Wedding in Tuscany - Part IV

I attended Thursday night dinner at Fonte de Medici and got good & caught up with Ciarán. During that conversation, I told him that a good friend of mine was going to be coming in from Madrid. I told Ciarán the job Jayesh was working on, because I figured Ciarán would be familiar with it - he was; controls is a small world. I asked if it was OK if JJ (Jayesh) crash some of the party. He said sure. Now at this point JJ did not have an invite to the wedding. Not at all. He was planning on stealing the rental car & having some fun on his own while I went off to the wedding. (He had scheduled himself a flight home out of Rome the same day as me.) He didn't want to impose on my friend. That was the plan before he got to Italy anyhow.

But put yourself into his situation - you are a half step away from one of the best affairs you might ever get invited to. The reception is going to be at a castle. The wedding is going to be at a church in Florence that you may have gone to visit anyhow. You wouldn't have even entertained the concept a day before, but after getting drunk on Tuscany's excesses you are certain that you are going to have to crash this wedding. He told me his plan. (It simply entailed getting on the bus.) I said, "Good luck." JJ got to meet everyone at dinner on Friday night, but he also knew that he was flying without an invite.

On Saturday, Jayesh & I board the wedding bus bound for Florence. It takes us to Florence. This full size coach bus is somehow navigating the same streets that could Barely accommodate my little Volkswagen Golf. MC Escher is the only person who could understand this dichotomy.

I get off the bus and walk up to a church that was built in the 1500s. Yeah, those 1500s. It was, simply, sublime. The stations of the cross. The frescoes. The pipe organ. The ceilings to infinity. You've likely seen it's equal in Italy & other parts of Europe. But I went to a wedding at this one. Wowsers.

We exit the church and there is a throng of tourists waiting to take our pictures. I kid you not. I am in at least 50+ vacation photo reels marked Florence: 02-AUG-2008. It was an absolute trippy experience. The bus shows back up and whisks us away to a castle. Castello Il Palagio. This is where I would spend the next 8 hours of my life dining on superb food & imbibing fantastic wine. But before we eat, let's take a second to talk about the guest list.

You can imagine that this is not the kind of wedding you invite 300+ to. The courtyard of the castle was set up with tables in a horse shoe arrangement. I would estimate somewhere around 60 chairs at this table. That's it. Sixty. That's a small wedding. And not an easy one to just blend and hope no one notices. Especially when your parents are from India and everyone else at the wedding looks decidedly Irish. Tans, they do not have. JJ gets a bit nervous when he sees the table. He bites the bullet & goes over to ask permission* from the father of the bride. Allegedly the man paying for this affair. "You wouldn't mind if one extra shows up, would you? Namely, me?" is what I suppose JJ said. I don't know. I was hiding at the bar.

*There is something about weddings that sometimes causes people to forget they are otherwise fully functioning adults. I've overheard questions like, "How do we get to the reception if we are not going to take the shuttle you've provided for us?" or use the directions printed in the invitation - for that matter. How it's appropriate to bother a groom with this question 5.2 minutes after he's been married, I have no idea. Yet you see it. Somebody always has something for the groom. I assume the bride too - but I tend to be in more of the groom side of wedding parties.

So I stroll up to Ciarán late at the reception and ask him how the day has gone. He's clearly exhausted, yet still visibly happy. And he unloads for a half second about how he wishes people would just stop asking for things. That's when I put one hand on his shoulder, look him dead in the eye, and ask him, "Can you get me an elephant?" I really did say that. But he absolutely let me down.

Of course, these are the Irish we are talking about. I could have showed up with the party list for the Tom Summer Classic and they would have been OK with it. So we all ate and drank and danced the night away. It was insanely pretty in that courtyard and there was no way it could get any better. That's when the fireworks started. A full spread - just outside the castle walls. How fun is that. Answer: very.
{post originally written on 21-Aug}