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All posting conceits are there to be flouted, and so it goes again. (Given that I hadn't posted in two weeks on the main board, this could be considered making up for lost time - or a piece of craven wish-fulfilment for the sesquipedalia-spotters among us)
Anyhow, you are all the sweetest and I thank you a thousand times over. Every <3 is requited, every encomium for the bride is blushingly forwarded. As you can imagine, it was the greatest of days - bookended by my stag night and our honeymoon flight (why waste time in between?) and featuring friendship at its most vivacious. Also featuring half the wedding party being led into the backwaters of industrial Chiswick, but if a groom can't muster a faulty inner GPS then frankly who can? So yes - polyphonic chanting was meditated upon, string was tied, rings were worn, delightful roast food and mulled wine were scoffed and quaffed alongside the Thames, and three days of Dublin were a fresh way to start married life.
Now for some end credits. The invite, which has turned a few glances, was the work of a man called Winston Rowntree, E's favourite webcomic artist. Once he'd agreed to her commission, she drew a very rough draft of what we wanted on Photoshop, sent it off, and let him do the rest. As you can see, his gifts are fairly extravagant. If there's any interest in his other work, it can be found at www.viruscomix.com - where a litany of genuinely brilliant strips can be found, usually with an articulate social or philosophical point spun imaginatively into the seams. Another feather in Rowntree's cap is that he writes so well - so feelingly - from the female perspective that long-term fans E and I were absolutely convinced he was a woman until after we initiated communications!
Next up, To Arms Etc. - the band I persuaded to play our wedding. Short story: I found their leader on a member recruitment page and struck up a friendship centred around our mutually-compatible tastes. Then I listened to their music, which was predictably thrilling progressive-edged pop. Then they sent me their 2011 album, which was nothing short of stunning as I have previously attested. Throw in a couple of nitro'd-up live gigs (one of which I DJ'd at, fact fans) and it became a no-brainer to get these guys on board - and boy, they delivered. They even learnt one request from each half of the couple in the two weeks beforehand - E's being FNM's From Out Of Nothing, and mine being (predictably enough) Cardiacs' Flap Off You Beak, both of which they nailed flat.
It would be remiss of me to go this far without mentioning the pub itself - the Bell & Crown on the Chiswick/Kew border. Wonderful location, cosy atmosphere, amazing food, delightful and affectionate Irish landlady, and all this with a heaving regular clientele in the other half of the premises. Plus, they have a really, really lovely dog.
And lastly - if you find yourself in the Sheffield area, pop along to the Heavenly Cheesecake Company because my fucking god if you told me I could sort out the wedding cake - four tiers - for 80 quid, and receive the most astonishingly perfect cheesecake I've ever consumed in my life, I'd have probably asked repeatedly for the catch. (The catch, as it turned out, was that THCC don't deliver outside Sheffield, so I had to get my youngest brother, who is at university there, to visit the shop, pick up the cake-box, be graciously ferried to the station by the shop-owner and stupendous confectionery doyenne, and escort it to St Pancras, whereupon I had to carry the blessed thing all the way to Chiswick - a necessary sufferance, and one that reaped a suitably karmic reward)
Anyhow, that's enough blather from me for a lifetime of sandboxing. Thanks again folks; the response here has been really warm, and I return the feeling in full. Here's to an equally eventful and joyous 2012!
― once a lifetime is ample, Saturday, 3 December 2011 12:37 (twelve years ago) link
nine years pass...