Following right on from the last post! Friday morning saw us up early, hung over and feeling less than well-rested. We spent the morning running around doing final bits of preparation and then had a quieter few hours in the afternoon to (try and) relax a little. For weeks, the weather forecast had predicted a dip on Friday, with a chance of showers and generally cooler and cloudier. In the end, it was better than feared, only clouding over briefly in the early afternoon before coming good again.
We got to Parentheses Imaginaires a bit before 5pm where the guests were starting to congregate at the meeting point. Barry and Carol surprised us by showing up too. Barry’s been very unwell and we didn’t expect to see them so it was a nice surprise. They didn’t stay for the evening, but they caught the ceremony itself. Speaking of, this went off without a hitch. First up, Ute gave a short speech in English and also in French. Then our siblings read a short reading apiece that were all very well-received.
We followed this with our mini-concert of three songs, and were relieved to not make any big mistakes. Ute then read out some text we’d prepared to introduce the ring exchange. Mathias was our ring-bearer and looked very fetching in his little hat, drawing appreciative coos from the crowd. The deal was sealed with the traditional kiss and then we broke for photos.
These done, our party made its way back to the reception room where we enjoyed our strawberry vodka cocktail and various canapés out on the terrace. At dusk we lit floating lanterns and set them sailing across the bathing lake. We then moved inside for the meal. Here are some photos that various guests sent us afterwards. A laboriously long official album is available online here.
Cooking for 70 is not an easy task, and we are most grateful to Sophie and Dom, and also to Benoit, Virginie and Manu & Mathilde’s girls who all helped prepare and serve the meal. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food: magret with a cepe sauce, patates dauphinoises and foie gras. This was followed by speeches and champagne. First up, Matt & I read out our thank you speech, him in English and me in French, taking a paragraph each. These were followed by numerous other lovely speeches from friends and family. The most notable was probably from our friend Richard who by this point had already somewhat overdone it on the wine. What he lacked in coherence he more than made up for in emotion.
Toasts done, we moved on to dessert. A selection platter of all Jan’s hard work was placed on each table and the guests made short work of them. Next up, we moved on to the dance portion of the evening. By this point, most of the older crowd had left us to it. To our great surprise and slight disappointment, all of our London friends also bailed out on us at this point (we suspect they’d overdone it the night before) so it was left to the die-hards to fill the dance floor. This I vaguely remember doing with more enthusiasm than skill. It all gets very blurry from this point onwards, but I am told we finally cleared out at gone 5am.
The next thing I knew, I was in lying bed, desperately tired with a pounding headache. We could hear voices in the house and I was tempted to ask them all to keep it down so we could get a lie-in until we realised it was 11 am and we’d already had one. With only 30 minutes to spare, we got up, showered, dressed and hurried back to the venue for our planned brunch. And that will be part III.