Swedish wedding reception

Soon after I became a self-employed management consultant I purchased the UK licence to a consulting methodology developed in Sweden, and it provided the dominant source of my income for 23 years until I stopped in 2015. There were licensees in 8 European countries, the USA and Australia – about 20 consultants in total – and for several years we got together every year to share experiences and discuss new developments and applications.

The practice was to meet in a different country every year and the first meeting I attended was in south west Sweden not far from Gothenburg. The hotel was on the coast near Fiskebäckskil and had its own moorings with a short landing stage projecting around 20 yards into the sea.

We talked business during the day and then, in early evening, we would socialise. On our final evening we were having pre-prandial drinks on the quay when a small boat pulled into view. As it got closer we realised that, standing on the deck, were a bride and groom, clearly on their way to the hotel for their reception.

We joined their guests in congratulating them and then went into the restaurant for our conference dinner; at more or less the same time the wedding party went into the adjoining room, separated from us by a white painted timber and glass partition. After a little while, they began to make speeches. There had already been several so we enquired of our Swedish colleagues what was going on. They explained that, at a Swedish wedding, all the male guests had the right to make a speech, and most of them exercised that right. They were evidently consuming a lot of alcohol, too, because proceedings were increasingly uproarious.

They were still at it when we went to bed at 11:30