Candy's wedding

So, Candy's wedding was fantastic - a short ceremony in an exceptional venue, a beautiful and charismatic couple, and spectacular food and wine at the reception. No offence Australian wedding caterers, but you are PUT TO SHAME by the French. Escargot, multitudes of fish arranged in nautical shapes (e.g. ship anchors), prawns, langoustines, terrine and that was just the first bit. Then veal that gave new meaning to the word, and cake as far as the eye could see. Plus palate cleansers in between each course (including Calvados over apple sorbet which sounded like a bad idea but was in fact, amazing). And all those cutlery implements which stump me time and time again. Fish fork? And the wine - oh, the wine.

(I should just say here that we were fed beautifully at Julien's wedding reception. But that was at a swanky resort. This reception was at a soulless room-for-hire in the middle of an industrial estate.)

I really wish I'd taken a photo of the langoustines actually, because they were hung from a wooden rack, bent backwards with their heads stuck to their tails so that initially we thought they were large, funny-lookin' mutant prawns that had somehow grown lobster parts.

The Australian contingent, or at least some of us... OK, me and The Boyfriend, and one other couple; were also put to shame in another way. We left at 2am, totally exhausted, while the great-grandparents were still partying on. Even the toddlers were still running around, tantrum-free and all. Meanwhile the twenty-somethings from Oz are barely able to keep their eyes open. I blame the overnight ferry we took to get there.

Candy looked excellent in her dress (from Paris, of course) although there was that small, seemingly inevitable strapless dress issue:
(I've got about 300 photos which are a variation on this theme.)

The rest of the photos of the wedding and also our wanderings around Caen here.