The wedding

The reason why I’m here. My cousin Larissa is getting married to a lovely guy named Caleb on July 16. I’d met him briefly last year at another family wedding and he seemed like a really good match for Larissa, with both of them very happy.

This is the wedding party. The flower girls are daughters of my cousins, so sort of nieces. Heather the youngest is only three, but despite that she could occasionally stand still for more than 30 seconds. The other flowergirl is Moira, she's really polite and well behaved which I assume must come from her mothers side.

Simon, the bearded gentelman on the left is another cousin, a brother of the bride, with Caleb's sister Meghan next to him. Then Caleb and Larissa, the stars of the show ( I should note here that I didn't get the memo about growing a beard), and then Thomas, another cousin and brother of the bride, with his wife Kasia.

The happy couple had gone with an unusual set up here, and had a best maid and a man of honour. The priest mentioned this during the service when he called Thomas the ugliest maid he'd ever seen, which I felt was a bit harsh.

The tent in the back ground is where the reception was held, in a carbon copy of Thomas and Kasia's wedding from the year before. However, it was almost a disaster, as a guy from a competitor tent company saw the tent the day before the wedding and called the authorities to check that there was a permit. There wasn't. Fortunately Uncle Dan put his pants on outside his trousers, chucked on an old cape he had lying around and saved the day.

They met as teachers up in the Arctic, where they spend most of the year, and during the wedding their friends shopped them by saying right from the start they were smitten with each other. Allegedly after the first date when Larissa was asked what she thought of Caleb, she replied, I think I’m going to marry him. A word heard rather often on the night of the wedding was glowing, and it was true, they both looked enchanted.

I should mention the heat at this point. It’s been in the 30’s since I arrived, and the church felt warmer than that. When I went to rub what I thought was a bead of sweat off my forehead my hand came away soaked. Imagine a wedding, with a free sauna at the same time and you get the idea. One of the cousins said later it’s the only wedding he has been at where he wanted water more than beer.

Canadian weddings are a bit different, there’s less emphasis on things like shoes, flowers and cars, but all the same good things with family and friends. The wedding was very similar to last year in the same Ukrainian Catholic Church, with the reception in a large tent in the grounds. A wooden dancefloor had been built and the tunes and dancing continued until 2am I’m led to believe. Unfortunately I was still a bit jet lagged so crashed out early, missing the part about singing on the bus, and cousins falling asleep in cars rather than in any one of about 20 rooms he could have crashed in.

This is the oustide of the Church. It's an interesting building, with a bell tower outside and a communal area beneath. The congregation is more like a community, with everyone pitching in. The choir were in attendance again this year and they were fantastic.