The advertisements that hang around the airy plate glass and steel foyer of the Waterfront hall were particularly appropriate.
One poster, advertising a video about Ireland's showbands, asked rhetorically, "Do You Come Here Often?" The answer was plain to see on the faces of the journalists and party rumour-mongers who milled around the sunlit galleries overlooking the city and the Lagan. It was a weekend too beautiful for this.
Another poster for the Ulster Orchestra's season spoke inappropriately of Visions of Utopia. If the orchestra can see it, they're on their own.
But perhaps best of all was the ad for NTL which was hanging to the right of the top table at the victorious Trimble press conference. Inspire, Act, Lead, it extolled. Having squared up to the latest challenge from within, it was thought that David Trimble may have done something close to that.
The contrast with his party's annual conference in the same hall just two weeks earlier could not have been more stark. That occasion was flat and colourless with a poor turnout of the faithful going through the motions of a party conference in more ways than one. The party leader looked and acted then like the worried, tired man he surely was.
Saturday saw a sprightly David Trimble, who strode purposefully into the post-victory press conference followed, as it happens, by his party president Martin Smyth who once challenged him for the leadership. There was no doubting who was boss.
This version of Mr Trimble smiled and cracked jokes - neither is a hallmark of his - and he seemed to relish the relief of success just gained: as well he might. It was a win significant enough to allow him some generosity towards his enemies.
He said the debate was reasoned and reasonable. He complimented all who spoke for voicing unionist concerns about the Belfast Agreement and decommissioning so clearly. The UUP team at Westminster would not tire in bringing these to the attention of Her Majesty's government. And he made it clear that, yes, they would return to the Waterfront to discuss the whole thing yet again. Being held to account by your own party was only right and proper. He wouldn't have it any other way.
It was magnanimity which was not matched elsewhere by his chief opponents. Jeffrey Donaldson made no secret of either his disappointment at the result or his distaste for a question from one journalist. Outside, he lined up with David Burnside to pose for photographs and the pair smiled weak smiles.