Firetop

Fabio and Francesca’s wedding ceremony was held at the local church in Ortona at 5pm on Saturday, just as well because it would have been far too hot for a suit and tie any earlier in the day! The wedding didn’t begin very promptly but we were all entertained by a choir who put our English choirs to shame. Perhaps twelve men and women averaging 25 years of age and they really loved what they were doing – most choirs I’ve seen at English weddings consist of the elderly and the very young who sing with as much enthusiasm as a death row inmate on his final walk to the chair. If I had the cash I’d pay for them to come and do mine and Suzie_Q’s wedding, quite superb and a marvellous alternative to forcing guests to sing hymns (not that we could have done in Italian anyway).

Being a Catholic wedding (of course) it was very religious, the priest all dressed in red, bride and groom with crowns of green leaves and mass taken at the end for all those confirmed Catholics to come up the aisle to take the body of Christ. It was quite hard to follow the ceremony, just catching the odd word – a little like watching the Pope’s Vatican address. There were obvious translations at certain points ‘marriage is a serious commitment not to be entered into lightly’ etc. My favourite bit of the ceremony was the priest listing a lot of saints for about a minute “Santa Maria, Santa Guiseppe, Santa Luigiâ€?… “Santa Clausâ€? I whispered to Suzie_Q. After about an hour and a half the ceremony was completed and the choir wrapped it all up with a nice English song ‘I will follow you’ in the funky pop style of Whoopie Goldberg in Sister Act – it was great.

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