Raise your Glass

Post wedding. Almost. The marquee is yet to come down as the blokes who are meant to be doing the dismantling broke down on the A1 this afternoon. Still it meant that lots of the tea rooms visitors got to look inside what is a pretty fab structure. I spoke to plenty of people about the wedding today. Most conversations started with them asking what the tent was there for, then saying "Oh, I didn't know you did weddings here". Two different women said the idea of a High Tea wedding made them want to get married again...
How did it go? Very, very well. We were happy. They were happy. Two of my 17 year old staff said they wanted their wedding to be just like it. The 19 year old bride said it was even better than the wedding she'd pictured. The father of the groom even went to the trouble of thanking all those behind the scenes - that'll include the three people frantically buttering (or cream cheesing) the bread, making the sandwiches, cutting them into the different shapes I'd demanded and filling the tiered cake stands - all at the last minute so they were as fresh as they could possibly be. Who likes curling, drying sandwiches. That's right. Noone.
It also includes all those people (including my Dad, who's claiming he's got tennis elbow. I've told him he can't get it from watching Wimbledon) who washed and dried 110 teaplates during the speeches so that they could go back onto the tables ready for the scones and cake. Yes I did have enough plates for both courses - but I don't like some of them. I wanted to use my premier plates. They also washed around 480 glasses - high balls, tumblers, wines and flutes, 110 teacups, 110 saucers, 110 pastry forks etc etc etc.
Enough wedding.
For now.
Customer of the day was the man who came in while his wife was preparing to sing in the Church recital. He ordered apple cake and a glass of milk and said it was his birthday.
As he was leaving he told me his wife doesn't like drinking milk, and doesn't really like him drinking it either. So that was his real birthday treat. Not the cake.