It was a hoot! The chap running the ceremony fully acknowledged that it was a bit odd saying a mantra in Sanskrit, having one of the various parties repeat it, then translating it so we all knew what they'd just promised. I once saw a movie in which the bride's mother at a wedding was asked to say something in an ancient language and dutifully obeyed, only to find out later she'd consented to the sacrifice of her daughter to summon a voodoo god. That doesn't appear to have happened on this occasion, though. Indeed, the gods were very accommodating, not minding in the least that the clarified butter that they were expecting to be set alight refused to combust.
There were six of these chaps lining the route to the stage, three on each side, opposite each other.
When my younger daughter was walking backwards in front of the bride, scattering flowers for her to walk on, she backed into one of them bottom-first. It must happen a lot, which would explain why they're high-fiving each other.
Here's the bride. Note the vermillion in her hair parting, which is the sign that she's now married.
She's dressed in Hindu tradition, of course, as it was a Hindu ceremony. So were all the principals, including her mother, father, brother, the bridesmaids, the best man and the ushers. As far as I'm aware, they're an assortment of Catholics, Protestants and atheists; the groom's side are pretty well all Hindus, but both families thought it was rather nice to do this. I can see hard-line theorists arguing that this is a form of cultural appropriation, but stuff them, it wasn't their wedding. To me, it looked like multi-culturalism at its best.
The wedding cake looked as if it was made of cheese:
This is because it actually was made of cheese. It was literally a cheese cake. One of those layers is a truckle of truffle gouda with a street value of £130. I had about £1 worth on a cracker, and have to say I really liked it — so much so that I put another 50p's worth on another cracker and scoffed that, too. Some of the other cheeses were impressive, too, a quadruple cream French soft cheese also winning a fan.
Of course, we can't take cheese home in a little box to eat later, so there was also this:
I think they may as well replace "may contain" with "contains".
As the husband of the sister of the father of the bride, I wasn't required for any of the official photos. There was a group photo taken next to the pond outside, though. Here's my view:
You may notice there's no photographer there. That's because I couldn't see him, or his camera. When he was ready, I did manage to get a clear line of sight through gaps between the bodies, but then he told everyone to wave and someone about four people closer to him put up their hand and closed off my raycast. Years from now, my niece will look back on her photos and be able to say "oh look, that hand waving at the back there is Uncle Richard's!".
Finally, here's a picture of the groom, Kris:
Good choice, Erin, good choice.
I'd say that even if he weren't a Yorkshireman.