The Sing-along Wedding

After surviving the winter bazaar at the kids' school Saturday morning (think tons of people, games, auctions, crying children, bake sale, bead explosions, etc.), Adrian and I went to Trevor and Malin's wedding in the evening. (Trevor and Malin are the owners and lead consultants at the small firm I work with called Lorensbergs). The ceremony was at Utby Church -- very oldy-wordly-Swedish and cozy on a dark December night. The ceremony was in both English and Swedish, and except for the time when the minister said Malin and Trevor were now of one fish when I'm pretty sure he meant one flesh, it was very traditional and tear-enducing.

The fun began when we went back to their house for dinner. I sat next to a zesty British woman named Leigh. Even after she told me for the fifth time: "Nevada, couples have to grow TOGETHER, not APART. Graham and I grew TOGETHER. K. and A. grew APART" (and boy do I wish I could write that with her West Midlands accent), I still loved her. Here we are before dessert:
Some time after the first course little sing-along booklets were passed around, a guitar player jumped up, and the singing started. A sing-along wedding! We sang Sailing by Rod Stewart, Love me Tender, a Swedish song called Främling that everyone seemed to know, and on and on. At one point Olle, another Lorensberg consultant (and psychologist) got up and sang this incredible Swedish a cappella song about 3 flowers representing faith, love and trust (I think). Watch for Olle on next season's Swedish Idol.

My pictures from the wedding suck, but I blame that on a) what is probably by now an antique digital camera and b) not being able to move from my seat between 5pm-10pm. So every picture I have looks like this (Malin and Trevor are, sadly, right behind the flickering candle in the middle of the frame), but you get a sense of the cozy atmosphere: Swedes really love singing, and especially group sing-alongs (allsång), so I shouldn't have been so surprised by the musical wedding. There are huge televised sing-alongs from Stockholm (Allsång på Skansen) and Gothenburg (Lotta på Liseberg) every summer. If you knew the songs and could sing I could vaguely imagine finding this fun, but since neither applies to me, not so much.