Wedding Speech 10th June 2023 Father of maytrees min

 A wonderful hot sunny day for a wonderful wedding at Bignor Park  West Sussex,

The maytrees' speech read something like this:

Firstly, I should like to thank all those who have worked so hard, and in many cases behind the scenes, to help make this such a special day  for the youngest daughter of Breda the mother of the bride, and for Catherine’s husband Johnny, and his mother Sheila.  A special thanks too, to  Sheila’s late husband  Neil, with whom we  had a most enjoyable tea on the family farm when we as Catherine’s parents, were being introduced to Johnny’s father and mother. Hopefully we passed muster.

Catherine is   the youngest of our four children with the oldest her brother Ed, being some 12 years older. One might expect  four young children   to have fights and quarrels amongst themselves  but never so far as I can recall, did such involve Catherine. Like her older sister Alice, she attended Wimbledon Ursuline Prep and High  Schools, where to date, some of the girls she met there are  still friends, and indeed Dominique, Josie, Felicity  are among her bridesmaids today. But Catherine of course also  has many friends from her post-school life.

Whilst at school she decided to compete with others to became a ball girl for Wimbledon Tennis. “Compete” is the polite word for “fight” yet she succeeded and still wears the Wimbledon tennis fleece and tee-shirt 18 years later, though whether they have been washed since then I dare not ask.

She also enjoys fighting to keep fit having joined what was then called British Military Fitness, with Alice, her sister. She still takes delight in the BMF workouts  if delight is the right word, often in Richmond Park, but perhaps the delight actually sets in when the BMF session ends.

Exeter University it was for Catherine, from which she gained her degree in maths. Bravely whilst a student, she travelled alone to the Dominican Republic where she did  some voluntary work  in the mountains there. Also, at Exeter, Catherine met  many wonderful students some of whom are here today. On one occasion, she decided to cycle  from Wimbledon to Paris with Heather from Exeter Uni. Despite being hit by a car on the way down to Dover, she and Heather made it to Paris and as you all can see, they both returned safely. Another friend Liv, she met whilst traveling in Australia. But  travelling always has its ups and downs  so she in the bad weather she seems to attract whilst travelling, she got stuck in Fiji because of the cyclones or maybe they are called hurricanes there, and ended up playing cards with an elderly couple in a hotel,  at a time when her  friends probably thought she was out partying.

She attended  the  2012 Olympic games in London with her  Grandad,  her   brother Hugh, and myself. She and we were all there on super Saturday and saw  Team GB win  gold medals galore on a very exciting night. One could never tell Catherine what to do career wise, but  after uni, she got herself a good post within DeLoitte and was soon sent to work in  Philadelphia for we initially understood, only a few days. However, days turned into  weeks then months so De Loitte  sometime after her work in the USA  had begun, quite happily (though perhaps  through gritted teeth) offered to pay the   airfare over to the USA  and back, for me to visit her. Catherine had discovered spinning  in Philadelphia. Spinning, for those who do not know it, is a kind of stationary competitive cycling in a group, with huge cinema screens in front of the cyclists depicting how well  (or in my case much later, badly) you are doing. This Catherine found enjoyable, though I am sure there must be some better words to describe spinning so for example for ordinary folk,   hard or back breaking  work on  lookalike  stationary bikes, might be more apt apt. Thus,  after treating me to an early coffee and croissant in Philadelphia and when I was sitting in the sunshine outside the café, with a copy of the Washington Post in hand, she would set off for that vigorous pre-work exercise. Nonetheless,  she could never be persuaded to run the London Marathon like her older sister, but she did run  the Wimbledon 10k, from the rugby club across the Common and back, where she beat me anyway.

With Johnny, she has done some tremendous hikes including climbing to the peak of Mount Snowdon. 

Sometime later if I recollect correctly, Johnny and she became engaged  whilst on holiday in the Lake District  having taken out a  boat on one of the lakes there. There was no escape from the boat so here we are today.

Now a toast to the Bride and Groom.