Wedding Bells

I was fortunate enough to attend a French wedding last weekend. Actually, I’ll rephrase that, it was an international wedding held in France. As with all weddings it was a great day, the sun shone and the bride looked stunning and the groom looked dapper and everyone had a great time.

One lovely aspect of it was just how international it all was. The bride was half French, half Irish. The groom was French of Belgian descent. The witnesses were German, Canadian, English and ‘Un vrai Lyonnais’! The guests added even more to this hotchpotch of nationalities.

It was a very relaxed service and the mayoress explained about the tradition of weddings in France and how the doors had to remain open as the mairie is considered a public place and everyone is allowed to enter. She also explained about the wedding contract the couple had chosen to enter. It is like a pre-nup and a wedding rolled into one. (This has been a new concept to me and I first came across it when some English parents at work were telling me the difficulty that had had when buying a house. They had been asked which type of wedding contract they had and they had to explain to the notaire that they were just married, full stop.) During the service friends provided translations of what was happening for the non French speaking guests, which had its own comic moments. Then the bride and groom were married and we were released into the sunshine and the subsequent photo taking.

Apparently there was only one difference of opinion in the organisation of this wedding and that was over exactly what a 'wedding apero’ should be. Traditionally in France after the wedding at the mairie, you can then choose to have a church blessing (France being a secular country) and then there is the wedding apero, to which all the guests are invited. After an hour or so, the main wedding party leaves and goes and has a meal. This is in direct contrast to an English wedding, where the select few attend the meal first, then the big shindig is after that and goes on till late evening.
This wedding was slightly unusual in that the meal was first and then the apero in the evening and this is what lead to the apero’tiff’, as the bride later referred to the argument. The groom was convinced that everyone would respect that it was a wedding apero and leave after a couple of hours. The bride was insistent that various guests, including the Irish contingent and her anglophone friends in Lyon, would be expecting to party to the wee small hours.

Anyway, it was a fantastic evening, everyone partied to the wee small hours and there were hangovers aplenty the next day.
I was going to give a word of warning about partying with Irish and paying for it the next day but have remembered it was actually a Scotsman who was buying everyone the evil Chartreuse that caused the worst of the hangovers.