2 days and a wedding in Wentbridge: Sep 11

Where? Wentbridge is to the west of the A1(M) close to the junction with the M62. It could be in South Cambs: well-kept village, parish council, good local pub and high property prices. But they do speak different. Wentbridge is in Yorkshire.

We were in Wentbridge for a wedding, my daughter’s to long-term boyfriend Alex. Clare is in the centre of the photo, Alex is on the right. The service was to be at the Church of St John the Evangelist followed by the reception at Wentbridge House, a 4 start family run hotel just 200m walk from the church. We stayed at the hotel.

It’s not often that you have a daughter married and for me this was the first, and hopefully last, time so it had to go well and be done right. So we headed up the A1 from Cambridge the day before for the rehearsal. After all as father of the bride I had a speaking role. Click here for a Steve Martin clip from Father of the Bride when he confronts this challenge. After the rehearsal it was time to eat and because we’d skipped lunch we enjoyed cream teas on the lawn, it was Thursday and the sun was shining. Check out the photo.

That evening we checked out the village pub, the Blue Bell, which does meals. In South Cambs it might aspire to being a gastropub but I suspect that they don’t do gastro in Yorkshire, just pub food.  The Blue Bell is very popular and it turned over 120 covers the evening we were there. The service was slick, the portions were generous (it seems a matter of pride that no square millimetre of plate should be exposed) and there was a choice of half way decent wines by the glass, mine was a Chilean Merlot. But was the food more quantity than quality? My haddock and chips was fine but perhaps not up to Histon Frier standard and the three chicken dishes although all different were similar. However number one son pronounced himself fully satisfied with his rare steak. And you can’t really complain when 5 of us ate for less than it cost the wife and I in one of those South Cambs gastropubs last Saturday.

The wedding was on Friday. We woke to overcast skies and a forecast of rain. The wedding was set for 2pm so there was plenty of time for rain to soak the lawns of the hotel and turn the lane to the church into a muddy path. But there was no point fretting. There was plenty to do besides worrying about the weather. Or at least there was for the ladies: hair to be done, nails to be painted, faces to be made-up and, for the bride and her bridesmaids, posh frocks to be put on. For the men it was morning suit but, hey, that doesn’t take forever. Alex went to play golf with the best man.

The morning passed without rain. Guests arrived. Lots from the locality (Clare and Alex work in Leeds), a bunch from Nottingham and points west (Alex’ family). Our lot travelled further: from Indonesia, Cambridge (were we the only southerners there?), Switzerland and the Netherlands and Wales (did that make me a double minority?). The photographer turned up at 1230 and asked to photograph the bride’s dress ‘before she put it on’. Very strange but he seemed to know what he was doing and he was active for the next 8 hours. Click here to check him out.

1345 and it still hadn’t rained and everyone was at or on the way to the church except me and Clare and the bridesmaids so it was time to go.

The service went off without a hitch. The vicar, the Rev Adrian Judd, was superb, booming voice for the congregation and sotto voce to ensure that Clare and Alex knew what was going on. I remembered my line , the registration papers were signed and soon we were out and the deed had been done. And it still wasn’t raining so more photographs, a little sustainable confetti and it was back to the hotel for drinks on the lawn.

This was the time for the photographer to earn his fee. There were 60 or so guests and he seemed to be doing his best to photograph everyone in combination with everyone else. I guess you can do this with digital so we had the bride’s family, the groom’s family, just the men, just the women, just those with posh frocks and penguin suits, just those without … and it went on. It still didn’t rain and we started to talk about the light being better for photography than sunlight … it doesn’t make people squint and the greens look more natural!

1630 and it was time for breakfast: the wedding breakfast and my big starring role which I’d tried to pretend wasn’t really going to happen. First speech up: father of the bride. I’d sort of known that it was inevitable and I’d done a little bit of thinking about it and I’d typed something up but it was a big deal and the last thing I wanted was to embarrass Clare. I showed it to number one son on the morning and he said it was OK so I guessed that I had something to go with.

The food was fine although I didn’t have much appetite and I drank little. It would be bad enough to embarrass Clare without slurring my words. I asked for a PA system and then decided not to use it. I joked about using PowerPoint and the meal took an age. I ordered a beer to be on hand for when I’d finished. And it started to rain but that didn’t matter we  were indoors.

Speech time came and went. I trembled and ad libbed when I shouldn’t have done. People laughed in the right places and clapped as well. They even laughed at other times and clapped a bit more. It seemed to go well. I coined one special concept: the divide between holding your daughter’s hand and her talking your arm: happens somewhere in her teens. I sat down, hands shaking. The wife said it was fine, Clare only said ‘oh no’ once and several people came up to me afterwards to say well done. I guess I was OK.

After that it was easy although I could have done without the disco. This morning there were lots of thank yous, as father of the bride I also had a financial stake in the day, and good byes and several promises, which would be broken, to meet up again soon. 2 days in Wentbridge, hardly likely to be repeated. For my part at least. Father of the bride, job done.

Click here for photos of the weddding and subsequent events.