May 10: The Big wedding day

The big day had arrived! However to power myself for such a major day I obviously had to have a hearty breakfast. I noticed on the menu that there were kippers on offer. Now as most of you know, I’m game to try to eat most things at least once in my life. Being in England where one of their traditional breakfast foods is kippers I absolutely had to have one. The lady asked me if I wanted toast and coffee/tea first, so I happily had the coffee despite it being the crappy American sort. Ever since I went to the US and tried first hand the complete and utterly useless liquid that looks like rainwater left in the gutters for too long and tastes, and I use the word “taste” very generously, like it too, I have hoped that it could be renamed to something more suitable like “swamp water” or “puddle water” so as to differentiate it from real coffee. Anyway back to breakfast and luckily I had a fried egg as well because the kipper, note the singular form, would have been a rather lonely specimen in that enormous of expanse of white that was the plate. Fortunately, there were members of my family who were not big eaters and I managed to make up a reasonable meal from theirs.

Before the wedding, there was a bit of time to explore the surrounding area. So we all took off like fledglings leaving the nest. I took a gentle stroll along the cliff side with Bink. Although I had made light of this place before I got there, I had to admit that it was a beautiful place.
It's the kind of serene country side village that you might associate with the English country side, as you can see here.

After a while it turned out that a lot of people agreed with me as the car park across from the inn filled rapidly with hikers. Lulworth was also well known for being a fossil ground and that attracted the kids who had interests in that direction.

There's a moderate sized hill that was a short walk from the inn and many of the visitors delighted in walking around, over it, across it or however they wanted to get to the other side. I have it on the best authority that there wasn't much to see. The hill also had the rather ridiculous name of Doodle Dor

This bit of the coast is pretty interesting to look at, if you had an interest in geology. You can tell that there had been some pretty serious movement of the rock by looking at the rock lines to the left. The whole lot looked like it had sagged.

Tucked down in a little corner is this lagoon. There were some people paddling around in canoes and a small group of scuba divers here.
It looks pretty overcast, but that turned out alright since it didn't get too hot so all the poor people dashing around in suits didn't sweat too much.

The lucky lady was busy getting herself sorted out for the big day as were the rest of the other important people who left earlier to ensure all was in readiness. Not to belabor the point, all the other people who were not driving piled into a coach, in all their finery, which had been thoughtfully provided by Pat and Brian. To add a bit of humour to the afternoon, the driver took the wrong turn towards another wedding that was going on the same day. *cough cough*
After a brief trip we arrived at Lulworth Castle, which isn’t really a castle but more of a fort, but let’s not quibble over technicalities. The castle was not terrible impressive as it had been severely damaged in a fire some years back and the upper floors had collapsed. However this did have the positive impact of making the hall higher and more airy than it otherwise would have been.

A string quartet was on hand to provide the necessary waiting music while the small crowd awaited the arrival of the bride. The plucked and sawed their way through some classical pieces like Pachelbel's Canon to keep everyone entertained until the big moment. This ended being later than expected, but then again isn't the bride allowed to be fashionably late?

After a few hiccups the bridal party arrived and the wedding finally got under way.Uncle Patrick giving his daughter away. I must admit to a feeling of oddness seeing Uncle Patrick in a suit. Pat's dress was stunning though, as it should be.

Joel delivering his reading. There was a bit of confusion earlier in the day when he asked Brian about his reading because Brian's sister, who was also doing a reading had the same one as Joel's! That would have been a bit of a disaster. It turned out that Brian had managed to email the wrong one to his sister.

As it wasn’t a Christian wedding, the ceremony was sorted out in a fairly short time and Pat was duly married to Brian, and we gained a new family member

And here we have Mr and Mrs Beaumont, at last.

With the wedding out the way we got into the obligatory post-ceremony pictures. Being part of the family, that meant they took forever and a day to get through. There were large numbers of pics taken, but I think this one pretty much summed it all up.

After pics it was on to the drinks accompanied by large amounts of the canapés and the like. Joel had a hard time nailing down any sort of food since he started chasing the serving ladies who would run out of food by the time he caught up and finally decided to camp near the exit where the food was brought through with the pretense of chatting with the other groomsmen.

After what seemed like an interminable wait we all sat down in the hall for the reception dinner. The speeches ensued. The speeches were quite moving especially the best man’s speech about Brian’s acts of selflessness while they were sailing round the world together; Brian certainly was moved by it judging by the snuffling that was going on.

Brian's speech was nice and straightforward. Pat's one was so emotional she could barely get through it, mainly because she had to thank her bridesmaid so profusely. Of course that started a vast quantity of tears.

And thus started the food, which was excellent timing because I was beginning to starve. The food was pretty good. The dessert was delicious, Joel had a second helping and judging by his face, that was a very welcome sight...

Then of course was the cake cutting.

Then came the obligatory dance, but Pat decided to surprise Brian by belting out her rendition of Shania Twain’s From This Moment. Pat’s got a reasonable voice for someone who hasn’t been professionally trained, but did she have to sing that song? Not to criticize Pat or anything but that song is on my top-ten list of most annoying songs of all time. After her song came the first dance, which was quite nice but the other people jumped in on their moment too damned soon. After a bit, even I had a bit of a spastic attack on the dance floor. Erica, Bink and Yan decided that it was a brilliant idea to chug down vast amounts of wine. That sort of fit the location, especially when Erica got wasted.

The beginning...

Oh dear...

stop shaking the world please...

Game over