Quiet after crazy...hopefully

Pastels, little princes and princesses

The big family wedding where I live was a great success! Rained a bit as people were arriving but then it cleared and was a lovely evening. The colour scheme was pastels and bride, groom and family on both sides were dressed in a gorgeous array of champagne, pistachio, soft coral, rose pink, lilacs and so on. I'm a bold colour kinda person but some of the dresses, with all the embroidery, bead work and sparkly bits were just beautiful.

The bridesmaids, sat along the 'thrones' on the stage - which had a large backdrop of pink and ivory roses -looked like princesses and the bride was their queen. The little boys running around in their matching champagne/pistachio outfits were so cute and the ones in black jeans and long, crisp cotton shirts looked like mini super-cool dudes. Interesting to see that unlike Western weddings where the gals spend hours getting their hair styled, the ladies had nothing fancy done. Then again, when you have long, black and super shiny tresses...no need to mess with it!

Food!

Of course there was food everywhere. Catering for the tables (delicious), kiddies' stuff (okay, grown ups too) such as candy floss and a chocolate fountain, a heart shaped cake and cup cakes in the garden 'room' then more sweet things piled up in trays in the kitchen. Asians seem to love sweet treats even more than the Brits love chocolate. If you have a sweet tooth then you're in heaven here. If you're doing keto or diabetic - be warned! Since it was a Muslim wedding - no alcohol! I don't like the stuff so I don't care but it made no difference at all to how much everyone enjoyed the evening. Its value is much overrated in my humble opinion.

Since it was forecast rain, my heart pieces went on the wall in the garden room. I did a last minute hand made guest book but forgot to take a picture, but it all matched with the decor. I finally had a chance to use some thick, heavily embossed cream paper I picked up from somewhere. It's a bit too heavy to wrap corners so I used ivory mulberry (with a bit of copper leaf for bling) to cover the book and cut out a piece of the good stuff to go on the front. Added two hearts in matching pastel colours with the Ms matching the style on the large ones, used some matching pastel papers for the inner cover and there you go! I used to make a lot of books but it's been a while. They're quite fun to do and you can do all sorts of intricate designs, but the hardest part for me is cutting the paper to the same size and putting all the pages together with a technique that doesn't take ages.

It all ran late - as expected and by the time a few of the cousins and myself had cleared all the tables, stacked 120 chairs, piled up empty coke bottles, collected the crockery and serviettes that catering hadn't got to...and swept the floors, it was gone 3am before I got to bed and the family were still bagging food gifts downstairs. Haven't quite made up sleep debt from this last week but been sleeping a bit better than usual so that's helped.

Meanwhile

The Corner Gallery is getting its last batch of art work delivered. The walls are now all hung with paintings, there's a bit of carpentry touch ups to do and I have some more clearing and tarting up to finish in the yard this weekend and they'll be ready for the official opening next Wednesday evening.

I went to another Stand in the Park on Sunday morning and a few of us ended up at a pub for a couple of hours as we discussed strategy and swapped stories. I don't want to be an activist but have agreed to dig out info on a local food production initiative I know about in Vancouver and draft some FAQs. It's not just about Covid measures. It's easy to just let governments push us down a dark road but if we don't know the kind of society we'd prefer to see, it's harder to recognise when we may be going the wrong way. Sigh. I don't know. It's 10.30am and I'm still sleepy - too much going on these last few weeks and there are writing projects to research and crack on with and maybe a new sculpture to do - something autumnal this time. But I need to recharge a bit. Time to use a few days leave and see if I can snag a couple of days in Devon and catch up with friends. Hope we still have some warm sun in September.