A Girl...

Dry Run

The morning of the Musroom Incident, after all the programs were printed and folded, all the herbs loaded into the car, all the favors assembled (three personalized pins, like all the kids are wearing these days), and all the breakfast barfed into a technicolor heap in the backyard, we piled into many many cars and made the trek up to Shakespeare country, to a village of 1,800 people, where the wedding would be held.

It went something like this: sheep-spotted hillside, thatched-roof village, sheep-spotted hillside, thatched-roof village, sheep-spotted hillside, really old church, thatched-roof village. In between flinching whenever we passed a car on the wrong side of the road or saw a vehicle that appeared to be driverless or, worse, piloted by a dog, I was trying to get our bearings by matching names on the map to names on the streetsigns, which, aside from the standouts "Compton" and "Little Compton," all sounded the same. Well, not exactly the same, but they all had the same...um...unabashedly British clip to them, I guess: Ditchley, Kidlington, and the Chippings, both Camden and Norton. I know we were in England and so the towns were supposed to sound English, but seriously, all of them were so ridiculously British that I actually had a bit of a revelation and for the first time ever felt bad for all my years of despising Dickens for his overly cutesy names. Formerly, I found it hard to believe there could be people out there with names like Mercy Pecksniff, Ham Peggotty, and Prince Turveydrop (his given name, not his title), but I suppose it's possible after all if these same characters inhabit places like Chadlington and Woodeaton (we laughed every time) and Ascott Under Wynchwood (it's real; look it up!).

Here are some shots of our drive toward the Avon River area. Imagine us listening to Weezer and me exclaiming "A shrubbery!" or "A thatchery!" every time a hedge or a thatched-roof cottage was in view.

We got to our hotel with just enough time to admire its refurbished-old-barn feel before we had to get to the church for the rehearsal. Simon and I stayed in one room of a suite that we shared with his mom, his sister, and some friends. It was cool until we ran out of toilet paper on day three because apparently it wasn't the kind of hotel that supplied that sort of thing (seriously), and we had to ration what we could of the tissue paper formerly wrapped around the bridesmaids' gifts.

The room also had these supremely annoying weird blinky lights on the ceiling, a case of perilously steep stairs, and spiders everywhere. But even the worst of it (the spiders!) was more than made up for by the view out our window:

Every time I looked out the window or stepped out the front door, I took a picture of the sheep. I have more pictures of sheep than anyone else in the world. (One night we heard a céilidh (pronounced "kaylee," like my cousin's kid) being called over a PA from the red brick compound in that second shot. Very cool, very country.)

As we neared the (stunning, amazing) old Norman church, I took a handful of crappy photos of fantatic little storybook houses along the way, thinking I was capturing some of the unique architecture of the area. What I didn't know was that the church was surrounded by black-and-white, thatched-roof cottages with windowboxes spilling geraniums, and I'd have plenty of chances to take better shots, which I actually don't have the files for just now. :(

Here instead are some pictures inside the church during the rehearsal. These are important because the Ewok minister forbade the taking of pictures during the actual ceremony, so this is one half of what you'll need to use to recreate the wedding scene. When you see the big white dress tomorrow, mentally place it over the jeans and T-shirt you see here. Also, add big hats to the ladies in the pews.

I gave the minister a hard time because it is totally unfair to disallow pictures during the ceremony, but she was actually an okay lady. She kept swapping Mel and Kilo's middle names for each other on accident, which was hilarious, and she also didn't have the lord smite me for giving her bunny ears when I was standing behind her during a group picture.

After the rehearsal, the whole crew caravaned to Stratford-upon-Avon (SHAKESPEARE!) for dinner at a Chinese buffet and drinks at Cox's Yard, on the banks of the swany river, where there was live music upstairs and a crowd so raucous that the ceiling beams were bowing with the weight of everyone jumping on the second floor. Eek; we stayed on the patio. At this point, I was already starting to get sick, so the constant cigarette smoke and noise made this evening a little less pleasant for me than it might have been. Even when we moved to a quieter pub in a smaller town later that night, it was getting to be much too much, and I chose to hang out with the old folks and drink Diet Coke rather than mingle with the younguns (most of whom were actually about forty).

I hardly slept that night for the sinus congestion, but by morning, by golly, I was ready to put on my party dress come hell or high water. The consensus of the committee, by the way, was the gold dress, because it meant I could wear my awesome peach shoes, which I also don't have a picture of right now. Harrumph.

Will this tide you over?

Posted by Leah at September 12, 2006 11:24 AM