The Wedding
We took a little trip down Memory Lane last night.
My little media player for the TV had gone on the blink, there was fuck all on in the way of programmes so we were forced to talk. It was tough but we managed.
Naturally we started reminiscing about The Wedding.
We were married on the 31st January 1976 in a very small church up the valley. It snowed the night before and the day itself was fucking freezing and frosty. The music was provided by a traditional Irish group I played with at the time and the small congregation included one on crutches, one in a neck brace and another in plaster [two car crashes and a fall off a horse in the previous couple of days]. It was a slightly unconventional wedding.
So after the formalities were over we headed for the real stuff – the reception. This was in a local hotel and being the end of January we had the place more or less to ourselves. The craic was mighty. The drink flowed, drunken speeches were made, the jigs and the reels rang out and everyone got pissed out of their skulls except my mother and an ageing aunt.
We had booked into the hotel that night [the honeymoon suite of course] but this was a major secret known only to Herself, myself and the hotel manager. We didn’t want to run the risk of finding a couple of drunken guests under the bed that night. So we had the big Send-Off outside the hotel where we were supposedly heading off on our honeymoon. We actually came back to The Manor where my sober mother fed us cups of weak tea and regaled us with talk of wills. Yes, my mother was weird.
Later when we reckoned most of the guests might have left we snuck back to the hotel. We met one of the guests wandering around in the snow in front of the hotel looking for his false teeth [now there’s a sign of a really good wedding]. He didn’t recognise us, but he was so far gone he wouldn’t have recognised himself either. The manager let us in the back door and we crept past the bar [which was still heaving with drunken revelry] and up to our room.
We came down the following morning and there were The Lads – my old drinking buddies – all lacing into the pints again. They were amazed to see us and of course we had to partake of a celebratory pint.
That wedding was talked about for years after.
It was generally voted to be the best wedding ever.
Anything put together and still working after 46 years was obviously put together right. Congratulations.
Thanks. Having come this far we might as well go for gold?
Of course it was the best wedding ever. Happy 46 years together!