A wedding and a pilgrimage

Yesterday our daughter Daisy married her boyfriend Russell. It was the most wonderful day. The sun shone on the last day of February.

The sun shone

The church was decorated simply with candles, white  daisy  chrysanthemums and ivy arranged by friends from the church, and pots of snowdrops and primroses planted enthusiastically by a friend last October when they decided to get married. That was just a few days after we returned from France after completing another stage of our pilgrimage to the surprise news that the young  couple were expecting a baby in May!

So this has not been one of those planned for two years and costing £20,000 weddings! The bride and bridesmaids were dressed in home-made finery.

The bridesmaids and their Golden Shrugs

The music for the service was played by friends. The bridesmaids’ bouquets were arranged by another friend using Lenten roses, ivy and variegated nettle from our garden.

The cake was made by the groom’s cousin, the salmon cooked by the vicar in his giant fish kettle! The hall was decorated by everybody’s Christmas lights and twigs sprayed gold placed in wine bottles. The food was served by a bevy of young girls who are friends of the bride’s sister, supervised by a not quite so young couple who had kindly offered their help.

Most of the food was bought locally in our little town  – meat ready cooked and sliced from the butcher; new potatoes,salad vegetables and fruit from the greengrocer, bread rolls from the baker. Our house, the church and the hall are all within a circle of perhaps a hundred yards so all except the most frail of grannies and the most special of participants (the bride and her attendants) could walk. The crockery was hired from the next village, Wicken, and the disco came from Ely, five miles away. You could say it was close to a  Sustainable Wedding.

The two families worked together and resolved differences of expectations and swallowed irritations sustained in moments of stress. An auntie was so  overcome with emotion reading the lesson in the service that her nephew moved to stand beside her and they read it together.  The curate admitted that he had to swallow hard on his first sight of the bride in her almost pre-raphaelite flowing cloak and gown softly draping over her belly.

The bride arrives at the church door

'Peter, sort her hood out!' I chivvied despairingly as I was whisked to my seat...

The bridegroom stroked her head during his speech as he told us all how very much he loved her.

The bride and groom

The little children held hands and danced enchantingly to the cheesy old music being played in the background as extended families caught up on the news and new babies.

Auntie thinks, 'You're almost as perfect as my new grandchild!'

'And have you found a proper job yet, Kate?'

The groom’s side and the bride’s side cross-mingled, discovering mutual values and acquaintances.

The bride and groom’s peers, almost all with uniformly black hair and clothes, who popped in and out for a smoke, and took four bottles of wine at one go to their table, gave us hearty hugs and thanks when they left, shortly after the happy but very tired couple went off to enjoy a luxury night in a hotel room with a huge bath with taps in the middle so they could sit at each end. Breakfast was served to them in bed before they appeared at the tidying up party at midday.

I know this must sound just too perfect to be true, but it is true! And not all of it, I’ve had to edit for brevity’s sake all the kindnesses and chance happenstances that came together to make this incredibly happy day!

Of course this has not been without hard work and depleting vast reserves of energy. After weeks of concentrated planning and emotionally sensitive negotiations, and the last two very short nights, I collapsed in bed with a vicious headache just after seeing  son and family off  and just before eldest daughter and family departed, both taking quantities of leftovers with them. Peter has continued on,  inviting friends to come with their own empty marge tubs for a share in the bounty and chain-washing tablecloths and tea-towels (thank goodness the sun shone again today). He is still going while I write this, too drained even after a sleep to actually do anything which would require me to be on my feet!

So now what?

Tomorrow Peter and I and Kate, our middle child (of the five, or 10 with their partners, or fourteen and a half with their children?) are off to Santiago and A Coruna for our  Camino Ingles pilgrimage – planned to be an opportunity to recover from the emotional and bodily excesses of the wedding,

The kitchen can be a retreat to the quiet(er) and familiar safe ground! (and now I understand why my mother commented on my fat tum!)

but clearly also to be done in a spirit of thankfulness and celebration!

I am also going to be walking with Amanda in mind.  She is also making a journey this week, although in actual fact her selection conference for the Anglican ministry happens to be only in Ely. She has already been on a long journey in her life, and it seems like ages since her first tentative thoughts about being ordained, and even since her more formal vocation-testing began. So this week is going to be very important for her, and I have determined to take it with me like extra content in a pack where every item, whatever it’s weight, must be essential and significant.

Also, therefore, Daisy and Russell’s next steps will be coming along with us. After dropping us off at Ely station, for our train to Stansted and the pared-down sinewy arms of Ryanair, they are going to hand over a large cheque (advanced by us) to the estate agent and sign the contract for their first, rented, home! At twenty and nineteen this is nearly as big a step as the one they took yesterday, and, without the romance and excitement, must seem more daunting to them. However, while a mistaken commitment to a six month lease could be  financially troublesome for a while, it’s my prayer for the lifetime commitment to each other and the little one inside that I hope to be  offering with each step and marking in footprints along the Way we walk in Gallicia over the next few days.