A wedding in Islington

On Saturday I attended a wedding. The last wedding I attended was in Hungary; this one in Islington. Less exotic but much easier for travel. Its almost walking distance. (Ironically I had spent the Friday night in a pub with the groom from the Hungarian wedding, looking through the first volume of photos from his extended honeymoon (his "megamoon") - 7 weeks round South America. And the bride at this wedding is one of his colleagues, and the groom one of mine. Pensions law is  a small world!)

The ceremony was in the Council Chamber of Islington Town Hall, which is a pretty impressive building.

 Now from an audience/congregation point of view, I have to say this is a massively superior venue to a church. No line of hard pews here or peering over the massed ranks of wedding hats - its set up for Councillors. So its in the round, with comfy leather upholstery. Good sight lines. And each seat is provided with a little desk and indeed a microphone. Regrettably the mics weren't connected up as it would have been cool to just chip in the odd comment. Although the couple's two little kids chipped in with quite a few comments. They did rather become the centre of attention, in part through the little lad's mobility which his sister, a bridesmaid, followed. She was immensely cute, as you can imagine. And indeed see.

The ceremony, being a civil one, was also for me mercifully free from having to mime to hymns almost no one knows.

Then onto the reception at the House, a wine bar round the corner. Now if I tell you that the wedding was at noon and I didn't leave the reception until getting on for midnight, you will get an idea of the day. Lunch started at 3pm, by which time I had already had 3 glasses of champagne. And that then morphed into the party, with further guests arriving for the evening session with a buffet. But in short, there was eating or drinking or both pretty much seamlessly all day. Which might account for me feeling slightly hungover Sunday morning. We had a bit of a dance, (with these two the music was always going to be way above normal standards.). And I have to say, which will embarrass the groom, that his speech was splendid. Why? Because it didn't sound rehearsed at all, no jokes, but just heartfelt. But somehow without being gooey. You had to be there.

In contrast to my younger mate's "megamoon", they were off for a "micromoon" - a couple of nights in Paris. Well that's what happens if you marry after having two kids!