Too Much Champagne

Most of my friends are married. I attended the wedding of one of the last of our little group of old school chums at the weekend. She walked down the aisle, a vision in sparkling tulle to “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”. It seems to be a pretty popular choice for brides these days and I suppose that the Kaiser Chiefs might not go down so well with the grannies.

The bride herself was, of course, late. Brides are meant to be late but this one has never been early for anything so she was very very late. Her mum called across the church to reassure the grooms’ parents that she was on her way, although they didn’t appear to be too concerned. It turned out that her dress had come adrift and her dad had had to take a needle and thread to it and sew her back in. It was a bit of a revelation to us (and perhaps him) that he was so nifty with a needle and thread.

Weddings always make me cry. This has got nothing to do with still being single (honest!) but more to do with the overall emotion of the whole thing. So of course we were midway through the first hymn when little droplets of water started in the corners of my eyes, quickly becoming rivulets and then small floods. My attempts to stem the flow were watched avidly by one of the bridesmaids. A look of extreme puzzlement crept over her six year old face and continued for the rest of the evening whenever she saw me. I may have put one small child off ever getting married. I do hope not.

Later on in the evening another single friend got very drunk (well I’m assuming that that was the reason) and made me make a pact with her that if we were both single at 40, we would each buy a cat, move in together and embrace a life of eternal spinsterhood. I reminded her that 40 was not such a long way away for either of us (although I will be getting their first) and tried to dissuade her from any such foolish notions. Sadly she was not for having it. I just hope that she was drunk and forgets because it is not a pact that I have any intention of following through on although cats are quite pleasant creatures…..

I thought that weddings were supposed to be joyous occasions. Granted, most of the guests appeared to have permagrins on the whole time but one chap was in quite a maudlin mood.

“Well” he said “That’s most of the weddings out of the way, so the next time you (myself and my old school friends) see each other again it will be at a funeral.”

“Thanks a lot” I almost spat “I think it will be quite a while before there will be any funerals involving any of us”. I mean, honestly, we are only in our 30’s. What a terrible thing to say and especially at a wedding. I will just have to assume that it was a spectacularly bad attempt at humour or that, again, drink was involved.

Speaking of drink, I had hoped to speak to a former primary school teacher of mine, but unfortunately she had one glass of champagne which proved a bit too much for her and she spent the rest of the night recovering in her hotel room.

She’s not the only one who has a problem with holding her drink. I myself just can’t seem to drink as much as I used to be able to do. I was hoping to hit that just slightly nice, woozy feeling but after one glass of champagne and half a glass of wine the only thing I was feeling was queasy. I drank a glass of water to stop any potential hangovers in the morning and gave up the alcohol as a bad job. Gone are my wild drinking days it would seem.

And then it was all over. The bride and groom slipped off into the night, the dancers kept on dancing and I headed off home to recuperate and prepare myself for another wedding which I will be going to in a fortnight. Perhaps I should work on my drinking technique between then and now.