A good friend at work Jon, or Yogi as he is apparently known!, got married today and held his reception at the beautiful The Royal Society of Arts on The Strand. Its actually a nice venue for somewhere that is in central London. It is also where the controversial picture of Queen Elizabeth II (with her head floating above a distorted body against a yellow background) is hung.

This wedding has been quite a few months in the making. I’ve been quite impressed at how involved Jon has been. Grooms have a traditional reputation of being as hands off as possible so to know how involved Jon has been in all the planning and decision-making I thought actually sounded quite romantic!

I’ve not been to an English wedding yet – my experiences at weddings are that you have a wedding to which everyone is invited to and then you go ahead and have a meal (whether it be sit down, or buffet style but still at tables etc.) But everyone kept telling me in England you have a wedding that not everyone goes to, then have a weddng meal and finally you have a reception which is normally canape style for everyone else. Strange.

Jon and Sara held their reception in the the sub-terranean vaults which, true to the website description, provided a well romantic candle-lit setting. We had loads of space to spread out and roam around and of course there was a fairly good sized dance floor to groove on.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Jenny and I arrived in time to drag the others away from the pub to the reception venue and to get there for the speeches. Jon gave a very moving speech as did Sara. I find it quite unusual for a bride to give a speech. The most touching aspect was that Jon was actually quite teary during her speech. So sweet! The best man gave a very funny speech too which I thought was also quite original in incorporating a Bulls Eye game.

After this it was time to move on to the food! The food was buffet style (not limitless) in that you walked up to a buffet style service area and you were served portions of the food. It was very delicious – the roast pork was perfectly cooked and the crackling on it – exactly right. The only difficulty with dinner was that there was limited seating (though I think that was part of the package to make it slightly cheaper.) Thoroughly enjoyed dinner. However what I think was most appreciated by all was a pretty much open bar. Wine and beer was free for most of the night. I fully expected it to run out quite early as everyone was hammering the bar but surprisingly it lasted most of the night.

Finally the dancing! Jon and Sara had the innovative idea of asking everyone for three songs to form part of a list from which they would select a final shortlist to play at the wedding. A good idea to get everyone up and dancing when their song choice came on. But Jon needn’t have worried – the dancefloor was surprisingly busy for most of the night (mainly by us! ha ha!)

A very good night was had by all (I think once again helped by the generous bar!) Festivities drew to a close at midnight with, surprisingly, most people hanging around until then. D, James B and I then attempted to go to the Casino in Leicester Square. Apart from the fact that my feet were killing me at this point (to the extent that for most of the night I didn’t even have my shoes on and when on I could walk about 5 steps in a minute) D was in no shape to be at the Casino and we were turned away! Quite an end to the night.

Even more photos here.