La Boum!

…French slang for PARTY!!!! Party in a quiet culture means you alert your neighbors to the noise level coming, which will probably go till dawn. Wedding celebrations are the quintessential ‘boums’—with the meal lasting well past midnight, and then the dancing begins…

The French wedding celebration of Patty Moore and Andrew Harris—the reason we’re all here—was no exception, although we did finish the meal before midnight, and the dancing didn’t go till dawn.

Saturday afternoon, a group of us women descended on the main dining hall, transforming it with amber dishes, purple napkins in the wine glasses, and flowers. Someone went out to collect fresh ivy, and Allison arrived with a box of tea lights, pillar candles and runners. We even hauled out the Christmas lights to blink on and off over the fireplace.

Raymond, our chef, worked for two days to delight us with stuffed tomatoes, escalopes de dinde (turkey breasts), in a white cream sauce (shallots sautéed with white wine is the secret, he divulged), green beans and egg noodles. The cheese course followed, with a blue, a goat cheese, and an emmenthaler. White wine accompanying…although we had a delicious Bordeaux that I stuck with, and the French baguettes flowed by the basketful. Gigantic “Iles flottantes”, everyone’s favorite dessert, was served. The ‘iles’—islands of meringue—were more like small icebergs, floating in a cream sauce. (Sorry for the duplication on photos--I'm having blogger issues!!)

French games, designed to embarrass...ahem, get to know better...the couple, interrupted our ooo’s and aah’s over the meal, and our "Bravo, Raymond!" (in several languages--French, English, Italian and German) as he introduced each course.

And then the clean up began, and then the lingering talk with coffee, tea, as so many of us haven’t seen each other in years. And as the baby boomers drooped a bit towards midnight, the younger generation moved downstairs to the improvised dance hall, complete with disco light, ping pong table and that table soccer game for which I forget the English name.

The ‘boum’ went up with a disco thump till I feel asleep, somewhere in the wee hours, reveling in the camaraderie, the French-ness of it all, and the knowledge that I had no specific time to get up the next day!

Patty and Andrew – c’etait genial!!!