The wedding was at 1.30pm at the church on Clapham Common. I’d hoped to have done the practice run the night before to see how easy it was to get to and to make sure we left enough time to arrive before the bride did but it wasn’t to be.

The kids lay in bed watching TV whilst I nipped to Tesco for some cereal and to pick up some plastic bowls which I’d forgotten to get for the camping supplies. By the time everyone was showered and dressed the clock had hit 1pm. Where had the day gone? We decided that the tube was going to take far to long and had the hotel phone us a taxi hoping that traffic wouldn’t be too bad. We couldn’t come all this way and then miss the ceremony! This feeling wasn’t helped when the driver said it normally took at least 25 minutes to get us to where we were going on a good day and within 100m from the hotel we were in gridlock. He managed it though. Erica however had fallen asleep in the back of the car by the time we arrived at the church.

We arrived just before H-Hour and I took the kids through to the creche while Vonnie took her seat. Just as I stood in line at the toilet with Nairn the music changed and I panicked a little until I realised everyone in front of me in the queue was in the choir so I was safe until they all disappeared. Back in the church I found my seat and time went past but still no bride. To cut a long story short there was a music festival on Clapham Common that weekend so the roads were extremely busy and the brides driver went the wrong way around the one way system, I think, so she ended up having to walk across part of the common to get there.

As the ceremony started I had a quick look at the order of service and it looked huge. We we’re going to be there a while. It turns out that the Church Of England is nothing like the wedding ceremonies up here in Scotland. The normal CoE ceremony seems to be 90 minutes long and with a bit of shaving and the cutting of a few hymns Jamie and Zara got theirs down to 60 minutes but it’s still far longer than the Scottish “Do you? Do you? Yer maryed” ceremony. It was really nice though and it actually flew in. I have to admit though it’s really weird being at a wedding and not seeing any kilts. If we could have afforded the hire of one for the week I’d have been showing it off. In saying that though the newly married couple looked great even if the only tartan near the place was on my daughters dress curled up in the creche. The choir were fantastic and really made it for me as although I’m a card carrying athiest you can’t beat a bit singing in a place that sounds that good.

After the ceremony I went to get the kids back from the creche and despite all the noise Erica was still fast asleep. We made our way out of the church past the bride and groom to be greeted by a wall of sunshine and loads of people smiling and chatting away. We hadn’t arranged transport to the reception but there was a Routemaster bus put on to ferry folk to Pimlico. As I walked over towards it I started singing a song that I love but it was a really strange place to start singing that particular song. It wasn’t until I stopped singing but it carried on without me that I realised it was coming from the festival. It turns out King Creasote were playing that day and just at that time started belting out Hamish Imlach’s Cod Liver Oil And The Orange Juice. It somehow put me in an even better mood than I was before.

The Routemaster bus was a nice touch. I’d never been on a traditional style London bus before unless you include Edinburgh bus tour buses but I can see why people get nostalgic about them. The driver had parked the bus on the pavement before everyone clambered on so he hit the kerb as he drove off and there was one hell of a grinding noise. Nothing fell off and we got away OK though. At one point he took a wrong turn and ended up having to make a detour round some roadworks when the road we were on was closed but somehow they made it through the side streets without hitting anything.

Despite the rain threatening to appear the weather stayed nice all through the reception at Pimlico Gardens. when we arrived it was Pimm’s and champagne in the gardens. Vonnie mingled and met several people that she knew online from Live Journal while I tried to juggle some drinks, taking photos whilst keeping an eye on the kids. Talking of the kids they enjoyed every second of being outside. They got on great with all the other kids that were there and spent most of the time either running about the grass or climbing on the statue at the far end of the gardens. There was an incident with one of the bride and grooms kids falling asleep under a bush which in turn led to a few comments afterwards about the suitability of the location. My personal opinion? I thought given the weather the location was an inspired choice. The kids loved the place and would probably have preferred playing out there all night if they didn’t have to go inside for dinner and it was perfect for the adults to mingle get to catch up with people before the meal.

The location for the meal and evening reception was great. If you’ve ever watched Love Actually the wedding reception scene at the start was filmed there. Whilst it had been a while since I’d watched that particular film, well 7 months actually as I’m sure it is on every Christmas, and I didn’t recognise it when we were there when I look back at the film it brings back memories of that day now. As the building was an old boathouse and not designed for a hundred of so folk clapping and banging their feet during speeches everyone was given a squeaky rubber duck to squeeze instead. The kids loved them and by the end of the night I think we had about 20 of them stashed in various bags as they kept coming back with more of them and refusing to part with them.

Everyone around our table were great although I’m not sure just what Zara meant when she named it ‘London Zoo’ on the seating plan! Actually I take that back as we had all three kids on our table so I know just fine where it might have came from. After talking for a while we somehow found out that two of the people at our table know Mo from his time in London which was very surreal. The meal came and went and like all wedding meals I enjoyed just a little to much of it and the speeches were great which isn’t the norm for most weddings I’ve been to where I don’t know anyone. We even got a mention in the bride’s speech!

The evening went by in a blur with Vonnie meeting more Livejournal friends and the kids just being great in general. Greer was on top form and loved the attention she was getting. Erica was a star and kept everyone including the other guests amused. Nairn spent most of his evening either at the craft table or dancing with the bride and groom and Findlay spent his evening building a fishing rod from the craft materials that would reach the Thames. He even tried to find some bait at one point.

Unfortunately I had a little to much to drink at one point and thought it would be a great idea to dance with Erica. I believe a Prodigy track came on which we caught the tail end of but Rammstein and The Ramones followed it up and I think we had cleared the floor by the time those tracks finished.

So anyway the end of the night arrived and we decided to head back to the hotel and get some sleep. Unfortunately the Victoria Line was still off so we decided to start walking to Victoria to get the district line back across to the hotel. We got about half way to the tube station when Vonnie decided her new shoes meant she wasn’t walking any further. The only sticking point was that with the bar being free all night and we weer using oyster cards for traveling on the tube we only had £15 on us. We hoped that it would be enough but as with everything in London money disappears fast when it’s being spent. We hailed a Hackney and managed to get the pram into the back of it and got a very friend driver who said he’d do his best to get us as close as he could to our hotel. He actually got us to within 100 yards of the hotel but on the wrong side of the road so he turned down towards Earls Court and dropped us just after the traffic lights. It seemed to be a day of cutting things fine but everything working out in the end.

We’d had a great day and another late night so we just hoped Greer would sleep though and let us prepare for the next few days traveling and camping.

Tags: church, Clapham, free booze, Jamie and Zara, kids, Pimlico, rubber ducks, Somebody up there does like us, taxis, wedding

Once we were on the road things went well. After our traffic problems right after leaving the house had been solved we barely seen anything that could be called traffic most of the way down the motorway. In fact the only time we seen anything that would come close was just as we stopped to get a couple hours rest at a service station. The road on the other north-bound carriageway was clear and then a few cop cars flew up with their lights flashing and then about 500 metres after that all three lanes were completely full with cars and trucks just sitting there. I hadn’t see any accidents on the road so I’m assuming one of the cars that had still been moving was being chased. I like to think the worlds like the movies that way.

Anyway the service station we stopped at turned out to be where most of the buses heading to London stop for a toilet break and so as soon as everyone in the car but myself got off to sleep the buses turned up and the noise everyone was making was enough to keep me awake. After a couple of hours and a hot chocolate for me and some caffeine for Vonnie later we were off again. We hit the outskirts of London at around 5.30am and started panicking about the congestion charge. Or rather I did and Vonnie had realised that it didn’t kick in until 7am or something like that. We basically had an hour and a half to find the hotel, dump our bags and make it over to Clapham to get a parking permit for our car.

We had a print out of the AA directions which I thought were to Zara’s house but it turns out they were actually for the church. Thankfully the hotel was almost on the way and with my map of Britain in front of me turned to the Street maps of Central London I took one look at it and thought this would be easy. What we hadn’t realised was the map we had missed out about 70% of the roads we passed. If it wasn’t a main road it wasn’t there which is clever when your trying to say,’it’s the second left’ whilst directing someone and it’s actually something like the seventh left thanks to 5 other streets in there. We ran foul of this problem just as we got to Baker Street but we eventually found a road we recognised to we made it around Marble Arch with ease. We hit another snag as we drove towards Kensington as I took us off the main road a couple of turns too early but we got there in plenty of time. The hotel kindly let us dump our bags about 7 hours early and we zoomed off to Clapham.

Once we got past Battersea Power Station I again thought this would be easy. It wasn’t until I tried to find the map for that part of London that I realised the scale had changed and where we had all the main roads and some of the minor road before we now barely had all the main roads. I could get us to Clapham Common, which I did, with ease but from there we didn’t have a clue. It was round about this point that I realised the directions weren’t for Zara’s house and after driving for a bit we stopped to get our bearings and feed Greer. It was at this point that I remembered I had Google Maps on my phone and within a couple of minutes I’d tracked down where we were and after Vonnie pointed out that the invites had Jamie and Zara’s address of them I had a route marked out on my phone and within another 5 minutes we were turning onto their street. We couldn’t find their house though! We did however find a McDonalds and stopped there for breakfast just as it hit 7am. Zara and Jamie came down to meet us and direct us over to the parking spot. It turns out the parking spot was almost right on the Common in a private street where Jamie’s mother lives. Very swish.

Findlay recovering from the shoe shopping

Once that was dealt with and we’d got everything we were likely to need for the day out of the car we headed off to the tube station. First stop was Oxford Street as we needed to get shoes for Vonnie and Erica whilst sheltering from the rain in McDonalds for the second time that day and then we headed back to the hotel to check in early and get a sleep. I’d got us to change at Earl’s Court onto a train that took us to Kensington (Olympia) but as those trains are only every 20 minutes or so we sat for ages and then had to walk back to the hotel using Google Maps as our guide. It wasn’t until we got to the Tesco at the end of the road that we clocked the two Celtic supporters we’d met on the tube that got off at Earl’s Court. It turns out that We’d spent all that time waiting on that second train only for it to takes us further away from the hotel than we already had been. A lesson learned.

After a snooze we had hoped to get back out to Clapham to catch up with Zara after the rehearsal but by the time we made it into to Westminster where we’d have got the tube out to Clapham it was too late. We wandered about looking for somewhere to eat and crossed the bridge to find a noodle bar place called Aji across Westminster Bridge in Lambeth that was a lot like Wagamama but better. The place was dead but at closing time on a Friday night I’m not surprised but the food was fantastic so I’ll need to remember that place in future. We sauntered back towards the Houses of Parliament where Findlay had commented early, yet again, that Big Ben wasn’t as big as he thought it should be and Nairn surprised us by remembering it’s the bell that’s called that and not the tower.

Anyway it was a late night but the kids had been great so we headed back to the hotel wondering how the next day was going to pan out.

Tags: Big Ben, Clapham, Earl's Court, Kensington, McDonalds, Noodles, Oxford Street, shoes, train, Tube, Underground, Westminster