Here comes the bride...

To be :-))
 
And so the day of Nikki’s Hen Do finally arrived and it was blue skies and sunshine from the outset.

When Jennifer (my niece and Nikki’s bridesmaid) and Nikki chose the date they didn’t realise that Celtic would be playing at home on the same day, and being presented with the Premiership Trophy at the end of the match.  But more on that later. 

The Hen plan was to start off at Golf Fang in Glasgow for cocktails and crazy golf, then on to the Craft Pottery for some pottery painting, then ending at a lovely Italian restaurant at Royal Exchange Square in the centre of Glasgow.

I met up with the gang at Craft Pottery.  

What a brilliant place!  If you want to get in to making pottery there are classes upstairs, but downstairs is dedicated to pottery painting.  There’s a massive choice of ceramics available from the usual mugs, vases, dishes to sheep, cats, toadstools, milk cartons, VW vans….the choice is endless.  It’s BYOB so Jennifer had organised drinks and snacks so bubbly poured, we made our choices and got painting.
  
I chose a large mug thinking I will use it to store pens on my desk, and set about drawing some love heart flowers and bees on it.  Nikki’s mum Avis then asked me to draw a pattern on the back of a little crab that she’d chosen to paint, so did that for her.  Then Nikki asked me to draw a design on the wings of a fairly she’d chosen to paint for Esme.   Kind of defeats the purpose of design your own!  Lol

The Pottery painting takes two hours and the time flew by.  I was delighted to hear that those in the group who don’t paint and claim not to have an artistic bone in their bodies, really enjoyed it and were chuffed with their efforts.  It’s sad how people just assume they will be rubbish at creating something.  They miss out on so much! 
Anyhoo, we left our masterpieces to be fired in the kiln and Jennifer will collect them when they’re ready. Quite a responsibility!  
 
We spilled out of Craft Pottery to our awaiting chauffeurs (David and brother in law Kenny) and set off into the centre of town.  At least that was the plan but due to said Celtic match, the centre of Glasgow and approaching street were closed to traffic as thousands of fans descended on the city centre to celebrate their team’s win!  We lost sight of K’s car and he texted Ele (who was in our car with Jen and Nikki) to say he’s just stopped and dropped the girls off as close as he could get.  D ended up dropping us off on West George Street and we made our way to Royal Exchange Square.  Nikki in her white dress and veil attracted lots of comments from passers by  like “Good luck, I hope he’s rich, I hope he’s good to you, don’t do it!”  

Finally got to the restaurant, which was lovely.  Jen gave us all gift bags that contained a whole range of goodies including cards where we had to draw what we think Nikki’s wedding dress will look like, a wedding quiz, our advice for the bride to name a few.  Great fun. 

We had a really great night, the food was delicious but the service was so slow.  We were there over an hour before the starters were served, and two hours before the main courses arrived (a long wait for those who didn’t have starters!) Given that we’d placed our food orders the day before, this was pretty poor.  We also waited over an hour for a drinks order.  If anyone had wanted a dessert, it was far too late!  

We politely raised these issues with the waitress and an array of people came and spoke to us including the chef.  Still not really sure what the problem was but the very young manager was very apologetic and very charming and the evening ended on a positive note.  They also took 50% off the bill, which helped.

And out we stepped into the carnage of the city centre after it had been besieged by football fans.  Literally just outside the door of the restaurant paramedics were working on a man who was flat out on the pavement.  As we headed down to the car park at Osbourne Street to meet up with our chauffeurs once more, we passed so many people completely passed out or hardly able to function.  One man looked in a particularly bad way and we alerted a couple of policemen who went to check on him.  Honestly, whatever the pay the police and paramedics, it isn’t enough! 

Despite some of the sights there was a party atmosphere in the city and it was a lovely clear night.  It’s a very long time since I’ve wandered the streets of Glasgow on a Saturday night and it was good fun (that sounds bad!  hahahahaha!) 


Everyone had a great time and we’re all excited for the wedding now on the 17th July.  I hope the weather is as good as today! 


Some pics from the day in extras, including Nikki, Jen, Ele and me with our masterpieces.  The last pic shows the restaurant, which used to be Glasgow Chief Office of The Royal Bank of Scotland, D’s place of work in the 1990s. Follow the arrow to where his office was :-)) Another life! :D