You can also read Dave Williamson’s address from the wedding service on his blog, along with photos of us from the day and other occasions.
Hello! Before I begin my speech, I’m going to ask all you lot to ready yourselves to take part in a bit of audience participation! Oh yes I am. Don’t be scared.
The last time I checked, the number of guests confirmed to be attending the reception today was 144. By a strange coincidence, this was the number of hobbits present at Bilbo Baggins’ birthday party in Lord of the Rings. Who here has read the book or seen the film?
In the film, when Bilbo mentions the name of a particular Hobbit family, they all cheer loudly. So, in a moment I would like you all to pretend that you are hobbits, and to give a loud and enthusiastic cheer when your family or group are mentioned. Are you ready? Good.
My dear Watlings and Woodbridges, Cumminses and Clarkes… no, no, no, this won’t do! You’re going to have to do far better than that.
My dear Watlings and Woodbridges, Cumminses and Clarkes, friends from Margate, friends from Dolgellau, and friends from Cardiff, Mackites, Contagiousites and beach missioners:
Today is my wedding day, and the happiest day of my life so far!
This is thanks to the efforts of many people, and I’d like to thank just a few of them…
[I’ve already posted my thanks on my blog, so you can read them here]
…But there is one person I have to thank above all, of course – until today the wonderful and beautiful Miss Beverley Watling, and now my even more wonderful and beautiful wife, Mrs Beverley Woodbridge!
They say that the course of true love never did run smooth, but they also say that time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana, so I’m not sure how much attention you should pay to “them”! The course of our relationship has run very smoothly, praise God.
It’s two years since Beverley and I first started taking an interest in each other, particularly around the time of the Cardiff Christian Union beach party. I was very impressed that Bev was able to hold her own in a discussion with me, her and Swithun about creation and evolution, God and time, and all that stuff. Swithun thinks that everyone is entitled to his opinion, but Bev took no nonsense.
It’s 21 months on Wednesday since we started going out. If I was ever worried that Bev was somehow so dull as to be normal, after I asked her out, she then asked for a drink of cola mixed with milk! What, I asked myself, have I just let myself in for?
In the unlikely event that you are under the impression that Bev and I are somehow sensible and well-adjusted people, let me make it clear to you now that we are nothing so mundane, and our occasional efforts to pretend to be normal are quite a strain. Together, Bev and I laugh in the face of normality. Mwahahahahahaha! See, I’d make a good evil supervillain – I’ve even got the beard for it. But I have sworn to use my Powers of Eccentricity and Creativity only for good. Like Batman, only with stories, poems and bad puns rather than martial arts, gadgets and the Batmobile.
Just under 11 months ago, on a sunny afternoon in the garden of Bev’s house here in Cardiff, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me, and she said yes. I thought at the time I couldn’t be happier, but today I know that I was wrong.
My dear Bev, over the course of our relationship, I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of discovering just what an amazing, kind, intelligent, fun and godly young lady you are; how well we get on, and most amazingly of all, that you also love me!
And it just goes to show, you don’t have to have a terrible misunderstanding and a mad dash to the airport before you get a happy ending, Richard Curtis romcoms notwithstanding.
Beverley and I have high ambitions for our marriage. For example, Bev is determined that our house will be spotlessly clean and tidy – unlike, say, certain previous houses we may have lived in, where the levels of cleanliness just might possibly have fallen just a tiny bit short of that ideal!
A Perfectly Clean and Tidy House is one of those ideas that’s wonderful in principle, rather like Communism, but in practice leads to wars, revolutions, purges and gulags. But I must be true to the Cause, unless I want to find myself in the marital equivalent of Siberia.
After all, you are fighting the very forces of Entropy, which if certain scientists are to be believed, will one day bring the entire universe to the point of heat death. Heath death will be rather like the cold layer of gunk at the bottom of the sink after everything has drained away, only on a universal scale. This rather puts making sure the bed sheets are on straight into perspective.
But the quest for a well-ordered house is not in fact a gesture of cosmic futility. As Dave mentioned in his address, neither scientists or entropy will have the last word. The Bible tells us that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay. Jesus’ resurrection is the proof that death is not the end; death will itself one day die. God isn’t just saving our souls, but all of creation.
The brief moment I will share with Bev between “I do” and when “death us do part” is not a diversion or a distraction in the face of ultimate meaninglessness. The small ways we try and bring order and happiness into the world – a tidy kitchen, putting my Doctor Who videos in chronological order, having friends round for dinner, writing novels, raising a family – are less a cosmic joke, and more an affirmation of hope, hope grounded in God’s promise of resurrection and redemption.
My wife and I (I love finally getting to say that!) hope that our marriage, all the way up from a well-ordered sock drawer to through to the totality of our life lived together, will point to what God is doing in this world, and in doing so, live life fully alive and truly human. We’re not trying to be better than anyone else, but to follow a God who forgives us our mistakes and failings, of which there will be many, and gives us every chance to start again.
And my dear Bev, I couldn’t ask for a better friend and companion in this life than you. Beverley, I love you more than anything else God has given me. You are more precious to me than a whole library of books, than a collection of Doctor Who boxsets or any number of cups of tea! I give myself willingly to you, until the day I die. Thank you Bev, and thanks be to God.