After the wedding

As far as I have seen, most people prepare for being a wedding guest by choosing their clothes weeks beforehand, getting some improvement works done on their hair then, on the day itself, focussing on metamorphosing into someone they might quite like to be the rest of the time if only they had the time, money and energy.

B and I sort of know roughly what you’re supposed to do but were pretty inattentive students at the lessons in how to do it. Over the years we’ve slowly adjusted to the idea that if we are the most gauche and socially maladroit at an event, at least we’re helping others there feel more like they got it right.

Our social inadequacy started with B forgetting to pack the respectable shirt he'd thought might be OK. We had to go through the rest that he’d brought and rule out the stained, the over-checked and the hipster Christmas-present one, to settle on one whose only inappropriateness was that it had short sleeves.

It continued with me deciding I could no longer endure the hair spilling into my eyes because I hadn’t made time for a proper haircut before we left home, and hacking at it with nail scissors in front of the bathroom mirror (at least we had a mirror).

Since it was an evening wedding we potentially had a whole day to spend not knowing how to prepare so instead we caught an early afternoon bus to Lake Vougliameni for a swim. Its hot-spring water is alleged to cure a multitude of skin complaints but I didn’t realise until we got in that it was also full of garra rufa - those dead-skin-nibbling fish that repel me in murky foot-infested water tanks in shopping centres. Somehow, in a lake, it felt OK though I didn’t feel my skin was any more ready for a wedding when I got out.

I didn’t know what traditions to expect for a Greek Orthodox wedding but I loved the candlelit, rose-petal-strewn steps up to the church. I loved listening to the music with the call from the two priests and the response from four black-robed men who were clearly telling each other jokes when they weren’t singing but who came in perfectly on cue when they were. I loved the thrown rice caught in the video-man’s bright lights, causing shooting-star streaks over the bride and groom. And the children, who found ways to entertain themselves while all the grown-up rituals were going on.

At the reception, in a room full of white, candles and tiny lights, I had a go at Greek circle dancing. ‘It’s easy,’ they told me, ‘it’s just one foot after the other.’ And so it was, like dancing everywhere, but which foot when, and where, and how? Still, no-one minded my mistakes and I'm sure I helped others there feel more like they got it right.