Leon’s Wedding Weekend
I first met Kev’s mate Leon a good while ago last year, I recall it was in a pub in Leeds before going to see the Manics play later that evening. I don’t remember much at the time, but he seemed a sound bloke, and I remember chatting loads about the gig before driving back home that night.
Then the next time we meet and hang out is during the weekend where Muse played at Wembley stadium. Immediately he became quite a legend to all he crossed paths with, because to put it lightly, where Leon went, amusing and somewhat drunken chaos followed.
I think the words ‘what a guyyyy’ come to mind…
Anyhow….a while after we hear that Leon is engaged! And we were invited…
So last Friday I drove up to Leeds to hang out and attend the wedding reception on Saturday. My Friday was pretty chilled out, the main aim of the day was to catch up with Paul properly since it had been ages since I’d last seen him or gone for a drink. I turn up in the afternoon and go bug Kev for while till Paul was free, though Kev was being an antisocial sod because he was too busy coding, so I just watched some random TV until I got hold of Paul and headed on over.
Kev and Paul’s flats weren’t far apart at all, so I decided to sod the traffic and walk down with all my stuff. I turn up and the first thing I go do however is buy some sort of delicious shake from downstairs. Turns out that Paul’s flat was right on top of one of those cool shake places where they pretty much had every shake imaginable. Brought myself a banoffe pie one, and return to the flat where Paul finished cooking an insane amount of pasta and had made me a brew.
We eat and catch up, and I fight my way through the mountain of pasta, was tasty though. Then I had forgotten my sleeping bag, so we walked back to Kev’s to fetch it. We drop in at Kev’s and chatted for a while before I just decide to move my car then we’ll head to the pub.
It took ages to settle on a pub, ha it was a bit silly as there was a whole street of damn pubs, and we couldn’t pick one - in the end we finally do settle, and I get some drinks in. Was a pretty good evening, nice and chilled out and I had decided to drink alcohol since I could easily stagger back to the flat if I did get twatted.
Annoyingly we only managed one drink before they called last orders, and so we set off to try and find another pub - it was crazy it wasn’t even 12 on a Friday and we couldn’t find anywhere to drink! Anyhow we go to a place round the corner from the flat that was luckily still open, and here I decide to have strawberry cider. That’s when I started to get drunk - wooo! We managed to get one or two drinks there, before last orders again. More chatting and also some guy got punched, though both me and Paul missed the actual punch and just saw some guy being shoved out the front door. Meanwhile the guy who got punched was suffering a nice nose bleed.
So yeah we finally get kicked out the pub, I mean seriously when they say last orders they bloody mean it! Was in a proper rush to shoo everyone out the door with shouts of ‘Right we’re close noww, drink up’.
By now I was rather drunk and had the munchies bad, so we go find food, I was obsessing about chips and cheese but then saw pita and thought - yeahhh I’m going to try a pita. Ah Stu totally raves about the place. So I stagger there, trying not to get run over, I spend a good moment trying to decide what to order - settled on a BBQ chicken one - cause I mean really, anything involving barbecue chicken is a delicious winner.
I ring Nick round about then to just chat, and I was most drunken enthused about telling him of my pita, and uttered the words of ‘I’m not drunk but I’m pissed’ which led to me and Paul discussing what the difference between the two were. Back at the flat the night closes with watching some Back to the future!!! since it was either that or some Boosh, but really BTTF is a total winner.
So yeah, pretty decent night in all, cept I didn’t sleep very soundly as the traffic kept waking me and I was a bit cold in the spare room I’d chosen.
Next day I got up quite early and had some breakie. I was meant to meet Alice in town but she cancelled on me because of the weather :/ which I thought was odd, though I thought fair enough. I slummed about for a short while at Paul’s before he started studying, so I nip back to Kev’s to bug him instead. I picked up some take out sushi lunch before heading over though - mm sushi.
I don’t do much there ‘cept play lots of GH3 with Kev mocking me, and I got to see just how stupidly hard Stockholm Syndrome was on Expert. Then it was off to the shops so Kev could hunt down some wedding gifts and something to wear…
Leon’s wedding gifts suggestions was ‘cheap larger’ so Kev took us to a ‘fine ales’ shop to try and get something nice there. It was pissing it down with rain by now and my trousers got wet heh. The fine ales shop was nice though - it pretty much a beer connoisseur’s hide away, with loads of cool fancy beers, ales and so form. Kev ends up with a beer and glass set and also some sparkling red (yes red) wine.
Onwards and we try and hunt down some reasonably smart shirt, the problem was that there were only two full priced clothes shops in the area, which we both went to. The first made Kev gasp in some sort of mild terror when the price tag read £50, and the second luckily enough had a sale. But we couldn’t find anything suitable, Kev did try on something that was too small for him and did somewhat amused me.
The next plan was charity shops! We check out Oxfam, and in there some very enthused shop assistant tried to ‘personal shop’ us. She picked up two shirts as suggestions saying it would go with Kev’s ‘complexion’ - teehee. Ah reminded me a little of work… He goes to try it on, and it did look fine.
I leave him after that do go back to Paul’s flat, as I was a bit soggy legged. I get a brew (I swear I consume a massive amount of brews that weekend hehe) and then go get ready. I decide against a dress, and just go with some quite nice cream top thingy and neat black trousers. Kev rings up saying he’s got a bit of a dilemma with his wrapping paper and it not sticking (??) which became much clearer later when he turns up and shows his wrapped presents, stuck together with gaffa tape 0_o Kev explained that he brought this dead nice paper, but when he tried to stick it down, normal sellotape just wouldn’t stick haha.
We pile into Paul’s car, whack on some hair metal, picked up Gem and then head over the wedding venue. It was quite a nice venue already busy with lots of nicely dressed people whom I hadn’t a clue any were. We piled in through the doors and found Leon right a way, was very surprised/happy to see us lot ha. And then immediately said how we were the ‘muse lot’ - cheers Leon.
The rest of the evening is how you would expect any reception to go, there were photos outside, a friend of Jenn’s I believe was acting as proper photographer. While me and other guests snapped random shots. I took advantage of the photographer’s set ups to snap my own shots.
Then there was some salsa music playing band, that was pretty funky and made me wished I knew how to dance to salsa/salsa properly (I decide by the end of the evening I totally should go to some salsa lessons sometime for a laugh). Lots of standing around while Kev ran off and socialised with people he already knew. Then the buffet was available, was a really nice spread and tasty - including crazy cheese board selection, olives, fruit and all sorts. Gorgeous. Though it was all veggie food teehee, I had joked about this in the car on the way up since the couple were veggies. Like said was nice though regardless.
Me and Gem eyed up the desserts and we dished up some when we got our mains ha. Gem was most excited about the trifle and the cream.
Afterwards we had speeches, some words of thanks, and I find out that Leon has not one but three best men! Who all said their pieces, including a slide show of embarrassing photos of Leon haha. Jenn’s best friend was brides maid and she made a very heartwarming speech, it was odd her American totally made the speech more passionate sounding.
Then it was the some dances, first with the parents to Stand by me, but the DJ had messed up and the track was just some looping beat with no singing haha. So some of the guests sang the words instead, was funny but cool. Then it was the couple’s dance, and it was this lovely usual normal dance with kissing and stuff, which suddenly burst out into this funky dance with Leon donning a hat and funkying it on.
Suddenly loads of other people got up to join the dance ha, which signalled the end of the speeches methinks. We all file back out, and return to watching the football that was on next door ha.
Nothing much else, I miss the cutting of the cake cause I was in the middle of a call with Nick outside, but Paul manages to bring me a piece so I didn’t miss out totally. Mm cake.
I pop back in for some cheesy disco music action, which I randomly dance to, and also some random lad comes up to me and says ‘That’s that 1.8 lens isn’t it?’ - well a more drunken version of those words anyway. I say bemused, yeahh you know you stuff ha, and we end up randomly chatting about camera gear - he had a 30d - then a quick ‘how do you know leon then?’ moment before he shook my hand and carried on on his way. That was odd.
Soon it was getting pretty late, so we make leave ourselves, was a cool night in all.
The next day I bid farewell to Paul and Gem, before heading back over to Kev’s where again I slummed about doing sod all apart from watching lots of music tv while Kev cleaned the front room. Then we go for a nandos and afterwards I head home.