A couple of weekends ago, we went to Italy for a quick visit – we flew on Friday, arriving around 7pm, spent all day Saturday attending the wedding of Matthew’s cousin and related festivities, then came home on Sunday. We had a great time, but it was exhausting. And I got sun-burned on my scalp, where I part my hair. Who would think to put sunscreen there? How would you even do that?
The people getting married were Matthew’s cousin Tone and her partner Deen. They have been together for 25 years and have two grown sons, but two years ago, Deen whisked Tone off to a chateau in the south of France and proposed in front of a room full of assembled friends and loved ones. That sounds pretty impressive in itself, but for the wedding itself, they really pulled out all the stops. Thus I attended my very first Norwegian-Nigerian wedding. In Italy. With the adult children of the couple serving as groomsmen. It was awesome.
The wedding was in Como, in the north of Italy. There is no family connection with Italy; as far as we know they picked it because it is absolutely beautiful. We had an unremarkable flight to Milan, then took a train into Como, through very picturesque countryside and little towns. From my admittedly limited observations, I'd say Italians like to have some green outdoor space; almost every place had a little garden or patio or even just a balcony with potted plants and a chair where one presumably sits in the morning and enjoys the first espresso of the day. Although Como itself is fairly flat, it is surrounded by extremely tall, steep hills, which makes for very dramatic scenery. We stayed in the old part of town, which is utterly charming, with the slightly run-down, romantic look of Cinema Paradiso or Il Postino. (We took a taxi back from the reception and saw that the newer part of town is much less charming. It has a lot of concrete buildings that seem to be crumbling in the humidity, rather unromantically.) It was a short, pleasant walk through a couple of piazzas from the station to our hotel, which was itself on a piazza. After a quick freshening up, we went to yet another piazza to meet everyone for dinner. This was quite relaxed - we sat around with some cousins and ate pizza while a street artist recreated "The School of Athens" on the pavement in front of the café and swallows (or swifts or possibly bats - there was much conjecture) swooped down from the cathedral bell tower eating bugs. Then we wandered through a few more piazzas, stumbling upon a Mexican/Cuban band playing an outdoor concert as part of Como's cultural festival, and ate gelato before heading off to bed.
The next day we took a boat cruise from Como to another town down the coast, to a hotel on a hill, where the ceremony itself took place. I don't know the name of the town, only that it was very, very hilly and that the hotel was not really very close to where the boat docked. I think the trek was worth it, though, as the hotel was very pretty and had a fantastic view over the lake. Matthew's young cousin Jake (age 12) kept saying, "Can you believe this is just a 3 star hotel?" like the seasoned world traveller he is. The ceremony itself was lovely, very personal and emotional. A close friend of the couple said a few words, there were two readings, and we all sang the Carpenters' song “On Top of the World”. The mayor of the town came, wearing a very impressive and official-looking tricolor sash, and read long passages from the Italian civil code, making the whole thing legal. These passages were then translated (more or less) into English (more or less) for the benefit of the entire roomful of people there who didn't speak Italian. Tone's sister Anne made a very sweet speech. I got a little misty-eyed, as I often do at weddings, from thinking about love and stuff. I get a bit overwhelmed at times, thinking about Matthew and how utterly surprising and unlikely it was that we ever met. I find weddings the perfect venue for indulging in such sentimental thoughts. It's nice, though, because when I start to get a little freaked out about how easily we could have not met, I always realise that, however improbable it was, we did meet and we are together and I am confident that we always will be because, among other factors, we have fun together, we like so many of the same TV shows, and we have an enormous mortgage together. Oh, the ties that bind... Anyway, after the ceremony, we adjourned to the terrace, where we had a light luncheon. I call it light because it was made up mainly of finger foods, but I realised on this trip that I could eat nibbles, especially crispy, deep-fried ones, for hours and hours without stopping. So not that light. And as we were waiting for the loo afterwards, Matthew and I saw a scorpion. My mother, sister and grandmother have all been stung by scorpions; I never have but I used to be deathly afraid of them, literally screaming and running away like a crazy person whenever I saw one. I guess I'm over that, since I was much calmer with this one. We took some photos, but the camera was still on the black and white setting that Matthew used for the wedding, so instead of scary, the scorpion looks timeless and romantic.
We spent most of the rest of the afternoon on the boat, with breaks in another town for gelato and on Isola Comacina, an island where people dock their boats (not yachts, just regular sized ones). This was entirely populated by young, thin, very attractive brown-skinned people and older, overweight, not-so-attractive sun-damaged people. It was like a “before” and “after” for the Italian lifestyle. Along the way, we saw houses belonging to Richard Branson (rather ostentatious, with weirdly sculptured trees), George Clooney (nice, big, traditional-looking) and Donatella Versace (big but not very impressive - a bit boring). Eventually, we arrived at Villa D'Este, the venue for the reception and the fanciest building I've ever been in that doesn't belong to the National Trust. We had more nibbles, posed for more photos, and I was blown away by the beautiful ladies’ room, so much that I went back later and took photos. I will post those pictures later, but let me just say pink marble, real linen handtowels, and, the best part, bidets in the cubicles, which were, of course, lovely little rooms far larger than our bathroom at home. In fact, the whole restroom “complex,” of foyer, hand-washing area and cubicles, was larger than our old flat.
When we sat down to our five course meal, I realised why even if I can eat nibbles for hours, maybe I shouldn’t. I felt very unsettled and could only pick at my salad and risotto. Jake was in even worse shape. Being a 12 year old boy, he has even less self-restraint than I do when it comes to small fried foods and I don’t think he felt good at all. He eventually bucked up, though, and he and our other young cousin Amy (age 10) had a good enough time sticking the heart-shaped confetti all over their faces. I recovered, too, enough to enjoy the main course, which was beef and veal with a big blob of fois gras on top. I know that geese are treated very cruelly in the making of fois gras – so why, oh why must it taste so good?
There were about a dozen speeches, which could have been torturous, but they were all quite short and either funny or sweet or touching. Then there was cake and dancing and then we got a taxi back to Como, where we fell into bed too exhausted to even be very annoyed with our barely air conditioned room.
On Sunday, we had another uneventful flight back home, then got up the next day and went back to normal life. Except for the sun-burned scalp, of course.
A note: Tone's name is Norwegian. When properly pronounced, it is quite musical, with the "o" stretched out and a lift at the end. However, when I (and most other non-Scandinavians) try to say it, it sounds like "tuna." So I just call her "Toni." Deen is short for the rather majestic sounding Moyadeen (unsure of the spelling), but has the benefit of sounding exactly like "Dean" so I can just about manage it.
This is the menu from the reception. As you can see, the cover features a lovely painting of Villa D'Este in 1847, which if anything, is even fancier now.
