Thursday, May 29, 2008

For Those Who Grew Up With Brian Cant On The Telly.

Brian Cant is on our website at GLTC!


Pretty funny eh?

Monday, May 05, 2008

Sara and Ben's Wedding - 24th April 2008

With Sara and Ben's wedding being up in Shrewsbury, we drove down the day before and stayed in The Purple Hotel, along with the Groom and the bridesmaids.

And bar an incident where the disability emergency cord was pulled instead of a lightswitch, it was fairly quiet evening drinking in the hotel lounge.

Why the hotel felt the ladies should have separate parking to the men, we're not sure. What we're they trying to say?

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We all arrived at The Rowton Castle Hotel the next day in convoy, just after 11. So we had plenty of time to explore the grounds, settle into our rooms, have a drink, meet other guests.


Given the weather forecasters said there would be light showers, there was barely a could in the sky.
the castle

the castle 2

the castle 2

Grounds

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Not sure what the connection with Rowton to Monkeys is, but the decorations around the hotel were monkeys, including the paintings on the walls.
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After we'd all unpacked and seen are rooms we congregated in the drawing room. With time to kill we got ourselves a much needed pre-wedding drink.
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And a flick through all the wedding albums to see all the previous weddings at the hotel.

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There were some classic wedding photos in there, which I just had to take pictures of.

The full medieval wedding...

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Badly fitting suit or trouser tent...

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Then before you know it, it was time to get ready, put on our glad rags and wait for the bride to arrive.

sitting waiting for sara

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If you're thinking that the bride couldn't be late given she got ready at the hotel, you would be wrong. It is the bride's prerogative afterall.

sara arriving

Sara arriving.

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No photos were allowed during the ceremony bar the official photographer's. Short and sweet Ben and Sara exchanged vows. Then James and Claire signed to say they witnessed the wedding.

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There was time for a quick few snap shots inside.

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The bridesmaid's.

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bridesmaids

Trying to grab a sneaky drink at the bar before we were called out for the official photos failed, as we had one glass of red wine between us.

family wedding

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As we stood around, it was a bit breezy for those of us in dresses.

caz jacket

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The happy couple!

ben and sara 1

ben and sara 2

Hopefully the picture of the happy couple and their friends where I manage to do bunny ears behind Sara's head will come out. There has to be at least one funny picture!

Then Yay! And then it was time for the bar. (Bit of a queue.)

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tim and me

sara

We then had a lovely sit down meal.

The top table.

top table

Our table.

food

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Juliet's Esme kept us entertained and on our best behaviour.
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dave table

caroline table

Then it was speech time, with speeches from Sara's Dad, Ben's brother James, other best man Mike.
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james speech
Mike's speech, which included a reference to Ian, Gary and Ben, which was nice.
mike speech

The cutting of the cake.

sara ben cake

After dinner, we milled around chatting, drinking waiting for the evening to start.

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caroline claire sara 2

caroline claire sara

Then with the arrival of a few more evening guests and the music man, it was time for the first dance.

first dance

After which we are joined in to some proper cheesy dancing.

sara dance floor

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dancing 3

dancing 2

dancing 1

As the evening wore on, we drank more and more red wine, with the occasional jack daniels; using the drawing room for breaks from dancing to fit in more drinking.

sara

sitting
A toast to the happy couple.

sitting a toast

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And then there are the Sara and Friends collection of photo's...

Sara and Dave
dave sara

Sara and Adam
adam sara

Sara and Mike
mike sara

Sara and James
james sara

Sara and Tim
tim sara

We rounded the official celebrations off with some rousing New York New York dancing sometime around midnight. Then before you know it was 4 in the morning and most people have disappeared off to bed or home. In the drunken haze, the last few of us bought more wine (by the bottle) and subsequently found more "free" wine (by the bottle.) After unsuccessfully trying to sell back the bought wine (by the bottle) to the bartender, we did the only thing we could. We tried to drink it all.

By 5 we're trying to make coffee in a bedroom on the top floor and take it downstairs to drink. Only a quarter of the coffee makes it.

Back on the wine, we finally called it a day somewhere between 5.30 and 6am.

Those of us who made it to breakfast before the 9.30 we were feeling a little delicate. Check out by 11am seemed nigh on impossible. But we made it, though leaving the actual grounds took another few hours.

A few of us were around to see the happy couple leave in their decorated car. With no old style bumper to tie the cans to there was worry it wasn't going to work. Improvising the boys used a windscreen wiper, and the wedding tradition was rescued. And the blown up condoms were put inside the car.

the car

Sara's face when she realised her footwell was full of condoms was pretty amusing. Footage of them leaving to follow.

car condoms

car full view

All in all a brilliant wedding. It took several days to full recover from, a sure sign that we had a great time. And I still have a few bottles of red wine should anyone feel like drinking again...
* If anyone wants any of the above pictures, I've edited them down here, but they are on Kodak's Gallery in their full resolution. Just let me know and I'll send you the link.