This Ordinary Life

I mentioned in my last entry that I attended my first proper English wedding last weekend near Bicester. As usual there is a story to tell...

A ex-colleague of mine with whom I was good friends with at the time, who then became a recruiter and found me my current job and with whom I have kept in touch got married last weekend. I received the invitation a couple months ago to attend both the ceremony and the evening reception as well as the Stag Doo, which was to be held in Edinburgh.

Well, for reasons that I'd rather not get into I decided to skip the ceremony and only go to the evening reception as that's when you have the dinner, speaches and dancing. Or so I thought...

As I am training for next year's Etape, the Tour de France stage that gets opening to the public, I decided that it would be good training to cycle up to my home for the night, the Biscester Cherwell Valley Travel Lodge just off the M40. Of course, because I was on my bicycle I wouldn't be able to cycle the M40 and instead cycled up the A41.

Before I set off I carefully packed everything into my rucksack. Suit (folded carefully), tie (folded carefully), shirt (folded carefully) and underwear (folded haphazardly) all went into a spacebag and then joined my toilettries, shoes, socks and cycling spares. Three and a half hours later (average speed of 30kph!) and I arrived at my destination.

I purposely didn't eat anything when I arrived because I didn't want to spoil my appetite. My invite said that the reception started at 7pm and as it was only 5pm, I killed some time by slowly getting showered, ironing my shirt and watching some television. Some other friends of mine who were also just attending the reception picked me up at 6:30pm and we made it to the venue at shortly after 7.

Now this is where a cultural paradigm came into effect. The bride and groom were both there looking stunning and working the room. There was an open bar and people were milling about in a pre-dinner manner. However, many of the people there weren't really dressed the way I would expect when attending a wedding dinner. Some even were wearing jean! This is when I realised that something had gone terribly wrong...

Turns out that in the UK, it's the ceremony invite that includes the dinner and not the reception. The reception is for the second class citizens that you didn't want to spend money on for dinner, but still want to get gifts off of. As to food, there were a few scraps to be had. I gorged myself on three plates of cheese, crackers, celery sticks and pate... shame I'd missed out on my seat at the dinner table that I would easily have been able to attend timewise.

With my metabolism racing, before I knew it I had consumed 10 pints which had no real effect other than to make me want to dance. Together with my mate's Northern Irish wife, I ended up tearing up the dancefloor and sweating up a storm for the next 3 hours. Very classy indeed!

So, the lesson of the day is that the English generally do things differently than the rest of the world, so if you are doing something for the first time in England, it is well worth getting details of exactly what will happen and is expected of you. Otherwise, you might cycle 100kms, miss dinner and then have the groom ask you why you're so dressed up. Embarassing, disappointing and hilarious all at the same time.