Love and marriage

... go together like a horse and carriage, they say. Which don't often go together these days, let's face it, but we all still love a good wedding. Public displays of optimism, says my uncle, himself a married man.

And the one we went to on Friday was a genuinely lovely one, celebrating a relationship no one could but wish to see stay the distance. Watching the bride's father, down from the North East, looking at C with a huge smile on his face as he started his speech and saying 'My bonny daughter...' was a heart warming moment, and I felt a little pang that my sister and I have thus far (and quite possibly permanently) deprived our own father of the opportunity to do the dad thing at a wedding.

Weddings are also hugely social and generally pretty drunken. Acquaintances are made and renewed, but equally fights may be had, and rifts born or buried. This particular one saw M and my Significant Ex talking for the first time in over six years... something I wouldn't have predicted and which all parties had to work at to handle well. But I think we all did (both work at it and handle it well).

Similarly, the hen night saw me engaging with two people I hadn't spoken to for nearly as long. One of them (let's call her A) was friendly -- certainly friendlier than I expected -- the other (B) was Frosty the Snowman. The one who was friendly was the one I had done the falling out with, the chilly one was the one who fell out with me. Which was interesting... I would have expected A to have residual pissed-offness with me for being a cow and B to be feeling that time had gone by and how much could it really matter anymore.

As with international relations, the aggressor is usually the aggrieved with big guns and an attitude, and it's up to the underdog to disarm them by behaving in a civil and non-inflammatory fashion. And if you refuse to disarm under these circumstances (as I have been known to in my time), you sure have some issues.

So big up to A and to M for being, in their different ways, the grown ups of the piece, and to Significant Ex and (if I may) to me, for going with the flow, as far as we were able anyway. And to C&D for having the optimism to get married in the first place and drag us all into the same place at the same time quite simply because what we have in common is holding them in high regard. Oh, and to the Lemon Tree -- what a wonderful venue.

There was more wonderfulness about the weekend, but I have to get myself to bed -- the last few days haven't been noteworthy for their surfeit of sleep, and I think I owe myself eight hours before I even attempt to work...

joella