Thursday, August 5, 2010

A Gingerbread Wedding

We've just returned from Ireland where we attended the wedding of the Littlest Gingerbread Sister to her Young Man.


As you might know by now, there are masses of Gingerbreads but this wedding was the last of the female Gingerbreads' and therefore possibly the last wedding to be held at the Gingerbread Homestead. I remember when Littlest Sister was born ... and now she's plighting her troth to a young fella from County Laois. Where did the last quarter of a century go?

She spent three hours painstakingly applying make up: layer, layer, wipe, wipe, layer, layer, wipe. It was like watching a backwards restoration of the Mona Lisa: instead of stuff being carefully scraped off the face, it was laboriously scraped on. The final result was quite lovely: she was gorgeous. And I'm not just saying that because she's my little sister, it's an opinion shared by an unbiassed jury, made up of my Mammy, my Daddy, my siblings, in-laws and several hundred wedding guests, not to mention passers-by who sneaked into the church to admire the bride. We all think she was mighty purdy, as you'd say in cowboy terms, and I'm sure you'd agree if I were allowed to post photos.

Weddings at our house are exciting: a big marquee and banquet furniture are hired, posh portable toilets are rolled in, the caterer delivers his barbecue and an assortment of water boilers (because God forbid someone at the wedding might be temporarily tea-less). We've succumbed to the inevitable and allowed the dog to roam around unleashed. Sadly, though, he's getting on in years and has lost some of the vim and vigour he had as a pup. Readers of my blog will know that he has devoted significant amounts of energy to gatecrashing previous weddings (read up on that here), but now that he was finally allowed to attend, it just wasn't the same. He ended up on the rug in front of the fireplace in the sitting room, watching Sky News while the wedding band played. It was a little sad.

But back to the wedding (or the bride'll kill me for straying off on to the subject of the dog again): thankfully the afternoon was dry. Not sunny, not warm - I mean, we're talking about Ireland in July, let's not get too carried away here - but after a morning of torrential rainfall, it dried up nicely enough to allow us to get into our Fancy Clothes and Spiffy Shoes. We Gingerbreads do scrub up nicely (even if it involves frantic waving of hands in car on the way to the church to dry the hastily applied nail varnish) and everyone turned out in their best festive finery. My little niece, a two-year-old fashionista, was happy to have her sparkly pink shoes snapped for posterity, even though she spent the day eyeing all photographers suspiciously. She made an exception, obviously, for her footwear.


Aren't they lovely? And what about those polka-dot trousers, eh? Don't you wish you were two again?

1 comment:

Joanne said...

Oh, I love those polka dot trousers!!! Too cute- and the shoes- just lovely! Sounds like a wonderful Gingerbread wedding time was had by all!