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One of our friends who'd stayed over after the party had brought a copy of our wedding DVD with her, so we watched it this morning. It comes from a different era of history, back in April 2012, when my hair was brown and the idea that America might become a fascist state and the UK would not be in the EU seemed like a crap idea for a dystopian TV drama.
Thirteen and a half years on and the tiny bridesmaids are all adults and at least seven of the guests are dead and against all the odds the happy couple are still married and still happy. And they've done something to make up for the Grim Reaper's sterling work by producing two more human beings. It's difficult to remember a time that those two weren't around, though this morning at least we had a taste of that freedom as they'd both been at their grandparents over night and didn't come back til after lunch.
There were things I remembered from the day, like the big bottle of ink in the room I waited in before the service (which did not feature in the video) and stuff I hadn't registered before. When asked if I did, I seemed to hesitate "Errrrr, I do." No one buzzed in for hesitation, but it's nerve wracking going first in that. What if you say "I do" and the other person goes "Nope, I don't. You've been Punk'd!"
I remembered my speech as being a rambling unprepared mess, largely because I foolishly hadn't really prepared, but it's actually a pretty good one as I am able to riff about stuff like my father-in-law's mic technique and my dad eating the lip salve on the table thinking it was cheese.
My best man Mike "Devon" Cosgrave seems genuinely baffled to have been asked to do the job, given how little we actually ever meet up and rightly so. But men don't need to see their best friend for him to be their best friend. Also if you're my best friend it probably helps to see me as little as possible so you don't realise what a mistake you've made.
It looks like everyone had a great time at the event and it's good to have some record of it, as everyone was spectacularly smashed. It's bitter sweet to look back, of course, but mainly sweet. Lost youth, lost friends and family, lost loves (a few of the couples at that wedding are no longer couples, of course) and the yawning gap of time between what still feels like a recent event and now. Yet we've gained so much as well and as nice as it is to have the occasional morning off from being a parent, when our kids turned up fizzing with excitement and full of jokes and silliness, I was very happy to see them.
That stupid and immature young man of just 45 years doesn't know how lucky he'd got. And he really thought he was lucky.
Catie, not so much, but she's made the best of it. Marry a twit, repent at leisure.
