Here comes the bride!

Hello from Italy and from a married lady! It's official and everything went well. I might blog about it later when we get our photos (can't wait.)

Taking a break in a long day

On Sunday, we woke up with hangovers and a mission to get at least part of the way to Innsbruck, about a 7 hour drive away, where we were booked in for Monday night. But first we had to go to our venue and pack up all the decoration and presents that remained there. It took quite a while, so I can only imagine how much work it took for my husband (eek) and in-laws to set up while I was chilling in the hotel room getting my hair and makeup done. 

One hangover-busting Chinese meal later, we were ready to set off on our honeymoon. Seven hours on the road was out of the question, so we settled for a couple of hours driving and a stop in Bad Dürkheim, a cute little spa town in Germany. We selected BD basically for how far it was away, but when we ventured out to find something to eat before taking an early night, we were excited to find out that we had come on the weekend of the Wurstmarkt.

This is apparently the world's biggest wine festival and this year was celebrating its 600th edition. The focus seemed to be more on fairground fun and food than wine from what I could tell, but with our hangovers we weren't looking too hard for the wine section in any case. Jules pointed out that wurstmarkt essentially means sausage fest, which is an interesting way to start one's honeymoon! Sausages aside, it definitely seemed like a good omen for our honeymoon to stumble across a fun special event by chance.

A delicious sausage at the sausage fest

The next day, we continued on towards Innsbruck, Austria, passing over the Alps although not too much was to be seen in drizzly weather. 

Velvety Alpine grass

Castle in the Alps

I knew Innsbruck was in a pretty mountain valley, but I didn't know that it also has so many lovely buildings. Jules spent 7 years living in Innsbruck, so he was my tour guide for the afternoon, spent wandering around the city admiring the lovely architecture.

Normally you'd get a nice view of the Alps, but the moody cloud makes for a good photo too

The famous Golden Roof. We went inside the museum, but there wasn't a lot to see and you couldn't go out on to the balcony

On Tuesday, the forecast was grey and rainy both for Innsbruck and for our destination at Lake Garda, so we weren't in a particular hurry to leave the city. Instead, we toured the Hofburg Palace. Photos weren't allowed, but it was an interesting visit, with a good audioguide explaining the history of the imperial family there, especially Empress Maria Theresa. It's also known for its apartments decorated for the famous beauty Empress Sisi, wife of Franz Josef, although apparently she only stayed in them briefly.

Ceiling in the cathedral

I'm not usually super impressed by church organs, but I loved the effect on this one, almost replicating the look of a cathedral nave in its design

After eating Fleischkäse ("meat cheese" aka a sort of meatloaf - tasty) for lunch, we set off over the Alps and Dolomites for Italy. The low cloud probably hid some pretty views, but it was quite cool seeing it clinging to the sides of the mountains and rising up like steam in the valleys. First stop of our Italian roadtrip is Lake Garda, for a few days of R&R. It's definitely needed - after all the excitement of the wedding and start of the honeymoon we're pretty exhausted and fighting off a bit of a cold. But it's all worth it!

Low cloud in the Dolomites

Driving at the top of Lake Garda

Henny penny

Hola amigos, long time no blog. The wedding is soon approaching, and I plan to blog the honeymoon (a month in Italy, I so can't wait), so I thought I'd better fire up the typing fingers again and check if anyone's still out there (echo... echo... echo...)

Last weekend, I had a whirlwind overnight trip to London for a low-key Hen's Do (that's a bachelorette party to my American friends). This was mostly the initiative of my friend Liz, who has recently finished breastfeeding and therefore returned to the Land of the Drinking. I was completely in the dark about what was planned for me, just hoping that it wasn't going to involve public humiliation or strippers.

I arrived in London on Saturday morning to gorgeous sunny weather and soon found my friend Caroline for a cheeky 11 am drink, and then it was off to pick up the keys to our Airbnb. London is notoriously expensive, but I had found a reasonably-priced place right off Brick Lane, a trendy and gentrifying part of East London. However, we were literally standing outside the address I had been given when I checked my messages and found that we actually had to head to a different address, about a 10 minute walk away. I'm not sure whether the bait and switch was to do with the actual building being rather less salubrious, or whether it was perhaps an illegal subletting of government housing (why not both?), but the actual location was less than prepossessing.

Our home for the night

And on the way into the building, this sign gave us great confidence:

I feel slightly better now I've noticed it was more than a year old, but it wasn't really what you want to see 

Well, safety in numbers and it wasn't actually too terrible inside, so we quickly dumped our luggage and hurried off to lunch on a lovely rooftop terrace, where we were joined by Liz, Amber and a pitcher of raspberry Tom Collins (omg, I never knew such a thing existed, be still my beating heart!)

After lunch, we had to rush back to the apartment for a mystery appointment. Laid out on the table were fishnets, a fascinator and long black gloves, so I guessed pretty quickly that we would be having a private burlesque dancing class. Now, the incorrect address had been communicated to the teacher, via her agency, in advance, necessitating some last minute calls to give the actual address. This meant, kind of understandably, the poor woman was absolutely terrified when she turned up. I think she thought we were deliberately luring her into a seedy estate where no-one knew where she was.

She came in, dressed much as you would expect in a sort of Amy Winehouse style - tattoos, short leopard-print dress, rollers in her hair - and plopped down on the very low sofa (affording us a good view of her knickers) and begged for a few minutes to compose herself. Again, I can understand her feelings - she was all alone, the address changed, the building was pretty sketchy and in a bad neighbourhood... but she proceeded to use the next 10 minutes to complain about how uncomfortable she felt and how relieved she was to see us, coupled with vaguely racist stories about another occasion where she had to give a class to a room full of "overweight black women". She repeated several times how they were black and overweight, just in case we missed how terrible this experience must have been, and then threw in some bonus remarks about being catcalled by Asian men.

Finally, she declared herself suitably recovered and stood up and started pulling off her clothes. Thankfully, she stopped at a pair of spangly hot pants and a tasselled bra. Just as the class was about to begin, she shouted "there's a siamese cat!" staring behind us at the window, 7 storeys up. We stared bewildered for a moment until it became clear that the cat was some sort of an apparition. "Did we know any of the history of the building?" Unsurprisingly, we did not. "There must have been a lot of cats in here, I can feel them." Poor Amber had just taken a mouthful of champagne and it was a good minute before she was able to stop laughing long enough to swallow it.

After these colourful beginnings, the class itself was actually not too bad. Even though it's not exactly intense dancing, it's harder than it looks to be graceful (let alone sexy, thankfully none of us were taking that part too seriously). As Caroline said, it's hard to know how to review it, since we had a lot of fun despite her being an absolute copper-bottomed loon.

Excited to be all dressed up

Sexy ladies

Fun times!

We swept up as best we could before leaving, but I suspect they'll be finding random feathers and wondering what the hell we were up to for some time to come

The rest of the do was positively sedate by comparison. After showering and changing, we headed to a local comedy club, which was amusing enough, then grabbed a bottle of wine and a classic drunk kebab to enjoy on the walk home. The bottle of wine proved too ambitious, since once we got back to the apartment we were all ready for bed at the grand old time of 11 pm (in fairness, it had been a long day, and it was midnight Belgian time).

The next day consisted of brunch, a wander through Spitalfields market and a quick drink at King's Cross before hopping on the Eurostar and back home to watch the F1 and be terrified by a GIANT spider that had taken up residence in the kitchen sink in our absence (Julien had also gone away for the weekend). Definitely a weekend to remember - and no strippers (unless we count crazy burlesque lady)!

Diamond shopping in Antwerp

One of the best things about living in Europe is the breadth of different experiences you are exposed to with a much lower entry barrier than back home. I can't say I grew up dreaming of buying a diamond ring in Antwerp, but if I had, it would have required meticulous planning, a month off work, days of flying, and thousands of dollars of expenditure before you even got to the diamond itself. Here, it was more like, okay so we're going to buy a diamond? Well, obviously we'll drive 45 minutes up the road to a city which has been synonymous with the diamond trade for centuries. I couldn't find a definitive answer on whether it is actually cheaper to get diamonds in Antwerp (and a lot of the online advice was based on people having to travel to and stay in Antwerp for the purchase, thus inflating their budgets), but the amount of diamonds you have to choose from is unparalleled anywhere else. According to Wikipedia, as of 2012, about 84% of the world's rough diamonds passed through Antwerp's tiny "Square Mile" diamond district, with US$16 billion in polished diamonds going through the Antwerp exchanges annually. So whatever you're looking for, chances are you can find it here, and if you can't, they'll make it for you.

What I don't think I've ever heard anyone say about buying a diamond ring is, holy hell it's intimidating. We first went on a bit of a dry run in Brussels, trying to get an idea of what things cost and what our budget should be. (I know that's not the way round you're meant to set a budget, but hey.) I wanted first to go to sort of chain or mall type jewellery shops, as I thought that would be less intimidating. Turns out chain jewellery shops don't really exist in Brussels. We found a few larger places in the middle of Brussels and circled nervously, gathering the courage to go in.

Once inside, the service wasn't great and the selection wasn't great either. They seemed to have only a couple of different models of diamond solitaires, which seemed strange. Plus I asked to see diamond solitaires in French and the woman brought a tray of wedding bands. We looked, confused, for a few minutes wondering if you first chose the metal you wanted, and then they made you choose the setting, and then the stone, but no, she just didn't understand. So we tried again, and she brought out weird dress rings. "Oh no, I just want something plain with one diamond", I said. "Oh, you want a solitaire" she replied. Um, yeah.

The second place we tried was an "Antwerp diamonds" place, which seems to be the Belgian way of indicating a shop that has a lot of different rings and different grade diamonds and you just put two and two together and they set the ring for you. This place had some pretty rings but it was a warm late summer/early autumn day and the shop was tiny and overly hot and I just spent the whole time in there dripping with sweat and feeling like the frumpiest mess on the planet, and so I couldn't meet the jeweller's eye, let alone concentrate on the glamorous business of diamond purchasing when I felt like my face was melting off. I've yet to see a movie where the dashing heroine goes diamond shopping with her foundation dripping, but trust me to make the occasion as unromantic and unaspirational as possible.

We retired defeated from the field of battle, and between the trauma of our first attempt and being busy with other things for a few weeks, it was over a month before we tried again. I did some further research online, locating specific places in Antwerp with a good reputation and drilling myself on haggling techniques and the fact that they're not better than me just because they work in a shop that sells expensive things. (They're not worse than me either, of course, but just trying to buck myself up.)

After a walk up and down Vestingstraat, a drab street currently undergoing roadworks but probably not very fancy at the best of times, we finally felt ready to move from window shopping to going into our first store. We started with Adin, which sells antique and vintage jewellery, partly because I thought it would be kind of cool to end up with a piece with a history and a one-off design, and partly because either you love it or you don't. You're unlikely to end up fussing around for ages trying to find what specific combination of the 4 Cs fit your budget and heart's desire. Luckily for us on our first attempt, the woman who helped us was super sweet and friendly and very patient with showing us everything, and the owner (I think) also came over and explained how diamond cuts were different in antique jewellery. We saw some beautiful pieces, but in the end I decided they weren't quite my style for something I'd be wearing day in and day out. I tend to go for plain jewellery, and was sure I would end up with a classic solitaire. But it was fun to see the vintage pieces just in case.

If I was going to go for something out of left field, this would have been a strong contender

The emerald Art Deco one was pretty, but I couldn't see wearing it every day

You really notice all the little cat scratches when you go ring shopping

These used a sort of illusion setting to make the centre stone look bigger. You could definitely get some decent-value rings if you committed to the vintage route

There was no hard sell and we left with a lot more confidence than we came in with, so I'm glad that was our first port of call. We went a couple of doors down to a place that wasn't on the list, but had some pretty designs in the window, Diamonds on Vesting. Again, there was no hard sell, and there was no problem writing down all the different specifications and prices and taking photos. There was a lovely twisted "coquette" ring, which really highlighted the diamond without being too obviously twisty.

It was kind of frustrating that many of the rings didn't fit on my fingers, but oh well.

We went to one more place on Vestingstraat, where they didn't let us take photos, but where I tried on a blue diamond (kinda cool), and then went to Diamondland, which has the biggest diamond showroom in Antwerp. A lot of reviews online said they took the time to really explain all the different diamond information to you, and so this was a good place to start. We actually went here first but they were too busy to see us, and I'm glad they were. They didn't do a hard sell, exactly, but this was the only place that made me feel uncomfortable out of all the places we visited. Rather than an aggressive approach, they took the buddy buddy "what's your name? wow, that name's so popular in my country! where do you come from? you look so much like my daughter it's amazing!" tactic. I did like that when she "swore", she said "corpus Christi!" though, which gave an agreeably medieval flavour to proceedings.

She took us to an upstairs room and started pulling out little envelopes full of different diamonds, from tiny .15 carat up to a carat. It was kind of cool to see the sparkly little beggars rolling around (and I actually managed to drop a one-carat diamond (supposedly) worth about 10,000€ which she had put loosely into a setting for us to look at), but it didn't take long for us both to (silently) be quite sure we wouldn't be buying here.

The sales technique was also not cool. She took a diamond which, according to the envelope it came in, was worth around 4,200€, and put it together with a ring that apparently she didn't know the price of, but guessed was worth around 300€. Put those figures together in the calculator and magically came up with 5000€. I didn't bother pointing out that you didn't need to be a maths genius to see that didn't add up, but she next assured us that she would go and talk to her boss and see if she could get a good discount for us. Normally they could give around 8-10% and she wasn't sure she could get that much, but she would really try hard for us. We had barely time to stifle our eye rolls before her boss "accidentally" came in, found a price tag of 200€ on the ring (yay! it's already cheaper!) and did some sums on the calculator, which ended up reading 3955€, although she said 3900€ out loud. Our original saleswoman cooed over what an amazing deal it was, and once her boss had left, wrote down the price of 3950€ for us, pointing out that she was even taking an extra 5€ off. In the store, we both politely said thank you very much, we'll have to think about it, yes, 5000€ down to 3950€, that is quite the discount, we'll sleep on it. But once outside, we were both like "geez, trying to take us for a couple of country rubes?!?"

So, drum roll... What did we end up getting? As I said, I was always sure that I would go for a plain solitaire - timeless, elegant, classic. But the more I researched and thought about it, the less sure I got. Maybe it would be better to go for something with a slightly less icky reputation than diamonds, both in the blood diamond sense and in the monopoly cartel sense (although apparently the monopoly has been broken/weakened in recent times)? I'm certainly not going to start accusing people of being sheeple falling for the slick marketing of Big Diamond, but I started to think more about the possibility of getting a coloured stone, even in the diamond capital of the world. Our reason for going into the aforementioned Diamonds on Vesting was actually some "sapphires" in the window (turns out they were tanzanites). Tanzanites are a rare gemstone (much rarer than diamonds) only found in a small part of Tanzania, with a blue-violet hue which can change depending on the angle. They are also one of the birthstones for December, which is a fun coincidence. Jules made me sleep on it - for longer than I would have liked, since the jeweller went away to China in the meantime - but we finally decided on something that I would not have imagined but I absolutely love!

Two tanzanite and diamond rings to choose between

Final choice! Thought I'd better get a manicure for when we actually got to bring this baby home

Transformed to a vivid blue in the early morning light

And, you guys, guess what??? I bargained! Me! Who's scared of everything! The ring was in platinum, and on our first visit the guy mentioned that it would be cheaper in white gold. So Jules and I fixed some numbers between ourselves that we would be willing to go to for the white gold or the platinum setting, and then I said to the guy, "our budget was X" (about 2500€ cheaper than the sticker price), "how close could we get to that figure with the white gold setting?" He didn't want to go quite that low for the white gold, but he offered us the platinum setting for basically the secret price we had agreed beforehand we wanted to pay for it, which saved almost 1500€! Possibly we could have haggled harder and got more off, but I was pretty damn proud of myself and pleased we got to the price we wanted, so I'll take that as a big win :)

MadamElla

This was my first French wedding, and I was interested to observe some of the differences to other weddings I’ve been to (not that many, actually). As you may know, all French weddings are secular, in accordance with the strict separation of Church and State (you’d think this would be enough to stop people protesting against gay marriage, but sadly no). You are free to have a religious ceremony if you like, but that won’t be recognized by the State. If you want to be legally married, you have to do it at the town hall with an official.

In this case, the official was the groom’s father, so obviously the ceremony was a bit different than your run-of-the-mill affair. But after the touching and funny speech, it was time for the legal elements. Unlike any Anglo wedding I’ve been to, the French ceremony includes a reading of the legal texts defining marriage and the spouses’ responsibilities. There was a lot of emphasis on Republican values – as in the values of secularism, liberté, égalité and fraternité of the French Republic, not as in promising to honour God and guns. A lot about having and bringing up children as well, although I suspect at least some of that was snuck in by the potential future grandpapa. The reading out of the full names, occupations and addresses of the spouses and witnesses was also more legalistic than I’m used to – although this provided some more comedy as Aurélien’s poor sister (who did a stellar job of providing the English translation of the speech, I must point out) had to struggle through some unfamiliar American street names. 

Legalities done (although not quite, since as I only discovered on Ella’s blog, the bride and groom were held up inside due to a paperwork snafu), it was back to the reception on foot in the rain. (I never actually made it into my heels until we got back to the garden party, thankfully enough as it turned out, since the little town hall was crammed with well-wishers and I had to stand for the marriage ceremony. Then I promptly sunk into the wet grass, but bravely kept my heels on for the vast majority of the evening nonetheless.) 

I was having too much fun catching up with the Lancelots and Mary Kay and family under a tree (for reasons of rainyness) to even notice that apparently beverages were not being consumed, but once I found the cocktail and snack tent, I didn’t stray too far from the yummy themed cocktails while chatting to blogfriends and many of Ella’s lovely friends from America and Aurélien’s French (and non-French) mates. (Surprisingly, my favourite was a cosmopolitan – I would have gone with the mojito if you’d told me I could only have one.)

Enjoying a cosmo with some of Ella's friends

This got me into a bit of trouble, however. As the afternoon wore on and the cocktails kept rolling, we were having a lovely discussion about poetry and other literary matters with a couple of Ella’s friends (genuine poets!) and a few of Aurélien’s friends. At some point, it was remarked upon that the punch bowls were getting a bit empty and we set ourselves the challenge of finishing the cocktails before moving on. Now, I did realize that things had emptied out a bit in the garden, but if there was a formal announcement that dinner was served, we missed it and, well, you just don’t issue a drinking challenge to a Kiwi chick. In my much younger days, I was known for such party tricks as “opening my throat” and pouring a specified amount of booze down in one. I once bested a 6-foot-something man built like a brick sh!thouse at a challenge which involved drinking half a bottle of peach schnapps (ugh) each in the shortest amount of time possible. Then I probably demonstrated how I can fit my whole fist (well, up to the knuckles) in my mouth. Because that’s how classy Gwan rolls. Or rolled, I don’t tend to engage in competitive drinking anymore, but you can probably still persuade me to put my fist in my mouth after a few beverages, if no-one has a camera handy.

Some of the cocktails in question

Long story short (actually, the above was more a case of making a short story long, and unnecessarily filled with embarrassing drinking stories from my youth), before too long the handful of others had also drifted away and only myself and one of Aurélien’s friends were left finishing up our cocktails in the tent.

I only realized that quite a bit of time had passed when I got a call from Ella’s phone asking where I was. I should have figured something was up when my jokey reply to "Where were you?" (I answered, "We were in the bushes", obvs) was met with an excited squeal and a "Who's 'we'?!?". But I really wasn’t expecting to walk into the dining tent a) to find that everyone was not only seated, but had *finished the first course* and b) to a round of applause from the assembled guests. Hugely awkward, especially since I didn’t even know where I was sitting so couldn’t flee to my seat as quickly as I’d have liked! The rest of the evening, I had people coming up and saying (hopefully at least half-jokingly) that they’d heard I’d been “otherwise engaged” in the bushes while they were tucking into their entrées. Cringe! The end result was that the young gentleman and myself kept well away from each other and any suspicious bushes for the rest of the evening…

This post is getting long already, so I’ll just say that the rest of the evening was fab. I’ve never seen a bride and groom actually boogie on down in their first dance instead of doing a sedate shuffle, and I did plenty of my own moving and shaking as well. (Seriously, I dread to think of the millions of photos probably floating around of me with what was uber-fluffy hair and probably more cleavage than anyone was comfortable with.) As well as being my first French wedding, this was also my first New York wedding, so I even got to participate in a Jewish chair dance (sorry, I’m sure there’s a proper name for that). I was right next to the bride and groom when the call went out, so ended up being the only girl to take a leg of the chair. Turns out that holding up a chair with a fully-grown man (even a slim one) is hard, so I drafted in a replacement man about halfway through and joined the circle of dancers instead.

It really was a fun evening, and I loved getting to chat with some awesome people (including meeting the lovely Grenobloise for the first time). All in all, it was a great party and félicitations to the happy couple! 

Balloons of good fortune (or something). Grenobloise and I were a tad concerned these might end up setting one of the tents on fire

Ella didn't specify, but I suspect this shot of yours truly is courtesy of Camille Collin

Does the hovering wizard claw of death shooting out of my chest remind you more of the Holy Spirit in Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ, or one of the chicken feet from Baba Yaga's hut? Discuss...

Either way, don't worry, I can tell from this photo I'm not trying to put a curse on anyone, this is a classic Gwan "here I am being funny" expression/gesture captured from the ages. The wizard claw is merely shooting out (attempted) witty rays. PS, talking of "witticisms", I have been dying to use this post title and secretly hoping the bride wouldn't get there first (selfishly!) It's not even that great!

Get her to the mairie on time!

For those who want to enjoy a meta-experience, you can read Ella’s version of these events here.

Unsurprisingly, for me the morning of Ella’s wedding began much more calmly than for the bride. I woke up reasonably early – in the bride’s bed, which was a first for me! – with plenty of time to wash my hair, grab breakfast from a local bakery and do my hair and makeup before chilling out and waiting for the rest of the guests who were also making their way out of town on the RER. When the rest of the girls arrived, they brought a wave of stressed energy and lively chatter with them which was slightly overwhelming at first, but with the addition of bubbly and the realization that *they* weren’t going to be holding up proceedings since the bride was running late, I soon got to know them and felt we clicked very well. Of course, Ella has great taste in friends!

A series of slightly frantic phone calls, asking for overnight bags to be packed and bubbly to be cracked alerted us that all wasn’t going quite so smoothly on Team Ella over at the hair salon. Deep breaths, a glass of champagne (although no Xanax) and a reminder that nothing starts without the bride were needed when Ella finally made it in the door, late and more than a little frazzled.

When Ella had first told me she planned on taking the RER to her wedding, dressed in her wedding dress and sipping champagne en route, I had imagined us commandeering an entire section of the train, clinking glasses while posing for photos and laughing at the stares of French people all agog to see a bride on the train. (Generally, the French will stare if you speak English on the RER, or wear a bright colour or go outside in 13° weather without a coat, so that part at least wasn’t much of a stretch.)

It was an Interesting Trip, but not a Very Bad Trip. (Photo stolen back from Ella's blog)

The reality wasn’t quite like that. I’d like to say that things went off like a military operation, but the main thing our journey had in common with one was the amount of running and shouting that went on. We were women on a mission, with no time for hesitation or stragglers. Problems with the ticket barriers were dealt with with ruthless efficiency; we were assigned buddies to make sure everyone made it on and off the various metro and RER trains, and instructions for each step of the journey were barked out in advance: “We are getting off at the next stop, turn left, right along the platform, up the stairs. GO GO GO!”

Schnell!

Piling on to the RER, our last connection, was an opportunity for a breather, or so you’d have thought. Visions of the nine of us sitting companionably beside each other splitting a bottle of bubbly were thwarted by the lack of free seats in the carriage, and specifically an aggressive man and his jungle of plants. Allow me to set the scene – there are bench seats on either side of the aisle, enough to fit three or maybe four people at a pinch on each bench. Multiply that by four (two facing each other on each side), and you have seating for 12-16 people. Ample, one would say. Except that there was one couple on one side of the aisle who, instead of putting all their fricking plants right next to them, put them all on the floor across the aisle, hence taking up space for said 12-16 people between the two of them.

 Now allegedly the guy did offer to move the plants before we got there, and allegedly (or, um, actually) Ella and I might have steamed in a bit later and expressed our displeasure with the situation in a vocal fashion, but that still doesn’t change the facts that 1) your plants shouldn’t have been all up in everyone else’s business to begin with and 2) you don’t shout at a stressed bride, dude. Still, Ella and I held our own (most of the art of French arguments can be reduced to “make a lot of random noises” – “eh oh, pfft, bah non, quoi”) although we continued to get evil looks from his direction for the rest of the train ride, not improved by the fact that we were all swigging straight from a bottle of wine. I think it’s safe to say, though, that the rest of the train were on our side, despite the Rowdy Anglo Factor being particularly high on this occasion.

The way I look like I'm popping out of Ella's suitcase amuses me

It wasn’t the way I pictured it, it wasn’t how Ella had pictured it either, but it was the most memorable wedding dash I’ve been involved in, and I was proud to be a part of it!