Marriage - French style

We were working in the garden during one of the rare breaks in the rain in April when Nicole, our neighbour who runs the farm with Dominique her husband, came down the drive to show us Awen, her new grandson, (three weeks old) and give us a wedding invite for the marriage of their oldest daughter, Sophie. She said it’s traditional in Bretagne to invite all the neighbours to a wedding (we hadn’t actually ever met Sophie – she lives in Angers). It was extremely kind of them to invite the auto-constructeur Rosbif neighbours to the wedding; the invite was to the civil ceremony in the Mairie followed by the church service and a vin d'honneur.

It was the first time we had been to a French wedding - lots of things were similar but there were a few puzzling and entertaining differences for us:

The couple arrived together in a specially decorated car that had seen better days - and probably wouldn't get through a Controle Technique ....

Arriving at the Mairie: L to R: Vincent, Vincent's mother, Dominique, Sophie, Vincent's father, Nicole

Note for English readers: In France the church and the State are completely separate and so the "official" marriage ceremony can only be performed by a representative of the State, in this case the Mayor. Actually in this case the mayor wasn't present so it was an ajoint to the mayor who conducted the service.

The ceremony wasn't nearly as solemn as we expected - everyone piled into the room at the Mairie trying to get the best place to take photos from - the prime place seemed to be behind the table looking over the ajoint's shoulder.. Those who couldn't get in chatted loudly to their friends in the foyer. I'd guess that the Maire isn't absent very often and it seemed like it was the ajoint's first marriage ceremony judging by the number of times he had to stop and thumb through the book he was reading from.

But everyone was in a good mood and the ceremony completed with Sophie and Vincent being declared as married and everyone applauding,

Not sure who was more hesitant - the newly married couple or the ajoint

Next, everyone left the Mairie and headed the 100m over to the church - it was our first time in a French church for a service and, I guess, we'd expected things to be a bit more solemn than at the Mairie. Not a bit of it - the bride and groom were led down the aisle by the priest to Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" - a bit different to "Here comes the Bride" - and the priest had to chase the same posse of amateur photographers  away from the altar area where they had taken up residence. The singing was good although only printing 50 service sheets when there were 200 in the church meant we weren't able to join in - maybe a good thing .... !

In the Noyal Muzillac church

After the service everyone walked over to the Salle de Jeune France for the vin d'honneur and in a convivial setting we met up again with the singer from Claudette's garden party last year. Instead of a Liste de Mariage people queued up to meet the bride and groom, wish them good luck and give them an envelope with money or a cheque, appropriately given Sophie's background these were then posted into an elegantly painted milk churn.. Being English we had brought them a gift that they couldn't post in the churn! 

During the vin d'honneur Lucien, Sophie's grandfather and our neighbour from over the road, came to talk to us and took care to introduce us to his new friend - an elegant lady who we have seen at his house a number of times ....

Progress Update

The build has progressed a lot since my last update.

Adam has completed one of the two new windows on the North Side, this was done in a similar way to the doorway but was complicated by the position of the beams and the size of some of the stones in the wall.

The first new window partly completed. The support posts, props and Strongboys are stabilising the wall whilst the work is underway

The finished window from the inside of the Barn

And from the outside - soon it will look as if it's been there two hundred years like the rest of the building.

 We've also had our new souterrain electricity supply installed and the old, ugly overhead cable has gone, the huge steel cable support has been taken down too:

 Barbara and I have been working on the fit-out of the lean-to, we've done the first-fix electrics and plumbing and have framed out the walls for the plasterboarding to follow. The lean-to will be one of the areas of the building that will be finished using conventional framing and plasterboarding; actually of course "conventional" in this case means modern rather than the techniques that the original builders would have recognised. We'll be using more traditional methods and more ecological materials in the main barn. Interestingly, after my previous blog post on my green confusion, the insulation in this picture is made from recycled bottles - so we'll be continuing our efforts to contribute to the stock of empty bottles to be turned into insulation ;o)

Framing using the French metal rail system (rather than the British tradition of using wood)

Electrical and Plumbing first fix in progress. The window we found and re-opened can be seen in the back wall.

Electricity "Connection Central" - hopefully we'll be able to connect all this lot up correctly.