Weddings

It has been a busy few weeks in our household. As Isabelle posted a little while ago, our family has experienced rather a lot of big life events this year (birth, a death, marriage, moving house, retirement, redundancy...).

One of the biggest was three weeks ago, when my sister got married. While I can't claim I did all that much towards her wedding, it did occupy us for a while before it actually happened - Mum and I made several trips to the dressmaker both for L's dress and my bridesmaid dress, which had to be made at the last minute because we had no idea what size I was going to be, nine weeks post-baby. It was really nice to have an excuse to meet up with Mum and spend time with her (we became regulars at Cuckoo's Bakery for a restorative coffee afterwards).

I feel a bit guilty about not doing more towards the wedding. I realise that having a very small baby is a fairly good excuse, but my sister's best friend did a lot more than I did.



This is the only photo I have of us... we don't have the official ones yet.

Anyway, the wedding went off beautifully. My sister looked beautiful and just sparkled with happiness. Her other half is an actor/musician and many of their friends are musical too, so the singing (and signing-of-the-register jazz numbers) were of a high standard. She designed all the orders of service, stationery, place cards and so on, so it all looked very pretty, smart and uniform, and they did something which worked really well - they asked each guest for a "fun fact" about himself or herself, and made them into badges which they put at each place as conversation-starters. (The Peanut still has his, stuck to his car seat - it says "My womb name was Billy". You haven't accumulated many facts when you're only nine weeks old.)

The Peanut was very well-behaved throughout, even though we dressed him up like this:



This suit was a present from some family friends in Spain and we feel it has a certain retro charm, although it is perhaps not the most practical babywear ever. He did also have socks and shoes on. The Peanut spent almost the entire reception being passed from admirer to admirer (allowing his mother to do some dancing!) and eventually went to sleep in his car seat/carrier thing depite the ceilidh band still being in full swing. My great-uncle and aunt were staying in the hotel and lent us their room for feeds, which really saved the evening for us (especially as I had to take my dress off to do this - not really feasible in public).

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the wedding - not that I was expecting it to go badly or anything, but I haven't attended a party with a baby before and I had thought it was likely to make things a bit difficult. But ir really didn't. And it was lovely to see so many of our relatives over the weekend, and meet the groom's family, mostly for the first time. His sister and her husband are lovely and I hope we get to meet them (and their two little boys) again.

And then the next weekend we did most of it again because our friends R and E were getting married up in the Highlands. But that is another post.