Excellent. A lovely day by the sound of it.
I've "done" two weddings using a Jaguar XJ12 convertible, belonging to a friend who had offered to do them for friends, and then found he was going to be elsewhere!
The first one was, as people say these days, a nightmare. I thought I was just collecting the bride from a hotel, but when she came out there were three - bride, matron of honour and bride's mother. On the outside this is a fairly big car, but inside it's about the size of a Fiat 500. They were all wearing 6 inch heels and the dress was like a frothy circus tent. They finally squeezed themselves in but there was no way were they getting out without assistance. The pre-stressed bride's mother was frankly grumpy about the unsuitability of the car but I remained courteous as befitted a mere chauffeur. Off we went to the church, on the opposite side of St Alban's.
That was supposed to take 10 minutes but I had allowed about 25. It took over half an hour due to very slow traffic. I was already pretty stressed myself and watching the temperature gauge anxiously, with beads of perspiration on my brow when the engine decided it wasn't going to tick over any more. After a couple of restarts following stops in the traffic, I started to heel and toe it to avoid flattening the battery of the 40 year old beast, not really something you want to be landed with in an unfamiliar car in those circumstances. The beads of perspiration became rivers. The plan was to reverse up the wide path to the church door to discharge the cargo, which I did, almost holing the sump which touched the gate stop. A couple of sturdy ushers helped to extract the passengers, the bride and mother in the back having spent half an hour in stewing heat folded up like penknives.
I did say "never again", but ended up doing another a year or so later - that went much more smoothly.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 21 Aug 20 at 14:07
|
