phillsacre.me.uk

… weddings!

That’s right. On Saturday we headed over to Peterhouse College, Cambridge for the wedding of Mark and Phillippa (Mark is a former member of Fordham and our home group). The wedding was in the chapel at the college, and was led by Andy Saville. It was a lovely service – the details had obviously been very carefully thought through, and it showed. Afterwards we wandered through into the garden for drinks, and then had dinner in one of the rooms. So it was a lovely time in general!

Afterwards we headed over to Freckenham Village Hall for what remained of the reception of Matt and Suzi’s wedding. Matt and Suzi are also former members of Fordham and our home group (strangely enough), they just happened to be getting married on the same day! We couldn’t go to two, but we did manage to get to a couple of hours of the reception and have a good chat with Matt and Suzi, as well as Chris and Eleanor.

So it was a busy but very pleasant day!

On Sunday we were much less busy – we had the usual morning service and Sunday@6, but not too much else apart from that.

So that’s pretty much it for the time being. Other than, some new books have arrived which I’m looking forward to reading – “The Great Divorce” and “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis, which have come highly recommended, and a book called “Naturalism” by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro. All look fascinating, so I will enjoy reading them and will review here when I’m done.

Just realised I forgot to update with what happened at the weekend! Doh! Well, a quick update: on Friday night, we had the last 21 of this term. In a way it was quite sad to say goodbye to some of the kids (they’re going up to the next youth group which we’re not involved in) but it was nice to know we’re now free on Friday evenings for the summer!

On Saturday afternoon we headed over to Ipswich for Sheri and Pete’s wedding. It was a lovely day – although the weather was a bit variable it didn’t rain, and everyone seemed really happy. And it was really good to see some of the old uni people again – particularly Chris and Louise and Phil and Esther, who we hadn’t seen in ages.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then didn’t do much in the afternoon, and then went to Sunday@6, and then went to Wivenhoe to have fish & chips with Alex and Elisa. The first time we’d been to Pop’s fish & chip shop in a long time! Unfortunately he wasn’t there, but the food was great. Then we went to the Greyhound for a bit to have a drink and play some darts. So, there you have it! All in all, a pretty good weekend.

Well, this has been a rather eventful weekend! On Friday night, Laura and AJ (the youth leaders at Fordham) were both away so we had 21 to run ourselves. It went pretty well considering! The kids seemed to enjoy it. The only problem was, the burglar alarm went off half way through our game [I should hasten to add at this point that there were, predictably, no burglars. Still don't know why it went off]. We had to leave the building and have the talk outside… fortunately it was such a nice evening, this was possible!

Anyway. On Saturday afternoon we headed out to a wedding. Unusually, it wasn’t of people we actually knew… at Ian and Lucy’s wedding last year we met a couple called Tim and Sue. They liked my DJing at the wedding, and got in touch earlier this year to ask whether I’d be up for DJing at their wedding. I said yes, and so on Saturday we went along to the wedding and then I DJ’d at the reception (note: it’s not usual practice for wedding DJs to go to the wedding service – but in this case, as Ian and Lucy were going and we were invited along, we thought it would be nice to go). Anyway, it seemed to go really well. I played most of the cheesy classics and at the end of the night there were still plenty of people dancing. In fact, I think people were a bit disappointed when it was all over – although I hasten to add I think that wasn’t just up to the disco. It was a lovely day in general – the first wedding I’ve been to where the wedding breakfast was a picnic outside!

On Sunday morning we went to church as per usual. Then in the afternoon we spent some much-needed time in the garden, relaxing and doing a lot of general tidying up which we’ve not had much time for recently. Then, we headed out to Sunday@6 which was a communion service – done in the early church style over a meal! It was really good actually – having communion in a meal style setting, as they would have done in the first 100 years or so of the church. I’d quite like to try it again.

Afterwards we had a quick music practice for next week’s youth service, and then we came back home to watch Top Gear. I thought it was really good this week – I can’t believe how much the insurance premiums are for 17 year old drivers! I thought it was bad for me, but some of the quotes they received were absurd – £8,000 was one! Come to think of it, I was first insured permanently when I was 20/21, so perhaps it was slightly cheaper for me – only around £1000 for my first year… I’m so glad I’m now over 25 and have a few years of no claims bonus!

This weekend was relatively quiet, as weekends for us go! On Friday we helped out at 21 as per usual. Then, on Saturday we spent the day doing various things which needed to be done i.e. a bit of shopping and gardening (well, mowing the lawn anyway!).

In the evening we headed down to Ware in Hertfordshire for Philippa and Tom’s wedding, at a place called Fanhams Hall Hotel. (It should be noted that the Philippa was not my wife – but she was flatmates with Phil at uni a few years ago. Strange world.) It was a really plush place – although we did wander in to someone else’s wedding by mistake! When we arrived at reception, we asked where Philippa and Tom’s wedding was, and she pointed us through. When we went in the DJ announced the first dance and cutting of the cake, and said “Congratulations to Stewart and Zoe”… ooops! Fortunately we were only in there for about ten seconds so were able to beat a hasty (and stealthy) retreat. Anyway, after finding out where we were supposed to be, we had a good time and spent half the time dancing the night away.

We weren’t at church on Sunday morning as we didn’t get back until the small hours! But some friends of ours from church had previously asked us round for lunch, so we headed out at lunchtime. They weren’t expecting us! – it was arranged a few weeks ago. Because we were not at the prayer meeting on Thursday night, and then not at church in the morning – plus someone at church said that we were away for the weekend – they assumed that we were away! So that was all rather embarrasing, but quite funny :) We did have a nice lunch there anyway, and stayed until the mid afternoon.

Then we got back home, watched the second half of the Andy Murray vs. James Blake match (go Andy Murray! – wonder if he will ever win Wimbledon? on that form, maybe), and then headed out to Sunday@6. I was playing lead guitar for the first time, so that was quite nerve-wracking but seemed to go quite well!

After Sunday@6 we came back home and watched “Grow Your Own”, a little-known British film. It was actually really good, I would definitely recommend it! And… that’s pretty much it.

This weekend was Andy C and Rica’s wedding in Trier, Germany. On Friday night, we came back pretty soon after helping out at 21 so that we could get to bed – we had a 3AM start on Saturday! We got the bus to Stansted, and then flew out to Frankfurt Hahn airport. From there we could get the bus to Trier.

We stayed at the NH Hotel. The room they gave us was huge! We arrived a bit early but fortunately they let us check-in anyway. Shortly afterwards, Ian arrived and we spent an hour wandering around Trier with him. It was good to see him again, I think quite possibly the first time we’d seen him since the wedding last year!

Anyway. The wedding itself was held at the Evangelische Kirche in Saarburg, about 40 minutes’ drive away from Trier. It was a really nice service – it was led by the minister of Andy C and Rica’s church in Luxembourg. Although it had to be done in English and German (someone was translating for most of the day!), it still worked and I think everyone really enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we headed to the Robert-Schuman-Haus in Trier for the reception. It was the first time we’d been to a German wedding reception, so it was a new experience for both of us! It stretched out over most of the evening and into the following morning. Unfortunately, Phil and I had been up for about 23 straight hours by 1AM and so had to head off! But it was a really lovely evening and we had a great time.

Aaaanyway, speaking of being tired – I’m off to bed. Night!

Those of you with excellent memories will remember that I DJ’d at Ian and Lucy’s wedding in May. It wasn’t a long set, but a couple of the people there are getting married this year and have got in touch asking me if I would like to DJ at their wedding. The only drawback with asking me is that I don’t have my own PA system (given that I’m not really a mobile DJ).

Anyway, apparently one of their friends is a sound engineer and can provide a PA, so it looks like I will be able to DJ there after all. I will also probably get a few bits of new equipment – CDs and MP3s are all the rage these days (vinyl seems to be on the way out, unfortunately) so I think I will try and get some CD decks – I’ll post up when I have some more info about that.

I actually have been flirting with the idea of getting more of my own equipment and advertising myself as a wedding DJ, still not sure whether that would be a good idea or not though. Still, you do see so many … well, crap wedding DJs – I’m sure I would do a better job than some of them (trust me, it wouldn’t be hard – one friend of ours saw a wedding DJ basically put on a playlist and then spend half the time stuffing his face at the BBQ there)! At the same time, if you have to play the same old cheesy stuff week in week out I’m sure you would get bored of it, hence why some wedding DJs seem rubbish – they’ve just got bored of the same old crap which people actually like and want to try something different which people don’t like!

Ah well, decisions decisions…

Well, we had the final wedding of 2008 yesterday. It went well! It was a civil ceremony at Vaulty Manor near Witham, followed by a reception there. Very nice ’service’ (not sure if you can call a civil ceremony a ’service’ but still), followed by a delicious dinner (great beef), followed by me DJing. Ah, the fun. We picked up the DJ stuff from Essex DJ in the morning.

I have a music quiz in a minute so not really much else to say… I’ll try and update later. Or tomorrow. Boooyah.

Since July of this year I’ve been working with Matthew on a little project.

Well, it’s finally ready to go live, and I am proud to unveil it today: Gift List Central (GLC for short) is officially open! There may still be a few issues to iron out, but the functionality is pretty much there and you can login and create gift lists to your heart’s content.

I thought I’d probably better explain a bit about what GLC is while I’m on the subject. When Phil and I got married, we were a bit frustrated: we didn’t want to go with a big chain (such as Debenhams) for our wedding gift list. We actually went with an Excel spreadsheet, which my Mum and Phil’s Mum kept updated!

At the time I did contemplate writing a website which would let people set up gift lists, but never actually got around to it. Anyway, that was a couple of years ago. Fast forward to last summer. I thought about the idea again (partly due to the large number of weddings we’ve had to go to this year), and I spoke to Matthew about it and suggest working together. Strangely enough, he had a similar idea when he and Ellie got married.

So, we started working on a website, and it started to take shape pretty quickly. The end result is Gift List Central as you see it now. The design work is all Matthew’s, whereas I did most of the coding.

As the name suggests, it’s not just for weddings – you can use it for weddings of course, but it’s for any gift list. Currently we’re focussed on a Christmassy theme, as it’s less than a month to Christmas ;-) Please do feel free to sign up for an account (currently it’s all completely FREE), and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you, if you have any comments / ideas / suggestions. If you have any death threats or the like, well, please just address those to Matthew and not me ;-)

I’m talking about weddings, of course!

Last Saturday was Andy B and Helen’s wedding, which was held at St Osyth Parish Church. We managed to get there in good time (it doesn’t take very long from Colchester). It was a beautiful day, Andy and Helen were really lucky! Anyway, the service itself was lovely – although I don’t think the organist was very used to playing new songs. Not that it spoiled the service, of course, but it was quite amusing nonetheless!

Afterwards we headed back home for a while (the joys of going to a wedding near to home), and then went back for the evening do. It was a really good evening as well – we were able to catch up with a couple of people (Naomi, Ran and Katie) who we hadn’t seen in over a year, as well as see Sarah and Jon (and a friend of theirs, Rachel, who we’d met once before). We had a good old dance to some of the old cheesy tunes – unfortunately the DJ seemed to have a real fondness for “Megamixes” – he played four or five that I counted! I did dance to the 60s one, but in general I’m really not a fan of them. The Beatles megamix, for example, basically took a load of choruses from the Beatles’ songs and arranged them into a rather soulless track which is rather less than the sum of its parts! Still, it was all good fun, and everyone had a good time! Many congrats to Andy & Helen as well :-)

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then went straight to my parents’ for lunch. We had a nice afternoon there, and I managed to pick up all my old CDs. It was a real trip down memory lane, reliving my mis-spent youth (well, not really).

In the evening we went to the all-age service at Nansen Road, where I played guitar for some of the songs. The service went well, despite me managing to forget my capo (and therefore not being able to play some of the songs!). Afterwards we headed for home, and watched “Stephen Fry’s America”.

I’m talking about weddings, of course! We’ve now been to six weddings this year – only another two to go before the year is out…

It went very well, anyway. It was in Cambridge, so we travelled up by train on Saturday morning and got there in plenty of time. The journey up was actually fairly painless, even though we had to go via Liverpool Street! The wedding service was lovely – Mike spoke really well, and the band were great. We particularly liked the songs that they sung during the interlude – the girl who sang had a lovely voice! They really did justice to the Celtic version of “When I Survey”.

Anyway, afterwards we went to the Regal (a Wetherspoons pub) for lunch with Roy and Janette and the boys, and then had a wander round Cambridge. Despite it raining, we managed to stay mostly dry and get to the evening do without problems. It was at a hotel called the University Arms, which is very nice (if expensive!). So we had a good time catching up with a few people from church who we hadn’t spoken to in a while. Gavin and Sarah offered to give us a lift back home, which meant that we didn’t have to spent two hours on the train (plus the walk to and from the station at both ends).

All in all it was a great day, and I wish Chris and Ruth all the best :-) (Not that either of them will read this, but the sentiment was there).

On Sunday we went to not one, not two, but THREE services! Two in the morning, and one in the evening. The morning services were harvest thanksgiving services, and so there were a few people there who don’t normally come which was nice to see. In the evening, Andy was doing the first part of a series of “Firm Foundations” courses – this was was on “Worship: The Principles”. We both very much enjoyed it, and it was good to see quite a few people from outside the parish coming – including quite a few from the St Albright’s congregation.

Right, I think that pretty much brings you up to date with the weekend. My copy of “Dig Out Your Soul”, the new Oasis album, arrived today and I’m actually rather enjoying it. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I’ve really been liking what I’ve heard so far. I will try and post up a fuller review of that when I’ve had the chance to listen to it a few times!