by Oliver Gee
I wasn’t celebrating myself, I was more in a state of hungover confusion. I’d just stepped off the train from Gare du Nord, freshly back from my bachelor weekend in Amsterdam. The trip had been organized by my French mates, the majority of whom had left Amsterdam a day early to watch the final from the safety of home turf. However, I was happy to see the game on the train and to observe the celebrations after. As wild, crazy, and slightly worrying as it all seemed, it felt like the good news that France had been needing for a while. And with my own wedding just around the corner, I was looking forward to some celebrations of my own.
7.8 The wedding
I look back on our wedding in Sweden with mixed feelings. On the one hand it was the best day of my life, joining lovely Lina in holy matrimony and starting our journey of living together happily ever after. The wedding was wonderful. Friends and family came from afar, our ceremony was in a picturesque Swedish church, the reception was elegant, and the speeches were touching. But on the other hand, an awful lot seemed to go wrong, and I’ve come to believe that the wedding was ever-so-slightly cursed. And that story’s too good not to share, even in a book about Paris.
It was in Paris that the troubles began, in fact. Right as we were heading to the airport to take the last flight of the night we were alerted that our flight had been cancelled. No further explanations were given, no further explanations were needed. It meant that we got to Sweden a day late and via Munich. We arrived to find the country in the midst of a sweltering heatwave. Due to our delay, many of the little tasks we’d left for the last minute were pushed to the last second. For example, just hours before we were to exchange vows, Lina and I were redoing the seating arrangement after an unexpected rethinking of the table layout. No big deal, sure, and we were glad to do it. Even though the heatwave made us wish we were relaxing over a glass of lemonade and sitting by a fan.
The reception was to be held in Lina’s parents’ back garden, an open-air afternoon and evening. As we fixed the seating plan, we handed the name tags to our family and friends who scurried around, setting them on the tables as directed and putting out cutlery and menus. And oh, what beautiful menus! Lina, who can illustrate even better than she can bake, had designed intricate booklets complete with information about the meals, and also sketches and funny facts about the guests to help them break the ice. Little did we know that almost all of those booklets would be destroyed beyond recognition in just a few hours...
The heat continued to bear down on the little Swedish town as the ceremony drew nearer. Before we knew it, it was time to get ready. With five minutes until we had to head to the nearby church, one of my brothers said “By the way, does anyone know how to tie a bow tie?”
The answer was no.
None of us had internet connections on our phones and there was no one to help. Everyone else was at the church already, of course. I couldn’t help them either (I’d opted for a tie). The boys, none of whom speak Swedish, mind you, ended up running through the town with undone bow ties flailing in their hands, yelling for help. I was striding to keep up with them, cautious of my wedding suit getting ever-stickier in the unbearable heat. As the church bell struck two, the time for our ceremony, I found my brothers in the front garden of neighbours I’d never met before, where some older village locals were helping with the bow ties. Already late, we ran the rest of the way to the church as the sun beat down on us. And when we arrived, the white stone church loomed above us, and I saw a sight that was to be one of the finest of the wedding.
There, in front of the church, were all my friends, who were waiting for us to arrive. Guests had come from five different continents for the big day, and - touchingly - they included our friends from France, many of whom you’ve met in the pages of this book, and most of whom were so instrumental in shaping my life in Paris. Fabien the Breton was there; so was Stephane, my neighbour. Clovis, my banking aide came along, and so did Cyril, my first-right-then-left kissing mate from Nice. Slim and the Beast, the band that helped me start my show, had brought their guitars from Paris and were to be the evening’s entertainment.
Now, you’d typically wait inside the church, of course, but the heatwave had turned the 17th century building into a sauna, and on the hill out the front there was a refreshing breeze. My friends cheered as we all arrived and asked where Lina was, and I admit it was the first time I’d thought about her in hours.
Wasn’t she here already? We were already late!
We all rushed up into the church and the priest greeted me, asking when Lina would arrive. I had no idea; she was getting ready in the bridal suite of a nearby hotel. The minutes passed. Soon she was ten minutes late. Then fifteen. The guests inside were sweltering, fanning themselves with Bibles.
But where was Lina? Was she… was she going to leave me at the altar?
I went to the front door of the church again and stood at the top of the steep staircase looking over the town below. Gathered by now was apparently the entire village, no doubt curious about all the foreign guests, the groomsmen running around with their bow ties, and the potential scandal of a missing bride.
She should be here by now. Twenty minutes late? When do I throw it all in and leave?
I looked to the glistening lake by the side of the church, twinkling in the July sunlight. I looked out over the wooden red homes so iconic across the Swedish countryside, and I wondered how an Australian guy like me was getting married in Sweden. Or was supposed to be getting married. Then I looked back to the villagers. And what was this? They were poking each other, jostling among themselves, taking our their phones and pointing across the village square. And there, like a beacon of shining light, with two bridesmaids in hot pursuit, came a vision of pure beauty.
My bride.
With a stunning wedding dress she’d made herself, she sailed over the cobblestones of Mariefred with the grace of a movie star. I met her halfway down the stairs. The priest, in a heavy smock and satin sash, breathed a sigh of relief and let the ceremony begin, as the organist played a subtle rendition of “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. We were in Sweden after all.
Lina later told me that because of the extreme heat, she couldn’t manage to slip her wedding dress onto her body. The hotel had no air conditioning, and she had spent half an hour wriggling into the dress. In the rush and nervous haste, she had left the hotel at a trot and was sweating almost as profusely as I was. In fact, she almost fainted at the altar as I stood beside her, sweating through my suit. Everyone in the church, including me, was far too busy fanning themselves to notice whether the priest with his strong Swedish accent pronounced my name as Oliver Yee or Gee, and I don’t think anyone would have cared either way. The point is, we did it. We were married. We’d gotten hitched without a hitch, or at least without any major ones.
And oh, that moment of leaving the church was miraculous. Everyone could breathe again in the fresh air. Lina’s extended family, many of whom were musicians, surprised us all by producing violins, an enormous marching band drum, and huge sprigs of birch trees, and then led us all in procession back to the house to the tune of Swedish folk music. Meanwhile, a French friend, Greg, had brought an unusual music box with him from Paris, which he played at the back of the procession. He’d strapped it to his chest, and when he wound the handle it played songs from his phone - and the faster he wound that dial, the louder the music played. The villagers were loving the show. At the time I thought it was curious indeed that Greg brought such a machine to our wedding, but I’d later thank him for it.
After a morning of madness, everything seemed to have righted itself. Slim and the Beast were waiting at the garden to greet us with an acoustic set as guests mingled over champagne. The sky was bright blue and made a perfect backdrop for family photos. Before long, we sat at the garden tables for the meal. I relaxed, amazed that we’d pulled it off, getting everyone together for a celebration like this. It all seemed too good to be true.
And, of course, it was.
In the space of three seconds, the summer sky turned dark. Clouds hurtled in, draining the colour from the party below. Almost in slow motion, I turned to the father of the bride. He turned to me. We were definitely moving in slow motion. We looked towards the tarpaulins that we had fastened to a nearby wall that morning, ready to be unfurled at the first hint of rain.
But it was too late. A raindrop crashed so hard onto the table between us all that it made a ripple in my wine glass. And then another. A third. In unison, all the guests went quiet and slowly looked up to the heavens.
And then: chaos.
The monsoon that followed was so quick, so heavy, and so violent that no one knew what to do. It was like a dam burst in the clouds and no one could move fast enough. We had 80 people in the garden, most of whom were midway through their first course as the storm struck.
As for us, we’d planned that any rain would be gentle at best and that untying the tarpaulins would be a quick and easy job. But because the rainfall was so furious and fast, and because the covers were folded like a crepe, those folds filled up with water in an instant, making them too heavy to unfurl. Strings that tied them in place snapped. People were screaming. It was like a horror movie.
“Where’s Grandma?!” I heard someone yell.
“Take the guitars!”
“Grab the menus!”
Oh God, they had a point. Lina’s intricate menus with the sweet little sketches were the first things to be destroyed in the carnage. It’s said that only one or two survived. The food was ruined, the wine glasses toppled. Yelling to one another like sailors in a storm, several of the taller guests grabbed anything they could to poke and pull at the tarpaulins, which by now had swollen so much that they were collapsing. Some guests were standing on tables, grasping at the tarps with their hands, only for buckets of rain to waterfall all over them and the tables.
Me, I stood in the middle of it all, wet through and shaking my head in despair. I was speechless. Oh what a disaster, I thought. And what did happen to Grandma?
Most of the wedding guests lined up with their backs against the walls, seeking any kind of shelter they could find. My cousin, who was the photographer, couldn’t believe his luck and bounded through the chaos snapping away at the whole mess. The rain, like a tropical downpour, continued at full force for five minutes before easing into a gentle shower. But it was too late. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
The wedding is ruined, I thought to myself.
That is, until something truly magical happened.
From somewhere behind me came the sound of music above the chatter of the guests and the easing rainfall. It was Spanish music, dance music, gently building up and getting louder. I looked around, trying to locate it. The guitars and the speakers had been whisked away, so the music wasn’t coming from the band, that much was for sure. But where was it coming from? I spun around, searching for the sound through the rain, the flying tarpaulins, and the soaking guests.
Then I saw him.
It was Greg, the Frenchman, with his music box strapped defiantly to his chest. His white shirt was plastered to his skin from the rain, but he had a determined grin on his face and fire in his eyes. He was winding the handle faster and faster, and the music came out louder and clearer. The music, that sweet music, was drowning out everything else.
Lina’s uncle, famed for his speed in hitting any dancefloor, ripped off his tie and fastened it around his head, then stepped out from the shelter and into the rain. At first it was one man, alone, dancing like a maniac as the music box continued to sound its energetic siren call. Then another guest joined the dancing, then another. The music was contagious. Aurelien, the guitarist, found the marching band drum tucked behind a door, strapped it to his own chest, and started pounding it in time to the music. And then quickly, unexpectedly, and miraculously, and as the rain continued to fall on them all, everyone started dancing.
The wedding was saved.
As if we’d been hypnotized we danced until the rain stopped. Even the shyer guests, who’d taken the back seats during the afternoon’s proceedings, lost their inhibitions and joined the fun. Meanwhile, the most responsible and practical guests worked furiously in the background, cleaning the tables, sweeping away the water, and removing the soggy menus. Before we knew it, the rain had stopped, the sun was back (this time for good), and we all sat down to enjoy the evening.
I’d love to say the rest of the night was perfect - and it really was close to perfect. In fact, the guests still talk about how the downpour was one of their finest wedding memories. But there was one last cursed surprise for me and Lina.
When we’d danced our last dance and decided it was time to go back to the bridal suite at 4 am, we realized that we’d forgotten one important thing.
“Do you have the key?” I asked her.
Shit. She’d left it in the hotel room in the mad rush to get to the church. And the hotel reception desk was closed for the night. So was the front door to the hotel, actually. And there was no way in. We tried every trick in the book to get into that hotel, but were doomed to fail. We ended up watching the sunrise from the outdoor lounge chairs in the bar. Yes, the bridal suite went unused that night, and we ended up crashing on a mattress in a room of passed-out wedding guests. I fell asleep wondering how it would have gone down if we had rented a chateau in France.
When all the guests had left Sweden, it was time for us to board our own flight back home to France where we’d prepared for a honeymoon adventure. On the plane home, I met an elderly French couple in the seats beside me. They were curious to hear about the wedding, and I mentioned the monsoonal rain. The woman, with a kindly smile, pointed out a neat little bit of French wordplay.
“We have a saying in France: Mariage plus vieux, mariage heureux, which means ‘An old marriage is a happy marriage’,” she explained. “But another interpretation is: Mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux. It’s pronounced the same, but it means: ‘A rainy wedding makes a happy marriage’.”
The elderly woman smiled at me.
“It rained at our wedding too,” she said. “And we’ve been happy for 47 years.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A mammoth honeymoon around France.
8.1 The honeymoon
For our honeymoon, we spent two months driving around France on the little red scooter. We went from Paris to Paris in a huge loop, travelling 4,000 kilometres at a top speed of 45 kilometres an hour (that’s about 2,500 miles at 30 miles per hour). It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I’ve ever done. But it wasn’t easy. The only easy bit was the planning.
You see, I think travelling is more exciting when you don’t know where you’re going - and luckily for me, Lina agreed. We decided to go big in the plans and not let logic or reality get in the way. Long before the wedding, we had bought a map of France, pinned it on the wall, and circled all the places we’d heard about that we wanted to visit. That was the easiest part, and the towns and cities racked up quickly. Bordeaux and Marseille, obviously. Brittany without a doubt. The Alps and Annecy would be amazing, so would Provence and the Riviera. We’d heard great things about La Rochelle and the nearby island of Ile de Ré - and I was pretty curious about the English-ified villages in the southwest. Not to mentioned Carcassonne and its medieval history, or the famed boardwalks of Deauville to the north.
We stood back and realized that we’d left circles and underlines all over the map and that it would be nearly impossible to see them all. Due to the unusual hexagonal shape of France - the French even call their country l’Hexagone - it is a difficult country to explore geographically for a road trip. There’s such diversity, and it’s so well spread out that you’d be hard-pressed to find the ultimate route. You can’t just cross from one side to the other, that’s no real achievement. Following the border would mean a mighty
2,913 kilometres (1,810 miles), but then you’d miss a lot of highlights. Sure, you could always zigzag through the country, but then how can you possibly decide where to zig and where to zag? Especially if you start from Paris, which is inconveniently located rather far from the edges.
When we looked hard enough at the map I saw what was obvious. If we started in Paris and headed northwest towards Brittany, then south towards Marseille, then back towards Paris along the eastern side of France, then the route clearly, undeniably, absolutely would make the shape of a heart. Like a frenzied painter working on his masterpiece, I connected the dots and showed Lina the heart shape and watched her raise one eyebrow.
“It doesn’t really look like a heart,” she said, squinting at the map on the wall. “Maybe an anatomical heart, but not a love heart”.
I redrew the lines to make it even clearer. A tighter pinch at Marseille, a wider loop into Brittany - and a similarly wide loop on the way home. If you stood back far enough and squinted hard, the dots undeniably formed the shape of a love heart. Lina burst out laughing but agreed to the idea. Although it was a gimmick, the heart gave us a goal, a plan to stick to and it actually made it much easier to decide where we’d go.
We estimated that we’d spend between six weeks and three months on the road, letting the onset of winter and colder weather dictate the end of the trip. The scooter, after all, was much better suited to riding in the summer sun. The very idea of an adventure with no real end point was so freeing and exciting. Even more so considering we wouldn’t have a home to come back to, as our landlady in the 11th arrondissement had decided that she would sell her apartment. The timing was awful, on the one hand, but instead of complaining about it, we decided to see it as a positive sign. An even broader horizon had just opened up and it seemed like the perfect adventure to launch us into married life.
In the excitement of the trip, I mentioned our heart-shaped travel plans in a podcast episode. The next day a game-changing email dropped into my inbox from a listener in Brisbane, Australia.
