David’s wedding

No, not me, but my ex-flatmate David Thompson.who married Penny on Monday. He flatted with me in Wellington when he started going out with Penny, so I took delight in telling people that Penny is the reason David left me 🙂

The wedding service was at the Maclaurin Chapel of Auckland University. You can see it in the background of this photo of Michelle and Mark who like me came up from Wellington for the wedding.

It took a while for the bride to arrive. While we were waiting I loudly suggested someone should pass the plate around so we can pay a tithe to Destiny Church. Then Penny arrived looking gorgeous and the service commenced.

The chapel is a lovely setting for a wedding, with a nice lawn and trees out the back.

We then headed out to Devonport with the reception at Duders Restaurant, which is just two blocks from the Esplanade Hotel where I was staying. You can see above a photo of Auckland from the beach. I am told it was the first nice days for ages.

I’ve been to a few weddings, but this one was a highlight. David and Penny are two of the nicest people you could ever meet. In fact the best man explained that he had been totally unable to dig up dirt on David because he was a universally nice guy. The worst people had on Penny was she once beat up a boy at primary school because he was harrassing her (triplet) sister.

The worst I could provide was how David had just started going out with Penny and was keen to make a very good impression. He knew she was a Lord of the Rings fan, but didn’t know a hobbit from an orc. So he arranged for me and Michelle to give him a one hour tutorial on the Lord of the Rings so he could bluff Penny with his knowledge. We were very tempted to tell him that Lord of the Rings was a love story about two gay dwarfs called Frodo and Samwise, and watch the ensuring fallout but he was so dedicated with his copious note taking over an hour and a half, we didn’t have the heart.

A highlight of the speeches was David talking about the day he first told Penny that he wanted to go out with her, and she replied with those fatal words “I love you, but as a friend”. She conceded that there was a small possibility that she could consider going out with him, but then phoned him back the next day to tell him that by asking her out he had ruined the friendship, that the small possibility of dating was no possibility at all, and no means no no never.

Luckily for David and Penny (and for men generally) women have been known to change her minds, and two years later they are married!