Whilst William and Kate have grabbed every headline going this week, the most recent wedding at Trent Bridge was conducted far away from the glare of the public eye.
In need of a set of images for our new wedding brochure, a friend of our photographers had generously volunteered to put her dress on one more time and spend the day posing in various corners of Trent Bridge. Unfortunately her husband wasn’t quite so keen so a few of us were roped in to make up the numbers. I played the groom, although a few people have happily pointed out that I looked more like a pageboy.
The differences between our ceremony and that enjoyed by the future King and Queen were apparent and numerous. Firstly, there were no foundations to the relationship as I met the bride for the first time as the first photo was being taken.
Whilst William’s favoured mode of transport was priceless classic cars, we were snapped in an electronic golf buggy that the maintenance staff use to shift boxes.
"I’m also keen to prove the Daily Telegraph wrong having taken opposition to an element of their season preview."
Our suits were Trent Bridge Test Match standard issue; iron safe fabric, bit loose round the shoulders and a top pocket so firmly stitched shut that the handkerchief had to be taped on.
There was no royal best man either. The other two roped in were Nigel from the ticket office and Chris from marketing.
There were a few similarities though. The Bridesmaids were bored senseless, the groomsmen wanted to get the formal shots out of the way so they could enjoy a complimentary pint in the ‘reception scenes’ and the backdrop was particularly scenic.
There’s no hiding at Trent Bridge when something like this is going on. Darren Pattinson walked past looking a bit confused and I felt a bit of a plum walking past Derek Brewer’s office window holding hands with this girl whose name I still don’t know. I’d also had a bad haircut which made me look about 15.
I’m well aware that this assignment represented the start and end of my modeling career and I can now go back into my familiar world of previews and match reports.
The serious point to all this is that we’re preparing for a sustained marketing campaign for our weddings, meetings and events packages which will benefit from the £1.4million refurbishment of the interior of the Radcliffe Road Stand due for completion in May.
Another recent highlight was the filming of the second instalment of our Put Some Colour In Your Cricket campaign to publicise our forthcoming Friends Life t20 matches at Trent Bridge.
We took several confused phone calls as to why the floodlights were on at 11 o’clock on a cold Tuesday night in April and why plumes of multi-coloured smoke were visible in the night sky. All will become clear in the finished product which looks superb and should demand attention when it is shown on our replay screen.
You can watch the behind the scenes footage here but the gist is that, along the lines of Samit’s paintball effort from last year, we will be using said smoke and half of our squad in promotional videos and photographs to drum up support for our fixtures.
Keeping six of the lads happy throughout a two-day shoot in cold conditions was a bit of a challenge but a massive catering operation certainly helped. Buy-in from the players is very important and their enthusiasm and effort off the field is always appreciated.
Clips from the final cut will be on the site soon, a 30-second version will be shown before each film is screened at Showcase Cinema and our giant banner on the Broadmarsh foot bridge should be in place by mid-May.
Other highlights of the week include the announcement of our partnership with the Broad Appeal to raise awareness and funds to support research into motor neurone disease and another fine win to extend our winning start in the LV= County Championship.
No one is getting carried away but it is pleasing that those that wrote Nottinghamshire off at the start of the season (and most of the national newspapers did) are being proved wrong so far.
I’m also keen to prove the Daily Telegraph wrong having taken opposition to an element of their season preview which read: “If Nottinghamshire were a celebrity they would be Justin Bieber because although they were the flavour of last season and they tweet a lot, they’ve got no real personality.”
The blow was only softened by the tags awarded to Worcestershire, who were likened to Rebecca Adlington with the justification that they are ‘well liked, generally the underdog and spend a lot of time underwater,’ and Somerset who were paired with Arsene Wenger because ‘they don’t win any trophies.’
All a bit harsh I reckon.