2351: One Year Anniversary

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My wife Andie and I have been married for one year today. Good going, us.

For those of you who were unable to attend our wedding last year, I thought now might be a good time to share the speech I made at said reception, as it’s still relevant now. (Apart from all the bits that refer to “today”, which you can take to mean “June 27, 2015” instead.)

Hello everyone, thanks for coming. It’s great to see so many of you together here in one place — in some cases, we haven’t seen each other for quite some time. I think there’s a relevant Lord of the Rings quote here, but my best man Tim is more suitably equipped to be able to make that reference, so I’ll leave that to him.

I wanted to start today with something that is probably the height of impropriety, and that’s to acknowledge that this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I think most of you here already know that, but it’s important to acknowledge it, I feel — not only to dispel any awkwardness that might result from that knowledge, but also because it’s relevant to why I’m standing here today.

First time around, you see, things were a whirlwind. And in all the excitement, I failed to realise some very important things: that while it absolutely is possible to make a partnership work if the two of you have disparate interests, if either or both of you find it difficult or impossible to meet the other halfway and at least respect the things that they’re into even if you don’t share those interests, things will go south pretty quickly.

Now, I don’t want to dwell on that too much, because that’s not the reason we’re here today. Suffice to say, however, that awkward situation is a thing of the past — and while my new wife and I certainly have our own interests that we’re happy to pursue independently of one another (I like Japanese video games with saucy artwork, she likes painting intricate designs on her fingernails) we also share some very important things that have become a big part of our life.

Those of you who know your video games will recognise a lot of today’s festivities as involving Final Fantasy — particularly Final Fantasy XIV, an online multiplayer installment of the long-running series that I’ve been playing since 2013, and which Andie later joined me in, much to my surprise and delight. Through that game, we’ve forged some very close friendships — as close as the friendships we have with many of you sitting here — and as such, I thought it was eminently appropriate for my proposal to Andie to be delivered as part of our in-game characters’ wedding ceremony back in January. Unusually, this means that there’s an actual video of how I proposed thanks to our guildmate recording the whole experience if you ever want to go and watch it and make me blush a bit. (It’s not hard.) [Editor’s note: I genuinely don’t know what the link is to this or if it’s still online. But it may still be out there somewhere.]

Now, unfortunately, as our guildmates are scattered across the world, most of them couldn’t join us here today, but we know that they’re here in spirit — and I did want to particularly show my gratitude to Chris, aka Reimi, healer extraordinaire, for sharing today with us. The rest of our fellow adventurers are eagerly awaiting photos and videos of our big day, so please do share any media you create today!

But back to Andie and me. I feel that our shared love of Final Fantasy XIV is actually rather symbolic of the journey we’ve taken together in many ways. We both play the game to a high level, taking on some of its toughest challenges together with our friends. Together, we’ve toppled the mighty dragon Twintania, fended off meteors and ancient pillars dropping on our heads long enough to dispatch Nael deus Darnus, and even vanquished the very angry — justifiably so — Elder Primal Bahamut himself.

And we’ve overcome our own challenges in reality, too. I shan’t go into details for now, because it really isn’t the time — suffice to say, though, both of us have dealt with our share of real life raid bosses: challenges that seem insurmountable and want nothing more than our complete annihilation, but challenges that we could overcome by working together, supporting one another and simply being there for each other. I’ll forever be grateful to my new wife for standing by me through some difficult times — and I hope she feels the same way too.

Sappy bit over. I believe it falls to me to deliver some “thank yous”, because a lot of hard work has gone on behind the scenes to make today happen.

Thanks to Andie, first of all, for doing the lion’s share of the organisation, because I’m a man and therefore useless at sorting this sort of thing out.

Thanks to our parents: Agnes, Val and John, for working together to help today be truly special.

Thanks to Rob for his generous loan of the PA system which we’re pumping music through over the course of the afternoon and evening.

Thanks to my best man Tim for his support in the weeks leading up to the wedding, and for being one of my most trusted friends who doesn’t spend most of his time pretending to be a catgirl on the Internet.

Thanks to everyone else who has contributed their time, money and effort towards today; I’m almost certain there are people I’ve forgotten or don’t know by name well enough to acknowledge you individually, but believe me, your labours are very much appreciated.

And thank you all for being here today. It means a great deal that you can share this special day with us.

Finally, Googling “who does the groom toast” reminded me that I’m supposed to toast the bridesmaids at the end of my speech. Before I do that, I’ll also thank them for their contributions today — and for both being an important part of Andie’s life. So please, if you would, raise your glasses, and join me in a toast to the bridesmaids.

A toast to Andie, too, for putting up with me while dealing with all the things she has to deal with, too. She’s stronger, more capable and more wonderful than she’d ever care to admit (and me attempting to say this to her face normally results in her wriggling off uncomfortably somewhere, so I’m saying it here instead) and I love her to bits.

Here’s to many more years ahead of us. And I say that with confidence.

1986: The Day After

I am absolutely exhausted. I was fine for most of today — presumably still riding high on the nerves/stress/adrenaline from yesterday — but in the last half hour or so I’ve started a real slump and I am now extremely ready to go to bed and sleep for about a week.

It’s back to relative normality tomorrow, though, as I have a bunch of work to do this week; that said, we are heading off to go and visit my parents later in the week, so that will be nice to have a change of scenery for a couple of days.

I talk about nerves, stress and adrenaline, but yesterday really wasn’t all that majorly stressful in the end. I know that weddings can be complicated and stressful affairs when you have lots of moving parts involved, but we deliberately decided to keep things very simple. Specifically, we identified all the parts of weddings that we both hated (spending hours over photographs, obnoxious DJs, shoehorned-in “entertainment”, poncy food) and eliminated those from the equation altogether, leaving us with a fairly bare-bones ceremony and reception, but one at which most people seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal. After all, if we hate those aspects of weddings, it’s entirely possible that other people do too!

But it’s all over now, and it kind of doesn’t quite feel like it was real. I’m sure it’ll sink in eventually — particularly as I’m now quite conscious of the ring on my finger — but for now, it’s probably the tiredness talking, but I’m enjoying the gently euphoric sense of knowing that it’s all over and done with and we can both now look forward to whatever the future holds.

Now, I know this has been a short entry, but I am knackered. And as such I will bid you all a good night.

1985: MAWWIAGE

Andie and I got married today. It’s now half past midnight and we’re both very much ready to sleep after a very long day that absolutely flew by. Kind of doesn’t quite feel real in some ways.

I’m going to keep this brief because I’m knackered, but I wanted to say thanks to everyone who showed up to celebrate with us.

A particular thanks to our parents for helping with organisation, decoration and, y’know, paying for shit.

Thanks to my best man Tim for a lovely speech that summed up our friendship nicely.

Thanks to those who came a long way to celebrate with us, like my brother and Andie’s extended family.

Thanks to Rob for helping with sound.

Thanks to Woody for getting drunk enough to pour milk on his cake and then attempt to convince me that he fully intended to do that and did not, in fact, mistake milk for cream.

And thanks to my lovely new wife for sticking by me through the good times and the bad — much as I’ve done for her in return — and for agreeing to do this marriage thing and take the next step in our life together. Next stop: cat.

Time to sleep.

1984: [Insert Wedding-Related Lyric Of Your Choice Here]

I am, as they say, getting married in the… wait, no, it’s tomorrow afternoon. 3pm, to be precise.

Today was the ceremony rehearsal, which was rather more informal than I was expecting. Although I’ve been married before, my previous marriage was a civil ceremony in a hotel and as such was a little less dependent on tradition, ceremony and symbolism. Tomorrow’s wedding — which will hopefully be my last — is a church wedding, however, which is altogether more “formal”. The rehearsal, meanwhile, was pretty much just a runthrough of what is going to happen when and who needs to stand where.

We’re having a pretty simple and straightforward ceremony. Neither Andie or I are particularly religious, but given Andie’s family’s ties to the clergy (her late father was a member of the clergy in the church we’re getting married in tomorrow) it felt entirely appropriate to have a church wedding. We did, however, decide to put our respective feet down a little and not have any hymns or traditional organ music, because frankly, both of those things are far too sombre and dirge-like for our liking. Instead, we’re coming in to the same music that introduced our in-game wedding in Final Fantasy XIV, our signing of the register is accompanied by two tracks from the Ar Tonelico series, and we’re leaving the church accompanied by EXEC_COSMOFLIPS/. from Ar Tonelico Qoga. They’re all strikingly powerful pieces of music that will hopefully leave something of an impression on those who hear them, even if they’re unfamiliar with the original context.

Over the last few days, I’ve spent some time assembling the music playlists for the reception afterwards. In keeping with our desire to keep things simple and personal, we’ve opted to not have a DJ or disco, and are instead having music from my tablet pumped through a PA system. That way people who want to get up and dance can do, and those who just want to chill out, talk with people and enjoy socialising can do without some braying idiot bellowing exhortations to gyrate wildly at them. (I loathe wedding DJs, particularly those of the breed that believe everyone should be dancing at all times, otherwise they are somehow a failure.)

There’s another reason for doing things this way, though; taking a DJ out of the equation means that we have control over the music, and as such the playlists I’ve been assembling — a slower-paced one for during the meal and a more energetic one for when everyone’s finished — are made up of a… somewhat eclectic selection of tracks, to say the least, but by doing that I feel that we’ve managed to capture our respective personalities and histories quite nicely. There’s a mix of stuff from our respective youths, some modern stuff that we like the sound of, and some stuff that will only mean something to a few people in the room — bits of the Final Fantasy XIV soundtrack, songs from Love Live!, music from the Ace Attorney series. There’s also Babymetal, because Babymetal, and I think there’s at least one Taylor Swift track in there, if only to placate our Taylor Swift-obsessed guildmate. (He isn’t at the wedding, but he probably appreciates the thought.)

I’ve written my speech and have some ideas on how to ad lib in a few places so I’m not just reading off a card. The venue is pretty much set up, with only a few minor bits and bobs to take care of in the morning. I remembered to bring my suit with me, and my shoes. We have the rings with us.

I think we’re ready to go!

Barring any last-minute anxious posting tomorrow morning — which is entirely possible, as I still feel rather calm right now, which I think is freaking people out a bit — the next time I speak with you all, dear readers, I will be a married man. Hooray!

1981: Preparations

Andie and I are getting married at the weekend. That’s pretty close!

I’m looking forward to it a lot. It should be a great day. Both our ceremony and reception are fairly straightforward, simple and low-key (aside from the fact the ceremony is taking place in Westbury’s mahoosive church) and that fits us just perfectly. Besides the obvious meaning of getting married, the day will be an opportunity for both of us to hang out with a whole bunch of people we, in some cases, haven’t had as many opportunities to see recently as we both might have liked.

This week is largely about last-minute preparations, then. My best man Tim and I went to go and pick up our suits earlier today, and we both look pretty great in them. (I do need a haircut, though; that’s tomorrow’s job!) Getting sized for said suit was pleasant confirmation of my weight loss, too; while I’m still getting stuff from the “big and tall” (fat and lanky) section, the numbers involved are… quite a bit smaller than they used to be, which makes me extremely happy.

Other things I’ve been up to this week include putting together the music playlists for the reception — one for during the meal, and a more up-tempo one that people might consider dancing to once everyone has finished stuffing their faces. We’re not having a DJ because wedding DJs suck; we both decided that we’d much rather have our own music playing without some braying idiot bellowing nonsense as Vengaboys blasts out from his sound system that is turned up too loud. (I know I sound like an old fart. I don’t care.) Instead, we’re simply having a tablet with some music on hooked up to a PA system generously loaned by my friend Rob. And that means we can have an entertainingly eclectic selection for people to (hopefully) enjoy over the course of the day — something that I feel reflects us pretty well.

Tomorrow is a day for printing things out. Orders of service, table identification card thingies and any other bits and bobs we might need. Andie’s spent much of the evening writing people’s names and the word “Pavlova” on table-setting cards (assuming they’re having pavlova, of course — and what sort of crazy person wouldn’t?) and, once I’ve taken care of business tomorrow, we should hopefully be pretty much ready to go. Hooray!

That’s that, then. Now, having stayed up to extremely silly times in the morning for the last few days playing Heavensward (which, by the way, is magnificent, if you hadn’t figured that out already) I’m off to bed at a vaguely reasonable hour.

1744: Congratulations to Cat and John

It was the wedding of my friends Cat and John today up here in sunny Aberdeen, Scotland. It’s pretty rare to have a horrible wedding — though I’m sure they happen on occasion — but I am, unsurprisingly, pleased to report that it was a jolly nice day, with a pleasantly short ceremony (in which I did indeed read the shit out of the poem I’d been provided with, and was subsequently complimented by all manner of people I’d never met before throughout the rest of the day), a tasty meal that struck a good balance between being posh and actually being edible, and an enjoyable evening of ceilidh music and dancing. (I must confess to not having indulged in much of the dancing, primarily because I don’t really enjoy it but also because my trousers were at risk of falling down partway through Strip the Willow.)

Cat is one of my oldest friends that I’m actually still friends with. She was the first person I ever met at university, and something of a fixture in my life throughout the course of my undergraduate studies. We haven’t seen each other all that much for the last few years — primarily because she lives in a whole other country (yes, Scotland totally counts as being a whole other country) — but it was nice to see her today and it be pretty much like the intervening years simply hadn’t happened; the only difference was that she was wearing a big, impractical dress and had a different surname.

The fact I’m friends with Cat reminds me of one of my secret proudest moments. It may not sound much — particularly if you’re not someone who has suffered with social anxiety — but it was a big deal to me.

Let me explain.

Prior to starting university properly, I had signed up for a pre-term music course, during which I’d have the opportunity to play with members of the university symphony orchestra, as we indulged in some intensive rehearsal and study over the course of a single week, culminating in a performance of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony and Beethoven’s 7th symphony. I had never performed a full symphony before, and here I was preparing to perform two of them after just a week of rehearsal. It was challenging, but fun.

What was more challenging to me, though, was the prospect of meeting new people. I’d already established in my mind at secondary school that I wasn’t quite sure how to go about making new friends or meeting new people, so I was quite nervous about going to university. (I had also contemplated, as I’m sure many people had, making up a cool nickname for myself, but never quite had the guts to go through with lying to potential new friends about what “everyone calls me”.)

So it was that I found myself in the lift after the first day of the music course, heading up to the 15th floor of Stoneham Halls of Residence to get a bit of rest. Also in the lift with me was Cat — although I didn’t know who she was yet, aside from the fact that she was in the string section. As the doors closed, I decided that I was going to bite the bullet and actually try to make a new friend. So I introduced myself. And, as often happens when I take a social “risk” like this, I was surprised to discover that I didn’t die, wasn’t punched in the face and wasn’t showered with acid from my conversational partner inexplicably turning into a giant, acid-spitting snake-like creature. Instead, I found out the name of someone, got to know them a bit and had a ready-made excuse to escape when I reached the 15th floor. Ideal.

Over the early days at university, I came to know Cat quite well. Having grown up in a school where interests were divided quite sharply along gender lines — it was also the days before being a geek was “cool”, although the relatively recent introduction of Sony’s PlayStation meant that situation was changing — it was quite surprising to meet someone of the female persuasion who not only tolerated the presence of video games, but also appeared to be genuinely interested in them. We spent many an hour sitting in my room playing Final Fantasy VIII and Point Blank together — to date, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to name Rinoa anything but “Cat” — and we had a most enjoyable time getting through our music (well, English and music in my case) degrees together.

In short, she’s one of those friends that will almost certainly be a constant presence in my life for many years to come yet, and I’m really happy to see her so happy today. I wish her and John a long and happy life together, and that new life for them starts today.

Thanks for a great day, Mr and Mrs Cowe. Have a very happy life!

1329: Day After

It was the wedding of my good friend James to his good wife Charlotte yesterday — an event which, apparently, had been a very long time coming. (I’ve only known James for a relatively short period of time and only met Charlotte once or twice, so it felt like a perfectly reasonable amount of time to me, but judging by the jokes in the speeches, it was, as I say, apparently a long time coming.)

In stark contrast to my friends George and Mitu’s wedding the other week, which was a vibrant, multicultural affair that must have cost a fucking fortune to put on, James and Charlotte’s wedding was a much more traditional British affair: church service, followed by retiring to a stately home for afternoon tea (including an astonishing variety of finger sandwiches and cakes), barn-dancing, a selection of meats (beef, lamb and pork — with crackling) and, of course, various types of booze on tap.

I must confess to having had a little too much to drink yesterday. I don’t drink a lot these days, you see — Andie doesn’t drink, and I normally join her on that, since the last few times I’ve drunk I haven’t really enjoyed it all that much, and I don’t tend to “go out” to occasions that involve imbibing vast quantities of alcohol very often, either. As such, my tolerance is considerably less than it was when I was at university and drinking fairly heavily on a regular basis. This makes me a cheap date, of course, but also means that I have to be somewhat… careful, particularly when strong drinks are involved.

The reception began with some Pimm’s, which was flowing pretty freely and getting regularly topped up by some ninja waiters and waitresses — the moment your glass was less than half-full, someone would appear as if from nowhere with a jug and refill it. Pimm’s is delicious, too, of course, and so it’s perfectly natural to just keep drinking it if it keeps coming.

Then there was champagne during the toasts and speeches. I’m not all that fond of champagne these days, to be honest — not that fond of wine in general, in fact. I had a bit of a “wine phase” at one point, but have since gone off it somewhat so I was rather underwhelmed by the champagne, even though I can probably safely assume — judging by the rest of the day, anyway — that it was probably quite expensive.

Later in the evening came the real killer, though — there were two different types of scrumpy, one of which just looked like orange squash, and the other of which was called “Bee Sting” and looked a bit like elderflower cordial. I tried some of the latter and it’s some of the nicest scrumpy I’ve ever tasted — very sweet, not at all “alcoholic-tasting” — but by golly it had a kick and a half, and you didn’t really notice until it was too late. In my case, it was looking up at the stars outside the venue and staggering unsteadily around that made me realise that yes, I was, in fact, a bit pissed. Not overly so — certainly not enough to make me want to take to the dance floor or do anything particularly outrageous — but enough to affect my balance somewhat. I felt all right, though.

That is, until about 2:30 in the morning, when I woke up to an unpleasant feeling and an accompanying mental image of an army advancing on my position. As the army got closer, I started to feel worse, and attempting to distract myself from the encroaching horde only made me pay more attention to it. Eventually, as the sound of marching boots was bearing down on me and mental pikemen started clashing with mental knights, I felt that there was only one real explanation for the battlefield in my head and stomach, and there was probably also only going to be one resolution to, it, too.

I was correct. Afterwards, however, I felt considerably better and have remained pleasantly hangover-free, too. Which is nice.

1055: Tim’s Wedding Day

My friends Tim and Sophie got married today, and I’m sure they’ll be delighted I’m marking the occasion with a blog post hastily composed on my phone because the Wi-Fi at this hotel doesn’t seem to work properly.

It was a very nice wedding, all told. I know people always say that weddings are at least “nice” if not “beautiful” and “wonderful” and so on, but it really was. Taking place at Cain Manor, an old big house (remarkably similar to the one Tim grew up in) near Farnham in Surrey, the whole affair was pleasingly compact in nature — the ceremony started at 4, was over by 4.30 and after not too much milling around we were sat down waiting for dinner. An electrical mishap delayed the food a bit but even with that delay, it didn’t feel like there was too much standing around doing nothing, which was a blessed relief.

Tim and Sophie also decided not to have an official photographer either, which meant there was no standing around waiting for all that shenanigans either. I was relieved about that — one of my least favourite things about other people’s weddings is standing around in the cold while waiting for some person with a camera to finish shouting “Friends! University friends! Obscure cousins neither the bride nor the groom recognise!” Don’t get me wrong, wedding photographers do a great job and I know several people who make a good living from it, but man, that waiting around is dull. I can only imagine what it must be like for the bride and groom, having to pull increasingly-false smiles as their fingertips slowly succumb to frostbite and they’re surrounded by relatives they don’t know the names of.

Andie and I are back at the hotel we’re staying at now. It’s about 4 miles away from the wedding venue, and is called The Devil’s Punchbowl after the nearby park. It seems like a pleasant enough place, though it would be nice if we couldn’t hear all the drunkards in the pub part of the hotel doing karaoke, and it would also be nice if the Wi-Fi worked properly. The room also smells like a dental surgery for some reason, but that’s all right.

It’s been nice to get away for the day. There’s a super-stressful week coming up for both of us — I have jury duty and we’re moving house. I also have to squeeze my usual work in somewhere! Still, I’m not thinking about that right now. Just going to have a nice rest and return to stressing out tomorrow!

#oneaday Day 698: Congratulations Mr and Mrs Burvill

It was the marriage of my two friends Simon and Jennie today, now to be known as Mr and Mrs Burvill. It was a great wedding and I wish them all the best for their life together ahead of them, especially given today’s surprise announcement that a baby is on the way too. Congratulations to them both.

Attending weddings for me is a bit strange these days. Anyone who has been through the breakdown of a marriage will likely know what I’m talking about. On the one hand, you’re super-happy for your friends making a bold and very public statement about their love for one another. But on the other, you can’t help the odd bit of cynicism creeping into your mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no doubts in my mind about Simon and Jennie’s marriage. They’re clearly made for each other, and they’re going to make brilliant parents too. I just can’t help making comparisons to my own failed marriage, now mostly a memory left in the past save for the actual legal bits — a process of healing helped immensely by the lovely lady I now live with. Thank you, Andie.

I know the things that went wrong. Blame lay on both sides, despite things I may have written at the time when it was all collapsing around me. But as with so many things, the dubious benefit of hindsight allows you to look a little more objectively at what happened and realise what went wrong. In some cases, it could have been fixed; in others, the end of it all was an inevitable, unavoidable eventuality.

In my own case, there were elements of both. I shan’t get into specifics here, as that’s not fair to Jane, who isn’t here to say things for herself (obviously), and it’s also not something I particularly wish to dwell on in this particular format. Suffice to say that despite the fact the experience of splitting up nearly destroyed me completely, it’s probably for the best that we’re no longer together.

For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to Jane for my part in the breakdown of our marriage, and I forgive her for her part in it. It’s both our faults, and it’s no-one’s fault at the same time. It’s just something that Wasn’t Meant to Be, and I think in the long run we’re both likely in much better situations than we were in together.

Enough maudlin musing on the past. I have a future to look forward to. While it’s not the rosiest it’s ever been at the moment, things could certainly be much, much worse.

To those who have helped me through difficult times, whether or not you realise it, I thank you.

#oneaday Day 113: Colonel Gaddafi’s Chicken

Very often, drunken conversations simply degenerate into “I love you, I do, you’re like my best friend and totally awesome and we should totally do this more often like, y’know?” And that’s fine, and to be expected.

But sometimes, if you’re with the right people, something magical happens. Fortuitously, the people I was attending the wedding with yesterday happen to be the right people for something entertaining to happen when discussing things.

We were sitting out in the garden of the wedding venue gazing up at the sky and getting frustrated at the security light that kept going off and coming on every few minutes if we sat too still and then made a sudden movement. Some shooting stars were making an appearance every few minutes and all in all, it was a thoroughly pleasant evening.

Long chats such as the group of us had are often called “setting the world to rights” but I’m not sure the vision of the world we ended up painting was in any way “right”. Here’s the most important things we came up with:

You can wish on bats as well as shooting stars, but bats would rather get on with doing their own thing than grant wishes.
It’s easy to Photoshop in a shooting star — in fact, you can do it in Paint.
Mishearing “spy satellite” as “spice satellite” leads everyone to the natural conclusion that there is a madman somewhere in the world planning to release a selection of herbs and spices into the atmosphere, let them burn up and effectively curry the world.
This didn’t sound like such a bad thing.
Because it was a secret blend of herbs and spices, “The Colonel” came up.
“The Colonel” was not intended to be a reference to Gaddafi, but the image of him cooking chicken and attempting to curry the world was too amusing to pass up.
Ergo, Colonel Gaddafi is now in charge of KFC.
Gaddafi would use cumin as his weapon of choice to release from his spice satellites — ground, not seeds, to allow for greater dispersal.
Gaddafi also uses bats as spies, and they report back on the wishes people are making.
The bats are somewhat embittered by this and just want to be left alone to get in people’s hair and stuff.
Coming soon to iPhone: Colonel Gaddafi’s Angry Bats.
The bar was shutting at midnight, so we should get another round in.

There was a twisted kind of logic to the things we discussed. Though it was more “twisted” than “logic”, really. Still, it gave us all a good giggle at the time, and that’s the important thing.