Pre-Wedding festivities returned me to my English tourist roots

This entry was written after returning from Honeymoon, but posted on the date the activity described concluded.

It's all over. Wedding and glorious honeymoon, focus of more than nine months of planning, now complete and consigned to memory. You and I, dear reader, have a LOT to catch up on. Let's roll the clock all the way back to 8 September and start with the pre-wedding festivities.

The wedding was on a Thursday, and I decided to take the entire week before it off. I had a small but important group of family (and dear friends who deserve that title) coming in from the States, and I wanted to focus on them. After airport runs on Thursday night and Friday morning, we had a full house in Basingstoke, with Anne (matron of honour) and Mike Bruneel in the guest room and Dad on the couch.

Festivities kicked off Friday night at The Jolly Farmer at Cliddesden. (The Americans are justifiably impressed with the classic British pub, and a lot of them would feature in this week.) We've been searching for a proper "local" since moving to Hatch Warren and this, happily, fits the bill. A tiny place filled with locals, friendly ... if a bit daffy ... staff, big beer garden, good food. At a mile and half, still walkable. We had a great dinner, put down many pints and chatted with locals in the garden.

Saturday divided on gender lines. For the girls, it was off to Nirvana spa, where I treated my bridesmaids to a day of indulgence before the big event. This purpose-built spa just outside of Reading is one of the best in the area, and, when compared to similar spas at the luxury hotels, is much better value for money. It's most memorable for its series of pools, each with its own purpose and each in a room designed especially for it. There's the main relaxation pool, decorated on a Roman theme with columns and trompe l'oeil murals of temples and Italian countryside. A wall of arched windows looks out on the outdoor pool, also on the Roman theme and dominated by a little temple at its head. There's a more functional exercise pool, kept cooler and divided into lanes for energetic swimming. The jet pool has more than a dozen different jets that work on different parts of your body, all in deliciously hot water. Half an hour in here is like getting a full body massage. Sculptures of sea creatures and murals of tropical beaches put you in a Caribbean frame of mind.

Finally there's the zodiac-themed flotation pool. You need to pay extra for treatments in this one; it was part of our package. The water is filled with salt from the Dead Sea and the perfectly round pool has a gentle current. A limited number of people (there were six in our session) go in at a time. You float as if on a mattress, looking up at a ceiling decorated with stars copying the night sky. They say one session here is as restful as a full night's sleep. Elsewhere, there are treatment rooms for other services, a light and airy cafe and a relaxation room with heated, tiled loungers and a bubbling fountain at its centre, kitted out to look like a North African palace.

Meanwhile, the boys had been tramping around Stonehenge and discovering the smallest pub in England before returning home, so Mike could give Piers the BBQ lesson that came with the grill that was our gift from the American family. A magnificent dinner of smoked brisket followed.

Sunday was a day of pilgrimage. Anne and I had both been re-reading Jane Austen in the run up to the wedding, and a day dedicated to our literary heroine seemed appropriate. We started at Chawton Cottage, the house where Jane lived with her mother, sister and a family friend in her late 30s and early 40s, and where she did her most productive work. It's a charming red brick house in a quiet little village. The kind of place four people could live in comfortably, but certainly nothing grand. Jane's small writing table and chair is in the corner of the dining room. There, she spent every afternoon with a view of the centre of the village, writing some of the greatest works of English literature. We swooned.

Next it was off to Winchester Cathedral, where the great lady is buried. Even though she had started to gain recognition before her death, including an invitation to the Royal Library and a request to dedicate her next novel (it would be Emma) to the Prince Regent, who was a fan, her tombstone doesn't mention her writing. It's a brass memorial plaque nearby, established later by the Jane Austen Society, that tells the rest of the tale.

We adjourned to the Hotel du Vin for tea (funky, slightly Asian-boudoir decor, lovely garden, might be worth trying the restaurant for a nice night out in future) then took a meandering drive through the countryside before meeting the boys at The Mayfly. This was one of my favourite pubs long before moving to Hampshire. In fact, Mom used to insist on coming here to watercolour; the view of the Test River, bordered by reeds and meadows as it winds lazily along, is one of rich pastoral beauty. There was a chill in the air and potential for rain, however, so we sat in the conservatory and watched the twilight develop from there. Another long, peaceful evening, with good food and plenty of pints for those not driving.

The family decamped for Mayfair on Monday, so sightseeing moved into London. Dad was ready for a quieter day, and Piers was still working, so after getting Dad checked in to the Lansdowne and having my final pre-wedding meeting there, Anne, Mike and I set off on a walking tour of town. It was an exquisite day. As hoped when we picked our wedding day, the typical clement September had arrived with warm days and clear, blue skies. After a pub lunch in Shepherd's Market we set off on foot, wandering around Mayfair, Piccadilly and St. James before heading for Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden. I was trying to do my tour guiding best, peppering the walk with stories, giving a sense of how these areas had developed, doing some quick dips of high culture (the National Gallery's free entry means you can do a 10-minute glide through, pointing out the most famous stuff) and the modern world (the planet's largest Apple store, with free wi-fi for visitors; whip out that iPhone and send a message home).

On Tuesday we added Tricia Hannegan to the family group and kicked up the sightseeing pace. Another lunch at another pub in Shepherd's Market, then a stroll across Green Park to Buckingham Palace, for which we had tickets to the annual summer opening. The Palace deserves a whole entry to itself, of course, but with such a backlog of activity to catch you up on I'm afraid this is only a brief mention. It is certainly worth seeing, though it is my least favourite of the royal palaces. Windsor has far more variety and a better art collection, Hampton Court more history and architectural merit.

Built primarily to impress, designed in the late Regency and heavily remodeled in the early 20th century, the staterooms have an almost institutional feel to them. They're like grand hotel interiors, built on an oversized scale and coated with silly amounts of gold leaf. Still, there's no denying it's magnificent, and when you get past the most formal rooms (processional staircase, throne room, art gallery, ballroom) the drawing rooms along the back are exceptionally beautiful. In fact, the back of the palace overlooking the garden is by far its best side, architectural miles ahead of the unimaginative neo-Classical front most of the world knows.

The big draw this year was the wedding dress of the Duchess of Cambridge (formerly Kate Middleton), displayed with much pomp in the centre of the ballroom. With that comes films on its design and construction, display cases with accessories (how she stood all day in those shoes, I'll never know), and a model of the cake (beautiful, but I like mine better). There was also a fascinating little display on the family's Faberge collection, but the crowds made it impossible to see well without waiting for ages. This really should have been in the Queen's Gallery, where people interested in the art could have seen it without the throngs there for the dress.

Next, off to the London Eye. I've done this enough to be quite jaded, but it's always a delight seeing the interest of first time visitors. It really is a great way to get a sense of the spread of the city and how all the major sites you see in the tour books fit together on the ground. Management is quite clever about offering a variety of tickets; you can wander up on the day, buy the cheap ones and wait, or you can buy the queue-jumpers in advance and waltz right onto a pod. An expensive half hour (at £26 a ticket), but worth the money if you're on a tight schedule.

And we were, because we needed to be at the wedding rehearsal at 7. This was the first time the whole wedding party had been together, and the first meeting of the immediate members of the two families. So a rehearsal dinner after the session, to allow people to get to know each other, was essential.

We decamped to Madsen's (see 26.1.10). It seemed fitting that the private room at this Scandinavian restaurant provide the setting for the Danish-descended Bencards to celebrate. Guests could choose from a set menu of two choices for each course, all complemented with good wines and the requisite snaps for toasting. The two family groups mixed well and seemed to enjoy themselves, establishing solid foundations for the wedding to come.

The night before the wedding, the two families retreated to their separate corners. The Bencards hosted a dinner for their visiting Danish family. Elegant and sophisticated. The Americans went on a pub crawl with silly hats. Are you surprised? Joined by the last member of the team, like-a-niece Kaci Machacyk, we explored the upscale and charming drinking haunts of Mayfair.

We started at "I am the Only Running Footman". This used to be a wonderfully charming old place, with its Regency leaded windows, its cozy interior and its unique name (footmen used to gather here waiting for their employers to socialise in the fancy houses nearby). Sadly, it's been modernised in recent years, and is now all scrubbed light wood, pale colours and modern design touches. Horrified ... and feeling that the wealthy, suited locals were glaring at our illuminated hats ... I led us off to the Coach and Horses. Just a few hundred yards east on the other side of Berkley Square, this detached half-timbered building was built by history-loving arts and crafts movement backers to look old. The atmosphere here is much more pleasant and relaxing, much less of a poseur's spot.

We wound up the evening at The Grenadier, a classic popular with visitors and locals alike. (See 1.5.09). Charming and quiet, due to its location on a backstreet behind the Lanesborough hotel, yet surprisingly reasonable food prices for this part of town. And the cheerful Irish bartender didn't mind the hats at all. Or the fake mustaches that joined them later. Given that this was once the officer's mess for the Grenadier Guards, I suspect it's far from the worst behaviour they've seen here.