Middle aged wedding fever

DD’s work wife got married on Saturday. It was the most lovely event, held on the waterfront at Narrabeen.

Technically, Jules isn’t actually DD’s work wife any more, but she was for 10 years and they’re still great mates. It was a second marriage for both the bride and groom.

DD cheerfully describes such scenarios as “the triumph of hope over experience”.

I bought myself a frock from my new favourite shop – Zara – to wear to the wedding. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but these days when I buy clothes I usually look at the on myself in the changeroom, sigh and either recoil in horror or say “that will do”. I tried this frock on and went “oooooooh, I love it!”

Very exciting!

So I frocked up and headed to the Northern Beaches after my sister kindly agreed to let the dogs out for a wee later that night so I could sleep over at DD’s place.

As for the wedding, the bride is a fabulous woman and the groom, Steve, is a top bloke. I cried a lot as I watched them exchange their vows and promise to love each other forever. I also laughed a lot because they are funny people and also because they both had to put on their glasses to read the vows. Ah, middle-aged weddings.

Just before the ceremony, I also almost fell over when I saw the name on a memorial plaque on a park bench at the reserve. It said “Syd Kenny”. Syd was a very dear friend of DD’s mum, who died during the first wave of COVID-19. Not from COVID-19 itself, but I don’t think the isolation that was imposed on him during his final days helped.

DD was introducing me to the bride’s son when I spotted Syd’s name on the bench and it spun me out a bit. I started tugging on DD’s sleep – is that THE Syd????

It turns out it was, his family home was just a block away from Julie’s wedding. It’s a very small world.

As Jules and Steve were signing the register, her brother sang “It must be love” to the guests, then we wandered up the road to a local venue called the Moonlight Social Club for a cocktail party.

We settled in for Margaritas with a couple who’d just come from the hospital where the husband’s mum was getting an emergency stent operation following a heart attack. They figured they might as well toast the bride and groom while they were waiting for her to come out of the operating theatre.

It was my kind of wedding reception. A covers duo were playing all my favourite songs, there were slider burgers and fish tacos and I got to do lots of cathartic crying at all the touching speeches.

A bulk fun evening was had by all … though I was feeling a bit dusty from the Margarita, Mojito and then Espresso Martini DD got to perk me up when I started to flag at about 9pm.

We left DD’s car there at the end of the night and returned the next morning for sweet potato corn cakes and a quick dip in the wild, debris-filled surf at Narrabeen.

I wasn’t happy to leave my relaxed Northern Beaches life to return to the real world after brekkie, but I had work to do.

I needed to attempt to make a sugar-free sponge cake for the youngest’s 16th birthday (on her request). In was not an unqualified success. When I tried to beat the coconut sugar with the egg whites, I didn’t get soft white peaks, it turned into brown slurry.

The youngest has since informed me you’re supposed to beat the egg whites on their own. Ooops.

The resulting concoction looked like a sponge cake on the outside, but tasted a bit like sweetish, brown bread on the inside. I whacked some fresh cream and sugar-free raspberry jam in it and hoped for the best.