Absinthe’s First Wedding

 

 

As a favour to a lovely couple from Burnley, we’d agreed to use Absinthe as a wedding car to take Danielle, the Bride, and her two Dads to Burnley Register Office and then onwards with her, her daughter Charlotte and the Groom, Aaron, to their Reception at the Thornton Arms.

Fearful that we’d lose all the decorations on the motorway, we stopped at a lay-by off the M65 to fix the ribbons and bows, before driving on to Danielle’s sister’s house to pick up the Bride. We had the postcode of the address but it was a new house and not on the SatNav so we had to text for directions, eventually being spotted by two of the wedding guests and pointed in the right direction.

Absinthe looked great and attracted lots of attention, none more so than from Charlotte, appropriately dressed as a Fairy for the big day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Precious cargo on board, we set off for Burnley Registration Office, a short drive of about 20 minutes – the traffic and speed bumps on the way didn’t help our progress though, and we arrived bang on 1pm for the wedding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting in the car park gave us time to fit the Just Married bunting to the back of the bus, in time to await the newly married couple.

 

Alison drove Absinthe to the side of the building in front of the staff cars, to allow the happy couple to get straight in, but then disaster struck. The Registrar needed to go to another wedding, so asked us to move the van back, to allow her to get her car out. As Alison tried to move Absinthe, the alarm went off and in our panic we couldn’t get it off or start the van. We pushed the van backwards with the alarm blasting out in everyone’s ears.

Mrs B, being alarmed!

Unable to think what to do, we were rescued by Keiron, one of the guests, who by day, is an AA man. He simply asked Alison to take the keys out of the ignition and then pressed the button to switch off the alarm. Problem solved! The weird thing is, Mrs B and I are usually pretty good in an emergency. We’re not given to panic normally, but I think the fact that this had never happened before and the need to get the Bride and Groom to the reception phased us more than we realised.

No harm done and we were soon on our way. An attempt to take some unscheduled photos at nearby Townley Hall was thwarted by the Park Rangers, who said we ‘d all get a £75 fine if we parked anywhere other than in a parking bay, so we drove on to the Thornton Arms for the reception and more photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who lives in here?…

 

… Absinthe the Fairy, of course!

Danielle had made all her own decorations for the reception – another clever crafter!

We had a brilliant day being part of Danielle and Aaron’s wedding, but we’re not sure we’re ready to do it again, too quickly. I’m anal at the best of times, but knowing that they were relying on us was quite stressful for me. I’m more relaxed about driving to France than worrying that we might not arrive for the wedding on time!

 

Things we’ve learned:

Everybody (even me) smiles at a wedding
The sun shines occasionally in Lancashire
An alarm stuck on is very alarming
SatNavs don’t always know where you’re going
One pint in the afternoon can lead to many more later in the evening
Everyone loves a Campervan

There’s a full set of pics here: FLICKR