Time Flies When You're Having Fun

It hardly seems possible, but tomorrow Amy and I will have been married for three weeks. All the evocative mental images of that day -- the tears, the sweat-soaked groom melting in late afternoon sun, Puba stealing the show and that speech -- are now but fading memories. [And, though we missed much, we did notice a few of you were enjoying yourselves - above.] Perhaps even hazier are our memories of the glorious week leading up to the wedding, during which pantegrulian quantities of beer and wine were quaffed by you wedding guests as you warmed up your drinking muscles and livers for the final onslaught on June 28th. So it is with great anticipation that we await the delivery of our wedding photographs which we hope will fill us in on some of what actually happened in that 6-8 hour period. Of course, that photographic story will be far from complete and because of that we'd love it if you could either send us or e-mail us a link to your best and worst pics of the week and the wedding.
We've uploaded our pictures of the wedding week to Snapfish so we invite you to check them out here
[Note: If you'd like to share you pictures with other wedding guests but don't have their e-mail address, please feel free to post links to your pics in the comments section of this post.]

We're sure most brides and grooms feel the discomfort of being so in focus with everyone snapping away, and while we did too -- particularly for the first dance, as we did our utmost to shuffle around without stacking-it on the uneven parquet while being blinded by the videographers' light -- we got used to it in the end, as the image to the right, i think, shows. [We thank Mrs. Louise Culshaw for capturing this beautiful, romantic nuptial scene.] Anyway, we encourage you to share your pictures with us and each other through whichever medium you prefer. We can't wait to see them!

Knowing Your Tagliatelle from Your Tagliolini

Returning home, you, like us, probably felt the bump of landing in several places - the legs and spine (from airplane travel) and the wallet (from the careless assumption that a euro is only worth a little more than a dollar). You may also have felt that bump in your gut - no, not the one gained from vacation over-consumption, though we now jiggle unintentionally in several new areas too - but the corporeal shock brought on by the sudden lack of carbohydrate-heavy foodstuffs delivered at least twice daily and washed down with liters of wine. Our livers are probably grateful that the recent, heady days of a personal pizza for lunch, and a pasta primi and meat secondi with potato contorni in the evening are over, but we find ourselves missing those regular hits of starch, and the challenge of trying to figure out just what kind of pasta we were ordering.

Many linguistic officianados may mock those of us who struggle with even the most basic of restaurant Italian but we're sure that our wedding guests, as we did, learned a great deal more Italian than they knew before just from negotiating two menus a day for a week. Unfortunately, however useful it is knowing that senza gas and naturale refer to still mineral water, it pales into insignificance compared to the sophisticated and nuanced ability to identify the shape of the pasta on offer. Do not feel downcast though, if you were surprised when your food came, as we learn from Heat - Bill Buford's humorous account of a novice cook's experiences in several famous Italian restaurants - so creative and impish are Italian pasta-makers in playing with the form of their dough that many natives do not always know exactly what it is they're getting.

Over the course of a three week trip, your blog authors had exactly zero disappointing meals, even when forced to eat at highway service stations, and in spite of frequently ordering things completely blindly due to inadequacies of our dictionary. That said, it would have been nice in some cases to have had a better idea of what to expect so our levels of anticipation could have been higher, and it is with this in mind that we very humbly (since this would have been a lot more useful to you a month ago) offer the following links to a website that removes some of the mystery from Italian menus.

Tubular Pasta
Stuffed Pasta aka pasta ripiena
Other pasta shapes
Long, Flat Pasta
Long, Thin Pasta

In spite of (or perhaps because of) eating pasta everyday for the best part of a month, we're reluctant to give it up, and are studiously trying to recreate some of our favorite dishes from our trip at home. Just last night we made an uber-simple but very delicious penne with arugula, cherry tomatoes and canned tuna dish we had at a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place in the mountains of Elba. If you aren't ready to give up your pasta fix either, we'd love you to send us recipes for versions of your favorite Italian dishes. They don't have to be exactly the way they were made when you had them in Italy - that's probably impossible - your nearest and most delicious approximations will do just fine. Either e-mail us or add a comment to this blog post.
Buon Appetito!!

P.S. - our hearty salutations to anyone who's figured out which of the pictures in this post is tagliatelle and which is tagliolini. Answers will be revealed in the next exciting installment...

Apropos of Nothing, A Show of Human Kindness

Warning: this post has nothing whatsoever to do with weddings or Italy, so feel free to ignore it if that’s all you care about.

Very clearly, though, it’s not all everyone cares about, and we were awakened from our own navel-gazing and hand-wringing over our wedding plans with a jolt this last weekend, when a very kind gentleman helped us out of tight spot just because he felt like it.

Our car was dead and wouldn’t be resurrected in spite of applying jump leads and high voltage, so we headed down to PepBoys Auto to see what could be done. Knowing the sum total of bugger all about cars between us, we were inquiring about a battery-powered jump-starting kit we’d seen on the internet, when another customer — a stocky guy with gold front teeth — suggested a way we could check to see if the battery was at the root of the problem, or if it was something more sinister. Moreover, when we told him that there was little chance of us being able to successfully perform said test, he told us that was no problem, he’d come and do it for us.

Pulling out a socket-set and a pair of gloves, Claude, for that was his name, set about testing our battery, and confirmed that it, and not the alternator, was at fault. He then told us we should buy a new one and he’d wait there and fit it for us when we returned with it.

Staggered by this selfless show of kindness, we at once felt hugely grateful and rather embarrassed that we had to rely on the charity of a total stranger to help us out. It did, however, confirm our belief in the innate good of humankind, especially when, as we thanked him profusely, Claude told us he was happy to help, saying, “If I wasn’t doing this, I’d just be at home arguing with my wife.”

So, thank you again, Claude. You were a real gentleman and a great help to us. We wish we could thank you properly but we’re sure you’ll get your just reward one day.

Another upshot of this situation was that we both know how to change a car battery now. So, it seems good things happen to good people, right? Right...?

Dancing Under the Stars

Vicky Pollard showing us all how it's done...

Many of us dream, we're sure, of whirling around a highly polished dance floor with aplomb, completely in step with a partner who is fleet of foot, erect of posture and minty of breath. Indeed, if you're like us, this may only ever be a dream, as the likelihood of straining knee or ankle ligaments, and/or head butting ones partner in the face, is far greater than the chance of successfully completing even the briefest of waltzes.

This should not dissuade you from shaking a leg come June 28th - quite the opposite in fact. For not only are all styles and ability levels welcome on the parquet, they are demanded. In submitting a request to have your fave tunes played at the reception, you, perhaps unwittingly, entered into an unwritten contract, committing yourself to abandoning any normal sense of decency and inhibition you might feel when bad music is playing. Maybe we should have made that clear when asking you for musical suggestions, but we didn't.

Some of you may be interested then, in working on your fancy footwork ahead of time and for those who do, we humbly submit this remarkable piece of footage for your consideration. We suggest you study this child's moves, they will come in handy should the music of a certain recently-divorced, serial-flasher, Louisiana-native, mother of two ring out during the reception...

You have been warned.

Yo Mamma Didn't Raise No Fool!

It's a dust-bunny... get it?

Congratulations to those among our wedding guests who have done themselves and their parents proud by paying the remaining balance for their accommodation on time (by May 1st). You are all at the top of the class, though given your obvious time-management and scheduling ability, that may not be an unusual feeling.

For those of you still furtively groping down the back of the sofa in search of spare change, we hope that you come up clutching something shiny and not something sticky and/or hairy. We also hope that in due course you will send us a check/cheque for the balance. The sooner we have all your money in, the easier it is for us to get that squared away with Lupinari ahead of the wedding, making it much more relaxing for you and us as the event draws near.

Once again, our thanks to those calendar-conscious over-achievers, and our encouragements to the bottom-feeding, ne'er-do-wells, amongst you. We're very much looking forward to seeing you all in less than two months!

Cheese by Any Other Name is Still Formaggio

Believe me, you will dance to this...


Yes, indeed wedding blog readers, when you ask a stupid question, you are bound to get a stupid answer. So when we recently invited our wedding guests to tell us their favorite wedding reception tunes, we were unsurprised to be deluged with more cheesy requests than a DJ at a college formal. We were surprised though, just how seriously you took our invitation, and so we expect you all front and center when the dancing starts.

This post, as much as it might want to, is not about to name and shame you for your cringe-worthy selections, instead we thought it might amuse you to find out some of the aural delights your fellow guests put forward. There's quite a variety of formaggio... Enjoy!

Ice, Ice, Baby - Vanilla Ice
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers
Annie's Song - John Denver
Club Tropicana - Wham
Hit Me Baby One More Time - Britney
It Only Takes a Minute Girl - Take That
Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
Brick House - The Commodores

and, though we won't name names, (you know who you are Tim Hind) - Cotton-Eyed Joe by The Rednecks

Should you find that you're not as familiar as you should be with some of these "classics," you might decide to visit the toe-curlingly fabulous Am I Right.com where you can enter the lyrics you've been singing in the shower and find out what they really are.

Please note: that in asking you to submit your fave tunes, we understand that you'll be expecting to hear them. However, we feel it's important to add that some requests (Chaz & Dave, for example) were quite beyond the pale, and have been rejected for fear of reducing a fun-filled celebration to a groan-inducing headache.

Getting Your Groove On, Literally

Coming to a wedding near you...
So, with the day fast approaching and most of the other details figured out, we're starting to address the conundrum that is the event's aural pleasure. What music will work in the peaceful surroundings of Lupinari? (Slayer?) What tunes will our guests enjoy listening to the string quartet play as they wait, expectantly, for Amy to walz down the isle? (Hall & Oates' Maneater, perhaps?) And which dancefloor classics are going to get you all on your feet, cutting a rug, after dinner? Regular readers will know that dancing at the reception is compulsory, and rest assured that all dancefloor antics -- the best and worst moves, and the most "in to it" facial expressions -- will be faithfully captured on video for our subsequent entertainment. You might not know, though, that the music for the reception will be played on an iPod instead of by a DJ.

With these things in mind, we thought the least we could do was to request that guests suggest their favorite songs - i.e. ones they'll dance to - so that when they're caught, eyes closed, lips-pursed a la Mick Jagger, and body contorted like spaghetti in a wind-tunnel on celuloid, they'll have the excuse that they really love the song. So, please send us your ideas on music for the post-dinner reception and we'll do our best to accommodate as many tastes as possible. Do bear in mind though, that the international nature of the wedding might mean that at any time, half the people in the room might be throwing themselves around with reckless abandon, hands in the air, to a "classic" that the other half of the room has never heard of. This, i'm sure you'll agree, is infinitely preferable to taking a risk with a local, Tuscan DJ playing all manner of crazy-sexy-Euro-disco-dance-party tunes from the early 90s, not to stereotype our Italian cousins as having poor taste, of course...

Anyway, get all ideas to us asap so we can collect all the songs together in time. You now have no excuses for not dancing!