A gorgeous husband, our favourite city, 25 degrees & the sun shone all day - what more could any girl want?

 

 

© Luca Rajna 2008    

© Luca Rajna 2008                                                                                                 © Luca Rajna 2008       

The details.........

Photo credits: Top row & bottom row left © Luca Rajna 2008 . Bottom row right © Bourne. The rest taken by members of our bridal party.

Above: My Elizabeth Gage wedding ring which was designed to my specifications ~ thankyou for your help Christine. A yellow & white gold ring with a pink/lavender tournaline, diamonds & fleur de lys. My lovely bouquet was a waterfall of Lilacs, Vibernum & Ivy - the Lilacs smelled beautiful & everywhere I look right now I see them blooming in peoples gardens & every year now nature will remind me of my May wedding.  The button holes & the bridesmaid's bouquet were Avant Garde roses. I kept it simple by wearing sprigs of Lilac in my hair, having toyed with the idea of wearing a variation of my Papilion comb. It's a good job I didn't as with the extra (delicate) height getting in to a water taxi with a low roof & even lower door would not have worked at all (it barely worked with a corset & 3" heels). The heels were a fabulous pair of caramel colour satin boots from Bourne which blended with my fabric beautifully - I always knew I'd wear boots.

 

So rewind to March 2007.

• One proposal made on bended knees at the side of our bed, before Mike went to work.
• A vague date worked out & destination decided over a quick dinner at Pizza Express.
• One email to my colleagues Jayne & Lindsey, Wedding Planners at Venice Events , whom I already knew, to find out how on earth we go about it?

At the end of October last year I finally found space in my diary to head out to Venice for a long overdue holiday & so that we could get a few details, like a date, sorted out. We met up with Jayne who introduced us to various photographers portfolios & ran through transport options, video, live music for the ceremony, etc. After some heady romanticising over the idea of a painfully expensive wedding gondola I finally decided there was no way a gondola & a corset would mix, we also decided against a harpist, etc. & in the end chose a selection of classical music & burned a disc to play in the background during our ceremony. We picked our date & time & left it with Jayne to arrange with the town hall. I would have loved to have had a later time but the cost of the ceremony shot up for weddings after 1pm & it made alot more sense to spend that money on a leisurely afternoon spent on the Bauer's terrace with drinks & canapes. Which is exactly what we went back to our hotel to look in to.

 

In January we hit the sales & found Mike's daughter an elegant black evening dress & black evening shoes finished with rhinestones. I later found some black beaded chiffon to make a stole & bought her a really cute ruffled handbag.

 

Having sat on our hands regarding photographs - do you need an official photographer when there's only six in the wedding party? I decided, however much I hate being photographed, I'd kick myself if I didn't book a photographer & so we trawled our 2 choices' websites to make a final decision & get them booked. Luckily our first choice Luca was based in Milan & in February during a work trip to Milan we got to meet up with him first. Something I know I felt much happier about, because we got to discuss his work with him & find out if we liked him & after that meeting, we were more than happy to let Jayne know we wanted Luca to do our photos. We also bought two ties from a shop in the awesome Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, one for Mike, one for his son / best man.

 

Early in the year I also dragged the unwilling suit shopper (quote "I look awful in suits") down to William Hunt in Saville Row. Fortunately having a bride with a heads up on where to to take her groom to find a good suit helps & he only tried on two suits (one style which he loved & looked great in, different colours) before settling on black. I nearly cried when I saw him all suited up (best to get the tears done with before the big day). We also chose a lovely fitted white shirt with really great wide cuffs & some gorgeous Swarovski crystal cufflinks. We didn't see any elsewhere (and we did have a good look) that were as fabulous & they were in his favourite colour: blue (Swarovski bermuda blue, if we're being fussy). © Luca Rajna 2008

 

 

 

We wanted his son to look similar but as a still growing 16 year old a William Hunt suit would have been a little OTT, so the week after Saville Row we headed out shopping. Big mistake, huge!.  Moss Bros Hire without the prior Saville Row trip I'm sure would have looked a whole lot better but lets just say it would have been mean to dress our Best Man in a hired, high street chain suit. However my tip to anyone who needs a slim fitting suit for a slim young man should look at French Connection's suits. We struck on a great looking suit, in a similar vane to the Groom's  & by time we'd found a similar shirt to his Dad's, some amethyst crystal cufflinks & we'd had the sleeves shortened a little to show the cuffs off ala Dad's & the back tailored in a bit our Best Man looked great. We bought our French Connection suit, shirt & cufflinks from Baronjon.

 

Surprisingly I happened upon two more silk ties in TK Maxx that suggested they might be an even better colour match than our Milan purchases. In the end the Groom had the pinky/purple TK Maxx find which was a very good match to my dress & Best Man chose the tie we'd originaly picked out for the Groom in Milan which worked with his cufflinks.

 

The wierdest thing I made myself was my hairpieces. Why hairpieces? Well, you get real hair pieces professionally set in a curl & that curl won't drop for days & certainly not for the duration of a wedding. Which is more than can be said for my waist length hair that would probably last an hour & look crap for the rest of the day. I had in the past been using the BBC for my clients, that was until February when the BBC got rid of the costume & wig departments and, I subsequently  heard, sold all their stock off. Not that I could have hired the pieces from them because I needed to match the colour to a deep purple shade but I would have sent them down there to be dressed. So I made pieces in a similar natural shade to my own using hair extensions made from real hair & had my hair salon (Saks) dye them to the same colour that I was using, dyed just before we went away. I found another company to set the curl & bought some hair dye from Beeunique to add a few vibrant purple streaks to the front of my hair.

 

In the meantime I ordered French levers lace & special ordered shot tafetta from two suppliers in France. My dress..... a chance to have exactly what I wanted. Though wierdly I'd never really considered that I might marry, let alone what I'd wear. Unfortunately however the lace I'd always loved, overprinted in blackcurrant & russet shades,  no longer came printed only plain. So I had a fair bit of research & trial & error to work out my own way to shade my lace. Though it has to be said, through research, my method to create a similar effect is every bit as good, if not better than the lace I'd always loved. And inadvertantly, I have added a number of extra strings to my bow. My method for shading fabrics is very versatile & the possibilities endless. My colour in the end was not the same as the original, even though I did manage to match that on one of my test pieces but I moved away from a darker colour which would have been very Goth with my skintone & went for a very unusual soft shade. The design was very hard to tie down. When as a designer, the options are endless, how do you strip back all your ideas to one dress? Even though the Edwardian period is not my favourite, my dress is more Edwardian than other historical eras because when it comes right down to it, one has to design for the individual & I suit those styles. I was also well aware that it would be easy to go over the top & that even though I wanted a certain amount of detail, again it had to suit me. When I did come up with my design it felt right & had the familiar studded neckline I have done on so many of my dresses, which I love. And the new details of all over lace (new for me) & the feather & crystal fringeing on my lace coat. Yes there were hiccups, the delivery time on the tafetta went well over, not disastrously but annoyingly. And having someone who's never fitted clothing before- my Mother- fit a corset ....trial by fire. If I'd thought about it, I should have had my Mother sit in on client's fittings last year & watch me but we didn't do that & as a result it became hard work. As it turns out, new hubby being on the same wavelength was a good thing. Having spent two hours one evening in corset, trying to explain where I needed things pinned in order to create my lace overcoat, my feet aching from standing still so long, my fiance called. I sobbed down the phone (pre-wedding there was a lot of crying) that I couldn't create a pattern from my previous two hour ordeal & asked him if he'd give it a shot. An hour later he was at my workroom &  half an hour later job done - I'd have married him for that alone! It turns out my husband is not bad at fittings - he follows instructions, sees what needs doing & does it.  My Mr Perfect & a life saver......... He also sat with me over a long weekend while I appliqued the lace edging onto the hem of my coat. An interesting stat for you - it took 27 hours to applique just the hem. Of course my Mum did help an awful lot as well.  I was told it was bad luck to make the whole dress myself so having Mum & Mike for fittings meant I didn't do it all myself & they strung my fringeing for me too. All in all, the components - French lace & tafetta, Swarovski pearls & crystals, feathers, colour for the lace, etc. certainly did not come cheap and add to this the cost of many many hours of intensive labour. I don't think Brides to be realise how much the fabrics alone can cost when you use quality fabrics & lots of them. I bought 4 lengths of lace 90cm wide by 4.7m long & used most of it. But if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well the only difference this time being this was my dress.

 

I have to say though that making my dress was the most stressful, emotional thing I have done. I liken it to building your own house. I piled immense pressure on myself - it had to be what I wanted and make me look a lot thinner. It was flattering, held everything up and in (but one can still hope for miracles, after all why could it make my size 20 something look size 12?) & whilst I pretended it wasn't important, it was really important. Add to this the worry that as a dress designer everyone will want to see your dress, judge your choices & then the pressure is even worse. You have all your own body issues, your own expectations & then everyone else's as well. Plus it also dawned on me quite late that there may only be 6 in our wedding party but there where an awful lot of people in Venice to be seen by & I'm the type that prefers playing wall flower - I'm not comfortable basking in the limelight (I wilt). To be honest it was horrible, I cried a lot - with tiredness, with frustration, the emotional stress of an upcoming wedding. Ehhh. You would think after 10 years of doing this for other people it would have been easy to make my own dress - how wrong you'd be & how ill prepared I was for it. What I am proud to say is, like all my creations, this one too, despite the difficulties of fitting it to myself, fit me like a glove.

 

Still it's done. True to form I dislike most of the photos. I hate that the sun made me squint all day, my eyes are one of my best features & it would have been nice to have some with my eyes open properly. I learned that I should have confirmed the sort of photos I wanted via email shortly before the wedding. On the day, if you choose to hand the organising over & just enjoy like we did you run the risk of not getting everything you'd wanted. I'd wanted some posed shots & asked for some of me, on my own, showing my dress properly (front, back, side), which we didn't really get, I now know I wanted close ups of us exchanging rings & instead I have photos taken from a distance, I would also have liked some posed portrait shots of me not squinting - relaxed after the wedding ceremony. I wanted photographs taken in a particular location (my favourite church across from the Bauer) & had veto'd the suggestion we pose in a gondola boatyard (not in my dress!). I don't know why but the church was bi-passed & the boatyard put back on the agenda. We didn't do the boatyard, it involved a good deal more walking & a bridge to get there & there was no way I was expending the energy required on something I didn't want to do. I'd seen a previous couple's shots at the yard, pointing at a plank of wood  with the "hey we're in a boatyard" expressions & quite frankly there was no chance I was going to be able to muster up enough 'fake' enthusiasm to make those shots work. Besides there were half naked boat builders lounging about in the sunshine, sleeping & I don't need those featuring in my wedding day memories. As it is, my favourite shot was taken on a bridge near the boatyard so something came out of that, that might not have otherwise been.

 

But I digress.......

 

Venice:

 

 

We flew out on Sunday morning for our Tuesday wedding. I left the feather fringeing to do when we got there as packing a dress into a case is challenge & worry enough without having 127 delicate ostrich feather fringes already attached to the hem to try & pack carefully so that they made the journey intact.

Weddings abroad are a logistical nightmare. Before 9/11 my brides had carried their dresses in garment bags onto the planes. One had room found for her's in the crew's wardrobe, another had her's fly in the cockpit with the pilot & others stowed their's carefully in the overhead lockers. After 9/11 this is no longer an option & we have the worry of packing our dresses into cases & stowing them in the hold, praying they come out the other end & that they haven't been put on a plane to Russia. And some us thank out lucky stars we're not flying our wedding outfits with BA through terminal 5. We managed to get my parents to share one case & Mike's offspring to do the same, giving us 2 extra cases - one for my dress & bits, one for the suits, BM dress & their shoes, etc. That way when the four of them returned to the UK they had four suitcases. We of course where staying on in Italy for our honeymoon.

 

Sunday we arrived at the Bauer, a five star hotel in Venice & our oasis of luxury for a few days a year. We feel at home there & the staff are great & they remember us. I'd booked a junior suite through Expedia so we ladies had room to swing a cat on the wedding day but the Suite we were given was more like two junior suites. No. 257 had 2 bathrooms, a walk in wardrobe, a large bedroom, another well lit wardrobe area (& make shift workroom for the sewing on of feather fringeing) & a living room. It even had 6 comfy chairs. We loved our suite, 2 bathrooms were a godsend & it gave us a perfect space to retire to when we needed a rest from the rushing around. We cut our cake there on the evening of our wedding day, which Mike shopped for the day before & the hotel happily stowed in their fridge for us.

 

Monday we had a meeting with Jayne & strolled over to the Rialto to meet the florist who'd evidently had a mare with my Lilacs. Apparently her supplier rang her on the Saturday to say the Lilacs had gone over (AKA died) & the panic buttons were hit to track some down, which they did after some midnight phonecalls (yay) & I had a mix of Italian Lilacs & some from Holland. Jayne told me, when this story came out at the florist's, that she was no way going to drop that bombshell on me seeing as it was so close to our flying out, I'd been working so hard on my dress, etc. But I said to her, this happens all the time. A supplier somewhere down the line lets you down & the person at the end of the chain like me or the florist in this case has to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Which she did & considering it was about the only aspect of my wedding I relinquished control of (I had plans to do my own flowers but decided to dump the inevitable stress factor & have faith in another wedding proffessional), I was very pleased with her services. The flowers were great.

 

We had booked 2 rooms at the Bauer's sister hotel, the Bauer Palladio across the canal, the two hotels linked by a courtesy electric shuttle boat. Their hotel was in an old monastry & every bit as great as the Bauer but much more tranquil, stone courtyard, lovely restful anti rooms, a garden & a Spa. Mike swapped with his daughter the night before, so we girls were in the Bauer together & my Mother joined us for breakfast in the morning. It was an early start - 7.15am. It had to be as I was doing my bridesmaid's hair & make-up as well as my own. We'd been up late, virgin fake nail creators, not through choice but nessesity. I didn't want to get mine done before I went & Mondays, it turns out, is traditionaly the day barbers & beauty shops are closed in Italy.  Jayne did manage to track down a nail bar in Venice that did open on a Monday only to be told they were on holiday that week. So my bridesmaid & I did our own nails using Kiss Lightening Speed kits we'd bought from Boots. Not bad results for newbies if you didn't look too close. I found out after I painted mine you need to file them down ALOT but we had nails & we were happy (& maybe a bit high from the fumes!).

 

 

 

Mike & Chantal's Wedding Day.

 

6th May 2008.

 

 

I awoke during the night itching. Mosquitos had bitten me on my arm & in my hairline. I slapped 1% hydrocortisone ointment (I know it's not what it's for but it works) on them & went back to bed. 7.15am the hotel calls through with my alarm call. I rub my nose (maybe it was tickling me). It feels odd, like when your leg goes dead. I look in the mirror & it's red & the end is bulbous. Oh ****. Seemingly the little buggers bit my nose as well, so without spiralling in to panic I ointment the tip of my nose & throw a Piriton tablet down my throat & head out for breakfast. Fortunately the Piriton worked & the swelling had gone down by time we got back to the room. See - no need for panic ;)

 

I pinned my own hair up with a little tweakage to the back from Mum (looking at the photos, the self critic wishes she'd had eyes in the back of her head & been able to tame the unruly curls). I hey prestoed my bridesmaid's makeup & sent her out to pick up my last minute earring purchase from a lovely Venetian designer's shop just a stones throw from the hotel (they had needed to be altered from pierced to clips). I then got on with my make up, dressed BM's hair & amazingly we were on time to get me dressed & downstairs in time for our water taxi. I'd puffed up because of the plane journey so the corset was tighter than it ever had been (just great) & it took Mum & Dad to close & tie it (amateurs make such a fuss & who knew I tied my bows in a funny way?). I tie them in the way that ensures the corset doesn't loosen when you tie the bow, 'apparently' my way isn't normal? If you're wondering where the lace is, it's underneath the buttons. Function on this corset not decoration.

 

Interesting journey - squeezing into a water taxi, walking crab like into the cramped interior. A doorway suitable for a Hobbit not a tall human in heels. Very ladylike & I should be offered some kind of prize for being able to do it in a corset (yes, I know, my husband was the prize). Do they have soft top taxis in Venice one wonders?

 

 

Anyway we stand outside the town hall, Pallazo Cavalli, which borders the Grand Canal & is just a stones throw from the Rialto Bridge waiting to go up. The previous wedding is overrunning & the three of us (Dad, Mike's daughter & I) wait quietly in the cool stone interior for the other bridal party to leave the building. When she does appear, the radient & heavily pregnant Bride looked so pretty, she too wore fresh flowers in her hair & chose a sort of high waisted, ivory Grecianesqe dress that showed off her bump. She looked lovely & I told her so in my limited Italian "Bella" (not just the name of a magazine). Whilst they're outside throwing confetti we start the climb up the stone staircase to the floor where the ceremonies take place. I'd been fairly chilled until I get to the door (too much running around) but as I enter the Salon nerves kick in & I walk past Mike before stopping abruptly to walk back to him & kiss him (our last kiss as singles). It's not like there is a clear stop point you see. I was using the central table as a guide but it turns out that first you have to go in to an ante-room behind the main room & go through the legal bit & sign papers. I couldn't tell you what was said, I spent the first few minutes clutching Mike's hand (like you do, or at least we do, when the plane you're on comes in to land), trying to stop my heart from leeping out of my chest it was beating so hard. But by the time we were called upon to sign our full names, calm had been restored. An instrumental version of one of my favourite classical songs, Andrea Botchelli's Con te Partiro which I'd tracked down on Itunes, softly played away in the background & finished with a flourish just as we got up to begin our wedding ceremony.

© Luca Rajna 2008

 

 

We proceeded into the main room & stood for the ceremony which is read to you in Italian & then translated (by Jayne) in English. The aptly named "The book of love" (Peter Gabriel) starting right on cue. The only words we were required to utter was "I will", I resisted the urge to survey Mike with a look of reticence, pause & then say "Oh, all right", I didn't think he'd see the funny side (usually yes. Marriage ceremony? Maybe not). So "I will"d it too & we were pronounced man & wife. Que romantic embrassing, etc. etc. Then we were invited to exchange rings & I think there was a bit more ceremony after that. At the end of which we were presented with a Murano ornamental glass dish, a gift from the Mayor of Venice to mark our wedding. As I don't know the Mayor & we're not celebs, I'll assume everyone who marries there gets one. But seriously, what a nice way to wrap up the ceremony & a keepsake only a select few get to take home with them from Venice,  Mike & I among them. I wouldn't have minded having more to say during the ceremony but considering we were marrying in Italy, provided you have some guidance like the ladies at Venice Events to make sure you're sending the right paperwork to the right place, etc. it was all quite idiot proof.

 

I can answer one question I, as a bride to be, wasn't sure of (I asked Jayne first so I didn't look silly on the day). You sign the register with you normal, single you's signature.

The question I have to get an answer on is what do I do next? Our certificate went to the British Consolate in Venice to be registered in the UK but can I just use Mrs. Day now or do I have to do something else to legally use it? After all, I don't legally have to take Mike's name so ..........................?

Found the answer here: http://www.weddingguideuk.com/articles/legal/changingnamemarriage.asp It seems you just use it & send copies of your marriage certificate to most people that need to know (there's a list to help you) & the original to government ones. Have to buy a new 10 year passpost though, the most they'll tack on from your old one is 9 months & mine's not that old. Plus I'm still scared from the last time I had to try & get a decent passport photo out of those vile digital photo booths.

Readers: Sorry, if I've bored you rigid. It's probably too late to say feel free to skip the most boring bits. But in a wierd way, for me it does capture the events, my event, for posterity. So if the only people to read this are myself, my husband & a few of my clients with nothing better to do, it was reason enough to write it.

 

After the ceremony we pigeon dodged our way towards the Rialto where our taxi was waiting, past tourists & school parties, "Auguri" ringing in our ears, strangers wanting photos. All very crazy Mike & his son revelled in the attention we were getting. I say pigeon dodged becuase the roof of the Palazzo Cavalli has large overhanging eaves and the pigeons sit on the edge and take aim below. In fact in one of wedding pictures Mike can quite clearly be seen guiding everyone under the eaves away from line of the edge and claims Mum was missed by a whisker...... We took a water taxi, which we had for an hour down the Grand Canal with the aim of stopping for photos. In the end the only stop we made was destination boatyard which I've already covered & then on to St Marks Square where we disembarked. The weather was phenominal, the day before it had rained & we had been so lucky to wake up to blue skies & wall to wall sunshine.  The walk into & across St Marks Square was just as crazy. I wish I could have enjoyed the attention more but for me it was about having been in that place together, where I've stood as someone who once never imagined I would get married, where I've stood with him as a new couple & again as a couple planning our wedding just 9 months later & where on 6th May I stood with him as my husband on our wedding day. Smiling way too much all day - smiling is of course fine but for my photos a disaster. I don't smile, I have a wonky smile thanks to the dentist who walloped the right hand side of my jaw extracting my wisdom teeth when I was in  my teens & I hate photos of me smiling. Smiling & squinting, well that's really bad & while they all wore their sun glasses & my Mother poached my Audrey Hepburn ala Breakfast at Tiffanys, Roberto Cavalli's for the duration, I was left all blue eyed, light sensitive & defenseless against the glare of the day.

 

From St Marks we made the short walk to the Bauer & onto the terrace where we had a private space set up in the corner for drinks & canapes. The Bauer's terrace is a small slice of heaven away from the noise & the tourists, though not anymore from the pigeons. You see 10 days earlier a law was passed making it an offence to feed the pigeons. Up until then the square was full of pigeons, bird food sellers & tourists eager to offer food in exchange for the flying rats pitching on them for photos. 10 days later and the pigeons were hungry, savvy to tourists having food & hastling people sitting outside cafes & restaurants anywhere in the city & sweeping on masse on newly emptied tables for leftovers, smashing glasses, etc. in a flurry of every bird for themselves. Though we weren't too bothered by them where we were sat.

 

As I said, the terrace is a little slice of heaven from where you can watch life play out on the Grand Canal, you have a beautiful view, Gondolas floating by & relative piece & quiet. We'd culled the canape list of the tit bits we didn't fancy & nibbled on canapés with marinated salmon, goat's cheese and bresaola, finger sandwiches with Prague ham and soft cheese, tartlets with Asiago cheese fondue & ham and cheese strudel & drank prosecco & cocktails, Chilling under the large sun shades & chatting. Not everyone's idea of a wedding but exactly what we had wanted. We threw confetti on the Bauer's canal side pontoon having walked out of our suite without it & at around 4pm Luca left to head back to Milan. We took a little time to grab some more photos of the dress & then I went up to change for dinner.

Dinner was at our favourire Venetian resterant Da Arturo, where the food is always excellent & the staff Ernesto, Hani & their cook always welcoming. So much so that for our wedding celebration dinner the three of them took time out to bring us all out a round of Prosecco (Italian champagne) & share a toast with us & after a fabulous meal, including their to die for Voronoff Steaks (the best part of 3" thick), they gave me a gorgeous stem of orchids as a parting gift. The food there is so good that last year the Da Arturo team closed their resterant in Venice & were flown by a hollywood director (who's a regular when in Venice) to LA for a week. They were tourists by day & cooked for the likes of Nicole Kidman, Courtney Cox, etc. at a string of dinner parties thrown by the director in the evenings.

 

As an aside, here are some more web finds for Da Arturo & other recommendations for eating well in Venice:

Telegraph

Times

Independent See 'Dinner with the locals'.

New York Times

 

After Dinner we drifted back to the Bauer, Mike put in a request for ice buckets, our cake & items with which to eat it & we polished off our evening cutting our cake with the wedding present I'd requested from my parents (a special cake knife & server engraved with our names & wedding date) & a toast with the Laurent Perrier Rose Champagne we'd bought at Gatwick airport on the way out.

 

Mike & I ended our evening sat, bobbing up & down (wait, no wry smiles), on the Bauer's pontoon having seen our families into the shuttle boat back across the water to their hotel. It was a lovely mild evening & a perfect end to our wedding day.................

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

For the next few days the Day / Mallett party ate leisureley breakfasts on the terrace at the Bauer together, took the newbies sight seeing & had a number of OK meals & one farcical one.

 

You see we made the mistake of thinking if you eat somewhere once it will be fine to eat there again. So there we are seated at a table for six, Mike's daughter painfully indecisive about whether to have mediocre spagetti ragu or a mediocre pizza. Mike trying to resist the urge to kill. Me, having gone the other way, in fits of laughter. And my Mother chooses this moment to crack & as the matriarch of the group, embarks on a good telling off which leads to a squawked & heated exchange at the far end of the table followed by stoney silence. So thank god for our waiter who begins to take the order, a decision on spagetti ragu having been made. He gets half way through inputting our order into his machine when the wireless connection evidently dies & he wanders off to get another machine. Again more repeating & inputting, some slapping of the machine much like Al used to do on Quantum Leap & just as effective & off he went again. Third time's the charm sureley? By now our Primis & Secondis are being inputted Russian Roulette fashion into his Fisher Price gizmo but the humour value, the sporadic slapping, confusion over red or white wine has broken the tension. And then the food comes. My Dad's fish is put down (no sign of his pasta first course) then the pizza arrives. My Dad sends the fish away saying he has pasta yet to come & Mike & his son are left bemused, staring at their pizza. And then the fun really starts as both their pasta dishes arrive from the kitchen & the waiters stand there like idiots trying to put the plates down! We of course are past being floored by the incompetence & are laughing hysterically whilst our waiters stand there trying to figure out a) what's funny? & b) how to serve two courses at once? So pizzas go back to the kitchen, primis are served. Then some of our party get their by now not so fresh secondis including my Dad's "fresh" fish dish back. And when we get the bill we've been charged 10% sevice charge!!! Naturally Mike takes the man most resembing management to one side & explains that we will not be paying service charge for such a farce. No one says sorry, the guy Mike complained to who spoke great english send a girl with pigeon english to deal with us & we're told we can only get around the 10% service charge if we pay cash. So cash is cobbled together & on the way out, still with no one having apologised, Mike stopped by our waiter & gave his stupid machine a playful slap or two. Well someone had to see the funny side?

 

The wednesday evening was dedicated to my favourite cocktail, the Casanova, in the Bauer's B Bar. My new stepson & I being the naughty children that stayed up late down in the bar whilst my lightweight husband went to bed feeling poorly & everyone else headed back to the Palladio.

 

May 8th we say goodbye to our treasured suite, pick up my flowers to place in reception's safe keeping for the day, do a little sight seeing, a light meal on the terrace & say goodbye to the city in style by using a water taxi to go back to the airport.

 

A simple equation: 1 x Taxi = Fun x 10 & ellicits sounds normally reserved for rollercoasters.

 

 

At Marco Polo, we check family in for their flight back to London, see about our hire car for the week & I get teary, for in the excitement, I'd  left my flowers behind. Soppy cow! So no sooner have we piled in to our hire car, my romantic husband is driving us straight back in to Venice to collect my wedding flowers. 

 

A water bus to the Rialto, a walk to the hotel, a close encounter with getting seriously side tracked with the lure of a farewell Casanova, another walk & we finally said farewell to our city. Just the two of us, with me clutching my wedding flowers, standing arms around each other on a packed water bus back to where we'd parked the car. Not as exciting as our first exit but more romantic & posibly more poignant. Oh & who just happens to be stood right behind Mike on the bus? Our comedy waiter (probably wanted to make sure we'd gone). If you're worried about his well being, you needn't be - he didn't seem to possess anything we had any desire to playfully slap ;)

 

We finished our day by finding a hotel near the airport for the night, destination a converted 12th century convent in Umbria our goal for the morning........

 

Useful links:

 

Wedding Planners: Venice Events.

Hotels: Bauer & Bauer Palladio.

Photographer: Luca Rajna.

Honeymoon apartment: Il Convento Mincione.

Wedding meal: Da Arturo.

Confetti: Perditas Petals. I bought Antique colour Hydrengea heads.

Mike's suit: William Hunt.

My boots: Bourne.

My bespoke wedding ring: Elizabeth Gage.

My hair (bright streaks): Beeunique Pipkin Purple mixed with Virgin Rose & some lightener.

My hair (main colour): Saks. 

False nails: Kiss Lightening Speed.

 

 

 

 

Part Two: The Honeymoon.

Destination Umbria.

 

 

I'm going to spare diary readers a blow by blow account of our week in Umbria.

 

No paragliding, mountaineering, surfing lessons, swimming with sharks, whistle stop globe trotting................ After organising a wedding & spending four days in Venice; peace & quiet, seclusion & breathtaking natural beauty were Mike & I's idea of a Honeymoon & OMG did I find the perfect place to achieve it.

 

The wedding was in planning stage & I took an interest in destination Umbria for a possible Honeymoon location after seeing the film 'My House in Umbria'. Everyone knows how beautiful Tuscany is & this would have been an option too, until I fell upon Il Convento Mincione on the internet. It looked perfect & the honeymoon appartment was avaliable, so after scouting the internet for alternatives- Il Convento being about the first Googled link I'd followed & Mike being almost as indecisive as his daughter, concluding it really didn't seem to have much in the way of serious competion. Il Convento Mincione was booked.

 

It took most of the day to drive there & it was about 7pm when after a few wrong turns (if you want remote, you've got it) we pulled up at the apartment's gates. Almost simultaneously with some people from Gerrards Cross & not too far behind them another British couple. So poor Joan, having been prepared all day for her new residents had 4 apartments descend on her at once.

 

Il Convento Mincione:

 

Joan, the owner, is an ex-New Yorker. Warm & friendly, she can hand you a weeks itinery if what you want is to get the most out of your weeks sightseeing & can book trips, really good resternants etc. to make your stay a fuller experience. She also has a stack of books on walks, art, you name it to cater to visitor's individual requirments. All in all, an Oracle on most things local. You can tell she love's the Convent & it's idyllic setting, which she so lovingly restored in just two years, having taken three years to build up the courage - hardly surprising seeing as, when she bought the place, there was not much more than the walls left standing, after the English had bombed the German army out & locals probably scavenged for building materials. Of course if all you want to do is bum around on your terrace drinking Merlot from the local Coop (Co Op to us) at 3.5 euros for 1.5 litres! Or laze around the pool / slip into the hot tub both of which have breathtaking views, that's fine too. I would have liked to take a dip but with the clear skys, in May the temperature was dropping at night & duvets were the order of the day hence, even with some gorgeous days, the pool was too cold. Come the Summer I imagine it will be too, too tempting. I would have also, in hindsight, have liked to book 2 weeks so we could have done the same amount of sightseeing but stayed 'home' a fair bit too. Our base was just so fabulous, I was loathed to leave it each day after our leisurely breakfasts - a continuation of the breakfasts I ate at the Bauer (mozarella, fresh bread, procutto crudo, melon, cheeses). But there were some magical places to visit:

 

Assisi where yes it rained but I kept reminding Mike that we got the best weather on our wedding day & any good day after that one is a bonus.

Spello, another lovely town with narrow cobbled & quirky streets. Both places also being amazingly clean & graffiti free.

Perugia, Umbria's capital. Elegant architecture & a cool underground city. Like Spello, you have to get on escalators to go up into the city from the car parks.

 

All of the above, pretty hilly places that take their toll on your calves but offer amazing views of the Umbrian countryside & have some lovely architecture.

 

Sienna - a place I wanted to see having watched 'My House in Umbria' was disappointing. A very austere place, with masculine, hard looking buildings which seemed to just be a tourist town or theme park complete with youngsters marching around the town in medieval dress, banging drums & throwing flags.

 

Maybe there is more to Sienna but unlike Venice that makes you want to wander off the beaten path, explore & discover life in the squares the locals live in, the laundrettes, hardware shops, funeral homes, furniture makers, etc. Sienna didn't inspire us to bother.

 

We, on our routes to & from the convent saw, a pair of snakes mating on the road, owls pitched on the road at night, along with large snails & frogs & on two nights wild boar. The first night 5 boar ran across the road ahead of us, the second night, one crossed & paused to look at us before disappearing into the night. We also had little lizards that hung around sunbathing - they weren't intested in coming inside as the apartments were too cool & there was mesh across all the window openings to keep them & the bugs out, so I didn't mind them, they were quite cute. The strangest sights we saw were of the human variety however: On our Monday trip to Sienna, we were on a country road not far from our hideaway when Mike commented that this 'lady' sat on a chair in a layby, smoking a cigarette looked like "a lady of the night" (his words). A throw away comment, followed up seconds later by the exclamation that "she is a lady of the night!" as we drove past another girl. All in all, on a short stretch of road we saw 10 working girls, probably eastern europeans, sat in laybys or at the mouths of dirt tracks on white chairs, in broad daylight! We even saw enough to know that a chair tipped over meant a girl was busy. The chairs evidently went with the hookers when they called it a day, as the countryside wasn't dotted with lonely little white chairs at night when, unbelievably, the hookers appeared to not be working! We did see a few more over the next few days, including one who was just there in a layby having a pee as we drove past. But not in such numbers as on our first trip out. Maybe the Italian men abstain on Sundays & Mondays is their best day for trade? Strange that for a Cathlolic country, the prostitutes were evidently quite popular, seemed to work 9 to 5 & were incredibly indiscreet.

 

The unconventional Umbrian postcards:  A Linda Lizardi as Mike named them  .  Snakes making hay while the sun shines  .  An Umbrian red light.

We had a fantastic week & would have loved to have stayed & chilled longer. The night before we left, we went out to the car park & threw my wedding flowers over the hedge into the overgrowth promising we'll come back one day and see them again. It was our way of leaving a little something of ourselves and our happy time there behind.

 

The next day we took a long drive to Milan to buy a sewing machine from the Singer shop on Corso Buenos Airies. We had seen it - a lovely semi-industrial Singer machine - there in February & I should have bought it then, but as I didn't & since regretted it, we made Milan our last stop & in doing so ensured our lives weren't put in Ryan Air's hands by flying back to the UK from Perugia. You can't buy Singers in the UK anymore, a sad reflection on the how few people sew these days compared with other countries around the world.

 

And so on to the pictorial part of my Honeymoon diary - they say pictures speak a thousand words:

 

Il Convento Mincione:

Umbria:

Of course one should never forget that the most important thing about a wedding is not the dress, the weather, the flowers or the honeymoon.

It should not be about fullfilling the little girl fantasy we imagine when we're in primary school & are some little boy's girlfriend. 

The most important thing is the reason for the wedding:

Marriage.

From this day forward.......................