Wedding

Many years ago my girlfriend and I were invited to a wedding. Our friend Claire was marrying into a religious family and the service said that there were three parties in the marriage, Claire, Ben, and God. I remember my dad saying "I bet God doesn't get up early to make tea very often". At that wedding his side of the church was completely packed, and ours was sparse. When we realised that we'd been invited to the service but not the reception we were slightly hurt. We were just "church-wadding" to even up the sizes of the two halves of the audience.

This weekend I went to a fantastic wedding, and there were roughly even numbers of people on both sides. Having said that the bride and her family are committed Catholics, the groom's side of the church, where I was sitting, was generally less religious. They were better at the Simon-Says elements of the service than us, for example they all knew when to cross themselves and stand up or sit down. They were much better at the call and response praying (when the priest says "lord in your mercy" say "hear our prayer") and the woman who did the reading before mine knew when and where to bow. They've also got a different version the Lord's prayer to confuse those of us that were brought up in CofE Schools and families.

While we were waiting for the bride I managed to (very quietly) tell a deeply sexist joke that starts "why do woman get married in white?" I was sitting next to a couple of woman who often sing in choirs and they managed to make a dirty joke out of the second verse of "Morning has Broken" (...the first grass...sweetness of the wet garden...). When the priest said that we would say together the prayer that Jesus taught us I couldn't help but say "I didn't know Jesus had a tortoise[note1]".

[note 1: taught us/tortoise joke stolen from Milton Jones]

I'll probably write about the reception next week, one of the speeches contained the best constructed dirty joke I've ever heard, and a smoking hot smoking blonde woman explained to me the bewildering popularity of the band Coldplay shortly before one of my friends accidentally called her a c**t to her face.


Richard "It's traditional..... all kitchen appliances are white" B