Le Mariage

An excuse to leave the country! Not like I need one, but this was special trip for the marriage of Karine and Mark who were nice enough to stop by when I was in ‘stralia. The party was in a location called Nice which isn’t pronounced ‘nice’ but more like niece, just in case you didn’t know and it is in the South East of France on the Mediterranean.

I was a bit late on hotel booking so when I arrived at 22h00 my hotel was located a good 1km away from the beach. I walked into town and met up with Mark and some of his buddies for a quick drink in an Irish bar. I headed straight home after two pints as I had nothing to drink or eat since the flight and felt drunk already. Ed was supposed to be sharing the hotel room with me but his passport had expired and he didn’t realise!! So he did not make it which sucks!! The next day I woke up and had a walk around Nice, I walked to the top of a hill and took this photo looking down at Nice –

Blue Skies, Blue Water and Hot Weather

I actually felt a little bit down when I first looked at the sea. From a distance when you can see the sea on the horizon it would seem crazy that waves would not exist, but as you can see, surfing is not going to happen here –

Good for swimming though

I sat on the beach for a long time and did a lot of swimming as well as met up with a few of Karine and Mark’s relatives and then some people from work. I then walked the 1km back to my hotel got my stuff and the laptop that was to play the photography video of Karine and Mark’s holidays that they had asked me to do based on some of the videos they had watched at this very website. I got changed into my suit at a hotel near Le Castel, the location of the wedding because wearing it in the 28 degree heat and carrying a bag 1km was not going to happen!!!

Security at the reception was tight, there was security guards on the entrance, a man on the beach with a big black dog and two men in a fishing boat pretending to fish (they were definetly secret service).

A work colleague/boss seemed to have somehow got dragged into sorting out the A/V for the wedding so it was funny to see Simon walking around holding phono/av leads, here he is checking the rig (not sure how much he was getting per hour for this) –

Work/Holiday Intertwined

The reception was beautiful and the weather was fantastic, the best man’s speech by Kenji was excellent and very funny –

Best man’s speech with Nice backdrop

After Kenji and Arnould (Karine’s brother) speeches Karine and Mark exchanged rings and kissed to an applause and onlookers from above –

Bravo!!

For dinner we all had to sit at tables that were named after locations of significance to Karine and Mark. The main tables were London, Sydney and Singapore and the other tables had different names. I was on table Exeter but some other tables were named Katoomba and Clovelly from Mark and Karine’s trip to Australia which was nice to see!! I was the only English person on my table so I had to hot up on my lingo fast. I only found this out at 16h00 the same day so time was not on my side. Fortunetly they all spoke English so I got to have some conversation with them!!

My french friends on the Exeter table

Later that night Karine and Mark cut their cake, which was the biggest wedding cake I’ve ever seen –

Big Cake!!!

And so as the sun went down in Nice on Karine and Mark’s first day of marriage, I also headed back the 1km walk to my hotel and spent the next two days just laying in the sun and swimming in the waveless, ripless sea…..

The day comes to an end

The end.