We had a wedding

All you need is love - and oysters, bubbles, family, old friends and new ones, fireworks and lightning. A special weekend of new beginnings, at this old house on the port.

Olivia and Angus, toasting each other with oysters.

I don’t know where to start with telling you how magical it was, so I’ll just start here.

My brother worked all week in our garden, tidying, planting, raking gravel and doing all those jobs I’d never quite got round to. Séan drove from airport to hotel to railway station to B&B and back again collecting guests. We borrowed extra tables and chairs from our neighbours, hung bunting and fairy lights off the pergola and dotted candle lanterns on the stone balustrade and in the foliage. I stayed up late on Thursday night, cooking long after everyone else had gone to bed. I love the quiet of the kitchen then, the radio on, steam rising gently from pans, a dog for company, sometimes a cat.

On Friday evening, the people from Jade Coquillages set up an oyster stall in one corner of the garden, then Fanny and Juan from Les Légumes du Soleil arrived with a giant circle of paella. I arranged all of the food on linen tablecloths and Séan set up the bar.

An oyster station in my garden. Highly recommend.

Friday night’s dinner.

The Friday night party begins.

In the late afternoon, Angus and Olivia’s friends and members of our families began to arrive at the gate and soon the garden was filled with people, from England and Australia, America and Sweden. (May I take this moment to say that the Swedes are a handsome people.) Over glasses of rosé and plates of roast lamb, salads and cheese, peach pavlova and marmalade bread-and-butter pudding, we all made new friends in the sentimental embrace of that warm August evening, all of us feeling lucky to be there, on that special night, to celebrate the young couple and love and the miracle of finding your person.

The wedding day begins…

…with a swim in the Med.

The next morning, some went to the beach for a bridal swim, still others to hair dressers and nail salons around the village, before drifting over to the Noilly Prat building across the square for the wedding at 4pm. In place of a flower girl, Woolfy, seven, ran into the Chai Sainte Anne to Lover by Taylor Swift. A bubble gun in each hand, he ran around the circle of guests, piercing the cathedral-dark with a thousand bubbles. My mother read a poem she’d written for the couple (Love means I see you…I listen to your words in any language and make them mine). As Angus and Olivia read their vows, Angus in Swedish, Olivia in English, their sisters, Helen and Elin, translated them. It felt like a handmade wedding, a perfect expression of these two beloved souls, because it was.

Canapés in the courtyard at Noilly Prat.

The animation de jambon commences.

Scrambled eggs and peppers.

We all danced out into the courtyard to champagne, cocktails and canapés – oysters, of course, gravadlax with lemon mascarpone, tiny foie gras pastillas, warm scallops with summer truffles, scrambled eggs in their shells, tiny tielles sétoises (octopus pies), brandade vol-au-vents, an animation de jambon  (a man carving ham – I want everything in my life to be an animation de… from now on). Then there was dinner of duck and potatoes, and lots of cheese. Musicians serenaded the brand new marriage with old songs played on an accordion and a violin. Then, the chef and maître d’ carried out the towering croquembouche, a pyramid of choux filled with chocolate and vanilla cream held together with a scaffolding of caramel and spun sugar, sparklers stuck in its side lighting up the darkness.

The croquembouche.

Later still, we had ice creams and chocolates made by Emmanuel Servant, the local chocolatier who also made the croquembouche, as we sat beneath the courtyard canopies watching lightning pierce the midnight sky, waiting for the rain to stop, so we could all walk the wet pavements of the village to our beds. (I am reminded of the French saying, mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux, a rainy wedding means a happy marriage.)

On Sunday, we all had lunch at Upendo on the port – chosen because it’s that rare thing in rural France, a restaurant that understands “vegetarian” doesn’t mean ham is an acceptable condiment. People came in and out of the house all day. Afterwards, the survivors played pétanque in front of the house, fortified by that sportsman’s diet of oysters and champagne. In the apricot light of the early evening, we clung to the happiness a little longer.

Today, the oyster path I made through the garden has another layer, a sprinkling of wedding shells discarded over this special weekend of love, family and new friends. I’ve always believed that however beautiful a house, it’s people who give it life, that bestow the true bloom of beauty.  After years of being closed up, closed off and melancholy, we filled this old house on the port with life, noise, happiness. Embrace life with a generous heart, whatever new adventure you embark upon, whether a new marriage, a new house, a new country. That’s all I know.                           

PS Normal recipe service will be resumed this weekend. Thank you for being patient with me. I always appreciate it. With love to you all.

Sunday evening pétanque in the square in front of the house, with a picnic of champagne and oysters.