Wedding

The day itself, the first wedding amongst my friends, was wonderful. I have watched the films, flicked through the magazines, viewed professional wedding photographs online, but for the first time this was real.

Yes, the dress was like something from a fairytale, with a beautiful embroidered bodice and sweeping train, and you couldn't have asked for better weather, as the sun slanted through the stained glass of the chapel, and later across the paddock and pond as we sipped champagne and had photos taken, but there was also something so human about it. The groom's face, as he waited for his bride, nervousness and sheer joy all bundled into one. The jumble of voices, old and young, during the hymns. The fine dusting of glitter from my bronze tinted body moisturiser that brushed off onto M's dark suit to his mock annoyance, as I sat pressed against him throughout the ceremony. My hat, with the elastic that I had stitched on during the drive up slightly too loose, so that I fidgeted with it nervously until M told me to stop worrying, that I looked lovely. My short, cream, charity shop purchase gloves that were much admired but I suspected made me look a bit like Michael Jackson. The grass stains on the knees of those that knelt for the group photo on the short grass of the paddock. The delicious dinner in the hall where many of us had eaten so many meals before, a fact that actually made this particular meal so much more special. The groom's speech, with an element of the unrehearsed, but so wonderfully him. The heat and the exhilaration of the ceilidh dance in the evening, that brought family and friends together in the darkness, and energetic music, and unfamiliar steps. No Hollywood, no Photoshop, just real life, and all the better for it.