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A nice day for a white wedding
Sep. 11th, 2006 09:16 pmI've been to three weddings this year, the most recent just on Saturday. At two of the weddings, the brides unfortunately no longer had fathers around to do the giving-away.
At the first of these weddings, the bride had pressed her uncle into service. He gave her away and, at the reception, gave what would have been the father-of-the-bride speech. He was clearly delighted to have been asked, and every bit as proud of his niece as a father would have been.
At Claire's wedding, this weekend, she'd chosen two of her brothers to share the duties - one to hand her over at the altar, and one to give the speech. Now, just think about this for a moment... giving your elder brother free rein at a public gathering. Instead of the proud, kindly speech one associates with father-of-the-bride Claire got the equivalent of a best-man's speech - a good natured, but thorough, pisstaking. Which was actually very entertaining; I enourage more fathers to adopt that approach.
I think Claire coped. Anyone who can stand looking that demure and conventional in a floor-length white dress then reveal, as she walks, that she's wearing ludicrously high-heeled spangly scarlet shoes is pretty robust. And despite that, she chose to walk from the church to the reception in said shoes... it's a short distance, and most of the guests had wisely abandoned cars and taxi'd into town. So we walked in procession out of the churchyard (damn cobbles), through the marketplace (complete with market and large numbers of curious children), up some shopping streets (past the place where the bride and bridesmaids had had their nails done, where the staff all came out to admire the full effect) and across the ring road. There's nothing like someone in full bridal fig for stopping traffic on a busy dual carriage way.
At the first of these weddings, the bride had pressed her uncle into service. He gave her away and, at the reception, gave what would have been the father-of-the-bride speech. He was clearly delighted to have been asked, and every bit as proud of his niece as a father would have been.
At Claire's wedding, this weekend, she'd chosen two of her brothers to share the duties - one to hand her over at the altar, and one to give the speech. Now, just think about this for a moment... giving your elder brother free rein at a public gathering. Instead of the proud, kindly speech one associates with father-of-the-bride Claire got the equivalent of a best-man's speech - a good natured, but thorough, pisstaking. Which was actually very entertaining; I enourage more fathers to adopt that approach.
I think Claire coped. Anyone who can stand looking that demure and conventional in a floor-length white dress then reveal, as she walks, that she's wearing ludicrously high-heeled spangly scarlet shoes is pretty robust. And despite that, she chose to walk from the church to the reception in said shoes... it's a short distance, and most of the guests had wisely abandoned cars and taxi'd into town. So we walked in procession out of the churchyard (damn cobbles), through the marketplace (complete with market and large numbers of curious children), up some shopping streets (past the place where the bride and bridesmaids had had their nails done, where the staff all came out to admire the full effect) and across the ring road. There's nothing like someone in full bridal fig for stopping traffic on a busy dual carriage way.
