You shall go to the wedding!

And I did, in the end. After my last blog on the matter, my cousin wrote me a letter. I was very surprised to receive it and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pleased too. Her letter laid a few things to rest and was a clear offer of peace, so I decided I could go to the wedding.

What I didn't count on was that I'd end up as the official interpreter, thus making a complete fool of myself :D
I was asked three days in advance so that gave me time to prepare myself and obtain the text of the ceremony from the City Hall, so I could translate it and then just read from it during proceedings. However, on the day a ready-made translation was shoved in front of me and I was told to just read from it. As this translation wasn't exactly brilliant, I kept half reading from it and half reading from the original text and interpreting/translating the registrar's words and the written text, getting very confused in the meantime.

The worst bit came right at the end, when the registrar ad-libbed a few well wishes. She whispered to me that she'd use simple words so as to make it easier. I thought about telling her to forget the simple words and make short sentences instead, stopping every 2 or 3 so I could interpret, but in the end decided not to as I had the feeling that it would be a very short thing anyway. Wrong! She just started talking and went on and on. I was trying to catch her eye to tell her to stop but failed, so when she finally shut up I'd forgotten the entire thing. Ooops!

I don't know if that was the most cringe-worthy moment, or if it was the one that followed shortly after in the town square, when the bride and groom were doing the rounds with friends and family and we were all milling around waiting to move on to the restaurant. I saw a woman coming towards me smiling, and saying: "Raingod! How good to see you! How are you?".
I think the entirely empty and slightly panicky look in my eyes stopped her in her tracks. I had no idea who she was or how I knew her. She then informed me that she'd spent almost a month at my place years ago, when she was in London. I still couldn't remember. Double oops!

Anyway, apart from those two "minor" details, it was a great day. Cousin looked absolutely gorgeous and the groom and his family are lovely, so the celebrations went really well.