Aquarium wedding

This weekend I went to a wedding in an aquarium. This is not a joke. It was amazing. It was in the Sealife in the Olympiapark in Munich. I’m now hard pushed to think of somewhere more original to have my own wedding. Not that I’m going to get married any time soon but a girl’s gotta think ahead!

We were handed drinks as we arrived and milled around outside for a while before being led to the aquarium itself. We didn’t go outside again because a storm broke and soon there was more water outside of the sealife centre than it it! The aquarium was open until midnight and the aquarium staff were also on hand to guide us through the wild and wonderful watery world. They had music playing through the aquarium and in some places they had set out bean bags so that you could chill and watch the sharks floating past overhead. Walking through a tunnel with a drink in hand and fish drifting over your head is a really very serene experience and completely different to the usual aquarium visits which usually involve being hustled along by a group of loud and disinterested schoolchildren.

Waiters wandered through the tunnels proffering fresh drinks whenever the GnTs were looking on the low side. Later on there was a multi-coursed buffet. The meal started with a delicious selection of hors d’oeuvres is various recepticles including cocktail glasses. This was followed by mini courses of salmon with boiled potatoes in holondaise sause, suculent mini lamb kebabs and a little chicken curry among other things. Then the massive strawberry and cream wedding cake was for pudding. Of course all of this was accompanied by however much of various colours of wine you fancied.

After the food we all trooped into the aquarium’s movie theatre to have the best man’s after-dinner speech. This was actually really funny, even for people who didn’t really know the husband. There was even a sing-a-long, typical Oktoberfest songs with the lyrics replaced appropriately.

Post-speech we all had time for one more wander round the fish (yours truly took loooads of photos of sealife) before the dancing started. Conny (the bride) is a colleague of mine and a group of us went from work. We made the office proud with our footwork on the dancefloor, and made some of the other guests stare a bit. Personally, I danced most of the night in bare feet, despite the stone floor, because after a while (typically), my shoes REALLY hurt. We danced the night away until about 4, at which point everything started to wind down and the slightly sozzled bride needed her bed.

Tingle to Brownhill

On Saturday Hannah Tingle became Hannah Brownhill. I was appallingly late for the wedding as we managed to get lost in our own back yard but luckily so was the bride and when I dashed in breathlessly, trying to be calm, composed, and above all, invisible, they were only singing the first hymn. I was also sporting a bleeding foot in open gold sandals. Not a good look. I had spent the whole of the journey to the wedding with my foot resting on my father’s headrest. You’d be surprised how long a foot can bleed for.

Apart from that small hiccup, the wedding was beautiful. The bride looked gorgeous and they were both radiating happiness, just how a wedding should be.

If you have high levels of testosterone please feel free to skip this next paragraph. The bride was in ivory, with a corset top laced at the back. On the front were lots of crystal beads forming little flower patterns. The skirt (or apron as I believe it is officially called) had folds like the folds in whipped cream with clusters of the same crystal beads where it gathered. She wore a simple diamond and silver pendant necklace and matching diamond earrings. Her ring was plain white gold. She wore her hair tied up but falling over her neck and a simple veil. The colour scheme of the wedding was ivory/cream and emperor purple and the bridesmaids wore simple, purple Grecian-style dresses. She has two bridesmaids and a flower girl (a niece) in white with a purple sash. The groom wore black tails and grey pinstripe trousers. His waistcoat was diamond-patterned cream and wore a dark purple tie. I hope I have such good taste for my wedding.

Boys, you can read again now.

The location, Griddleton House School was lovely, and the kids that go to that prep school are very privileged children indeed. The wedding ceremony was followed by a wedding breakfast, which made me very happy. The food was traditional English cuisine: leek and potato soup, followed by a beef roast and lemon cheesecake for pudding. After pining for a roast for 7 months, this made my day, if not year.  On the table everyone had a little Lindt bunny and a present, which turned out to be a game of charades for us to play.

After the breakfast (!) we retired to drink tea and coffee and eat cake. By the time we had had a cup of tea it was time to start dancing. They had a live band and we attempted to work off some of the lunch by gyrating wildly. There was also a mahoosive evening buffet but by that time my loose silk belt was starting to feel rather snug.

The newlyweds snuck off at around 11pm as they had been up since 6 and were exhausted. As they were heading to Edinburgh for a mini-moon the next day they also needed to get their rest.

I had a great time at the wedding. It was a lovely wedding and a good opportunity to meet up with this group of friends. I got to know Hannah, Charlotte, Jo and John, (unfortunately the 6^th of our group, Bex, was in Paris and unable to make it) in Berlin, where we brought a taste of England to the multicultural metropolis. We all studied French and German so it’s really interesting to see what people are doing now. Charlotte and Hannah are doing their PGCE at the moment, Charlotte will be teaching the little ones, Hannah the larger ones. Jon (an amazing cellist) is doing a masters at the London Academy after finishing at Cambridge and is about to embark on the difficult career of a professional musician. Jo is doing Audits at Price Waterhouse Coopers and Bex is doing a Masters in Theatre and Opera (incredible singer) at RADA. And I’m embarking on a career in PR in Bavaria. So we don’t get together very often and I thought the least I could do was be around for the most special day of her life.