There’s presently a little under three weeks to go until the wedding – meaning you can all expect to be harried over whether or not you’ve RSVP’ed, and if you have special dietary whatzits in the near future.
It also means that now seems like a fair time to warn you about the dichotomous nature of the wedding day itself. Per your invitations, and the details here, you’ll see that the day is split into the Wedding Ceremony and the Breakfast & Reception.
That’s where it gets complicated. Because a Quaker wedding is pretty much your regular Quaker meeting, barring the two randoms who stand up and clutter up all that nice clean theosophy with noise, and the nature of a Wedding Reception is that it’s pretty much your regular party, but with more alcohol. And more food, more guests, more posh dresses, more speeches, more formal photographs, more confusion over who said what to whom at the previous obligatory family reunion, more panic about what might be about to go wrong, more awkward pauses when you forget somebody’s name… and so on.
It’s pretty well our feeling, therefore, that “Posh dresses” and “Quaker Meetings” don’t entirely sit well together, so here’s fair warning:
The clothes in which Ruth & I are planning to get married are not the same as the clothes which we will be wearing at the big party at Rowton. We’ll be getting changed into fancier clothes shortly after the Wedding itself, and prior to that we’re basically wearing the sort of clothes we go to work in – all very business as usual, like I say.
That means there’s a risk some of you who adopt a less stubborn approach to this sort of thing than what I do might find yourselves feeling vaguely overdressed in the first part of the day, but don’t worry, because that won’t last more than 90 minutes or so, at which point, we’ll complete the paperwork, and then sneak away to get changed.
Basically, if you wear snazzy formal wear to the actual Wedding, you might notice that we’re doing the opposite and wearing regular clothes. But not to worry, because that’s not the way it’ll be all day. Just as soon as we’re married we’ll get changed into fancier clothes and we’ll start fitting in again.
O, and one other thing: no confetti. It’s specifically prohibited by the venue(s) who are very much against loosely dyed bits of torn up bank statements getting thrown about the place. Likewise no rice for much the same reason. If’n you fetch up getting into trouble for this, be ready for me to chuck you to the wolves. And give your slice of cake to someone else…
See you crazily soon!
what about oats – very quakey and biodegradeable + good for wildlife
I suspect that oats are sufficiently against the spirit of the regulations that you’d still get in trouble, I’m afraid!