Samuel Fishwick: Wedding tourism is the millennial’s perfect way to spend the summer

See the world, they said. Join our RSVP list, they said. Last weekend my friends Helena and George married in Berlin, a city break/ wedding ceremony all gloriously rolled into one.

Wedding tourism, or a “slashie” wedding, is so smart an idea that I’m surprised every enterprising millennial hasn’t tied their own nuptials into a business proposal for a local tourist board. “It’s me, plus 150 others.” That’s one way to bring the price down.

Over a long weekend they happily squeezed in mini-golf, karaoke, lake swimming and a beautiful service beneath a willow tree in a city park, an ingenious way of eliciting the most fun from a finite amount of time with loved ones you rarely have in the same place.

And it can be done on the cheap.

I was in on Thursday night, out again at 10am on Saturday morning, still picking bits of confetti out of my hair and WhatsApping my accommodating friend to apologise for the state his spare bedroom was left in. In 36 hours we’d packed in more than the average Ryanair flight carry-on bag.

Wedding tourism is clearly taking off. Friends have been plotting a reception at an Airbnb in Italy at £300 for the week — on mentioning this, one colleague told me that her Austrian in-laws chose Scotland for a wedding in a castle this summer. Indeed, one in four of all nuptials north of the border involve a bride and groom who are not Scottish. Scotland is so hot right now.

Paradoxically, the “slashie” wedding takes the stress out of two things which are inherently stressful: city breaks and weddings. When it’s the happiest day of someone’s life, there’s less box-ticking of tourist sites and fewer qualms about staying under budget. Quarrelsome in-laws can be left to roam free in the city.

It also fits modern holiday trends. Millennials have eschewed the two-week summer break format for more frequent, shorter trips. Marriage isn’t always a holiday. But perhaps the start of it should be — even for lucky guests like me.

Yoga as a lifesaver? Don’t go overboard

Can yoga save you from 10 hours in the sea? An unnamed rescuer of Kay Longstaff, the 46-year-old air stewardess who fell off a cruise ship in the Adriatic Sea, told The Sun: “She said the fact that she practises yoga helped her as she was fit. And she said she was singing to not feel cold in the sea overnight.”

What excellent news. Yet without wanting to go too overboard with any cynicism, it does sound like she’s auditioning for a part in a musical. Singing I can buy into. Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, perhaps? But yoga? As an occasional practitioner, I’d say that’s a stretch.

From Grenfell to Genoa, we’re a generation of rubberneckers

Before the wedding in Germany I was in Italy. The ferocious storm that destroyed the Morandi bridge in Genoa , leaving at least 43 dead, had smashed over our insignificant little farmhouse in Tuscany hours earlier, clutching the valley in total darkness, then turning the night white with lightning.

Two days later, returning through Genoa, I found myself staring ahead from a taxi to where the road plunged away. People left their cars to take pictures. Social media makes rubberneckers of all of us, Netflix has a whole new show, Dark Tourist, devoted to visiting the planet’s most scarred spots. It reminded me of reporting on the Grenfell Tower fire , when a local turned to me and my Dictaphone and asked, flatly: “What is the point of you?” Fight, flight or watch — the final instinct isn’t much of a prospect.

Melania’s battle for the White House

A battle of wills is erupting to decorate homes. In the White House, The New York Times says the President has trumped Melania by replacing her modern choices of furniture with more dated pieces.

At our new house my dear girlfriend told me my furniture would “make it feel like we’ve moved into a grandparent’s place”.

Ouch. But she won. At least one of those homes is ready to be dragged into the 21st century.