Letter From Paris - Weddings
Paris Kiosque - September 1999 - Volume 6, Number 9
Copyright (c) 1999 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
Summer in Paris is wedding season. Invited to several,
we only made it to one, the wedding of a cousin "a la mode de Bretagne" (a
French saying for an unrelated cousin). The bride was, in fact, the niece
of my brother-in-law and we were excited to attend because we had been
hearing about the wedding for almost a year. Held in the small Norman
village of the groom's family, this wedding was going to be worth
everyone's time, turning out to be a three-day affair, first of all the
wedding ceremony and the reception for the out of town and older set of
guests and then two more days of partying for the young people.
The Norman town we stayed in looked like it was straight out of Madame
Bovary, complete with a mill and a stone bridge, half-timbered houses,
pretty little gardens and a manor house.
The wedding ceremonies took place in a small seventeenth century church in
a nearby village. The bride was ravishing, the groom handsome, the
respective parents puffed with pride, the priest young. Probably one of
the funniest moments of the ceremony was when the priest warned us that a
certain Biblical passage that the bride had chosen to be read "should be
viewed in the context of the times in which it was written". This of
course got everyone's curiosity up. What on earth could he be referring
to? Although we had been forewarned, a collective gasp of astonishment
and a few chuckles arose from the congregation when the reader got to the
part saying that the happiest husband is the one who has a woman who keeps
quiet. You could almost read people's minds and see a question mark
looming over their collective heads: why would the bride, a successful
lawyer and a femme de t=EAte, as the French say - have chosen such a passage?
She's probably the last person in the world who would "keep quiet".
Wishful thinking on her part? Or, and this thought only occurred to me
afterward, perhaps the groom chose it and didn't tell her! Hardly
likely...
But on to more important things: food. The reception was held in a
beautiful chateau and the dinner, which began at 10 p. m. and went on well
into the night and early morning, consisted of (and here is the actual menu
for you):
Fete de Salades Composées et Crudités Juliment Dressées
Savoureuse Charcutailles de Pays
Assiettée de Saumon Tranché et de Poissons en Terrine
Trou Normand
Canard en Magrets Sauce Vinaigrée de Framboises Fra=EEches
Et sa Garniture de Petites Pommes Duchesse sur lit de Champignons en
Fricassée et Tomate Proven=E7ale
Salade Verdoyante
Fromages de nos Terroirs Assortis
Ronde Variée de Saveurs Sucrées en Bouche
Café et son Pousse-café
Soupe Tardive à l'Oignon
I have to say that I missed the onion soup which was served to those who
stayed until six in the morning. As for the "trou normand", it is a
miraculous little trick the Normans have invented so that you can go all
the way through a meal of several courses without suffering indigestion.
The trou normand is calvados ice cream with calvados poured over it.
Something about the cold and the alcohol makes it so that your stomach gets
a break in the digestive process and can start all over again. I can
guarantee you that I am the queen of the sensitive stomach and that this
trou normand WORKS, even on me. Fantastique!
Incidentally, this looks like a ten course meal but in fact was"only"
seven, as the first three items on the menu were served as a cold buffet
and the trou normand doesn't count as a course. However, coffee does, as
it is always served separately in France, a tradition I particularly like.
By the time we were dipping our spoons into the cold trou normand, the f=EAte
was starting to heat up. A waiter had broken a few sherbet dishes, my
tablemates had moved on from a discussion on the Americans and religion to
the sublime art of the late French singer Georges Brassens (who is a real
French artist but unfortunately absolutely untranslatable). "His songs
reflect a simple humanity", commented one guest (and I swear we weren't
drunk). The music got louder with each course and people who felt they'd
been at the table too long headed to the dance floor to let off some steam.
At eleven pm we were just finishing the trou normand and were moving on
to the canard (course number two, or three, depending on how we're
counting). The conversation at our table moved to the French writer George
Sand, bullfights in Dax and in Spain, Americans and guns, the death
penalty in the U.S. (the French have abolished it)...and for some reason,
religion again.
All of this wining and dining and dancing of course was going on amid a
cloud of smoke that anywhere else in the world would have brought out a
fire brigade. I have never seen people who smoke as much as the French
(and there are nations who smoke much more, for example, the Greeks beat
the French on this by a long shot). Not only were there cigarettes but
at one point my tablemate pulled out a long lethal looking CIGAR and I knew
it was the end. But since I have lived in France long enough, I have
learned tolerance and so not to spoil the fun, I didn't ask anyone to stop
-- and besides there were so many people smoking I couldn't stop them all
even if I wanted to! So my eyes smarted and my lungs blackened and I
thought: it's just one evening. I'll survive. And yes, in SPITE of the
smoke, it was a lovely evening indeed.
Then there was our "Chinese" wedding, one we weren't invited to but which
we witnessed a part of one Sunday as we sat in a Chinese restaurant in
Belleville in the northeast of Paris, an area composed of many different
ethnic groups. It is so ethnic in fact that I actually spied a "kosher
Chinese" takeout place, the first I'd ever seen in France. But back to our
wedding: there we were, six of us, sitting in the vast restaurant
calmly eating our nems and spring rolls and savoring our soup when all of a
sudden the Lohengrin wedding march broke out as loud as could be. We
turned our heads and what did we see? A lovely young Chinese couple in
full wedding dress, followed by a procession of assorted friends and
relatives. As they rather self-consciously but proudly marched past our
table and through the restaurant, all the diners looked up from their
food with big smiles on their faces and broke into spontaneous clapping.
Hey, it's not every day you go for Sunday lunch and happen upon a wedding
party! And then...back to our nems!
All of this brought me back memories of my own wedding which took place in
Paris on a wonderfully cool morning in November 1973. We were married in a
civil service by the Mayor of the Fifth Arrondissement, Jean Tiberi, who is
now the Mayor of Paris - and deeply involved in a political scandal -
nothing to do with us! Afterward we repaired to Le Coupe Chou, one of
Paris's oldest and most romantic restaurants, where we had reserved a table
for our French and American families. The lunch was spent translating to
the two families, neither of which understood a word of what the other was
saying. But, as they say, fun was had by all. Our marriage has lasted.
I'm not so sure how long Tiberi's political career will!
Harriet Welty-Rochefort, a bona fide Midwesterner from
Iowa, visited Paris for the first time while in
college. She became so completely enamored of
France that she stayed - and has been there ever since.
Married to a Frenchman and the mother of two
Franco-American boys, Harriet Welty-Rochefort writes
on business, lifestyle and travel for major U.S.
publications. Her book -
French Toast
- is a lighthearted look at
French manners and mores.
Writes Leslie Caron: French Toast includes the most delightful barbs at France's
subtle but deep-rooted codes of behaviour...I read the book on the EuroStar between
Paris and London and wished the train had not reached its top speed of 300 kph!
Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, 1998, French Toast
is published in the U.S. by St. Martin's Press.
You may contact Harriet directly at
hwelty@club-internet.fr.
Editor's Note:
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as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer any requests
for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
Your Hotel In Paris