Worra Lully Cuppill!

My wife showing her typical lack of  respect for authority
at Forbidden Planets 35th birthday celebrations.

I'm writing this at the end of an utterly fantastic bank holiday weekend which saw me promoting the 35th birthday of Forbidden Planet but one which more importantly saw two of my best friends in the world getting married and me fulfilling the great honour of being the grooms best man. Occasional guest writer Druid (better known as Tom White) and Frances Grainger have now become the symbiotic entity known as Tom and Frances Grainger-White (the artists formerly known as the Fran/Tom Menace) and I couldn't be happier for the pair of them.

It was an utterly wonderful weekend at a beautiful venue (Warwickshires incredible hidden gem of Wethele Manor) with wonderful scenery, wonderful food, wonderful drink (hic) and wonderful people - all gathered together for a wonderful event. It's always nice to catch up with old friends - but it's even better when you're together for such a special reason.

Nerves were slightly frayed when the photographer wasn't on site and the Bridal party were delayed by a traffic jam - two of our friends Gerry and Kevin valiantly offered to step into the fray to do photography and our friend Steven bravely offered up his services as a replacement Fran if the worst came to the worst - but everybody turned up in plenty of time and it turned out that Tom and I didn't know that Hannah, the photographer, was travelling with the bridal party all along.

D'oh.

It was a brilliant ceremony with the temperamental weather deciding to remain sunny, and a fantastic wedding breakfast of curried goods was absolutely perfect - the drinks were flowing, although I'll admit that other than a drop of Cava and a sip of Cobra I barely touched a drop - I was way too nervous about the speech especially after the phenomenal one delivered by Frans dad Harry after which there was barely a dry eye in the house ("Fran and Tom do crosswords. They don't do crossed words").

And then the speech - repeated here verbatim for your pleasure cricitism; 

The cake toppers that Tara and I made for the
wedding cake - kept as a complete surprise for Tom!

Good afternoon everybody.

For those who don’t know me, my name is David and I have the great honour of being Toms best man. For those of you who do know me - the previous statement still applies.

I couldn’t believe it when during a New Year party several years ago Tom asked me to be his best man. I’d like to point out – for the record, m’lud - that we were all in fancy dress at the time – he was dressed in a schoolboys uniform as Angus Young from AC/DC and I in a oversized papier mache head- so it’s quite possible that he asked the wrong person and has been too proud or embarrassed to subsequently correct his mistake. That said he was my best man at my wedding several years back, so this might just be petty revenge. And knowing how fiercely competitive Tom is, it must really have hurt him to hand over the Best Man title.

But Tom, mate. Don’t look on this as a best man’s speech, more of it as a right to reply.

In all honesty though, it’s such a great honour and a sign of our friendship and it genuinely means a great deal to be asked. But as they say, every silver lining has a cloud and for me - this speech is it. It’ll only be a short one though because of my throat - If I go on too long, Tom and Fran have threatened to cut it.

But firstly, on behalf of everyone here I would like to say congratulations to Tom and Frances and to thank you both for making us all feel very welcome and allowing us to be a part of your special day.

Thanks must also go to John & Pat and Harry & Barbara for such a wonderful day so far. On a day like today looking at this lovely building I can’t help but think about history, and especially how history repeats itself. I mean it must have only around 25 years ago Fran was going to bed with a dummy, yet here we are again...

But anyway, to the matter at hand, I’d like to tell you all about one of the best blokes I know, but tradition dictates I talk about Tom.

Now this is a story all about how 

Toms life got flipped-turned upside down

And I’d like to take a minute,

Just sit right there

And I’ll tell you how he met and married Frances Graing-er.

I’m sure those of you who know Tom know – and have often remarked - how uncannily his life parallels that of the actor, producer and rap artist Will Smith with but a few subtle – but interesting - differences. Whereas Willard Christopher Smith Junior, to use his full name, was born and raised in West Philadelphia, Thomas Susan Norman Stanley Fletcher White, to use his full name, was born and raised elsewhere.

Will Smith has enjoyed great success in television, film and music and in April 2007 Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood. He’s been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, two academy awards and has won four Grammy Awards.

Thomas White has done some buildings and some bridges and some water pipes and stuff.

And there the similarities end.

I met Tom 7 years back and the two of us have been great friends ever since. We found we had many interests in common – drinking, crappy monster movies, video games, multi-packs of crisps and exaggerating about numbers to name just 27.

Once a year Tom throws what is affectionately termed a “pie bash” where a large group of our friends gather together, the only rule being that every person there needs to have brought along a pie that they have made. It’s like Fight Club only with no – well, less - fighting and more of an emphasis on shortcrust. It was at one of these events where Tom and Fran first properly met - It could be said that their pies met across a crowded room.

I once asked Tom when he first knew he was in love with Fran. He told me that he knew from the very first moment she told him he was.

But sincerely, anyone here like me who has been lucky enough to spend time in their company knows what a great couple they are, perfectly complementing each other in many, many ways. Fran is both an excellent cook and baker, and Tom loves eating and being complementary about food. And now they’re a perfect couple, for better, for worse. Tom couldn’t have done any better, and Fran couldn’t have….

Anyway.

In closing I’d like to wish Tom and Frances all the happiness in the world. They are the most perfectly suited couple in every way and it is incredibly reassuring to know that two of my best friends in the world will be spending the rest of their lives happily together. It now gives me immense pleasure - not to mention relief - to say that all that remains for me to do is to ask you to charge your glasses, stand and join me in wishing Mr & Mrs Grainger-White a long, prosperous and happy life together.

"Take my wife."

Ladies and gentlemen please raise your glasses – to the new Mr. and Mrs. Grainger-White; Fran & Tom!

It seemed to go down quite well, despite my nervous rapid-fire delivery. They laughed at the bits I wanted them to laugh at, and all was well. And I've never drunk three glasses of white wine so quickly. I had catching up to do. And boy, did I catch up.

The rest of the day was awesome - the weather remained absolutely perfect although it would appear that Wethele Manor was also hosting some manner of Wasp convention that they hadn't warned us about - there were hundreds of the little buzzing Nazi wannabe-bee bastards, all paying particular interest in their awesome Wedding cake.

Beer and wine poured thick and fast, the awesome Jakamo played a blinder of a gig and my wife Tara ended the night with an excellent playlist of tunes and didn't even get slightly grumpy and play "Hang the DJ" when the venue owners threatened to cut short her set.

Overall, a fantastic weekend and a lovely day of celebrating the marriage of great friends. If any couple belong together, it's Tom and Fran. I wish them all the happiness in the world.

Mawwiage is what bwings us together

So, last Saturday saw me marrying the day when the lovely Tara Watson (now Court) agreed to marry this old duffer, making me the happiest man in the world.

It was a spectacular day, the only hitch being an incredible cock-up from the coach company due to transport the wedding party from the Registry office to the reception venue - but that's a blog post for another day.

I'd been kicked out of my house the night before by my bride-to-be and had prepared myself for my impending nuptials by a night at the pub followed by Rock Band 3.  The next morning my best mans lovely girlfriend Fran cooked us all a full English breakfast, and I imagine our preparations were considerably more stress free than those taking place with the bridal party.  The queue for the bathroom alone at my house must have been record-breaking.

I was completely composed during the ceremony itself right up until I saw Tara.  She looked absolutely beautiful, and I'm not ashamed to say that I was a little bit overwhelmed with emotion.  I managed to make my vows without my voice going completely, and that was it - we were married.

The reception (at Hatton Village Hall) was fantastic.  The caterers had done an incredible job of setting the room up to our specifications - every guest had a fortune telling fish and a fortune cookie (which it could be argued should have cancelled each other out) and the tables themselves were laden with confetti, finger frights and lanterns.

The meal (what little I had of it - I was too excited to eat) was brilliant, and everybody seemed to have a blinding time.  The booze was flowing, the music and DJs were brilliant (who wouldn't want a bit of AC/DC played at a wedding?) and the night couldn't have gone better.  Taras Dads and my speeches were short, but my best man Tom White did a blinder of one.  The most hilarious part was where he gave gifts of Belgian beer to all the stag-do party, except for my dad who received a crate of Carling and Sticking Plasters - those who know either from their attendance at the stag-do or my earlier blog posts about it will quickly know the relevance of that.

We'd made our own Zombie bride and groom and pumpkin cake toppers (as in the photograph) and these also appeared to go down well - I'd been desperate to publish photographs of these before, but had (rightfully) been not allowed.

Afterwards the wedding party went back to the Brittania Hotel in Coventry (where a huge section of us were staying) and continued to drink until the early hours of the morning.

Overall, an absolutely fantastic day.  My wife looked beautiful, my best man performed over and above the call of duty and I got to celebrate this wonderful time with my best friends and suddenly-dramatically-increased extended family.

So, I'm a married man and an incredibly proud one at that.  Thanks to you all for your best wishes, gifts and simply for being there for us.  It means a great deal to both my wife and I and we love you all.

I'm getting married in the morning - erm, this afternoon. Ding dong the bells are going to chime.

So, suits are ready, shirts are ironed and facial stubble has been removed by electrical implements.  My last blog post as a single man as I mentally steel myself for my wedding at 2:45.  Naturally, this marks the end of this blog because as of this afternoon I'm going to have to run everything by the missus for approval*

Thanks to all of your best wishes through the old fashioned cards-in-the-mail method and that new fangled facebook thingummy.

The difficult choice I have to make now is do I change my relationship status to 'Married' during the service or afterwards?

See you all on the other side :)

* - I may sneak on in the middle of the night to make blog posts when she's fast asleep.  Just don't tell her.  Ssssshhhhh.

World of Weddingcraft

Some of you may recall an earlier post in which I revealed the design of our wedding invites.  Since then, Tara and I have been a little more crafty (that is crafty as in the carrying out of crafts as opposed to exhibiting suspicious fox-like behaviour) and have some more designs for your delectation and delight*.

Still going with the Penguin theme - and relieved that they haven't tried to sue or yet or meaning our designs get turned by the printer for infringing copyright - we have the place settings, being modelled here on my work desk by Mr. Peter Parker.  He hasn't got an invite for the big day, but he doesn't know that yet.  It's an old tradition to never allow super powered beings to your wedding - they tend to make the day all about them.  The place settings are again provided by the brilliant moo.com and are simply business cards with our design folded in half - effective yet simple.

We were originally going to go for something simple for the table place names, but as per usual I decided to do something over complicated which we originally regretted - It's an utter ball-ache cutting the bits out and assembling them - but the final effect looks quite impressive.

As our wedding is the day before halloween it seemed appropriate to combine that theme with the existing Penguin one, and so we went for classic horror novel titles.  Five on display here, five still to make.  I hope nobody takes offence at being stuck on a table called 'Frankstein' or 'The island of Doctor Moreau' - the woman at the local print shop where I got the templates for the designs printer (ColorCo in Earlsdon, again very professional and very friendly) thought the designs very amusing.

So, it's T minus 22 days to the wedding and things are chugging along - although a trip to hobbycraft will be required tomorrow to get something capable of holding the table names up.

We're also planning something quite special for the bride and groom at the top of the cake, althought it must be said that Taras artistic efforts way exceeded by one in that regard, so I'm having to start again.  More components to buy from Hobbycraft.

Still, exciting times!  Rings are purchased, venue is booked, DJ and music have been chosen, etc, etc.    Tara is remaining remarkably cool and collected about the whole, so it's looking good.

Roll on October 30th!

* boredom

Marriage. A sentence, not a word.

Regular readers of this blog (and thank you to all those who answered my desperate plea for more followers, by the way) may remember a post a while back in which we were trying to decide the final design for my wedding invitations.  We very much wanted to design our own from scratch, and many ideas got passed around and discarded; the first design (which I was rather fond of) featured Space Invaders - album cover spoofs and the like were also considered.  Well, having had a fine print job done by the beautiful people at moo.com (who I can't recommend enough - the design we submitted was printed perfectly and their website is an absolute joy to use and is simplicity itself) and having dragged friends in to assist with the laborious exercise of writing and sealing envelopes, they finally got posted off yesterday (Aren't first class stamps expensive, these days?  No wonder I rarely post anything anymore) and we've heard tell of a few arriving at their intended destinations.  Now this day has arrived, the final design can be revealed!   In the end as you can see we went for the classic Penguin book cover design, with a blue to match that of the bridesmaids outfits.  The wedding plans themselves?  Chugging along nicely like some manner of ridiculously expensive wedding train weakly-developed metaphor.

Suits are hired, caterer is booked, photographer (Victoria Jane Photography in Coventry, again highly recommended) has her gameplan and deposit.  Respective Stag-dos and Hen-dos are arranged (with great thanks to my best man Tom who performed cat herding style miracles to arrange it all) and there is little else to do now other than get nervous about the big day!

And the title of this blog entry?  I joke, clearly.  As an aside, the lovely-soon-to-be Mrs. Court has started a new blog solely based around her mums opinions on the acts on Jools Holland.  In Taras own words; "The basis of this blog is to share with you, the internet, my mammy's scores and comments as she watches Later With Jools Holland. This might seem quite a dull idea for a blog, but her comments are always good fun, with scoring thrown in and best of all, sweariness. Yes, I think it IS big and it IS clever. In fairness to her though, she is a fiery redhaired Irish woman, so the swears are just a normal everyday occurrence in her vocabulary. And I've inherited that trait also".  Here's a link.  I encourage you to have a look.

Getting better all the time (better, better, betttttttteeeeer)

Whether my body is finally recovering or the mad pills (Citalopram, as you ask) have finally kicked in I don't know, but for the last four or five days I've actually felt quite well - in fact, positively chipper. The pains in my chest have all but gone and the only aches I get now are the odd small stomach cramp and the odd pain in my arm, but this is undoubtedly the end result of years of excessive masturbation and frenzied stabbing attacks on pensioners taking their toll.

So, much to Taras relief, I've actually started showing an interest in our wedding plans again now I'm not constantly worrying that I'm dying of something or other. In fact I'll admit that now this six months of sheer hell is drawing to a grateful close, I'll be at a loss at what to blog about again.

We've been looking for wedding invite ideas and have found one we think is perfect; I'll post it up here when we've finished the design. In the meantime, I thought I'd post this brilliant one I found on the interwebs. Whether I'd have been allowed something along these lines is a different matter.

Yet again I'm amazed by how fantastic everybody has been. Thanks for all the birthday greetings and cards by the way - lovely stuff. Tara has been brilliant - If I'd been her, I'd have lost patience with the hypochondriac under my roof months ago. The last week or so have been difficult - it would have been Mums birthday on Sunday, and what with Mothers Day from a little while back, it's been a tough time.

We went to the Huntsman Carvery on Sunday, which is where Mum, Dad and I would always go because my Mums birthday was so close to mine. We took my aunt and cousin along, and it felt odd Mum not being there with us but we had a good time regardless. In all seriousness, if any of you live in the Midlands and want a cracking meal, I can highly recommend the Huntsman. I've never had a meal there that was anything less than perfect. Proper old fashioned British Grub in stupidly large quantities; even the leftover meat that will be graciously donated to dads two dogs will be enough to last them until Easter.

Dad, Tara and I are off to Somerset later in the year in May to scatter Mums ashes in her favourite spot. This'll be tough but it'll be nice to spend some time with Dad, although I imagine he's bored of me hanging around so much now..!

On another note, check out the blog from my lovely friend James Stace. And be gentle with him; he's only little and he's upset about the cider tax.