Lorraine Jennings, 52, takes us back 23 years to the day her brother’s wedding accidentally fell on the same day as FatBoySlim’s Big Beach Boutique – the biggest free party Brighton had ever seen.
With my hands above my head, eyes taking in the thousands of people surrounding me. I was dancing in ecstasy to the sounds of Camisra ‘Let me show you’ echoing down the street and pounding through my body, it wasn’t the usual wedding reception I’d expect to find myself at, but this hadn’t been a usual wedding.
It was a beautiful weekend in July when my brother, Nick, got married. A rushed wedding, hastily arranged before his wife had to move back home to Australia. Our mother was ill with thyroid disease at the time, and with my brother’s fiancée being from the other side of the world, the guest list was small – just me, my then husband, my kids (who were then only 7 and 4 months old) and a few of Nick’s school friends. Yet, for all its simplicity, it was perfect.
‘The best free wedding reception you could ever imagine’.
The day was as straightforward as it was special: Brighton Register Office for the ceremony, pizza at Donatello’s, then home to change out of my lilac trouser suit and into something more suitable for town, and drop the kids off before heading back out for a quiet drink in town. I changed into jeans and a hoodie and slung some beers into my rucksack. There was no grand plan – we just wanted to celebrate, as the three of us.
As I made my way back into town that evening, I noticed the streets were busier than before – busier than usual, even for a Brighton Saturday night. Earlier, one of my mum’s old raver friends had mentioned something about “some music thing” happening down at the seafront, but I hadn’t thought much of it. Now, it was clear that whatever was going on was much bigger than I’d anticipated. The crowd thickened with every step until we reached the Grand Hotel, down on the promenade, where we physically couldn’t get any further. Yet most people seemed to be down on the beach- some people even appeared to be climbing lamposts, or swimming in the sea with the boats lining the shore- anything to get a better spot.
We were late to the party, and it showed. The front rows must have been there all day. The whole thing took us by surprise – Brighton beach was unrecognisable, completely swallowed by the sheer number of people. The streets I’d known my whole life had been taken over. We later found out that Radio 1 had announced the event, drawing in tens of thousands from out of town. It had the atmosphere of a festival – though, at the time, I wouldn’t have known that – I’d never been to one before.
People stood in the middle of roads, perched on lampposts, crammed into every available window and balcony. Asking around, the three of us soon discovered it was FatBoySlim that was the small dot on the far away metal staging we could only get a glimpse of on our tippy toes.
I knew FatBoySlim was a local, but I associated him more with his time in The Housemartins than his solo career as a DJ. Seeing him command this sea of people was surreal. I even remembered a time, back in the ‘80s, when I’d unknowingly asked him for a light on the top deck of a bus, back when smoking upstairs was still a thing. Who would’ve thought that nearly twenty years later, I’d be dancing with 250,000 others to his music on my hometown’s seafront?
So we just stood there, right in the middle of the road, drinks in hand (thankfully, I’d packed those beers in my bag – every shop had sold out of alcohol by then). The best moment? Tim Deluxe’s ‘Just Won’t Do’ blasting through the speakers. Even now, that song transports me straight back to that night. Nick threw an arm around my shoulders, clinking his beer against mine. “Some wedding reception, eh?” he laughed over the music. “I wonder if Norman Cook knew it was my wedding?”
But more than the music, more than the madness of it all, my standout memory is simply being there with my brother. Sharing such an iconic moment together on his wedding day – it felt momentous. We joke now that it was probably the best, most memorable free Wedding Reception you could ever imagine! Nick lives in Australia now, and I’ve only seen him once in twenty-two years. But whenever I think back to that day, I know we were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. If he hadn’t married that weekend, we’d have totally missed it all. Brighton had never seen anything like it before, and I very much doubt it ever will again. But we were there, together.