The last chapter

In what may be the ultimate sign that I have moved on, I completely forgot that Fab and Katell got married this past Saturday. Though if I'm honest, it does get my goat a little bit that they chose to get married exactly one week before C & I. I mean, what are the odds?? It's like they had to get one last little dig in. I have absolutely no clue what they were planning on doing for the wedding since communications have broken down to a fight over taxes (money gets ya every time), but I suppose I wish them well? If only because there is now a child involved...

Friday afternoon, C & I went to meet with the official who will be marrying us next weekend (Yes, next weekend!). I had been hoping the woman we had originally met with would do it since she just seemed so upbeat and positive, but alas, she was unavailable.

As a side note, bigger cities have several people who marry couples and while they all have assigned weekends, you can request whomever you would like. We heard one story of a couple who loved sailing and one of the adjoint maire's was a semi-famous sailor, so they asked if he would do it.

Anyways, so we started explaining what we had in mind - a few people reading texts, etc - so that it would seem more like an American wedding for my family since we weren't doing the church wedding.

He stopped us there and said "Why aren't you doing a church wedding?" C replied "Well, because we're not the same religion." The official replied "That doesn't matter, some priests will marry you anyways. Where do you live? We'll find out what diocese you are in and we can call them".

We sat there stunned for a second - like "Dude, we're getting married in a week, I think it's a little late for that." I was rather incredulous actually - here our mairie is all for people doing civil ceremonies-only and yet this guy is trying to push a church wedding on us. Me thinks someone did not read the memo!

In the end, we were able to brush him off by saying we were doing a small thing here and then something for the rest of my family in the US. But still, so much for separation of church and state, right?

Photo of the Day

Is anyone else wondering how this woman's tiny little twig legs are holding up the weight of that monstrous hat?

The other day, I headed to Rennes for a tradeshow. It was the first time I'd been to such a big one, so I was just kind of walking around getting my bearings when I saw someone I knew across the room.

I was sitting there, thinking "Man, which one of my customers does that guy work for?"

Until I realized it was one of the farmers from "L'amour est dans le pré". And then I noticed there was another cast member standing nearby:It was Raphael, the jerky fonctionnaire rennais. It was actually pretty funny to see him there, because C & I had both speculated that he was just on the show to get his 15 minutes of fame, et le voila.

They were there to participate in a forum held by the radio station "France Bleu Armorique". I didn't get to listen to the session because I was there to schmooze with my customers after all, but here were some of the topics discussed:

Est-ce si difficile de rencontrer l'âme soeur chez nous en Bretagne?
Avez-vous réfléchi longtemps avant de tenter l'aventure?
Comment cette idée a t elle était perçue par votre entourage?
Cette aventure a t elle toujours été agréable à vivre, ou y a t il eu des moments difficiles?
Comment avez-vous réagi le jour où vous avez appris que vous aviez été sélectionné?
Aviez-vous fait d'autres tentatives, annonces, speed-dating, site de rencontres sur Internet?

Is it really that difficult to meet one's soul-mate in Bretagne?
Did you think about it a long time before deciding to sign up for the show?
How did your friends/family feel about it?
Was it a 100% positive experience, or where there also some difficult moments?
How did you react when you found out you had been selected?
What have you done in the past to find love (ads, speed-dating, dating websites)?

The interview can be found here (in French of course), if anyone would like to listen to it.

Silly sausage

At the beginning of the summer, C, in a fit of excitement about using our balcony grill, bought what can only amount to a boatload of merguez sausages. But since summer never really made much of an appearance here in Paris, we haven't made much of a dent in it.

They are however predicting nice weather for tomorrow, so we decided to invite a few friends over for a BBQ. C was all excited and said "Yes! We can say it's a sausage party".

I'm telling you people, if you did not just bust out laughing, you must be dead.

I just about rolled on the floor, while C said "What? What is so fun-nee??"


This second one I already posted on Twitter, but it still cracks me up. C has a tendency to pronounce "focus" as "f*ck-us". Apparently this is a common problem for French language speakers, and it never fails me to crack me up every time, especially since he can't seem to remember the proper pronunciation now.

Foo-coos?
Foo-cus?
Fo-cous?
Fu-cos?

And they say French is hard.

Vaux le Vicomte

 This is a Château I've been wanting to visit for a while now - and when I heard they had a candlelight visit AND also put on a fireworks show every other weekend during the summer, I knew we had to go.  

Except the summer flew by in a flash and all of the sudden it was September.  There were two last fireworks shows - one this past weekend and the other our wedding night, so off we went this past Saturday night.

 We were lucky to have absolutely beautiful weather:

 The château was also relatively empty, giving us ample time to look around:

 This candle-holder cracked me up:

 And these made me want to cancel the cake order and have a macaron tree for the wedding:

 This guy however was creepy - he had a video screen as his face and was actually "talking":

 Then it was back outside for a lovely picnic in the forest while the employees lit up all of the candles

 And when we came back, it looked like this:

 I was a bit disappointed though, because while it looked beautiful from the outside, the lights were still on inside, so the candles really didn't make much of a difference.  So we went back outside after just a few minutes and found a good place to wait for the fireworks and finish the last of the champagne:

After the other fantastic fireworks shows we've seen this summer, theirs were a bit boring, but it was still a lovely way to finish the evening.

Practical info:

The château is about a 45 minute drive from Paris, otherwise if you don't have a car, you can take a train to Melun and they have a navette from there.  There is also a company called Paris Vision that will bring you by bus from the center of Paris to Vaux le Vicomte for 49€ (entrance ticket and audio-guide included).

Ticket prices range from 14-16€ for the normal visits, or 17-19€ for the candle-light visits.  (Student discounts are available).