The wedding

The wedding I mentioned last time went off without any hitches
(pls excuse the awful pun) ... the couple looked gorgeous, the
venue at Oakham Castle (a huge medieval hall) was amazing, and
the reception at the Old Wisteria Hotel was great too -- 4 star
food in a lovely old hotel ... some of the best wedding food,
I've tasted. The couple decided to keep the whole occasion very
informal, so we didn't have to sit through a load of dull
speeches.

The sun came out for the occasion which was lovely for everyone
except the photographers. I'll have to get some practice in
using a light meter and the manual settings on my camera, as
I overexposed the whites on the bride's dress in some of my shots.

I'm beginning to appreciate the skills of the professional
photographers in balancing the contrasting tones of everyone's
outfits perfectly every time. It's very difficult to get those
perfect photos of white meringues. No wonder some photographers
don't wish to take on the responsibility of doing wedding photos --
and considering the cost of their equipment with cameras & lenses
costing over £2,000 (plus the further expense of photo-editing
and printing), it's not surprising that they charge a lot for the
wedding albums (£2000+).

One interesting thing about the wedding planning was that at the
meal, the guests' table names were colour-coded as to who ate
meat or not ... Mrs C and I and several others were served with
delicious salmon steaks -- the only thing I disliked was
the buttery sauce served up with it - I think sauces should be
served separately, so people can opt out if they so wish. This is
one reason I dislike typical French cuisine -- creamy sauces +++.
I prefer plainer food.

This is another reason why I don't like watching the usual
TV cookery programme where the star chef uses masses of butter
in making savoury dishes or cakes / puddings. And then on another
TV channel there'll be a programme encouraging people to lose
weight, by cutting out a lot of the fatty foods, fry-ups and all
the sugary stuff. Someone should shout "WAKEY WAKEY!!" to the
TV programmers. It's a bit like putting on a programme all about
the virtues of drinking lots of beer and wine, followed by one on
the hazards of overdrinking and alcoholic liver disease.

However, I can see that peering at a lot of lettuce leaves, beans
and lentils wouldn't appeal to a lot of TV audiences. Combine it
with looking at poos, a feisty female presenter, plus a lot of
scientific facts, and you'd be onto a winner.

........... (pls excuse my rambling on) ...............


We went up to Leeds the following day and had a look round
Kirkstall Abbey Museum, a treasure house of local Victoriana and
more modern stuff. Several displays were all about what people
used to wear at weddings ... the Victorians favoured using blue
as the colour of choice for brides' dresses. partly because they
could carry on using the dresses for their Sunday best. I wish
modern women would use the same, or colours other than white,
as then they would be a lot easier to photograph.

If you fancy a look around the museum, click here, and when the
photo is fully loaded, click on the plus sign, and use your mouse
to get a 360 degree view of the street they've re-created. There
are lots of shops and rooms you can look inside, and they've got
some penny arcade machines.