A Wondeful French Wedding

We went to our 1st French wedding over the weekend.
Francis from France married Marie-Jo from Belgium.
We started out at about 10am from our home, stopped to get Euros, then stopped again to try & find lunch (unsuccessful), finally got to Saulxures at about 1.30pm. Checked in. We were so hungry so went into town to find lunch – it was a Saturday & after the normal lunchtime so most places were closed. Found a restaurant that was willing to serve us lunch even though they had just closed the kitchen. It was a big lunch of baked potatoes with cheese & a large salad with smoked ham & bacon. Even with sharing with Tobias, we finished only 2/3 of it. Then it was back to the hotel to change & off to the church (in Cornimont) for the wedding. The weather was absolutely beautiful for a wedding. It was cold when the wind blew but it was cloudless & the sun was shining! We went to the civil service 1st (which was in the building next to the church), then to the church service. It was strange to sit in a wedding & not understand what was said. (It was all in French.) Songs were sang both in French & English at the same time – you picked the language you wished to sing in – quite interesting to hear. On the way back to the hotel, one of the wedding party parked his car across the road to stop traffic & allow the wedding convoy to pass, some tooting their horns. (Only in a little village in France can you do such a thing!)
Back at the hotel for the reception. Then photos were taken & finally dinner at about 8pm. It was a really filling dinner of salad, fish, main course (steak), cheese plate & cake. It was all great but so so much to eat. But a French wedding as we have now learnt is very very long drawn. i think we finally finished the cheese plate at about midnight. There were introductions & games & singing in between each course. Interesting but again we didn’t understand everything that was said – only when Francis was able to translate for us. There was also more singing & dancing after the dinner but i didn’t stay for that. i had my dessert & went to bed at about 2am, mostly because Tobias was sleeping by himself in our room & the dancing was in the building next door.
Tobias had a great time! He slept on the way there while we were looking for lunch (hence the very late lunch). Was very restless during the service. Had fun showing off his MacDoddle to his new-found little friends at the reception. Ate only a little at dinner. Went to bed at 9.30pm. Was up at 7.45pm the next morning all ready to go again. We had wanted to stop at some nice French town on the way back but the weather on Sunday was terrible, plus Tobi fell asleep again at lunchtime so we drove straight back to Switzerland & had lunch at the 1st rest stop here.
Here’s a photo of the happy couple & people from ICL (International Church of Luzern):

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