Our Wedding day!

Our wedding went just too fast!!! One minute it was all anticipation and nerves the next it was all over!! How ever we had such a lovely day. In fact we had a wonderful time from the start of the week when guests began to arrive, to the post wedding day 'boules' tournament!
The days before the big day were spent entertaining my Grandparents and dining out in the city's restaurants as the English folk arrived. I really loved the meals we had at Assiette en Rose and Restaurant de Mai both serving traditional South of France grub. In fact we ate really well all week!The day before the wedding we decorated the tables at the restaurant with skeleton leaves and sheaves of corn and berries on the tables. We had also made menus and hung skeleton leaf fairy lights around the dance floor. It was so exciting waiting for everyone to arrive.....talk about a build up to the main event and I was so impatient!

After waking with the dawn suddenly the hours just before the wedding began to fly past! Nothing like a glass of bubbly to calm the nerves! Despite all the last minute organising of hotels, hair do sessions, people getting lost and putting that dress over my head everything just fell into place and we all set off for the Mairie in St Orens. Like all French weddings this is where we had our civil service. If you get married you have to have this, by law and then if you want you can go on to have a religious service. I got all teary in the car as I recited my lines to say to Oli!

We were lucky to have the Mayor himself do our service. After reading through the laws of marriage (very much referring to any future children) he read some poetry and then Oli and I exchanged rings saying our own little vows to each other!
As well as our rings we were given a medal. It shows a man and
woman on the front who are looking towards the future together, it also has details of our wedding day on the back! We also got given our family book, which I think is really cool; not so sure about the eight blank pages for registering our future children though!!























After the ceremony we all met up at the restaurant set in the grounds of the lovely old farmhouse, Domaine du Bousquet. During the Vin d'honneur we rushed outside during a sunny spell to take some photos. Everyone just looked so lovely!




























Then after downing a few more glasses of punch at the Vin d'honneur we moved onto the feast! I think I was already rather drunk by this point as I grabbed Dad for some pre dinner dancing and I got all confident with my French as I tried to chat with the guests!
Firstly we had a starter which was delicious, a salad with smoked duck cutlets, potted meat on toast and foie gras in a raspberry dressing!
We then had a bit of dancing to the music our Breton/Occitan band (traditional French music) were playing. We then had a fish course of Salmon and caramelised onion sauce! Feeling a bit full up by now, what with the tight corset on my dress we had a pause while Oli's parents gave a very moving speech. This is where I found out that the trips to the mountains with Joël were not really pre wedding 'tests'!!Then we had the meat course....Duck with Olives..........more dancing...... a cheese selection....... Fred's speech (which moved Oli to tears) and finaly the dessert!!!!! This was carried through the room a blaze with sparklers......a traditional decoration for the 'bringing out the cake'!But before we sat down to this final course the champagne was brought out and Oli was given a sword to cork the first bottle!! It's a shame we didn't have a photo but we did save the cork which still had the neck of the bottle around it! We spent the rest of the evening trying to learn the dance steps we were shown.....but as the evening went on it just didn't get any easier.....I wonder why!!!!!! As the guests left a few of us stayed on to swig back some beer, I think we got home around 4.30am!!!!
It was such a special day that went too fast... my dress is still hanging in our bedroom, It will be such a shame to put it away! I've spent ages trying to choose the photos for the blog, I hope it gives you an idea of what a lovely day we had!!!