Weddings, Wine and a Jolly Good Lunge

Weddings: a whole day of opportunities to be enormously unhealthy. It's always very difficult to make good choices under wedding day circumstances when the free wine is flowing and friends and family alike are actively encouraging you to "have another one".

My plan was brilliantly simple, I would just have a bit of wine with dinner then rock out on the dance floor for the rest of the evening. Did it work? Well, no, not exactly. The first problem I encountered was the post-ceremony Pimms that was on offer. I thought "just one of these would be okay wouldn't it? Take the edge off all the group photo madness". Then all willpower went out the window as a) the Pimms tasted amazing and b) numerous top ups were offered by particularly attractive hotel staff. 

So after giving in to several glasses of Pimms (and canapés), it was time to sit down for the Wedding Breakfast.  The food we were served was absolutely outstanding, so I couldn't resist a couple of opportunities to polish off other people's leftovers, but the portions were erring on the side of posh food so even with these extras I was happy in the knowledge that I still hadn't really eaten too much at all. So whilst I'd managed not to vastly overeat (quite a good accomplishment for me) I did manage to consume a fairly substantial amount of wine over the course of the meal. Again, I blame the hotel staff and their constant topping up.

So basically what I am saying in a round about sort of way is that at this point in the day I was reasonably well inebriated. The healthy plan had sort of gone out the window completely. However, as soon at the tables were cleared and the dance floor was created, I was hit with new, healthy motivation.

In fact, from this point onwards some very impressive achievements were made. First of all, I managed to dance continuously in my shoes for at least the first couple of hours. I actually outlasted several other people in the shoe-wearing dance endurance challenge, that's a first!

I was having such good fun busting out my killer moves (which involved a lot of lunging and arm waving) that I didn't want to leave the dance floor to go to the bar. Believe it or not,  I didn't even leave when they announced the buffet! I felt like a willpower hero, dancing less than twenty metres away from tables of delicious food and ignoring it all completely. It was only at the very end of the night that I tottered past with my sore feet and couldn't resist a bit of wedding cake, but after four hours of solid dancing I felt that I deserved it.

So even though I got off to a rocky start of wedding unhealthiness, I came out redeemed.. and sober enough to cycle home safely today. Success!