Two weddings and a picnic
Well, the village wedding has been and gone and we all have the warm glow that follows a lovely bank holiday weekend. My friend Pelly's Number One Daughter was married to her soulmate in the wonderful setting of Forde Abbey, which nestles inside the Dorset border, with just a nod to neighbouring Somerset for its postal address. There were gasps when the bride walked in with her father to a score composed by the Cinematic Orchestra , as the huge log fire blazed in the great hall. A Jane Austen heroine, she took the arm of her husband-to-be, who in the film would have been played by a young Hugh Grant or maybe Dominic Cooper. There was even a distinguished wedding guest in a kilt. And the assembled throng sniggered when the registrar asked the bridegroom to repeat the words: 'I Timothy St John Dauphinois Sutherland...' The guests gathered below the abbot's lodgings and tower (built by the last abbot, Thomas Chard, in the early 1500s) for a group photo as the female photog...