Northern Exposure

We are now in Lille this weekend because Monday is a public holiday in Italy. Basically we are 6 weeks to the weding here, so we needed to swing by and prepare wedding booklets and other nonsense in Lille. It is really pretty administrative, and (after the pain of deciding table themes and dinner menus) I realise why people only get married ONCE...

The good new though, is that I have learned about more interesting wedding customs from the North of France, where Fab is from. For example, in the Church, there is one part of the ceremony where people come up to the front table or something and bless a cruxifix of some other personal item intended to be in our future household. The idea is 2 fold. First, it allows people to get up and walk around in the middle of the service to stop them falling asleep and secondly, there is a church collection basket next to the cruxifix, where you can drop some change into. The money goes to the maintainence and repair of the church. I have no problems with this custom. I actually think it is quite useful, and when you see the stained glass window, you realise that it does deserve to be maintained and repaired...

I am also reading this really funny book at the moment. it is called "surely you are joking Mr Feynman!" and is the biography of the brilliant and eccentric physicist _ Richard Feynman.