Just thought you might be interested - I'll try and get some photos up soon too.
Simon thank you for those kind and touching words. How do you think that went compared to when your eldest daughter was married? Better? Jill? What do you think? Vick? Second time around – nae bother, eh?
Ladies and Gentlemen, shortly after I got engaged, I realised I’d be able to stand before you today and say: “I’m Nick Wallis… and so’s my wife.”
Right now I am the happiest man on the planet, but before I pay tribute to my beautiful bride, Nicola and I, sorry… my wife and I have a few thank yous to make.
First of all, there are some certain special young ladies who I know have been looking forward to today for months. Our beautiful bridesmaids. They’ve been charming and delightful and behaved impeccably all day (it says here). Megan, Hannah, Emma and Louise you look absolutely perfect. We are all so proud of you. If Megan, Emma, Hannah and Louise are here, we have some little presents for you. Whilst Nicola is handing them out, ladies and gentlemen if you could show your appreciation for and raise your glasses to… the bridesmaids!
[give gifts – goody bags]
Thanks are also due to Anna, Becky and Vick from Bridesmaids R Us. You’re right, they do look just like they did in the catalogue.
Now, to the ushers. Gentlemen if you could stand up. We’d also like to give you a token of our appreciation and introduce you properly to our guests. Ladies and gentlemen I hope you will agree they’ve done a first rate job of stewarding us this afternoon. This is my brother Tom, who saw me through childhood. Matt Ford, who saw me through school. Chris and Ally, who saw me through Radio Oxford, and Tim Wilson, who’s just seen me marry his sister. Gents, thanks so much for everything you’ve done today, we really appreciate it.
[give gifts – engraved pewter tankards]
There is also one particularly smart young gentleman to whom we should pay tribute. Peter Jewell was the first of the new generation to find his way into the family, and he has become a great friend and a first class nephew. Peter, thank you so much for agreeing to be Chief Usher’s Chief Helper today, you’ve been absolutely brilliant, and I am very grateful.
[give gift – half pint version of above]
There is also, of course, my best man, Will Jackson, but I think it would be wise to give him his present after his speech, just in case…
Now, there is one group of people without whom we wouldn’t be here. Nic and I wouldn’t be anywhere, but none of us would actually be here. I refer, of course, to our parents.
Firstly I'd like to thank Jill and Simon Wilson, my new parents-in-law. I met them for the first time six years ago, and quickly discovered two things. Simon appears to own a magic bottle of white wine. Always exceptional quality, always chilled to perfection and it never seems to run out. And he's always very generous with it. Incidentally, at Christmas, this is supplemented by a magic bottle of port, with very similar qualities.
The second thing is that Jill is quite the most exceptional cook. Through her amazing food, I've been inspired to make numerous failed cheesecakes, lasagnes, pies and puddings. If I ever manage to make a meal as good as yours I'll die a happy man.
I am also deeply indebted to you for the amount of time and energy you've put into today. The wine, the design, the catering, the lights, the musicians, the flowers - all commissioned, chased, chivvied and generally knocked into shape over the last twelve months by you.
We are - I am - very grateful. It's perfect, it really is. And you even let me get a few ideas in of my own, didn't you Jill? And we didn't actually manage to fall out. Mind you, you weren't officially my mother-in-law then, so it's probably all downhill from here.
But sincerely and honestly, I couldn't have wished for a kinder, more welcoming and generous mother- and father-in-law. I know that all you've ever wanted is for your children to be happy. I promise I will make Nicola's happiness my priority for the rest of my life.
Now. Mum and Dad. What can I say? Thank goodness for unconditional love. I realise I haven't been the perfect son, but you've always been there to support me and that counts for a lot. Thanks also for your considerable contribution to the wedding, and Dad - thanks again for the maps on the wedding invites. I think I can say again with some certainty, that without that particular contribution, none of us would be here today.
[give gifts] - flowers for the mums - nice red wine for the dads.
There are so many other people to thank - Anne and Gay for looking after Baby Amy all day today, Clive and Wendy for putting up three of our guests - we really are grateful to everyone that helped make this day so special. There are, however, two people who've gone above and beyond the call of duty for us and we'd like especially to thank them:
The Wilsons are in a good position when it comes to weddings. As well as being lucky enough to have a BBC-trained sound engineer in the family - and I would invite you to listen to this - [hold mic in air] - pure hiss-free audio gold - you can't buy that - you only get it from thirty years of experience.
But the Wilsons are also able to count on a graphic design team in their midst. Tim and Jess not only designed, printed and shipped every single invite, order of service, menu and name tage. They did it from Australia. And have so far refused to accept a penny in payment for it.
It's not as if we were easy clients. Nic, Jill and I would convene meetings - is that pink too pink? too leafy or too flowery? I remember we even had a discussion about the angle of one of the flower stems in what felt like the 37th version of the design - is too far forward? too low? In all cases the solution was to send it back to Tim and ask him to come up with another four re-designs. And that's before we started negotiating over paragraph alignments. Your patience and good humour throughout the whole process frankly astounded me. Nic and I are very grateful and I hope everyone here will agree you’ve made an inspired job of it.
Tim and Jess are also the furthest travelled - from Melbourne. They just pipped Dopper and Jacqui who made it over from Sydney. Honourable mentions are also due to Becky and Richard and Brenda and Richard who are over from Hong Kong. I'd also like to mention Jo and Brendan who flew in from Belfast, Tom and Kat from Dulmen in Germany and Angela and Lawrence who made the arduous journey from Newcastle. Britain's transport infrastructure being what it is, it's them I'm most surprised about making it.
It's also a very proud tradition on occasions like this to pay tribute to the oldest and youngest guests. I hope she won't mind me saying that the oldest, by nearly 20 years, is Grandma Wallis. We are sincerely delighted that you are here. Although with those sunglasses on you do look like the head of an organised crime syndicate. I would warn everyone Grandma is considerably more lucid than most people half her age.
Many of you may be thinking the youngest person here is little Amy at ten weeks. Not so. That honour goes to the eight week old Josie Ford.
Matt and I shared a room at school, had a joint 18th birthday party far too many years ago at the officers' mess just down the road in Middle Wallop. To become fathers within two weeks of each other has made this year all the more special. I'd like to wish Matt and his wife Alex all the best for the future - you make a great couple and Josie really is a darling little girl.
Now, if you will permit me a few moments to pay tribute to my extraordinarily beautiful new wife.
I realise here and now I am the luckiest person alive and I can honestly say this is the happiest day of my life. Nicola is my heart and soul, and my reason for getting up in the morning - well, one of two reasons for getting up in the morning, but as she was mainly responsible for that second reason anyway, so she deserves the credit, anyway...
A lot of people quite naturally assume I met Nicola working at Radio 1 - this is not actually the case. In fact, we met around eight years ago when I was the Chair of the Student Radio Association and Nic was an administrator at the Radio Academy. The director of the Radio Academy wanted to discuss formalising a relationship with the SRA and invited me to a meeting to see if we could work together.
To give you a little bit of context, the SRA was an organisation in need of friends. We had just got Matthew Bannister's Radio 1 onside to set up the Student Radio Awards, but we had no money, no administrative base and no idea how we were going to stumble from one year to the next. For the Director of the industry's trade body to invite you round to discuss a formal relationship between the two organisations was a big deal. Especially if you had half an eye on getting a job in said industry, as well, if you know what I mean.
As we all know in situations like this, appearances are very important and first impressions count. I would have to wear something appropriate to a business meeting, but in media, perhaps a suit and tie would be a little too much. After all, I represented a student group and no one likes a student in a suit. So what did I end up wearing to the meeting that would define the fate of my organisation and very possibly my own career?
Well I've actually kept it all those years and brought it along today. It's this:
[hold up Monaco FC replica home strip circa 1990]
A Monaco FC home-strip circa Chrissy Waddle era. Mr Dalton could you take a photo of me with this, because I think when the speeches are over I'm going to take it outside and ceremonially burn it.
After this incident it was two whole years before Nicola would even consider going out with me. We could all have been sitting here in 2003 if I had worn something else. Anything else.
We've been together a long time now. It doesn't seem like a very long time - that's not what I meant. But six years is quite a while. And it's been quite a journey, we've visited some strange and exotic places together, Chile, Australia, Hong Kong, Wales... We've bought a home and a car together and gone from being underpaid graduates working in the media to... oh. Well some things never change, do they?
However there has been one event so life-changing and special and even more important than our wedding, and that, of course, has been the arrival of Amy into our lives. To me she is perfect, and all the perfection in her comes from Nicola, and I just hope I can make my two girls happy by doing what I do and striving to be a better husband and father day by day.
I would like to thank you Nicola for looking so beautiful today, for making me the proudest groom for agreeing to spend the rest of your life with me, for giving us Amy and for being so patient, kind and so full of love that it flows out of you and lights up my life. Thank you.
Finally I would like to offer a special vote of thanks to you, my friends, for being here today. Weddings can be an enormous palaver, you lose a weekend, you shell out for a room, you have to travel to the middle of nowhere and wear uncomfortable clothes and shoes. But I think we, as human beings, become greater than the sum of our parts when we come together, and your presence helps give the meaning and purpose to what we're doing, and we are grateful to you all.
All that remains for me to do is introduce the mysterious and enigmatic figure sitting alongside the lady he so lovingly calls The Future Mrs Jackson.
I've known Will for 9 years now. I was but a humble student broadcaster and he was the ever-so-grandly titled Client Relations Manager at a company called MetroNetworks, which is now called Trafficlink. Just to explain - you know when you hear travel information on the radio, and the information is sometimes wrong or out of date? Well that information is supplied by Trafficlink. I'm not saying that disparagingly - getting travel information right is the broadcasting equivalent of trying to nail jelly to the ceiling.
Now, as far as I could make out, Will's job as Client Relations Manager was to traverse the country explaining to radio station executives that yes, Trafficlink's information was sometimes wrong and out of date, but it was nothing that couldn't be solved over a few beers. And it worked. Given that Will is, by his own admission, something of a radio anorak, and I can vouch for the fact that he is the single most sociable man on the planet, he could have been genetically engineered to be Trafficlink's Client Relations Manager he was so right for the job.
Even so - how long did you stay there for? 10 years? Good lord. You see, the only downside to being Client Relations Manager for Trafficlink was being shouted at by two-bit no-mark deeply insecure radio station executives who wanted someone to blame for their own incompetencies.
Earlier this year Will left his job at Trafficlink to take up a post at Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator. Will now advises on how to award multimillion pound radio licences. And as a result every single two-bit no-mark deeply insecure incompetent radio station executive who previously made his life difficult are now falling over themselves to be his best friend. Will told me he's had so many karmic moments over the past three months.
One of the skills of being a social operator like Will is being able to entertain an audience. And in this respect… Will is a giant among men.
When Will opens his mouth to speak, the room falls silent, drinks go undrunk, cigarettes go unsmoked. DJs hush their records. Will's deep, penetrating basso profundo voice reverberates into your very core and down into your soul. His words, his eyes, a mere facial expression can send a rapt audience into paroxysms of life-changing despair, laughter or joy.
His stories are a form of verbal sorcery which weave together leaving audiences clinging helplessly to his tiniest utterance - enchanted whilst he speaks, bereft when it is over. Will can speak for hours, without notes, yet it seems like seconds. I've never yet seen an audience he hasn't left whooping and hollering for more. He can reach spectacular rhetorical heights from a standing start.
Simply put, we are privileged to be in the presence of such once-in-a-lifetime greatness. Blessed that a man of such magical charisma can be here with us tonight. I am both humbled and honoured to introduce the best Best Man's speech that you will ever hear in your lives... Ladies and Gentlemen: Will Jackson!
[will's speech]
Thanks Will. I said I'd wait until after Will's speech before I gave him his present. Will has been a fantastic friend and an exemplary best man. I'm really grateful for everything he's done.
As well as being a leading light in Britain's favourite light touch regulator Ofcom, Will also runs his own online pub guide. I thought it would therefore be appropriate to get him his own beer. I think we have it arriving now.
[bottle of Will Jackson Celebration Ale brought in on silver platter]
Will, could you read out what it says on the label...
... This is also the beer that we are serving at the wedding all evening. So if anyone wants a pint with, or indeed of, Will Jackson, you'll find both of them at the bar. Have a good evening and thank you very much.
Shit ale too. 4% of tastelessness. The only upside was that it was so lagery Nic liked it when we shared the second bottle for dinner. It's the first bitter I've ever seen her drink. If it gets her into real ale it'll be like when Chris (one of my ushers) got his girlfriend into nick cave. Nirvana. Well, Cavopia, whatever.
