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| The bride's eyes rolled back and she thought again of the old adage, 'Never work with animals or children...' |
At the very same wedding, their father is performing the ceremony. I have no experience with this one. If you were a bride, would you rather be walked down the aisle on father's arm or wedded by him?
Nancy and James don tweed outfits - suitable for their honeymoon in Scotland. Here, I mentally insert pictures of Prince Charles and Princess Di and I try not to be bummed that it all went so very pear-shaped...Mabel, the trusty family retainer, is full of old-fashioned sayings...'hoity-toity, little pitchers have long ears, little girls should be seen and not heard...'
Prudence, in her capacity as a van Vinke employee, is to be either a Girl Friday or a Universal Aunt. I'm sure the pay is marvelous but the hours seem like a killer.
Mrs. Pett in the village shop, only sells two kinds of cheese; tasty or mild. I don't know what they mean by tasty--is it a particular kind (like cheddar is cheddar) or encompasses a slew of heartier cheeses (pepper jack, gouda, swiss, etc.)
The van Vinke family goes on Sunday drives and I wonder if it aids the digestion. Holland is low and flat and the roads wouldn't jar the hard-settling roast and Yorkshire pudding (or Dutch equivalent) out of them. This Betty, however, has a notoriously weak stomach and Sunday drives (where you're slow and rubber-necking) always make me sick.
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| David Sutcliffe is no slouch but I have to blame the set up. How can this compete with Italian-ness? |
Oh, Betty Kiera, I MUST agree with you about Beauty and the Beast! That's so true. Disney, usually so good at their handsome princes, really messed that one up. I liked him better as the beast. I haven't seen Under the Tuscan Sun. I don't ever remember taking myself to the movies. Netflix instant seems like such a better deal anyway. :-)
ReplyDeleteI would prefer to be married by my father, but since I'm a Catholic, that's not generally going to be an option, so the question is entirely rhetorical. :-)
Cheese: definitely cheddar, which is kind of the default English cheese. Tasty would be sharp if the cheddar were made in Wisconsin or Vermont, maybe even extra sharp.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fairly chronic problem with Beauty & the Beast -- if the Beast is too beastly, we just think it's sick and traumatic and Beauty needs to book it, no matter what the consequences to her dad. But if the Beast is just growly and gruff, and she comes to love him, then when he goes back to being a young man, he should have some of that Beastly niceness still clinging to him.
ReplyDeleteI'm tempted to do a legal version of Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast is the partner NO associate is willing to work with . . . until the heroine shows up. I could have some fun with that plot...
Betty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteFor two takes on Beauty and the Beast-both literary and both by the same author--see Robin McKinley's Beauty, written when she was a mere child, and her much later version Rose Daughter. I love both, though I do have the softer spot for Beauty.
Re: tasty cheese. This would be a sharp version of cheddar type cheeses, as Miranda noted. Mild would be basic cheddar or what is marketed here as "Longhorn". But we are not talking a processed cheese(like "American" cheese) and I am sure the village shop never clapped eyes on CheezWhiz!!!
My former pastor married both of his daughters - he gave them away, too. He just wore his robe as he escorted them down the aisle and then stepped onto the chancel to begin the ceremony.
ReplyDeleteHe married his sons, too, but that's not relevant. ;-)
I think my last pastor (another former pastor but I have to distinguish them somehow!) is marrying his daughter later this month, and he will escort her down the aisle as well. Maybe only the practical Presbyterians can get away with the dual roles? ;-)
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Betty Magdalen, that's a great book plot. Now, get busy... we're going to run out of Betty Neels books pretty soon and need some replacements!
ReplyDeleteBetty Barbara,
ReplyDeleteI adore both of Robin McKinley's versions of Beauty and the Beast - I always pick up any used copies of Beauty I see...because I keep wearing them out or giving them away.
I love the ending of Rose Daughter - but I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it.
I love all of Robin McKinley's stuff, although a) I did swap my copy of Deerskin -- didn't need to read it again; b) I'm angry at her for not writing a sequel to Sunshine, and c) I haven't read any of her more recent stuff.
ReplyDeleteBetty Cyndi -- I feel really guilty about this (but not enough to change my ways!), but you should all know that my books will be somewhere on the Brighton scale. Still, here are some blurbs, and here are two first chapters (both Brighton free).
At my wedding I had nine nieces and nephews as flower girls and ring bearers (aged three through nine)--there was no way I was picking one of each. Of course, they stole the show. I did know to have them sit down on the front pew with the fathers/uncles mounting guard for the most of the ceremony.
ReplyDeleteMy brother-in-law, an ordained Baptist minister, and my history colleague, an ordained Methodist minister, performed the ceremony (Professor van der Hertenzoon and I have a mixed marriage). One of my students played the organ (and made about as many mistakes as some organists in Neelsdom).
My father had passed away two years earlier so my maternal grandfather gave me away. Technically, he is my step-grandfather, but we have never viewed him that way. The funny thing was that he also gave away my mother so that, although he had no blood daughters, he gave away two brides. He was a very large 6'4" or 6'5" (could have been a vast RDD but was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy) and made the local paper when, at my mother's wedding, he couldn't figure out how to return to his beribboned-across-the-entrance pew so he crawled under the ribbon.
We made sure there were no ribbons on his pew at my wedding.
LOL! That's so funny - crawled under the ribbon? Adorable.
ReplyDeleteMy dad gave away 6 brides and had no trouble except with my sister Kim. Her veil was very long - it spread out across her chapel length train. After he'd put Kim's hand into Bill's and stepped back, his foot got caught in her veil, ripping it from her head! She's hissing at me - a 12 year old maid of honor isn't prepared for such foolishness and I was holding two bouquets! Eventually we worked it out as I tossed bouquets to the matron of honor and helped her get herself together. Dad, btw, had nearly fallen but caught himself on the front pew. :)
BTW, I med my beloved at that wedding. He was the best man, Bill's brother.
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Your husband was best man at your sister's wedding? How very Neels of you.
ReplyDeleteI think the headline of the column in newspaper was "Here's a Side of Joe Fleming No One Wants to See Again."
ReplyDeleteBetty JoDee! Too funny. What a great memory.
ReplyDeleteBetty Debbie: Yes, we married brothers. Our kids are double cousins. Their daughter,Terri and our son, Jason have always been very close. When she moved back home after her Greek Adonis abandoned his family, the two of them were together constantly. She went back to college just as he was starting college, both at the local tech school. Everyone teased them with their same last names and called them a couple. Their constant joke was that they were going to go and make 4-headed babies - since they were double cousins. ;-)
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Okay, this is WAY more than any of you need or want to read, but just in case anyone is looking for a major time suck:
ReplyDeleteSome blog posts & pictures about Betty Ross's and my wedding in North Yorkshire
More blog posts & yet more pictures about the wedding
And even blog posts & photos, if you're not already full to bursting (scroll down past stuff about the dog, quilting, lilacs, etc., etc.)
I loved seeing your wedding photos, Betty Magdalen. Your bridesmaids are adorable, beautiful, charming - love the one of the Littlest sucking her thumb! :)
ReplyDeleteMy younger grandso,n who'll be two next month, is a thumb sucker and already his parents are concerned about his future Without The Thumb. We keep trying to assure them he'll be fine. They'll figure it out! The older one (who is rising 4 come July) only just gave up his Balala, which was an empty bottle he used as a kind of giant pacifier. THAT bothered me way more than Jared's thumb! But it's gone, without trauma. They bribed him and it's gone.
So all that is to say I have a soft spot for thumb suckers. :)
Lovely photos. Loved reading all about the wedding, too.
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Betty Keira was a grand champion thumb sucker. She had her thumb in her mouth for years. Years.
ReplyDeleteI'm visiting Betty Keira this weekend, so I got the story of how she quite right from the horses...nevermind, I got the story.
When she was 5 or 6 years old our parents finally resorted to bribery. This was highly unusual. Highly. She was promised a reward if she could go for one week without sucking her thumb. At the end of the week they offered her a choice. Ice cream or a book. Her response? "ice...BOOK!" That was the book she learned to read from. She doesn't remember the name of the book, but on one of the pages it had the words "between two trees". It may or may not have featured a run-away baby carriage. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Betty Keira says she would recognize it if she saw it.
Anyone?
What, Betty Keira didn't tell me you were coming down?
ReplyDeleteBetty Debbie, for some reason, your story reminds me of my mother with my sister, Hazel, when she was only four years old. She had a wart on her nose and my parents felt strongly it had to go so they'd scheduled an appt to have it burnt off. Mom & Hazel took the bus downtown and as they were filling in a bit of time before the appt, they walked through town. At the big, fancy local dept store there was A Dress in the window. It was purple, and it had a parasol and Hazel stood, enraptured. She was not happy, of course, about having this procedure so Mom lt on a way to lessen the trauma...maybe.
ReplyDeleteShe told Hazel that if she didn't make one sound when the doctor took the wart off her nose, they'd come back and buy that dress.
Mom bought the dress! :)
Hazel's 63 years old and can describe every detail of that dress, and even what else was in that window that day.
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