress so beautiful I would later – as she informed me the next day – be caught nuzzling it on the dance floor.
The reception that followed was a splendid, unpretentious affair; they had blended each table with a cross-section of their friends, so you ended up next to someone you didn’t know, but on the same table as others you did, which worked very well. A good table plan is paramount at a wedding, as is the willingness of those seated to participate in a friendly boat race before the main course. Or at least, this seemed to be the case with our table. Also, as promised:
‘Doug says you write a blog?’
‘Yes that’s right’
‘Will you write about today?’
‘Yes’
‘Can you mention me in it?’
‘Why not’
‘I’m James, but I want to be known as Jame, without the s. It sounds cooler’
‘OK’
(If you’re reading this James – voila)
In good wedding tradition, everything began to unravel after the speeches. The bar was opened, the octogenarian swing band took their seats, the first dancers hit the floor and Homer, the family Basset Hound, did a tour of the abandoned tables to hoover up any leftovers that might have hit the floor. The ushers also took this point as an opportunity to sabotage the Groom’s overnight bag and replace his Gap boxers with a packet of spanking white Y fronts.
After the swing band had finished, an ipod and a couple of speakers kept the party rolling on until 3. Unfortunately for all involved, at around 2.30 the champagne gave me the fleeting illusion that I was Norman Cook and I took up the mantle of DJ for at least half an hour before someone gently prized it from my hands and I went off to dance on a table. By 3.30, Ed told me it was time to go, and led the remaining revellers down the road to our dormitory at the Groom’s house, illuminating the way with the light of his phone.
Anyway, what a wedding. Congratulations to Sam and Rob, who headed to Bali for their honeymoon on Sunday night. May your future together be blissfully happy and free of Y-fronts.
