We spent last Wednesday night in a frenzy of packing as we wanted to leave the house at 9am in order to make it up to Edinburgh for mid-afternoon. We did quite well and made it out of the door at 09:15. Our good timing went slightly awry when we got to the M6 and discovered that it was closed between J23 and J25 due to a bad traffic accident. This meant that we had to stop at Services and buy a map so that I could work out a detour...and had a coffee and a biscuit of course. Luckily we were able to detour on motorways, so it wasn't too horrendous and we still made it up to Edinburgh for about 4pm.
We got to the hotel and checked in. Or rather we got to the hotel and had a few minutes of panic because they couldn't find the booking (and what was the one thing I didn't print? yup!). Thankfully we had our trusty laptop and I was able to find the expedia booking, they phoned their central reservations department and we were upgraded to a suite. RESULT! Our room was fabulous! The hotel has a bit of a Ernest Shackleton theme - he lived in the townhouse during the early 1910's - and the room had large prints of his ship and a mural behind the bath. It sounds naff, but was actually very stylish! The bathroom was the most exciting part - a lovely roll-top tub and a wet area with a waterfall shower - bliss!!
On Thursday night we met up with the bride and groom (Eve and Chad), my Mum, Dad, Stepmum (Joan) and Chad's family - Mum, Dad and three brothers and their wives - who are all lovely. We had dinner in Milne's Bar and then headed along to Whighams wine bar for a few post-dinner drinks. We had to stagger back to the hotel via the chip shop as Stephen was (once again) completely starving!!
On Friday morning we had agreed to help Eve with all the running around, collecting the cake etc. We drove up to collect her and a trunk-full of table centres, wedding favours etc. As Stephen was parking the car there was a grinding noise...DISASTER! He had kerbed his alloys. Stephen is totally precious about his alloys - to me they are just wheels, but to him - oh, a thing of beauty not to be blemished in any way! I am SO glad that it was him, not me...
This was to be the beginning of a litany of minor disasters... We went round to the Gyle centre to collect The Cake and the food for Eve's girls night and were excited to see a Starbucks! We popped in for coffee. A dad and young son sat at the table next to us....the youngster dropped his cup of milk on the floor and it smashed all over the camera bag (but thankfully not the camera), Eve's shoes... No point crying over spilt milk though, right? We moved onto M&S to pick up a few bits of food. Stephen was in the way in the line, so we sent him over to stand at the far side of the checkout. "SMASH". We looked up - a lady had dropped a bottle of red wine right next to him. There was a huge puddle of glass and wine on the floor, but he was remarkably unmarked. As she was apologising she said "wait a minute...were you not in Starbucks a few minutes ago having milk thrown all over you"! They say that bad luck comes in three's...well that was three things, we must be done now right? Wrong!
We got to the food pick up desk and the lady produced a couple of items. Eve said that she had ordered a party pack too and the lady rather accusingly said "well you must have phoned to cancel it". Enter Dr Spark into the fray. He hadn't particularly been paying attention to the details and thought it was the wedding cake they were accusing Eve of cancelling! So he waded in in his sternest voice with a "Wait a minute. We haven't cancelled anything, so get on the phone and find out where the problem is and get this fixed." Obviously he has a very authoritarian tone as she did just that! (Whilst I explained to him that we had the cake and he could dial it down a bit!). It turned out that they were having supplier problems and no longer offered the party pack, but no-one had told Eve or the store. The lady became very apologetic and collected other items to replace the pack AND refunded the cost of the pack.
We loaded up the car. The trunk was full of table centres so we put the bag of party food in the rear footwell and the 3 cake boxes on the rear seat. Eve went in the back to ensure it didn't slide around and I gave Stephen a 5 minute lecture about driving really slowly and smoothly to ensure that it made it intact....
I suspect that what he heard was "mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah" in the style of Charlie Brown cartoons as at the very first roundabout we came to he got stuck in the wrong lane and, instead of driving on and finding somewhere to turn around, he put his foot down and drove round the roundabout at enormous speed, practically on 2 wheels. So please picture the scene... Eve is on the phone to Chad. The bowl of pasta salad which is on the top of the food boxes in a carrier bag slides across the boxes and lands on her feet and bursts open. There is now pasta salad all over the footwell. Eve drops the call "I've got to go there is pasta salad everywhere" and tries to scoop the pasta back into the bowl. Meantime I look round and shriek "Forget the pasta salad. Grab the cake" as the boxes were beginning to slide... All of this in the space of a few seconds which felt like an eternity!! We were fervently thanking God when we checked the cake and found that it was all still in one piece and not smashed into bits. I could make a pasta salad, but my baking and sugar rose making skills are somewhat lacking!!!!
Those of you keeping count will know we're at 5 things now...it was time to start breaking matches to break our run of luck! But we hit the sixth thing when Stephen dropped his tripod (narrowly missing my feet). That had to be it! Who could be unlucky enough to hit 9? Not us thank goodness!!! I was working on the assumption that if we got the problems out of the way the day before, then the wedding day would go smoothly...and thankfully it seemed to work that way! Actually I've just realised we we probably reached 8...Chad's mom and dads cases hadn't made it to Glasgow airport with them and the airline promised delivery on Friday afternoon. The case didn't arrive as promised and when they phoned the lost luggage helpline it shut at 5pm. This meant that Linda didn't have her outfit for the wedding. She was very calm about it! She managed to cobble together something that looked very chic just in case the case didn't make it before the wedding. In the end it was as well she did as they didn't get the case until Sunday morning.
We spent the afternoon taking photos of the rings and the shoes (much harder than it sounds!). It took quite a few attempts to get the placement and arrangement just right, but the shots were worth it! I spent a good while lying on the floor in the sitting room under the table, moving shoes a few millimeters at a time to get the perfect shot!!
Eve had her girls night in the evening. Her friends are lovely and I got to meet a few for the first time as well as catch up with some I already know. Grandma Doreen was a little late as she had had a bad journey up, but a cuppa and something to eat seemed to revive her! Joan and I walked her back down to her hotel around 8pm and then met up with the groom, his family and our hubbies in Channings bar. We joined them for a drink before they headed off for a livelier venue, then Joan and I had another glass and a good chat before we headed off for beautification and beauty sleep. Stephen arrived back around midnight, but had left the groom in the bar. This could have been a potential problem, but as Linda had said: This day was too important to Chad for him to mess it up. He was safely home by 1am and up and sightseeing with his family when I sent him a text at 8:30 on Saturday morning.
We met up with Mum, Eve and Hazel about 9:30 and walked up to the hairdressers with our own personal David Bailey in tow. Stephen and I rushed back to the hotel once I was blow dried in order to do a quick change and head back over to Eve's to help her get ready (and take lots of photos). The bride looked stunning. Eve is 10 years younger than me and it was difficult to reconcile this beautiful and elegant young woman with the little tomboy I remember so vividly! The day passed in a blur! Stephen took some beautiful photos and I only had to be concerned once when Stephen (the perfectionist who had scoped out all the photo locations the day before) and Dad (former professional wedding photographer) had a disagreement over where was best to take the group shots. I thought there was going to be Sporrans at Dawn!!!! We did a couple Dad's way then herded everyone over into the private gardens where we did the majority of the shots in Stephen's preferred location.
We have a couple of great photo sequences. The first is of the Sardinian plate smashing tradition where the mother of the bride smashes a plate holding symbolic things such as rice, sand, money and sweets. If the plate smashes then it will be a fruitful marriage blessed with children. Mum is obviously wanting to be a gran many times over! She wound up, raised the plate high above her head and threw it to the ground with such force that it shattered into a multitude of pieces before the rice etc had even hit the floor!! The second funny sequence is the bouquet throwing. All the single ladies (and a single guy!) gathered and Eve did a mighty toss...there were only two serious contenders an Hazel definitely had the edge! As we showed her them the next day we were laughing when she pointed out that she had her knees bent ready to leap and never took her eye off the ball - years of netball paid off it seems!! The third great sequence is of my little 2-year old nephew Ben. He was sitting on his Gran's knee when a slice of chocolate wedding cake was put down in front of them. His little face lit up at the sight of this slice of diddy-dot cake and he just went face down into it! Then he picked it up and had a good chew with the occasional face first moment to lick the icing. It was totally hilarious!!!
We made up a quick album for the newlyweds and took it along to our final family dinner on Sunday night. It was a huge hit! We hadn't thought that the parents might want a set of photos too (d'oh!), so we undertook to get another couple of albums made up the following day.
