Douglas and Rachel’s wedding
Morag and I went to Douglas and Rachel’s wedding over the weekend. Rachel is from Shropshire so they held the wedding there at her tiny parish church in Woolstaston. Luckily I was able to get the weekend off work, so I headed down on Friday night and met up with Morag at Church Stretton. The older Tudor buildings in Shropshire are timber framed and resemble magpies in their dark wood and whitewashed exteriors. The roads out in the countryside surrounding Woolstaston were barely wide enough for a single automobile and were bordered by seven-foot hedges on each side! It was actually safer to drive on them at night because you could at least see the headlights from the oncoming car. However this still left the challenge of one car backing up for considerable distance to let the oncoming traffic pass.
The wedding itself was lovely. The church was a recently restored country parish, complete with a set of ropes for ringing the bells at the end of the nave. Douglas’ uncle, who is a Church of Scotland minister, reversed the readings from Paul’s epistle into a warning on how to ruin your marriage. Morag and I agreed that this was much more relevant to us after six months of marriage than it would be to the actual couple. The wedding took place on Saturday, which was Guy Fawkes night, and the four-hundredth anniversary of the failed attempt to blow up the king and parliament at that. I suspect that the reason for that date was so that Douglas could ‘remember, remember, the fifth of November’ and have fireworks every year on their anniversary, but seeing as we managed to get married on St George’s day I should withhold any comments. The music was surprisingly good, with a local band playing Ceilidh/Barndance music followed by a younger band which played songs by the Beatles and even ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ with skill. Having said that, there are few things in this world that are more pathetic than a bunch of English people trying to Ceilidh. Bad things happen when one side of the dance floor dances clockwise as the other side dances counter clockwise. It just doesn’t work, folks! In the end, however, it was a good evening.
The wedding itself was lovely. The church was a recently restored country parish, complete with a set of ropes for ringing the bells at the end of the nave. Douglas’ uncle, who is a Church of Scotland minister, reversed the readings from Paul’s epistle into a warning on how to ruin your marriage. Morag and I agreed that this was much more relevant to us after six months of marriage than it would be to the actual couple. The wedding took place on Saturday, which was Guy Fawkes night, and the four-hundredth anniversary of the failed attempt to blow up the king and parliament at that. I suspect that the reason for that date was so that Douglas could ‘remember, remember, the fifth of November’ and have fireworks every year on their anniversary, but seeing as we managed to get married on St George’s day I should withhold any comments. The music was surprisingly good, with a local band playing Ceilidh/Barndance music followed by a younger band which played songs by the Beatles and even ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ with skill. Having said that, there are few things in this world that are more pathetic than a bunch of English people trying to Ceilidh. Bad things happen when one side of the dance floor dances clockwise as the other side dances counter clockwise. It just doesn’t work, folks! In the end, however, it was a good evening.
Labels: 2005, Ryan and Morag
posted by Ryan | 10:53 am
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