WINE CHIC(K)
TEXT
WENDY WATTA
A SWEET
HANGOVER
After getting married at a fabulous out-of-town ceremony attended by a
close knit group of friends- many of them popular personalities in Nairobi-,
our resident wine chic(k) Annabel Onyango muses about the whole affair.
B
y the time I was standing
at the altar of that beautiful ceremony saying “I do”,
I had not eaten in three
months. I mean I must have
eaten something to keep me alive,
but generally speaking, my appetite
had dwindled to the point of only
needing a few random, force-fed
slices of Gouda to keep me going for
the next design meeting.
I did not eat at the reception
either. They brought me first a plate
of salad, then a plate of spaghetti
(who eats spaghetti while wearing
the whitest, most expensive dress
of their life?). Both of these were
44.
gobbled up by my now-husband who
was sitting next to me. The sheer
adrenaline of the occasion kept me
going. That and the Swartland Cuvée
Brut that was ever-present during
that wedding weekend. We merrily
toasted our way through the guest
arrivals, welcome dinner, wedding
rehearsal, getting our makeup done…
At this point, I must add, only the
makeup artist -Wacuka Thimba- unflinching in her professionalism,
refused a glass.
Getting married is truly the best
diet known to man. It is such an
irony: for a protracted period of time,
you surround yourself by decadent
and delicious things that you plan
to delight your nearest and dearest with; but you have no desire to
indulge in any of it. It is generally
agreed that looking waif-thin in your
wedding dress is the best outcome
a bride can hope for (even if it is a
bi-product of extreme stress) but this
was taking it a lot further than even
I thought was acceptable. One more
week of wedding planning and I
would have surely dropped dead.
One month later, I can report that
things have gone the other way, and
the scale does not lie. This is either
from sheer relief that the BIG DAY
is over, or just the fact that I have
more time on my hands for humanly
pursuits - I now eat and drink like
a horse. Just this past weekend
for example: I ate out twice, had a
multi-course dinner at a friend’s,
drank countless beers, cocktails,
and glasses (ok bottles) of wine, and
ate an ice cream (I don’t even like
sweets). Post-nuptials, there appears
to be no limits to my appetite that
was once so genteel and lady-like.
My marriage is as a robust as my
new eating habits. We thank God. If
I continue like this, however, there is
no telling what I will have to squeeze
myself into at our one year anniversary (a.k.a. wedding number 2).