A Royal wedding garden party

My brilliant and amazingly talented sister, Angie, was running late to watch the Royal Wedding with us as she had been tucked up in a hotel in Piccadilly all morning, doing hair and make-up on an ACTUAL wedding guest.  How exciting is that?!  She can practically say she was there!

Insider gossip: guests had to arrive at Westminster Abbey by 9am (2 hours before it started – let’s hope there were loos!) and not everyone invited to the ceremony was also invited to the official wedding reception but there were lots of other ‘after parties’ going on.  These particular guests were on William’s personal list for the ceremony but NFI* to the do afterwards.  Oh.

Back in the far less glam East Dulwich, we scrapped our plans to watch the wedding on the grass at Peckham Rye and invited everyone over to our place instead.  Vic knocked on our door just in time to see Kate get out of the car while her husband, Gary, and their two kids (cool dude Barney & his sister Nancy) arrived some 5 minutes behind her.  Apparently Vic had floored it all the way to our house and legged it out of the car as soon as they had parked up so she wouldn’t miss the first glimpse of Kate’s stunning lace wedding dress.

Stunning!

‘I don’t like lace’ read Eva’s text.  My dress was lace, I reminded her.  ‘I loved your dress so maybe I do like lace then’ read her next one.  I imagined her at home, peddling backwards… bless her.

obviously, I set the lace trend...

I thought Kate looked beautiful and I really loved both her dresses… although not so keen on the shrug/cardi over the reception dress… am sure I have seen a similar one in Monsoon.

nice dress, shame about the shrug

After feeding the kids and putting them down for their lunchtime naps, the men went up to watch the planes fly overhead (they missed them) while we cracked open a bottle of wine and watched the couple smooch on the balcony (I missed them.  Twice.  Thank goodness for live pause).

Then the real fun started.  We set up the ‘picnic’ on the table, everybody brought a different dish so we all tucked in to hubby’s baked ham, various salads, pastas, quiches, sandwiches, sausage rolls and YiaYia’s houmous.  After lunch we moved out to the garden and as more people arrived with more food and more drinks, we got more loud and more hilarious.

Hope Will and Kate enjoyed their day as much as we all did!

Dude

Dudette

Dude's shadow

Daddy Dudes

Dancing Dude

It wasn’t too late a night so we didn’t feel too ropey this morning although the staple hangover breakfast of salt & vinegar crisps & a diet coke probably helped.  Luckily, the park is really close by so we took Zachy and Archie for a stroll this morning and a little run around the children’s playground.

Wonder how many people in the world are wandering around with pounding champagne headaches today and if any of the Royal wedding party got frightfully trolleyed last night and made a total tit of oneself.  Might one then send ones help out to fetch one a golden arches…?

What I wouldn’t give for a Big Mac and vanilla milkshake right now… but will make do with a hotdog sandwich and another can of diet coke.

*Not F-ing Invited