A Wedding Full of Memories

I’m back at uni for the final time this academic year to collect my results (I passed with a high 2.1 which I am both amazed and relieved with!) and to pack up the rest of my room. This means I’ve finally got some time and some peace and quiet without distractions to right a proper blog post – it feels like ages since I sat down and wrote properly, so sorry for that.

Last weekend, all the girls of the family plus Andy got dressed up to go to my ‘kind-of-cousin’s’ wedding (he’s my mum’s cousin’s son, so we must be cousins once removed or something like that). My mum’s car was in the garage, which meant it was up to my little Toyota Starlet to drive the three and a half hour journey. My mum and I were going to share the driving, but I’m pleased to say that I actually managed to drive the whole way down there (I’m considering adding this achievement to my CV).

It was held in a village on the south coast which was super awesome because my grandma and great aunt used to own a holiday cottage there which we used to have our holidays in until they sold it when I was about 7. The one thing I wanted to do was stand on the beach and also have a look at the old cottage. We got there at the perfect time, with about 45 minuted until the wedding service – just enough time to share some home made cookies between us.

The service was lovely and very traditional. My favourite bit though, was when they played the music for them to walk back down the aisle and they spontaneously started to do a little dance right down between everyone. I don’t think it was planned, they were just so happy it kind of happened of its own accord. Once everyone was outside, there was lots of waiting around while photos were being taken, so we took one or two of our own to keep us occupied, and then we all went over to the hotel for the reception.

The mode of transport for most of the wedding guests was a huge red double decker bus, which I thought was quite a fun idea. I’m glad I wasn’t on it though as the roads to get to the hotel were particularly narrow and it was an incredibly windy day!

We eventually made it to the hotel where we ended up waiting at least 5 hours for even more photos. Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating, but it was a LONG time (although the free Pimms made it a lot better). Heather got left on bridesmaid flower holding duties while said bridesmaid went to find her baby (who would be my cousin twice removed? Second cousin? Something like that) so we could give him some cuddles.

After this we were called to have our photo taken and after that we made a bid to freedom and headed to the beach which was right on the doorstep of the hotel. I can’t explain the feeling I got when I went onto the beach. It was SO windy and it felt like we were finally stood on a proper beach. Although we stopped holidaying regularly there when I was quite young, I still remember it very vividly and we’ve been back a couple of times since, although the last time we went was about 4 years ago now. It wasn’t even the same bit of beach we used to go to, it was a bit further round but hearing the crashing of the waves and breathing in the salty air and seeing the pebbles slowly giving way to sand just made me feel like I was 6 years old again. It was amazing! I turned to Heather and said, “I can’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now.” And she replied with, “You don’t have to, I feel exactly the same.”.

We went back up to the hotel and at last it was lunch time. We were all ravenous because we didn’t sit down to eat until half four and we’d had breakfast at about 6:30 with just one cookie each in between. When the food came though, boy was it worth the wait! It was SO GOOD! Unfortunately, my grandma couldn’t come as my car’s a bit uncomfortable for her and it was a long ride. However, this meant her ‘meaty’ meal could be swapped for Andy’s vegetarian one that he changed his mind about, and the extra vegetarian one was shared between the rest of us. We didn’t want the waiters to stop bringing the extra food (as we were three starving people and one starving pregnant person), so after we’d shared it out, we’d quickly put her knife and fork on the plate and cover it with sauce or something to make it look like she’d just gone to the loo. They must have thought she was quite ill, spending that long in the toilet! I’m sure they cottoned on to what we were doing though. The starter and dessert were fruit and cheesecake, pictured below, and the main was nut cutlets, roast potatoes, potato rosti and vegetables and was too yummy to wait and take a photo for, sorry!

The place settings were very pretty and each came with a delicate bag filled with sweets. I hope they didn’t hand select the love heart messages for each person though, otherwise God knows what they think of me!

There were also bubbles on the table (which probably didn’t help my case when I was happily blowing them when the waiter came round offering wine and completely missed me out – for the record, I’m nearly twenty!). They did make for some pretty bubble blowing pictures though.

After the meal, we quickly slipped away onto the beach again. It was even windier, but still lovely and felt worlds away from the wedding with lots of people we had just left. It felt as though we were all on our own and it was beautiful.

We went back inside and stayed for a while before leaving to find our way to the Travel Lodge we were staying in. We had a calm evening looking through all the photos and groaning about how full we were before collapsing into our beds. The next day, we went to a barbecue to finish off the celebrations. The house which was hosting the barbecue was really close to the house we used to go to, so we slipped away to have a look at it. It was completely boarded up and derelict, which we knew it would be but we were surprised to see it was for sale. Completely undoable for any of us to buy it, but interesting to know that something might come of it rather than it just sitting there getting worse and worse. We spent a few minutes scouring the beach for sea glass and skimming stones into the sea like we always used to, before it was time to go back and say our goodbyes.

It was really enjoyable but quite odd being there really. It kind of felt like I’d been dropped in one of my memories or into one of our old photos. I had some of the best times of my life on that beach and in that cottage and it’s had such an impact on me, despite how young I was when I stayed there. I just hope it won’t be too much longer before we get to visit it again, and who knows, when we’re all rich (haha) maybe we’ll buy a holiday house around there that we can go on family holidays to with all of our children? I think that really would be a dream come true.

• Posted in: My Family ♦ Random
• Tagged: Beach, Holiday, Sand, Sea, Wedding