I appear to still be buzzing on the adrenaline kick from the evening I spent at one of my best friend Lynn's wedding to her wonderful husband Craig so I thought I'd write about it while the memories are fresh. Lynn wrote about me way back in the early days of this blog which you can find here. Yes, I have used a line from the same song in this post title but it's my favourite 'Lynn song'.
There were three of us from our group of friends invited for the whole day but, after a discussion with Lynn about how I only managed my own sister's wedding by having a hotel room to go to for a two hour nap halfway through the day, we decided that I would only go in the evening to maximise the fun I could have.
My good friend Martin was driving so came and got me and we took a slow drive up to the beautiful Ross Priory on the shores of Loch Lomond for the night. Apparently it is a site of great significance for the family, as borne out by the photo album Keith (Lynn's dad) passed around showing her and her family going there together ever since they were kids.
I had a nice chat with Keith where I told him one of my regrets of not making the full day was missing his speech. He's a big, gentle fellow who you could quite easily mistake for shy but when he has something to say it's always worth listening to. I reminded him of a speech he gave at a birthday party for Lynn when they first moved away to Warrington and he was amazed I remembered it. When I got a chance to speak to Yvonne (Lynn's mum) I mentioned this too and I nearly set her off crying as she was so touched. I actually did set her crying when I told her the story behind my new ring (from a previous post) as she is a geneticist so understands DNA more than most. I love them dearly as a family. Here's Keith and Yvonne up for a wee dance
Craig, the groom is a worthy addition to the family too. He took a bit of time to do the usual few minutes thanks that you can get from a groom at their wedding but set aside special time for me to thank me for the present I had got them. Here it is
And here's one of Lynn and Craig up for a dance too. Their wee girl, Tara, is the wee girl on the left in the foreground
It comes with the definition of an 'infinity table', which I thought was the perfect sentiment for a wedding gift, but I also just thought it was beautiful, which the whole family agreed on. I totally stumbled across it by accident as well. A nice, serendipitous find.
A decent bunch of our old school friends were there, which is always great fun - it is often hard to get all the ones with families together all at the one time - but this had the added bonus of there being a few other people who we had been at university with who, we get to see with even less regularity (it's now 17 years since we graduated after all). One exception who I get to see occasionally is Lynn's best friend Marelle, who I occasionally bump into in the hospitals of Glasgow as she is a nurse practitioner who also, it turns out, happens to be good pals with my dietitian Claire, who lets her know how things are going on the medical front when I haven't seen her in a while.
Of the old school friends that were there, my own best friend Dave unwittingly stole a wee bit of the wedding party's thunder by letting us all know that his girlfriend Kate, who late next year will also become his wife, is pregnant. I'm so thrilled for them both. My own situation dictates that if I get the transplant in time I will be going over to Slovakia under very carefully constructed doctors orders. If I still haven't got the call then we need to have a chat about whether I could hire a portable oxygen concentrator that would allow me to make the journey. It would obviously be a massive undertaking but it's my best friend's wedding. If we concede that it would be folly to, for instance, go in an aeroplane for over four hours with the recycled air of a few hundred people with whatever bugs they are carrying then I suppose I will have to just wait for the much larger ceremony they're having a month later back in Scotland. I'm not going to lie I'd be gutted to not go but I have to be sensible.
Getting back to happy stuff from the wedding it was so nice to see not just the friends from school and university but to see some of the other friends Lynn has picked up along her wander through life as well, some of whom I know well and others I only really know in passing. One of my highlights of the evening though was meeting Lynn's cousin Emma again for the first time in what must be about a dozen years. I've always had a soft spot for Emma ever since we had a couple of snogs at family parties way back in the mid 90's when we were really just kids. She's turned out to be a beautiful young woman with an adoring husband and two kids in tow too. Somehow I managed to live about half a mile away from her in Belfast for two years without either of us knowing about it, which is a shame, but I'm so glad to see her looking so happy and it is to her immense credit that she didn't flinch when faced with me in a wheelchair and my facial furniture. She, like the whole family really, were just wonderful in saying they were keeping me in their thoughts and prayers. You can't ask for much more than that really.
Another wee thing that pleased me was that the DJ played the Bluebells' song Young at Heart, which was just perfect as it was exactly 22 years since my big sister Clare got married and at her own wedding she got up and sang the full song with the band.
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