BCA Garden Party for the Royal Wedding

Well there was no shortage of bunting at the BCA on Friday - every room and tree was covered in it for the Royal Wedding garden party. With the wedding at 11am UK time and coverage starting hours before we were in for an early start. The BCA was welcoming though, even at the dizzy hour of 10am (we'd got up just before 9am and had our Aeropress coffee) and the three of us (Kevin having arrived the previous evening) strode in and quicly grabbed our "welcome drink" of a bucks fizz!
We joined Steve and Anne-Marie and quickly ordered our breakfasts (a full english with real pork was just 55LE). Being there so early (!) we managed to pull two tables together in the middle of the garden and grab ourselves two sun shades too - it was warm and sunny already and things had hardly started.

Our two-table and two-shade set-up!

During the day much merriment was had, with the beers flowing, free ice-cream and yummy (10LE) cupcakes to eat (with marzipan crowns or Union Jacks on them), memorabelia to buy (we bought two "I am not a Royal Wedding Mug" mugs and a tea towel) and lots of good chat.

Kevin was popping in and out of the main BCA building to watch the coverage, but we mainly just sat and chatted away in the middle of the garden - glancing to the TV every now and then. Ours wasn't the best view, but we had come down to enjoy the party rather than be part of the wedding hype.

View from the table of the big screen

After the main event we did go home for a little rest in the afternoon - mainly because we knew we wanted to watch the evening band playing at the BCA and so didn't want to wear ourselves out! Around 6pm we returned to the BCA and had more drinks with other groups of friends that had turned up. Then Glass Onion were playing and we spent most of the time in the main room tapping along and having a few drinks. By their third set though we were all up and dancing! They are such a great band - really tight and they have the sound of the Beatles really down.

All in all a fun day and a great night!

Although we joked when the Archbishop of Cantebury said "in a way, every wedding is a 'royal' wedding" the day and the event did remind us of our own wedding. Both of us say that it was the best day we've ever had, so we loved being reminded of it and being loved up together.