The wedding entry
23.10.07, 10:13 pm
So, my father got married on Friday at 2pm, to the great-great-great granddaughter of the Wicked Witch of the West. Who I am now related to, along with her two children, and will now have to see on every single family occasion until the end of time. God, let�s stop fannying around for a second � the wedding was hideous. I mean, I knew it was going to be hideous from a personal unexpressed perspective, but not from a general expressed perspective. Add in uncontrollable tiredness and bad hormones, and you have the reason why it�s taken me three days to sum up the reserve to write about it.
So James and I trolled up to Manchester Airport to pick up my sister on Thursday night, after I had two days of faffing about with my stupid outfit, and finally located her after going to the wrong terminal � my sister being zero use as she�d had to take out her contacts, and thus couldn�t even discern if I was a boy or a girl. Mmm, flattering! Anyway, we got to New Mills about tenish, and had to go down to the town hall to meet them as they were still getting the reception ready. Amanda couldn�t have looked less pleased to see me. Initially I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and was about to go in for the polite one-armed hug when I noticed the flat look of dislike and quickly stepped away. I tend to avoid touching people who don�t like me. I think they prefer it that way, and plus you�ve no idea where they�ve been. Anyway, we eventually went back to Amanda�s, my sister and I gave out our holiday presents (tried very hard to make out that my dad�s present was also for Amanda, not sure how successful that was) and I finally got to slink off to bed about half elevenish.
Friday morning was very uneventful. I was up at the crack of dawn, as it felt like a work day, and most of the morning was spent making small talk. My Uncle Huw arrived with Sally (his wife), who I haven�t seen in about 4 years, and we all got changed and fannied about some more. James was very impressed with the outfit. I was less than impressed with my hair, as it should�ve been cut weeks ago. My sister took forever to get ready. Eventually we set off for Stockport town hall for the ceremony, got stuck in awful traffic and turned up with two minutes to spare. Hurrah!
Met various people that I don�t really have much time for, and then my gran finally turned up. She was also EXTREMELY impressed by the outfit, which just goes to show the low opinion that she usually has of my dress sense. Finally it was ceremony time, which lasted all of two and a half minutes. Seriously, blink and you�d have miss it. I got up and signed the witness thing with Amanda�s son, people took various photos whilst I stood there grinning vacantly like a fool, and then we all trolled outside and took more photos. And then we slowly headed off to the Turkish restaurant for the meal.
This is where the badness began. I was walking ahead with Huw, who decided to tell me that he didn�t like Amanda, that he thought she was very unfriendly, hard and a gold-digger, that he didn�t think that she liked him and Sally, and that he thought my dad was making a huge mistake. He then started talking about how wonderful Bernie was, which was incredibly painful, before going back to how my dad was rushing into things. We arrived at the restaurant to discover that there weren�t enough seats around the long table, so Hugh and Sally had to sit with my other Uncle and his new wife on their own around the corner. I later learned that this offended Huw massively, especially as he was the best man, and him and Sally were on the point of walking out.
Once the meal was over, James drove me, Huw and Sally back to Amanda�s. A car journey filled with your ex-Marines uncle ranting on about how Amanda should just go back to Transylvania, and that if she ever did anything to hurt your dad she would promptly be killed, is not actually as fun as it sounds. I decided not to tell him my opinion of Amanda, as that would just be inviting trouble, but it was pretty obvious anyway as I said nothing to defend her. My uncle has a good heart, despite being a bit of a rough-and-ready Notts blokely bloke. And despite not being massively close to my dad, he�s always looking out for him.
Huw and Sally left to get ready for the reception. We went back to Amanda�s, followed by Amanda�s mother, sister and sister�s husband (who I�d never met), and for some reason we were shoved into a room with them and left to entertain them, despite only just being introduced, whilst Amanda and my dad pissed around in the kitchen opening presents and drinking tea. Really really rude, and just another example of their total ME ME ME it�s all about ME thing that they have going on.
Finally, the reception. My uncle got more annoyed over things I won�t bother going into, cornered my sister and talked her ear off about Amanda (she won�t tell me what he said). Him and Sally got drunker and drunker, and I worried that he�d have a blow-out with my dad, but thankfully John and Maggs (Maggs was Bernie�s best friend and consequently they�re both now friends of the family) turned up and got chatting with them and generally deflected the situation. The rest of the evening passed without incident, and James, Alice and me buggered off to Sheffield as soon as we could on the Saturday morning.
Apparently my gran doesn�t like her either, and thinks that she�s hard and unfriendly. She then spouted off all this crap about how maybe it�s life�s fault, not hers, and that she might be different with my dad. I really, really wanted to tell her about the holiday and the jewellery, and that I really dislike her and have huge misgivings about the whole thing, but I didn�t. It�d cause too much trouble. She also said some stuff about how I look just like my mum, and am just like her, and that she�d be proud of me, which made me feel very uncomfortable because I can never handle hearing anything along those lines. My my, let�s count those childhood issues! Anyway, from what I can gather the only person who likes Amanda is my dad. So that bodes well. To be honest, it all seemed a lot simpler when it was just me who didn't like her, as opposed to me and the entire world. However, she definitely is at least slightly gold-diggy. And a complete hag. I�m so sad that she doesn�t like me!
On a serious note, which I do need to state as beneath all this flippancy I�m actually not happy at all, the whole wedding thing has reminded me of Bernie a lot, as that should have been her wedding, so keeping all of that under control has been quite hard. Accepting that Amanda is going to be a part of every Christmas etc. is also hard, and a bit beyond me at the moment. I picked up the jewellery on Saturday morning, and insisted that I took all of it. I haven�t really looked at it yet, as that�s too hard too. I know that I should be happy for my dad, with the whole wedding thing and everything, but all this loss has just ballooned up and hit me in the face. Ugh, I just have three million random thoughts cannoning around in my head. And I�m KNACKERED from stupid full-time and an evil cold that some droid has bestowed on me. And I�ve run out of Waking the Dead to watch.
I�ve promised Robin that I�ll definitely go swimming tomorrow night and not cancel at the last minute. Ah ha. As if.
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