As you know, for those who read previous post, I am in France at the moment, the weather is hot, the food is awesome (will do a post for the foodies later ;), and I m sick ;( the drastic change of weather did not worked on my favor but i am still trying to enjoy my trip as much as possible. As you know, I went to a French wedding of one of my good friend Mag last saturday. I haven t think of making a post on French wed until I read recently an hilarious post from my friend Vicky about why is not a big fan of Indian Wed ; ) So, to see the difference let me tell u how it works in France:
The invitation:

Usually the invitation is personalized by the future wife and husband, an my case they are fan of diving, so they put pics of them diving.

The ceremony part 1:
For catholic, we start by a civil ceremony with the Mayor of the city u want to get married, it takes roughly 20min for it.


The ceremony part 2:
Which takes place in a church of usually the same city, with the entrance of the future wife with her father. Followed by around an hour of talking from the priest, the best man, the exchange of the wedding rings, the signature ....


The Exit from the Church as a married couple:
Because they are divers, all of their friends were waiting for them to come outside the church, holding a flipper for some, and for the others instead of throwing the traditional rice they were making bubbles (like in a sea, if it s sounds confusing for u, check my smugmug for other pics ;)


The pictures:
After the 2nd ceremony, the photographer is taking pictures of the couple with the parents, with the family, with the friends etc etc so you are waiting for ur turn to go on the picture with the couple. The more guests u have, the harder it will to get everybody on time for the pic!


The Procession:
The married couple is taking a car to go to the reception, usually it s always a fancy car, with some ads at the back of the car 'JUST MARRIED', my friends had a collection car, very old one, very popular 30 years ago, it was a simple car, well decorated, they are a very simple couple ;) Each guest will have some piece of ribbons to attach to their car when following the Married couple s car.


The vin d'honneur:
Usually the couple invite family and good friends for a diner, but some 'friend of friends' or acquaintances are only invited to a small Reception with some wine and appetizers.

The Feast:
The room will be decorated, for my friends it was around diving. Each guest was in a table, the table had the name of an 'jetsam', mine was 'Chouen'. ( If i get married, I already know the name of my tables will be wines name ;)
On each table you had a piece of blue fabric to represent the water, with some seashell, and an aquarium with a golden fish on it, which I found it very original. Our name was writen on a small roc. You will also have the menu of the diner (appetisers, 1st course: fish, 'Trou Normand", meat, cheese: of course, desert)

The "Trou Normand":
Translate "The Normand s hole" which came originally from a region of France called Normandie. It is usually an ice cream with some very strong liquor on top of it, that we eat/drink in a middle of a big feast to digest faster and then eat again (as I said in a previous food in France is a Culture, very very important!!!!)

The desert:
It is traditionally a Layer cake with the small statue of the couple that they will cut together ;) We also, well the best man, or the parents do a toast for the new couple.



The shameless powerpoint preso and songs:
The best friends usually make it thanks to the parents of the couple, it is a presentation of the couple before they met with shameless pictures of them when they were kids untill and why they met, their comon hobbies, it s really funny.
Sometimes u even have a well known song, where the friends changed the lyrics of it and adaptated it for the couple, always in a funny way.

Dancing:
Of course after and sometimes during the diner we have to dance, to at least eliminate a bit of calories taken during this feast. There is the tradional first dance as a married couple. Now, as French it seems that we are not afraid of embarrassing moments, and we do have lots of funny/crazy/traditional dances that i put together in the following youtube video ;)



The sugared almond:
Well in this case it was not an almond but a chocolate, but usually after the wedding we leave with a small decorated bad and some sweet with almond or chocolate in it
The presents:
The future couple do a list of presents in a shop and guests can buy some for the couple or simply give some money in a ballot box available the day of the reception.

The party generally stay till very late or early in the morning, including lots of alcohol and dancing and food of course!!!!!

The late question: what is a wedding like in ur country/religion/cultures? Any pics I can see ?

PS: there is no aunties who are tried to find suitable guy for their girls ;) but usually the future couple when doing the guest lists they put single people on the same table.... u never know, maybe u ll find somebody.... will it did not work for me, but it s ok, I enjoyed it anyway!
PS2: the dentist was fine, she did not hurt me much, i still have that job but it was ok, the blood injection was also done by saturday morning (damn hard to woke at 7 for that), I did not faint and It almost did not hurt ;)

- a GIANT steak to eat on Friday with my dad when I arrived, it might sound weird, but Food in France is a culture, it s like food for French is as much important as religion for Indians ;) Here in Ireland, to have a decent small steak u have to burn 10 euros for it, in France u can get the triple size for half the prize!!!! And I don t want anything else no potatoes, no rice whateva aside it, just a bloody steak (I apologize for the veggie).
- blood test ;( I hate syringe, I am actually quite scared of it. I m trying to avoid it as much as possible, but with a mum who is a nurse and a dad who is a pain in ass sometimes (but i love him) i need to do a check up. And I can t do it in Ireland, first of all because we have one of the best medical and social administration who is free btw in France and I won t have to explain in English and in panic that I hate injection.
- hair dressing: I have a wedding to attend, so obviously I have to look decent, now, I talked to my hair dresser in France who already told she won t be able to color my hair 2 hours before the wedding, which means that i m going to that wedding with white hairs, I m addicted with these, everybody tells me 'but we don t see them , it s fine' yeah 'I see them' it s like they are sparkling at me, if they could talk they will say ' hahah, in your face, u ll be white at 30 dear' ;(


- a wedding: I love wedding, happy people getting married, I ll be there with my Nikon who is my partner for the wedding ;(, I hate the traditional question: will u come with a partner? mee: nah, is it a problem? yeah yeah I know I m 28, i have enough with my dad who everytime i asked him what he wants for Xmas he replied 'a grandchild'!


- quality time with my dad ;) then my mum ;) then dealing business with my bro to get a new phone (my bro is a salesperson, nothing is free with him, he could sell my dad and mum on the market ;)
- tan + sun: yes, as u know i m working in Ireland, and I m white not just white but DAMN white, i m thinking that everybody will be tanned at the wedding except me grrrrrr so i m planning some nap time in my mum s garden.
- tour of the 'Pink City' with a couple of friends coming from ireland, I ll show them where i used to live in France and why we call it the 'Pink city'
- Doctor, following the blood test of course
- Dentist, I hate dentist as much as injection, well I don t really hate the dentist himself only the job, spending 30 min on a seat while somebody is playing with ur teeth and talk to u at the same time, like u can answer him! If he wanted to talk he should have choose psy or taxi driver but not dentist!


- Did I mention the food? Yeah, I ll make sure i take pics for foodies, BBQ, mum s cooking stuff yummy, also local drinks like Pastis (my fav) and wine from the cellar ;)


- and hair dresser again to finally make the colour to hide those nasty white hairs, i must say my ex ex manager is responsible for the fast growing of those hairs (stress/pression/frustration grrrr)
Anyway, I think I m done with my checklist ;) Now for the tag, as --xh-- automatically tagged me for every tag ;) i m doing the screenshot of my Desktop wall, I like pin ups, specially these one made by Leigh Young rather than skinny b... ;) more sexy and sensual

Oups I forgot to mention the awards Sourish rewarded me with ;) I m so excited my first two yeah ;)


Million dollar Friend Award
And I quote: Cess -A french girl with wonderful sense of humor and getting her as an admirer of my written craps...is a really a lovely experience..


Brilliant Weblog Premio -2008
And I quote: Cess- If u read her writings..the way she describes the situation with humor..u won't stop reading it until u finish the whole segment

Thank so much for them ;) I feel special now ;)

The final question as usual ;) what s ur plan for this weekend? or for ur next holidays?

... just kidding ;( but at least my friend Mag is getting married which is good for her right, and I will be able to go to south of France on september, enjoy the sun, the food, see family and friends, far away from Ireland.

So this weekend, since the last time I went to a wedding it was 2 years, and by that time it was during winter so obviously I can not wear the same outfit, I decided to go to wedding shopping. And the weirdest part is that I decided that this time I will wear a dress, u might think, well why weird right, obviously u are a woman so you can wear dress? Well in my case, wearing a dress has never been an easy thing to do, first of all because I ve never found one where i can fit it, wait a minute... I have no problem, finding skirt, neither dress where i can easily wear the bottom of it, however since proportionally my upper body has more volume (by volume I have two of them if u know what I mean) than my lower part, so finding something where i can fit the upper part was ok, however the lower part of my body was basically swimming in the outfit with all the space he had for... So saturday morning was my challenge, I went to a shop and finally I found one...which I think is beautiful... without too much pain I have to say, you can find my beautiful dress HERE, the funny part, if we can say that, is that the upper body is so tight that i don t need to wear anything underneath, I tried a bigger size but my lower body was swimming again, I won t complain, I might have to problem to breeze after the restaurant but hey, apparently as a woman u need to suffer to be beautiful....

On saturday s night, I went to Viviane s leaving party, she is Sebastien aka Momo 's girlfriend, a colleague of mine। It was a drinking nite, where we got some kimchi rice, which is a korean dish। They re going to Korea for a month। The funny part of the night was actually Momo, where he tried a couple of presents that he got for his birthday in february and haven t eat yet, it is worth a look and he will probably kill me for updating them on my blog but he deserves it.

Next to him you can see Adel, his new flatmate from month of september, u can already see how well they seem to be close ;)
Now, on monday, something incredible happened, it was sunny!!!! even hot, can you believe it, well when i say hot, nothing compare to south of france or india, but for ireland it was hot, so we start thinking, OMG can it be possible summer this year, really, can we get some hope, I mean it is really hot in south of france, so I can imagine we can have some as well here, until I looked at the forecast.... see for yourself, it passes all comments.... I need a drink ;( And just to make it worst I m putting as well the forecast of where i m from Nimes...