Friday was all about wedding plans. And exploring the differences between French and English business practices. And me generally getting frustrated by being dragged around France without accomplishing much.
Our morning started out successfully enough. Aude was up early to get a blood test to get her medical certificate allowing us to be married. Afterwards, we went down to the local doctor together to ask if he would sign my certificate. Certifying precisely nothing, as no blood test is required for men. He signed it, seemingly a little confused with the whole procedure, and took my blood pressure so I didn’t feel like I was walking away empty-handed. 130/70, pretty good considering the stress of planning a wedding.
Apparently in this part of the country, a doctor’s job is more about funerals and less about marriages. Something about changing demographics and all that.
We jumped in the car and made our way to Lorgues to meet with the florist. After a little swearing and sweating on my part, a two-way trip down a one-way street, and a little honking and pointing by the locals, we’d found a place to park. We met with the florist, a colourful little man named Thibault with a partner who looked like a camp version of Gerard Depardieu in Green Card, and went over what we wanted.
Mission accomplished, we set out for our second appointment of the day. Wine tasting. Which, oddly enough, I expected to involve tasting. Of wine. How wrong I was!
No, I was told upon arriving, tasting the wine was no good. It was too early in the afternoon, too close to us having eaten lunch. It wouldn’t be a good tasting. Besides, we hadn’t chosen our wedding menu yet, so any tasting would be meaningless without context. Much better to buy several bottles and try them later with food. It seemed to matter little that I’d dragged myself halfway across Europe to be physically present to taste this wine.
I should probably explain some of the context here. We’re having our wedding reception at a chateau. Part of the deal is that we drink their wine – non-negotiable. So already the wine tasting is a bit of a farce, as we’re stuck with it whether we like it or not.
Second, we’re hardly taking Chateau Lafite. This is ordinary, everyday wine. So arguing about whether our palate was in a suitable state was a little like arguing that I was using the wrong glass and not appreciating the fullness of flavour in my can of Coors.
In the end, we took the wines home and tried them with dinner. The verdict? The Chardonnay was undrinkable plonk (which, even with my lunch-tainted palate, I could have decided in situ at the vineyard) and the blanc de blanc is suitably inoffensive and non-descript. A little bit like Two-Buck Chuck.
Still smarting from the wine non-tasting incident, we made our way to the chateau to meet with the caterer. In this meeting essentially we agreed that 1) what we’d been promised was possible on the telephone was now no longer possible and 2) that we would certainly have to meet again. It took 90 minutes to ascertain this, and despite my best efforts, the caterer seemed reluctant to simply allow us to sign the paperwork, hand over the deposit, and leave before we’d heard his entire marketing pitch and quite a few pleasantries as well.
Our meeting having overrun, cue frantic race down the autoroute in ten-year-old Renault Clio 1.2 to try to make it to Mass at the local church. We managed to slip in just a few minutes late, slightly conspicuously as there were only about 20 other people in the very small chapel. Without the benefit of a prayer book to follow along, I did my best to follow the French service. Thankfully, it was the Passion of Christ – the same reading we’d heard in English the week before in Canterbury. Confusingly, the Mass didn’t follow conventional form – hard enough to follow in English, but even more complicated when you don’t speak the language.
