The Wedding

28 July 2018

This day for any normal woman will probably be the best day of your life, this is the day every little girl dreams about. The dress, shoes, cake and most of all your Prince charming who’s going to take you away on his horse.

All this said, there are some things that become more relevant as you get older. Things like the guest list, the budget, who’s family gets along who’s not getting what they want and most of all the party. So as a couple planning the wedding can be pretty stressful thats normal for ANY couple. At first it’s about who to invite and in some cases it might not even be only your division as my father paid for the biggest part of this wedding he invited people of which some we have never even met.  The next fight usually is about either the food or how many people will be groomsmen and in our cas it was a HUGE list, we had 12 on each side which made the wedding party a total of 24 people that had to get dressed, and collectively agree on a date to hold a bachelor/ette party. When time gets closes to the actual wedding day the fights get more ridiculous. →Like whether the violin should be electric or acoustic.  

Now where does the Judo fall into this. As Daniël had a Budapest Grand Prix only 3 weeks after the wedding day the party was not all that. His bachelors had to be held early and on the only date far enough from a competition so that he can drink due to his 4-6 week no drinking before a competition policy. Due to the vast variety of friends the attendance was also not that great which made it a bit of a bummer.  which made it worse was that his bet man could not even organise it at all due to work obligations. Being in-between Student, ex-professional athletes, non drinkers, super religious and parents with toddlers this was a very hard party to attend and bring together. But in the end he was happy, very drunk and got his last night out as a Bachelor.

On the wedding day it was all about getting dressed having a good time and making sure all will be running smoothly as my father is really militaristic and needs everything to be perfect, which created a bit of a scuffle between my father myself and Daniël (believe it or not it was about the music) even after all that it did’nt go smoothly but who gives a shit.

Daniël didn’t drink at all due to the competition date being 3 weeks away and as he is a -66 kg category weighing 72kg on average he didn’t eat as much either and he even dieted a bit before to make space for some food on the  wedding day not putting him over to much afterwords. Yes these are some of the crazy stuff he does but its all part of the JOB!!

And that was our wedding… Finally hes not the only Judoka wearing a le Grange back-tag in SA anymore. So proud to be a Judo wife, not easy but won’t trade it for anything els – R. le Grange