The arty wedding party

I tend to think of myself as a mixture between a social nincompoop and a rather sophisticated person who has been around. You know, I've been places and met people — and yet I remain, if not a Forrest Gump, slightly goofy nonetheless.

But last Monday, at the wedding party of Simon and Michaela de Pury, I wasn't the only person with their jaw on the floor. The party itself was a work of conceptual art that made everyone gasp.

As the evening unfolded, it became clear that parties might never be the same again — it altered notions about the nature of celebration among friends.

The invitation specified that guests were to arrive at the Saatchi Gallery at 7pm sharp — they included designers Tom Dixon, Ron Arad and Ross Lovegrove, Middle Eastern princes, German princesses and artist Tracey Emin.

We were handed seating tickets for supper tables and directed to the top floor. On entering the first gallery I saw a raised central table packed with 1,000 shucked oysters and cut lemons on a bed of ice. Lit to perfection, we gazed and wondered what they were supposed to mean.

In the next gallery we found a huge table and, dangling above it like a surreal Magritte skyscape, a joyful selection of salamis of every shape and size.

Large bottles of cornichons and mustard, sharp knives and a bag heaving with ciabatta gave me a clue. "I think they're our snacks," I said to my husband. He smiled and walked into the third and fourth gallery: one housing a vast display of champagne bottles in silvery ice buckets, the other an entire gallery of beer on tap. One by one, it dawned on guests that we could participate, eat and drink the display, become part of the artwork.

Then we discovered the bride and groom, glassed in to individual dressing rooms, attended by their hairdressers. A crowd gathered and took photos on their iPhones, totally ignored by bride and groom. It was a theatrical sort of Court of the Sun King moment, a witty play on the nature of the public and the private. Once the bride and groom were dressed, someone with a pick-axe smashed the glass to break the de Purys free. That had Mario Testino's jaw on the floor.

Drinks downed, we descended in a cloud to the mezzanine overlooking a back gallery, where glasses were smashed into the empty gallery below for good luck.

To supper, and the galleries on the middle floor each contained 12 or so beds with platters of food and crates of drink. Four or so per bed, we perched and lounged in a sort of Roman picnic without the orgy. After supper, there was a musical interlude and cake.