It was a very cool wedding, and was a wonderful day - the time and money they'd spent preparing the wedding showed. Will's true Cornish colours came out; Cornish groom, Cornish bride, Cornish relatives, Cornish farm, Cornish food, Cornish best man, Cornish mineral water and so on. Well, asfter all they were winners of Cornish Wedding Couple of the year Rachel's very Cornish farmer dad was quite funny. He said in his speech; "When Rachel wants something, I normally have to sell a cow to pay for it, but when she wanted to get married, I had to sell the whole herd".
The ceremony was at a pretty country church in Madron. It's near
Penzance, and Rachel's family's farm is just down the lane. The groom, best man and ushers all met up before the wedding at the local King William pub, and they took down their washing off the line so we could use the beer garden. I was an usher along with Gareth and PJ, Rachel's brother & Davey was best man; we were all dressed in matching suits with top hats. They'd already prepared the church with little place names on the pews so that everyone had an allocated seat, and we were provided with a layout (done on Excel) so we could direct people to their seats. I sat with Will's Exeter friends on the right hand side; Linda & Kris, Jo &
Ben, Michelle, Danny, Russ, Tom Scruby, as well as Bruce, Gareth & Jim from Reuters.
The bridesmaids (Will's sisters & Rachel's little cousins) arrived in a fancy blue car, and Rachel in a convertible white Rolls Royce. The ceremony was nice enough; Will's little brother John was the ring bearer and had the rings on a little cushion. A poem that Will wrote and was read out during the service, and shocked everyone by being relatively normal sounding. Rachel acting as the editor perhaps? The church organist was very funny, as he played romantic tunes like "love is all around us". Following the photos outside we drove to the reception, which was in a field on Rachel's parents' farm, with a big marquee that had been set up.
We were served with champagne and listened to the excellent steel band that was playing. There was also a bouncy castle for the kids. The (Cornish) meal was very nice; crab salad to start, steak, strawberries & meringue, cheese & port and coffee. There was a container of roses on each table, and later on in the evening one cheeky little tinker was going around saying "wanna buy a rose - 20p?". There were also helium balloons, which naturally everyone was inhaling (particularly little John).
After the meal, the free bar opened up serving copious amounts of booze - when we'd left it looked barely dented! My friend Sumit travelled up for the evening section. He's got a habit of overdoing it - that night he slept in the marquee and the following morning tried to walk back to Penzance - the crazy nutter. Fortunately he got a lift. He was very pleased that when he got back home he hadn't lost his glasses shoes or bags
- for Sumit this is quite an accomplishment. A ska-ish band played, and then there was a ropey DJ. Toward the end of the evening Will let off quite an impressive display of fireworks (burning his hand in the process), while Rachel danced around excitedly.
Russ was passed out most of the evening, Danny was laughing loudly, Sumit was standing behind the bar for a good while, I had a conversation with a girl about her surname (Vile), and some other fella with a strange name Zebbady?, and one couple were having s*x on the bouncy castle!
All in all, an enjoyable day.
My photos of the day can be viewd in my album here.
