Recovery position

Petunia, lobelia and pink Rioja
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

On Saturday, we went to the last wedding of the season. The last wedding of *our* season, anyway. We were invited because I lived with the bride R (and the bridesmaid K) for a while just after I split with my Significant Ex, having answered an ad in Daily Information which read 'Sane, clean, Guardian-reading woman wanted: No wallpaper TV addicts please'. When I turned up to view the room they were playing Ani DiFranco and I loved them both immediately. It was the best place I could have moved to, and I loved living with them, and I love the fact that we are still friends nine years later. Additionally, R was marrying a genuinely lovely man. Additionally still, it was one of those weddings that you know will be ok because you know that the couple in question feel at least as ambivalent about the wedding industry as you do yourself.

When the invitation came, I thought it was very modern of a church hall to get itself licensed for a civil ceremony, but it turned out that they actually got married on the Friday in a register office, and what was happening was an exchange of vows and rings and a general (secular) celebration.

Still very modern, and utterly admirable. There was lots of wine, but we were also invited to bring our own (and the church hall in question was conveniently located 100 yards from an Oddbins selling splendid pink Rioja). There was a best man, but she was a woman. There were speeches, and the bride made one of them. The bridesmaid made another, which made me cry with laughter. There were vows about equal partnership, which made me cry for other reasons. There were flowers on the tables, and we were invited to take them home and plant them in our gardens (to save the bride and groom having to take them back to their own).

There was also bunting. You can't have too much bunting. And there was mucho, mucho dancing. I did myself a mischief during True Faith, and compounded it during Common People.

I wish we'd left by 9.30, which was the plan, and would have made a lot of sense, given that we'd been drinking since 3.30. But as it was we were still there when the lights went up, and stood uncertainly at the bus stop at midnight (or thereabouts), clutching plant pots and talking bollocks.

And three days later I am still feeling it. Sunday... forget it. Monday... misanthropic. Tuesday... venturing back into polite society.

This is another reason I've never got married. I'd be hungover for a week.