Wedding Weekend

Walking to the church on time

So we all slept in last night as we didn't get home until after 11pm!

We didn't have much planned for today, although it was Miss Swindlehurst's wedding and Tom wanted to go along for a look.  It was in Wray, not far from here, so I did a quick FB check to see if anyone else was going, quite a few were (all girls) so we decided to go along.

Happy Bride

First of all, though was the matter of the cricket tea - finally after 3 years we got caught and asked to provide a cricket tea.  We only got asked on Wednesday so I didn't have time to make anything nice for it and anyway, Matt said that processed junk tends to go down well.  I let him order everything in and lead me as to what to do.  The morning was therefore spent buttering and filling rolls and getting everything together.  We then delivered it all to the community centre and then Tom and I headed off to Wray.

There is a nice tea room in Wray, so I thought we would get there early, have lunch and then head off to the church.  We got there, the tea room was closed, and in the garden was a magnificent marquee made from 3 Tepees joined together - she was having her reception there.  Wow!  It was an expensive wedding.  The streets of the village were covered in love hearts, and there were chalked H&Is all over the place.  I parked up and went in search of food.  There was a pub but it was full to bursting with wedding guests - so we gave that a miss.  We then went to the Post Office in search of sandwiches - we failed.  They didn't stock any.  In the end we had a packet of crisps and some biscuits each which we ate down by the river.  Not exactly the best lunch in the world - but cheap!  Miss Swindlehurst was ruining our outing!!!!!

Working Hard

Children at the gate

We ate up and then bumped into Caitlin and Evie, we all walked along to the church and saw quite a few of Tom's class mates and quite a few teachers.  We didn't have to wait too long to see the bride - her position was given away by a drone coming along the street (a proper 21st century wedding this one).  She walked down the street as her parents lived just down the road, so we all got to see her well, and she stopped to say hello and hug everyone.  Very cute.

Now what do we do?

Once she had gone into the church a lad arrived with a lot of twine.  Apparently tradition here is for children to tie the church gates shut whilst the wedding ceremony takes place.  The bride and groom then have to through pennies and sweets to the children to be let out.  (The best man also needs to be 'on to it' and have a very sharp knife with him).  It took the whole ceremony to tie the gates shut - they did a good job.  They were well prepared though - Miss Swindlehurts' Dad turned up at the gates and told the children to chant 'Hannah' (forgetting that they don't know her as such!)  After some encouragement they shouted for her and along she came - with a box of 10 pence pieces and a bag of sweets which got thrown through the gates, the children did very well.  Tom was very pleased - he focused on the money and managed to get 70pence.

Money and sweets went everywhere

When she came through the gates, the children threw confetti over her and then she spent some time with them all for photos before carrying on her merry way.  She was having a truly lovely day.

Confetti

We came back to Ingleton, headed over to the cricket and found that for once Ingleton were doing well, so we went to the Community Centre and lay out all the sandwiches etc.  There was a church jumble sale going on at the same time - Tom almost got adopted by the old women who thought he was a star helping me out.

We then watched the cricket, served the tea, cleared up and came home.  Tom was in bed early and asleep immediately - he's had a raft of late nights recently and as a result his behaviour today wasn't great.

The happy couple and her class

Sunday

Pasta muncher

Tom had his cricket session in the morning and then we headed to Skipton to look round the new farm shop.  We were very pleasantly surprised, it was huge and the prices were very decent - rivals Booths anyway.  We had lunch in the cafe which was very very lovely.  Even the children's meals were made with real food (quite unusual).  Such a shame we are about to go on holiday, must go back on our return and see what tasty morsels we can find.










Note for Cricket Tea next time:
Processed food is good - all processed stuff went first
Crisps not that popular
Fruit not that popular
Sandwiches - we did deli rolls cut in half - 2 per player, assuming 25 players.  Needed about 10 more.
No juice needed for the tea, but need some for breaks