Sam Avery, comedian and former guest editor of 4Laughs, is a wannabe rock star and budding gourmet. With wedding season kicking off, Sam makes a wedding speech…
I love weddings. The dressing up, the all-day drinking, the bitchy comments about the bridesmaids… I love it all. I seem to be reaching a point in my life now where I’ve got stag nights and weddings coming out of my ears and it’s depressing. This is amplified when close friends talk about this truly magical wedding day experience of theirs when all I have in comparison is a front row seat at a Prodigy gig in 1998.
I was in Sorrento, Italy recently for a friend’s wedding and couldn’t help notice the difference attitudes that the Italians had at the reception.
Even towards the end of the night the men were all still immaculately dressed and, despite a concerted effort, I couldn’t find one male with his tie wrapped round his inebriated forehead. That was probably a result of the guys sipping espressos instead of Carlsberg, and all greeting the groom with a delightfully camp wave rather than a string of ‘friendly’ obscenities.
When the buffet was opened there was none of the January-sales-style-borderline-queue-violence-hysterics that you get at most British weddings. (I use the word ‘buffet’ with some reluctance as it’s a word that dredges up soiled memories of crusty vol-au-vonts and hairy sandwiches. There isn’t a more depressing situation than arguing with an angry pensioner over the last chicken leg. And losing.)
Nor was there the wanton desire to tactically pile high the food like some horrifically edible Jenga tower, for fear of others taking the spoils.
“This second plate’s for our Julie,” when we all know Julie went home an hour ago.
Instead these Italian revellers swaggered past the mountains of gnocchi and picked and poked their way through a sensible amount of the beautiful food on offer. Even this couldn’t stop my inherent British buffet-greed from coming to the surface as I smuggled pasta underneath strategically placed bread, retiring to a safe corner of the room to scoff my winnings.
Just goes to prove, you can take the boy out of Britain, but you can’t stop him from being a greedy pig.
Get prepped for the season of meringues and wedding cake. Read up on when wedding proposals in restaurants go wrong and DIY wedding buffets for the credit crunching bride.
Comments
Great article! Thanks for posting this! A++
No one does a wedding quite like the brits
Come Dine With Me should do a show over in northern ireland sometime. My mum would do cuz shes a good cook!
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