Steve & Helen Smith's wedding

We just got back from a wonderful wedding up in Warwickshire of my friend from university, Helen Gallier and her new husband Steve Smith. The venue, Nuthurst Grange was really special and the sun shone at all the right times. I've lots of photos, here come my favourites!

The first ones are of us getting ready, and some of our hotel room in the travel lodge.



The civil wedding ceremony went very smoothly, the registrar was very charming and spoke well. Emma got hungry half way through and my Helen missed the second half of the ceremony including the vows when she was feeding Emma.

There was a big round of applause when the registrar announced the new husband and wife.

The official photos followed and the photographer was very professional, doing the big group shots first, then telling people when they were finished with. It let us get on with important things like chatting in the shade and going to the bar whilst the bride and groom had all the arty shots taken in the extensive gardens.

Here's Emma getting cuddles from some new friends:Jane Halliday, who moved back to the UK from Canada last year and is now working up in Macclesfield. We've been friends since we both lived in Ancaster Hall in the first year of university at Nottingham.
Here's Emma being given a cuddle by the bride, Helen. Helen was also at Ancaster Hall in the first year and lived with Jane in the second and third years.
Here's Richard giving little Emma a cuddle. Richard was another housemate of Helen's in the third year, and was in Ancaster Hall during our first year, but stayed there an extra year. He left Nottingham just a couple of years ago, about 5 years later than the rest of us. It wasn't all retakes - he was doing post graduate work!
This is Rowan holding Maddie who is wearing Emma's hat.
Here's Mike who we were glad to find out is still alive. Mike has been rather quiet of late - we hadn't heard from him for some months. The reason is a good one though, he has a lovely new girlfriend called Claire, co-incidentally our friend Richard's younger sister. They seemed very happy together at the wedding. Mike didn't seem to be too scared of giving babies a cuddle, so watch out world!
Here's the Erasure Table. From left to right, there's Claire, Mike, John, Rowan & Maddie, Richard (The artist formerly known as Jim), Emma, Helen & Emma, David (me) and Jane.

The new Helen Smith loves her Eighties music and realised that if the top table were to be called "The Smiths", then all the other tables should be given names of Eighties groups as well. She did a fairly good job of naming the top 10 eighties groups - I think she had A-HA, Banarama, Culture Club, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, The Cure, Erasure, The Smiths, Spandau Ballet and Wham. However, I do have to pull Helen up here and point out that surely Ultravox and The Police should have gotten in ahead of Erasure.

Here is Emma wearing Maddie's hat.

A bit more baby armwrestling, picking up from where they left off at Berkeley Castle.




Here are some pictures from our table. Helen and Steve had arranged some chocolate lollipops with people's names on to be left on the tables.





Here's the cutting of the cake. The cake had to be chocolate because of Helen's weakness. According to Brian, her father, Helen's chocoholism was inherited from him.
Here's Emma at the end of the evening. She'd been very good all day, sitting up during the speeches and consenting to being passed around without complaint. The night before, she'd slept from 8pm until 6am wih only a single feed at 11am. This was not repeated on the night of the wedding however when she was up a few times in the night.



Here's some pictures of Helen and Steve's first dance. They did some very impressive moves on the dance floor. We think they must have been having lessons.... I used my digital camera to capture some video footage of the dancing. It hasn't worked very well because of the dark, but the sound is fine!
On the way home today, once we were through some nasty traffic leaving Birmingham on the M5, we stopped off in Cribbs Causeway, and got some natty green pyjamas with farmyard animals on for Emma. Helen got some more trousers from H&M. I spent some old Virgin Megastore vouchers Helen found in the attic buying the three series of Black Books on DVD.

We stopped off in Toys R Us and bought a Bumbo for Emma to sit in now she can support her head well. It is supposed to help her posture. When she starts on eating solids it is a good place to sit her too.

Since we got back, Helen had a sleep and we watched the first episode of Black Books where Manny (Bill Bailey) swallows The Little Book of Calm and thereafter has a glowing aura and calms down animals and car alarms, but not skin-heads by quoting from The Book.