The Charman-Anderson Wedding

This weekend I was getting my money's worth out of the very expensive suit I bought just over a year ago. It has seen me successfully through a job interview, a funeral (not mine) and, now, it has completed the triumverate of occasions on which besuitedness is required by surviving a wedding intact (also not mine).

I had Friday off work to accommodate the hours of travelling required to get down South (or dahn sarf, to use a colloquial expression). I left the bustling metropolis that is Leeds just before noon, struggled initially to find a seat on the train, then settled down for the journey with iPod playing and Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' as reading material.

Unexpectedly, the further south we travelled, the less busier the train got. I changed at Winchester and as we pulled into Southampton Central just around five o'clock, the rush of commuter traffic was eerily conspicuous by its absence. I got into Poole at six, by which time the shops were closed and most people had vacated the streets. It didn't feel like early evening, it felt like the dead hours of the morning. Did this strange land of dahn sarf have a curfew in place? Had 'An American Werewolf in London' got it all backward? Was the place to beware benighted creatures walking abroad not the desolate Yorkshire moors, but a dingy dock town reputed to have the second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney?

Quite possibly. I didn't go into the KFC next to the bus station, but I suspect if I had, all the locals would have stopped in mid-mastication of secret recipe chicken and stared at me in a way far more unsettling than that managed by the fictional patrons of 'The Slaughtered Lamb'. Mainly because the locals round here were of the shell-suit wearing type and the media has inured me into thinking they're far more dangerous than a flat-capped farmer with a double-barrelled shotgun under one arm and a ferret down his trousers.

Still, my main concern at this point was catching the bus to Wimborne such that I arrived before the proprieters of the B&B into which I was booked buggered off to whatever evening function they had planned at 7:30. I caught the bus, but I was a little inaccurate with my dismount - the double axel into a triple salco went fine, but I stumbled a little on landing and found myself approximately quarter of a mile and two stops further up the road than I needed to be. Still, after six and a half hours travelling, I figured that kind of accuracy wasn't bad going.

Found the B&B, checked in, exchanged small-talk with the owner, shown room, very nice, mention wedding, he mentions that one of the other guests happens to be an American checked in for that very same function.

Which just goes to show I was right about benighted creatures being abroad on this chilly English eve.

A few minutes after settling in, my initial plan of going out to get a proper meal was undone by being dog tired. I tried writing, but couldn't keep my eyes open to focus on my laptop, so instead watched TV, while thinking that I should try and stay awake so that when I went to bed later, I wouldn't have thrown out my sleep patterns.

I shouldn't have worried. My sleep patterns were already out of whack and I didn't get more than a couple of hours of fitful sleep all night. On the plus side, I didn't realise my great fear of sleeping in a single bed, to wit - rolling over in the expectation that I have a double bed's worth of mattress to roll onto and duly smashing my face into the bedside cabinet as a result. I did that once on a trip to Amsterdam and it's not an incident I care to repeat.

By now you're probably thinking - isn't this post supposed to be about a wedding? Surely the blushing bride and grinning groom ought to get more of a look in?

Well, looky here, buster. This is my blog, it comes out of my head and unfortunately my head is largely filled with me. So, yes, I am getting to the betrothery, but there's more me to get through first.

The me in question was up for eight on Saturday morning in order to attend breakfast. After feeling upbeat about life and my fellow man thanks to 'Stranger in a Strange Land' the day before, that feeling had sunk away to nought thanks to my shitty night's sleep. I was remembering my introverted inclinations and how unsociable I'm inclined to be when there aren't other people around. I'm a writer. I'm supposed to lock myself away in solitary confinement and wallow in self-pity, self-torment and self-adhesive envelopes (speechifying works best when you can employ lists of three, okay? Even if the third clause doesn't necessarily make that much sense). Now I had to get up, go to breakfast and face the irrational fear I have about interacting with other people - specifically, that however witty and fascinating these people people may be, it will be lost on me because I will be trapped in the corner by the most drearily serious and monotonous soul who not only has no concept of two-way conversation, but is also probably drunk and completely unaware that what he's telling me now is what he was telling me five minutes ago and even five minutes ago I wanted to tell him to shut up by punching off his lower jawbone and then using it to gouge out his vocal chords (which I wouldn't actually do because I'm too polite - which is even worse, because knowing it's your own good manners that leave you powerless to commit the grievous bodily harm that would save your sanity only adds to the frustration).

This is not an irrational fear. It has been bred by bitter experience.

Fortunately, this was where I lucked out. It turned out the American was called Jason and was one of Kevin's (the groom's) friends from his University days. More importantly, he was a member of the witty and fascinating crowd and we ended up passing the time before the wedding began by walking around Wimborne and lunching together at the King's Head Hotel (so called because it is an accurate rendering in 200 year old brickwork, plaster and bamboo of the cranium of King George III. We ate burgers in the zygomatic area, just by the windows).

The venue for the wedding itself was Canford School. We were informed by Brian of the B&B that the school had once uncovered a mural during renovation work. While this mural was an important and significant symbol of the school's historic heritage, it was also worth a fortune, so they flogged it and kitted out the grounds with the proceeds. In other words - very flash and very posh. It was lacking in children, because we were there on a Saturday, but a later conversation revealed that the kids were on site during the wedding rehearsal and they all wore a very specific 'public school face'. Further questioning could not determine what expression or arrangement of features defined this face, but, even for someone unfamiliar with the British class system and the resentment it breeds, apparently this face elicited the desire to 'smash their little faces in'. Which I think rather brilliantly describes exactly what the 'public school face' looks like.

Jason and I arrived early and took a leisurely tour of the grounds, mainly because we had no clue exactly where on the sprawling estate the wedding was taking place and thus where we were supposed to be. Eventually we spotted an arriving taxi and that brought us into contact with the photographer, who pointed us to where we needed to go.

Now, it should be pointed out that Suw had decided upon a themed wedding. However, I am not too knowledgeable about historical periods. I get them mixed up. I don't know the difference between Georgian, Elizabethan and Tudor, but I shall do my best to throw what I hope are accurate sounding descriptions of the style in my prose in order to evoke the appropriate atmosphere. I do know she was going for a Ye Olde Look to proceedings. This explains the minstrel. He was decked out in traditional Plebian garb, merrily playing on his lute while the guests filed into the ceremony's venue - John O'Gaunt's kitchen. The bride's guests were arranged to the left of the floor, near the fitted units, washing machine and wine rack, while the groom's contingent filled the space to the right, near the sink and ceramic hob.

Then the appointed time arrived. A hush descended. The groom, standing at the front by the Aga and novelty R2D2 pedal bin, looked to the rear of the room, beaming with anticipation.

A cat wailed mournfully with its last breath and died.

Only it didn't, because the minstrel had swapped his lute for a set of bagpipes and was now using it to perform CPR on the stricken cat. It survived, scampered off and the wedding continued.

When Suw finally arrived, sometime after her cleavage, the minister beckoned us stand and we all watched as she led her retinue up the aisle with a broad smile on her face.

Now, I have been cynical in the past about the business of marriage and the institutional parlava that constitutes a wedding, but after serving as Best Man at my brother's wedding and seeing his face and that of my sister-in-law as they stood side by side on that occasion and then again on seeing similarly unalloyed happiness expressed by Suw and Kevin on this occasion, I can't help but think that all the other paraphernalia that surrounds the moment, none of it really matters. The legal stuff, the spiritual stuff, the material stuff - it's part and parcel of getting married, but the only bit that's important is when two people stand up there at the front of a room containing their nearest and dearest and... they're happy.

Honestly, I don't think there's any higher calling in life than that. If you can find yourself happiness, you've won the great metaphysical lottery that is life.

Only it's not really a lottery. I said this to Suw before the wedding on the phone. It wasn't really luck that she met Kevin and everything clicked. She met him as a result of all the things she'd done and all the things she was. In that sense, there was a kind of karmic inevitability to it.

At which point you're probably sick of all my musing on the quasi-mystical bond that is marriage and want me to get onto the really important points. No, not what the dress looked like - go look at the pictures for that, I am a man, I am genetically coded to be blind to such things. You want to know what the cake was like. Well, it was chocolate and it was very tasty.

But I've skipped ahead. The cake and the tasting of it came later. Before that I should mention that paraphernalia I dismissed as unimportant a few paragraphs ago. Unimportant it may be, but that does not mean it can't be fantastic. From the Edward Woodwardian costumes to the hand-crafted plates that supported the ribbon-bound candles; from the ornate grandeur of the venue to the shoutiness of the mediaeval baroque new romantic beat-combo that coshed the minstrel when his back was turned and took his place for the evening's festivities - everything was expertly judged.

Though I did find fluff stuck to the rim of both my second and third glasses of water, but that's just nit-picking. Well, actually it was fluff-picking and it does make me wonder if the cat that was revived earlier had in fact only made it as far as the kitchens before being attacked by the chef. You've seen enough episodes of CSI to guess what must have happened. During the struggle, bits of cat were flying everywhere - paw into a wine bottle, nose into the raspberry meringue dessert - and a few bits of fluff, inevitably, settle gently atop some glasses gathered together on a tray. The main course of the meal was supposed to be chicken, but for all I know cat meat tastes awfully similar.

Considering I started the day grumpy, having had little sleep and nurturing my writer's antisocial tendencies, I ended up talking to lots of fascinating people. Unfortunately their names weren't quite so fascinating so I can't remember many of them, but I've always been better at recalling faces. At dinner I sat next to a very nice lady who'd reported from the Gulf in 2003. Opposite her was one of Kevin's ex-colleagues from the BBC, who made an excellent improvised speech after the traditional address by the Best Man (and not-so-traditional cue carded speech delivered by the Bride and Groom before that). Next to him and opposite me was Steve Kane, who needs no introduction. Continuing to his left, there sat Stephanie Booth, who was someone I knew from the Fresh Lime Soda podcasts she did with Suw, but who I didn't actually know until meeting her that evening. I'm a little fuzzier as to who was sitting further to my right, but I know that at one point I heard a haughty declaration that 'we have no morals left in this country'. I suspect maybe The Daily Mail was sitting up there. I was rather glad I avoided conversations like that in favour of more weighty discourse, such as the anecdotal top trumps I had with Jason, Suw's Dad and Steve K later on, where I got heartily trumped on coming up with stories about particularly smelly fish (Suw's Dad just pipped Jason to win that round).

There are lots of other people I met I should mention, but I think they already know who they are, the people reading this who know them know who they are and the people reading this who don't know them wouldn't know them even if I did say who they are, so I feel saying any more would be a bit superfluous. Though despite all that I should say that it was good to meet Svet again (without whom Bad News would not have been possible), while Kate - Suw's Maid of Honour - and her husband Steve were also both exceptionally welcoming. Oh, and I met someone who'd worked as an animator on Brad Bird's work of genius, The Iron Giant. It was like finding out that Jason worked for a computer game developer - I can't help but find such things very, very cool. Maybe this is because I work mainly with accountants.

Entirely coincidentally, many of these conversations occurred during the two-door salad-day - poncy dancing made-up on the hoof by the leader of the pack of rampaging anachronisms. Now, I was not wholly averse to the idea of dancing, but on general principle I felt I should avoid it if possible. In contrast, Mr Kane appeared to have a morbid phobia against such revellry and broke out into a fevered rash whenever the prospect of being roped into the choreographed stumbling was raised. On at least one occasion, it prompted him to made a dash for the exit. This made me feel slightly more confident and relaxed about my own cowardice.

At ten o'clock, Kevin and Suw had to leave for Barbados and there were some tearful farewells. Before they could go however, Suw had to throw her bouquet. This required her to gather all the singletons, male and female, into the foyer of the school's Long Room, me included. She even picked on me specifically when she spotted I was lurking at the side of the crowd and insisted I move across toward the middle, which I duly did and then kept going until I was over at the far side and thus once again safely outside her firing arc. Around about this time it struck me that while I had managed to intentionally or unintentionally talk to almost all of the single men forced into that odd little gathering, I had also managed to singularly fail to talk to almost all of the single women there.

I eventually decided that was a good thing. While I felt I had got through the day being successfully sociable, it's quite another thing to be successfully sociable with an attractive girl whom you know is single. Plus they were all from far-flung climbs like London or Swaziland.

The bouquet was thrown. This being Hollywood - or a reasonable facsimile - time slowed to give the moment the dramatic weight it deserved. Because this wedding was done on a fraction of the budget suggested in 'Modern Bride and Military Monthly', Suw and Kevin made sure they got their money's worth from the slow motion by having a succession of goodfellas mown down in the background by a carbine machine gun, a hurdy-gurdy explode serenely in a blossom of orange flame and wire-fu ninjas do balletic brutality over the cash register for the improvised bar.

Meanwhile, the bouquet was coming into land. I was, as planned, a distant observer. It looked like a very pretty petite girl in a dress that was some sort of colour would be claiming the prize, but giant hands got to it first and instead the ex-colleague of Kevin's from the BBC found himself clutching the bouquet. He looked bemused, distraught and immediately protested that it was an accident and that he'd been merely protecting his face from the high velocity impact of flowers. Of course, no one believed him.

Moments later, the taxi that Jason had ordered back to the B&B that I expected to arrive sometime around July, turned up spontaneously outside and we had to make a rapid exit (Jason just about remembering to retrieve his coat and leave behind the glass he was carrying before we made it out the door).

We returned to the B&B, bid each other good night and then I saw out the remainder of Kevin and Suw's big day failing to get another good night's sleep.

Which pretty much brings you up to date (I've had to leave out the Odysseusian adventures I encountered on my journey back to Leeds today for sake of brevity).

No doubt other people out in the blogosphere will be offering their own spin on events, probably more lucidly and comprehensively than I've managed here (though I bet they all fail to mention the cat), so while you may wish to seek them out, I shall merely end with a link to the Flickr search that's currently doing the best job of returning the relevant photos.

P.S. Suw and Kevin have now returned (though Kevin has since gone again), so there is now an official post on proceedings available here and an official Flickr photo set here.