First Dance

From Facebook Archives

4 April 2016 at 19:04

So we're sat here listening to Sounds of The Seventies (or half listening in my case) where someone wrote in about their wedding dance.

"Thank God we didn't have to go through that rigmarole" says Fester.

"What rigmarole?"

"Chosing a first dance for the wedding."

"Phil and I did the Gay Gordons, possibly because it was the only one he knew how to do."

"What about the Dashing White Sergeant?"

"You need three people for that and we weren't in a menage-a-trois."

"Set up for a Royton!"

Mrs Leftfoot Romance is clearly alive and well in the B/F household!
And conversation too!

Mrs Quilt You do realise that only a proportion of us know that you're not entirely bonkers!

Bentonbag That many!

Mrs Quilt I've been musing, Royton would only work if you were a matching pair of left and right

Bentonbag You'd be very limited on figures ...

Mrs Quilt Another solution might have been a Tommy and Betty performance with/without a Rapper Set - you could spend quality time together choreographing it.....

Mrs Telyn What - you mean she isn't bonkers? Our friendship has been built on a tissue of lies. I only accept bonkers people...

It was twenty years between Fester and me getting together and getting married.

 

As my father said in opening his speech at my wedding to Phil, after we’d been living together for four years, “Ben has not married in haste.”

The day after our first wedding anniversary Phil went into hospital to have a tumour removed; he died 11 days short of our second.

One of my reasons for not remarrying (apart from not being asked) was that I didn’t think I’d be able to say those words again.

But in 2012 Fester’s Littlebrother died suddenly and unexpectedly.  

Fester was his, and their parents, only heir and started spending the inheritance on improving this house, which belongs to me.   

It seeemed unfair to me that his family money should go into a house he had no right to.  

So I instigated talks about marriage; he’s been married before so not against it in principle.

“You organise it and I’ll come.”

So I chose the date we first ‘got together’ and phoned the Registry Office.

Then I started thinking about guests.

The guests at my first wedding had been so happy and so well-wishing for us, and look what had happened.  Not even the most loving good wishes in the world had stopped the worst thing I could then imagine happening.  It would be hard enough, emotionally, to say the words without my sisters (and probably others) sitting there thinking 

“Well I hope this one lasts/doesn’t die on her.”

So one night, in bed, I asked 

“Would you mind if it was just you, me, the boys and two witnesses?”

He replied, with a huge sigh of relief, “Good grief no, I’d prefer it, I hate fuss.”

So it was.

No one was told beforehand, except the witnesses and someone I consulted about my dress (and she was sworn to secrecy).  There was no bouquet, no cake, we went in a taxi, had lunch afterward in the Wooden Doll pub and came home on the Metro.

I took along my MP3 player, put it on the Registrar’s desk, recorded the ceremony and attached the mpg to an email which I sent to family and friends.   

The next day I sent a card with the news to all the people on our Christmas card list.

Mrs Leftfoot has still not forgiven me for not asking her to be a bridesmaid.