This weekend was the last weekend of our holiday. It was quite a busy one as well — we had to travel down to Gloucester for Matthew and Ellie’s wedding. [Hence the title… apologies to Grieg’s “Hochzeitstag auf Troldhaugen”]
We set off after lunch on Friday, and made good time – we didn’t really hit traffic until we were about 30 miles away! We stopped off in a village called Burford to have something to eat. I can’t remember the name of the pub we ate in, but it was pretty good! After dinner we drove to where we were staying for the weekend, at some friends of Philippa’s family.
On Saturday morning we drove into Gloucester to find the church. Matthew and Ellie had asked Philippa and I to ‘ush’, so we had to get there a bit early. We managed to find the church in plenty of time, and be ready for our duties! The weather was quite disappointingly wet, but that certainly didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits (sorry, I bet that phrase has been trotted out in magazines a lot recently, but I just had to get it in…). One thing which I have to mention is the wedding car: it was a stretch mini! Very appropriate, I thought.
After the wedding service, we drove fairly promptly over to the reception venue, and started preparing. It was obvious that Matthew and Ellie (and many other people) had put in a lot of work in preparation, and it really paid off – the whole thing went smoothly. Ian’s best man speech was brilliant, and Matthew and Ellie’s speech (done in the form of a poem) was fantastic!
After dinner there was dancing. Matthew and Ellie’s first dance was to a song from ‘Wicked’, which they’d choreographed themselves (I think). The music afterwards went really well (I’ve never seen a wedding done off an iPod and a single speaker before – I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but the atmosphere was none the less because of it); and as “musical consultant” I think the choice of music was very appropriate 😉
Anyway. To summarise, that evening was probably the most fun I’ve had recently, and it was great to see many of our old university friends again! It’s a shame we don’t all get together more often… Matthew and Ellie, can you have another reception in a couple of months? :p
I think that’s just about everything for the wedding. The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, so I’ll leave it there!
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