Bristol wedding

To Bristol through the rain (more on this later)to the extraordinary 19thC SS Great Britain for A's wedding. One of the really good ones, where you really felt that they were both blissfully happy. She looked preternaturally chic, and alternately laughed & cried her way through the ceremony. I particularly admired her savoir faire when her veil fell off backwards as she walked down the aisle.

My lovely ex-boyfriend and now great friend, R, gave A away, and made a truly great speech – only slightly trammelled by A banning him from mentioning any of the genius stories which we had volunteered on the subjects of: fags (she smokes 60 a day and had Nicorette patches hidden under her dress), booze (she does like a glass or three) or past men (this was her third marriage). He did manage to mention the words "Amazon.com Number One", and "New York Times Bestseller" which was the most important thing.

Sheer bliss to see my girlfriends and catch up, but L and I are such party animals that we sloped off from the celebrations at, wait for it, 2230hrs. She was hungover from a night out with her boyfriend, and I was just jet lagged. I think L and I were the only unmarried people there (bar T, another ex, who I spent the evening avoiding. He's very sweet, but I finished it, & just cldn't face talking to him). I think at a wedding the unmarried want to be able to flirt harmlessly, but there was no flirting material. And experience tells me that married women do NOT like their husbands dancing with the single girls at a wedding. (What do they think we are going to do exactly? Jump their spouses on the dancefloor?)

There were also a LOT of pregnant people, children and a baby. This was attached firmly to the breast of the friend sitting opposite me at dinner. Weddings. Sigh. Being surrounded by so much marital action meant that we spent breakfast the next day working through our Full English & ranting on our favourite theme. The "We have fabulous lives, why does everyone think we envy them their smug marriages?" one. Very cathartic if slightly psychotic.