I recently travelled to the UK for the wedding of two of my best friends. For my undergraduate friend group this was a significant landmark. Dustin and Ashley were the only couple that had formed within the friend group proper, and they were also the first of us to get married. They are really the first close friends of mine to get married, period. I know I’ve been to weddings previously, but I don’t think I’ve been to an actual wedding ceremony since I was 8.
The wedding was quite spectacular. For most of us it was the first international travel we’d done since the start of the pandemic. For me, it was also a bit of a nostalgic trip, London having been my home from the start of 2015 to the end of 2017. Dustin and Ashley also know how to throw a party. The week prior to the wedding was booked solid with tourism and good food. I also helped organize a pretty banging two days of bachelor party festivities for Dustin if I do say so myself.
The wedding itself was at Hotel Endsleigh, once a country retreat for the Duke of Bedford. It is difficult to imagine a more fairy-tale English retreat, a grand manor overlooking rolling hills, rivers and streams. I hardly had any time to explore the grounds, but in a half hour of wandering I found ruined buildings converted into herb gardens, a rockery, and a stable-turned-residence next to an artificial pond.
The day of the wedding was warm, if windy. My eggs royale were the best I’d ever had. The only hiccup was that one of the bridesmaids had caught COVID (this will be important later), but mostly the day ran like clockwork. The wedding ceremony was lovely and short, imparting just the right amount of symbolic gravitas before allowing us to get back to the business of eating and drinking and making merry. I was not ideally positioned to appreciate the wedding dinner[1] (foreshadowing), but the wedding speeches hit all the right notes to close off the evening.
The wedding was an amazing escape from reality, but such escapes can only last so long. My head began to ache shortly after the ceremony, my throat began to tingle, and by part way through the dinner I was quite certain I had COVID. The bridesmaid with COVID was one of several people that I had been sharing accommodation with the week prior to the wedding. I held on to the end of the speeches, then went directly to bed.
At first, I was stressed. I had to travel back to London from Endsleigh, cancel my planned trip to Turkey, and find some place to stay while I rode out the sickness. Friendship, however, made the entire affair more bearable, for I was not the only one to have caught the dreaded illness. A strange enclave formed at the bride and groom’s small apartment, affectionately redubbed ‘the plague ward’. Numerous jokes were made about the bride and groom’s honeymoon. One of the friends I was supposed to meet in Turkey was also a Londoner, and she kindly allowed me to stay at her place while she was abroad. A routine developed, albeit a short-lived one. I wrote during the day then bussed over to Dustin and Ashley’s for food and games and conversation.
The wedding was spectacular, but the two weeks after were something special. They were unplanned and unscheduled. They could have been awful, but through kindness and friendship they developed a comfortable rhythm. We ate at fewer Michelin Star restaurants, but we cooked for each other. We drove fewer hovercrafts, but we played more cards. For a very short time we were like the cast of a sitcom, that fantasy friend-group that has time to work and still see each other every day. A reminder that life is sometimes just what you make of it, and the difference between happiness and distress can be just a slight rotation of perspective.
[1] Confusingly known as wedding breakfast in the UK.
Comments