So lets recap, shall we? [Part 1]

I've been wanting to blog stuff since the wedding, but generally, the last 3 weeks have been, in a word, chaotic. We're flying back to London as I'm writing this out at 35k feet. I've now lost all sense of time. It's the 21st. We got married on the 2nd. It seems that everything since then has been one big blur. I've been keeping little bits and pieces and notes on random scraps of paper, so I figure that now is a good time to try and sort through all of them.

The weekend before the wedding

Things started to get a bit nuts from the time Michel arrived, with his B&B not being ready for his arrival (in fact, being closed). We got him settled in to our place, but the plan of going to do a final suit fitting and go to the Cambs wine merchants went out the window. Instead, Katy and I went to run some errands. Here beginneth the dress saga.

Just over two month prior to this day, we'd bought Katy's wedding dress from Monsoon. At the time, she couldn't fit in it but the plan was to start a diet/exercise regime to get in shape. Now I'm really proud to say that Katy lost over two stone (24 pounds for people in North America) but we found out the hard way that Monsoon bridal dresses are cut really, really small. (We later found out that we should have gotten the dress a full size larger than the size she normally wears, but we didn't know this little tidbit at the time).As the wedding date drew nearer and Katy was still one critical zipper inch from fitting in the dress so we decided to get one that would fit nicely. We found a really nice one, which we actually ended up liking more than the original one. We were now however stuck with an unwanted wedding dress and since we were past the 30-day return period, we were kinda at the mercy of Monsoon's return policy.

We ended up being really lucky though because the dress was still in the system at the full price (which was probably an oversight on their part because it was last year's collection and no longer on the website). Because of this, we were able to get a store credit for the full price (250 quid), so Katy had a bit of a shopping spree at Monsoon that afternoon :) She got a nice skirt (shocking, I know!), a belt, two bags (one which was a gift for my sister), a pair of dress trousers, some Monsoon jeans (that she'd been lusting for since forever) and a baby top and some lion-headed mittens for Gabriel. A good haul, indeed!

We got back home and, after the cat crap incident which has been previously mentioned, had a nice evening at the Red Lion with Michel and then dropped him off at his B&B.

On Saturday, I went to Heathrow to pick up the 'rents and while they were recuperating at our house, we drove to town to do the suit fitting. That turned out to be another unplanned adventure because neither dress shirt would fit us and they didn't have any more in stock. After about 46 minutes of faffing around waiting for people at the other branch of Moss Bros to call back to see if they had our sizes available, we decided to just go to Debenhams and buy some. In the end, we found some really nice ones for a decent price, so that's not too bad. Besides, since I now have a pair of cuff links, it makes sense that I have the shirt to go with them. However, seeing that we spent an extra hour at Moss Bros and another hour in the Grafton centre, we ran out of time to go to the Wine Merchants again. That ended up being the running gag of the whole week – we never got to go while Michel was in town. We did manage to stop at M&S to get some grub, so we introduced my parents and Michel to not-just-food-but-M&S-food (meat pie and dripping-roasted spuds).

On Sunday morning, we took my parents to see the city centre and to hopefully get to the Wine Merchants – which turned out to be closed on Sundays. It had been sternly suggested by Michel's better half that he go and take pictures, so we just had a nice pootle in town but had to cut it short because Rita, Tim and Katy's parents arrived at our place in the meantime. We made it back to Hinxton just in time to go to lunch at the pub. Everybody seemed to have a nice time getting to know each other. I was surprised to see just how well my dad and Katy's uncle caught on. We all went back to ours for tea and small talk. Katy made a quick batch of gloop and sausages for dinner and people went on their merry way to their hotels while Katy and I went to pick up Anna at the train station. Poor thing, it took her more time to get from Manchester to Cambridge than it took us to cross the Atlantic and get to Canada. What should have been a 4-hour train ride mushroomed to an 8-hour ordeal because of missed connections, delays, cancellations and general train madness.

The wedding day

Things started out ok but went downhill fast. Mel, Stu and I were supposed to go to Chilford hall to drop off the wedding album and the music CDs to make sure that everything would work on the sound system. We also needed to go to a chemist to pick up some supplies for Katy's mom. Chilford was ok, but we got hopelessly lost in Saffron Walden and couldn't find the chemist. We found what we needed in a little hole-in-the-wall shop, but then got caught in morning deliveries and the traffic they spawned. When we finally made it out of town, we got caught behind a tractor going 10 miles an hour on the only road back home. I was going rather nuts by that time. When we finally got home, Katy and I realized that we had put her stocking suspenders in such a safe place that we could no longer find them now. I still think that the cat ate them, but I can't prove it. I hate to admit it, but I was sort of running around like a headless chicken for a while that morning. Finally, it was time for Michel and I to get dressed and for most of us to get to Chilford. We needed to get to the hall for 12:30 and Katy for 12:45, so we hired a minivan to get everybody except Katy, Rita, Anna and Mel to take us there. Another cab would come a bit later for Katy and her party.

That's when the biggest (and honestly, the only) hiccup of the day happened. Stephane was supposed to come up from London that morning with the lighting equipment that he'd hired for the day. He'd called earlier that morning to say that he should arrive around 11:30. However, because of train delays, he made it to Whittlesford after we'd all arrived at Chilford. We hadn't had any news, so I checked my voice mail (my phone was not on me and was also on vibrate, so I hadn't head it). Poor guy was stuck in Whittlesford, didn't know the place where we were getting married (he'd forgotten his invitation that had all those mundane details, like name and address of the hall), couldn't call a cab and even then, only had euro on him and no pounds :)

Things got sorted out in the end. I called him on his mom's France-registered cell phone, gave him directions and the number of a cab company and gave some money to the people at Chilford to pay for the cab. All and all, he was only 30 minutes late and that time was actually useful to settle my nerves a bit because I was becoming a bit of a wreck. He finally arrived and we all got a good chuckle because he was wearing ripped jeans and a skull-and-crossed-bones tshirt, hehe. He got changed and took on his duties and official photographer and we things got back on track.

The ceremony itself was, well, honestly, I don't really remember a lot of it. Mostly flashes. I did not expect to get so emotional, but I think that it was the release of months of preparation stress and just happiness at finally being at the moment. As soon as the opening notes of Pachelbel's canon (Katy's entrance music) started playing, I choked up. Even though we wrote our own vows, I don't remember a word of them. Thank god that the registrar led us through them. I know that I had a bit of trouble getting them out past the lump in my throat and I think I was whispering them at some point. I happily did not faint, nor did I drop the ring (though I had a bit of trouble figuring out which finger it was supposed to go on, even with the subtle prodding from Katy “it's the finger with the engagement ring, you big sap”) Katy says that I snotted all over her when I kissed her. I maintain that it was not that bad, though I know that my cheeks were… humid. I will say in my defence though that I was not the only one that shed a few tears or had trouble saying his/her lines.

We signed the registry and that was that. We were married.

We walked down the aisle and were out in a glorious sunshine. We were really lucky with the weather. It had drizzled a bit in the morning and it was forecast to rain all afternoon, but we had a lovely sunny break to take all the pictures outside and have canapes and champagne. The menfolk had cigars outside. When people sat down and started eating the buffet, it started pissing it down with rain.

We ended up having waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much food, but it was YUMMY! The buffet menu was posted previously and it was all that it promised. We need to send thank you cards to the people at Chilford because they gave us wonderful service, above and beyond what we expected. We spent the whole afternoon and most of the night eating and drinking and being merry. It was a really, really nice day; one that I will cherish forever. It was nice to meet a lot of Katy's friends – many of which I only knew from stories and I can now assign a face to. Michel had to make a speech, but emotions got the better of him in the middle of it. The same thing happened to Katy's dad during the toast.

We started taking pictures of everybody who was there and had a bit of fun with them. I was wearing a top hat that day and Katy a tiara, so all the people who posed had to wear either item, but it wasn't gender-specific :) To maintain tradition, there's also a picture of Stephane and I that will surely come back and bite me in the ass, but hey, some things you just gotta do.

I was really happy that my dad made it overseas. I think he had a good time overall there. I was really worried about his back, but he made it without too many problems. It was good having them there, and I think I made him cry that day :) Being a bit sensitive and emotional runs in the family after all :D

At 7:30, even more food was brought out, including a plate of scones that didn't last all that long. By the end of the evening, too much food had been eaten, just enough drink had been consumed, as well as some really nice cigars for the menfolk. People were just chilling and chatting in groups. That's one thing we were really happy about. People didn't seem to have too much trouble mingling together. My parents and Katy's got along really well, which didn't surprise us, but with more ease that we'd expected, to be honest.

People stared leaving around 9:30 and we were all home at ten-ish.

The days prior to leaving for Canada

You'd think that the following days would have been relaxing. You'd have been wrong. We were in town bright and early the following morning to return the suits and drive Michel, Stephane and Anna to the train station. We introduced my mom to the Early Learning Centre, which I think was a costly thing to do, but she loved it and bought tons of stuff for the kidlet. Things got a bit hairy for a while when we couldn't get in touch with the cattery to confirm Tolstoy's booking, but that got sorted out in the end. We dropped him off on Wednesday morning just before we went to Whittlesford to head off to London.

We got my folks on the Picadilly line to Heathrow and we headed to Victoria station to get to Gatwick to take a shuttle that would take us to our hotel . After being surrounded by a mad rush of people that intensely for a few days, it did us a lot of good to be on our own for a while. We were starting to get people'd out. The night we spend at the hotel in Gatwick was uneventful really. Nothing spectacular about it. The hotel was clean, the food was ok, but the service was crap and snooty. No kudos to it, so I won't even mention it anymore. We took off for Canada the next day.

The Christening

Katy and I are the godparents of Gabriel, my sister's son. We landed on Thursday and spend the next 4 days at my parents'. The christening went well, and it was a nice ceremony as these things go. I think that most of it was lost on Katy who is not catholic and doesn't really understand the rapid-fire french that was spoken during the ceremony. Still, I nudged her to sign on the right line, so all is well. My mom was in manic-mode that weekend, making sure that everything got done. She'd organized a wine & cheese with my extended family so that they could come and meet us, the newlyweds. It went well and though most of them aren't fluent in english, we still managed to get some nice conversations going and showed the wedding pictures a lot. I wasn't expecting them to be so generous, but we got quite a bit of unexpected money for our vacation, which was all well spent in the next two weeks

Montreal

We left for Montreal on Monday morning and went to get the keys of the crash pad we'd rented for the week. It was good to be on our own. Don't get me wrong, I love my family but after all the stresses of the previous week, we needed us time. We hadn't really had the occasion to just be on our own since prior to Michel's arrival. We needed this time. We had a good time in Montreal, even if it was a bit rushed at times and we didn't get to do all we wanted to do. We didn't get to see the biodome or the planetarium, poo, but those can be targets for next time we're in town.

We did manage to hit all the high notes: having sushi three days running, seeing Michel and Isabelle, Sara and Em, going to the old port, walking on the mountain, finding a really lovely tea shop in the old port, discovering a french pastry shop on St-Denis that makes mille-feuilles to die for, going to Eggspectations, seeing the lanterns at the Botanical Gardens. On Thursday night, while having drinks at Hurleys, Michel told us that Isabelle had to drive to Quebec early the following morning for work and we could have a lift if we got to their place for 7:30 am. That involved us going to bed at 1:30am because of all the packing we needed to do and getting up at 5:30 so as to not be late. Harsh, but we managed to sleep a bit in the car on the way to Quebec

Quebec

Quebec was wonderful. I did not expect to have that much fun in Quebec. I hadn't been there since a high school trip in 1991, but I still managed to remember some of the spots from that trip, like where we sang Christmas carols in june at the foot of Champlain's statue and the fountain where I chased Khaled with a trash can because he wouldn't give back my hat…

Anyway, I digress. The hotel we were in was really nice with lovely people running it. We ate like kings, we ate like pigs! Two really nice restaurants had been recommended to us by our hotel: le Cochon Dingue and le Lapin Saute. Both were NUMMAY!!! Steak frites, french onion soup, rabbit in mustard sauce, porc loin in maple syrup, hot chocolate galore! We would a little crepe shop that was overcrowded but really, really satisfying if you know what I mean :) That was also the night she scared some locals by saying “lets go to the hotel. you can rub cream on my shoulder and we can have sex with bad tv in the background” as a way to end a bit of a not-argument :)

We ate so well and so much that at one point, Katy started saying things like “yay, salad!” and “I'm looking forward to going back home and not eating”.

We mostly stayed in the old town, because that's where most of the sights are when you're a tourist without a car. Even then though, we had more things to see than we had time, so we did the major bits and took lots of pictures.

We decided to head back to Ottawa directly and not stop over in Montreal, mostly because we didn't have anywhere to crash.

Ottawa

We spent one night at my parents' before going to the Casino Hilton in Hull, our last major treat to ourselves. We'd booked two night in the executive-level rooms with the king-size beds. Finally, we had room to sleep!!!!!!! All of the beds we'd been in so far had been doubles, if not smaller, except for the hotel in Quebec which had a queen. We had room to spare in that bed. It felt wonderful :)

We'd gotten lucky weather-wise so far, because while it had rained non-stop in Ottawa, Montreal was mostly fine (except for some patches of drizzle here and there) and same for Quebec (we got moist one afternoon, that's about it). Ottawa was a bit grey, but we still had nice weather to walk in the Byward market and around Lemay lake.

[At this point, my laptop battery died so I'll finish it later]