The Wedding Diaries (16 page)

The delights kept coming. Main course for the top table: rack of lamb with dauphinoise potatoes and what looked like an asparagus and green bean side. For us: dry chicken with breadcrumbed potato croquettes and peas. Pudding for the top table: Eton mess. For us: bowls of strawberry blancmange with squirty cream and some hundreds and thousands.

After they had finished their puddings and we were still picking bits of clotted blancmange out of our teeth, Steve stood up, tapping his glass. We all got comfortable, gripping our glasses of tap water for the toasts, and Steve said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: the cash bar is now open!’ And that was it. There was a stunned silence, which the DJ took as his cue to start up the dancing with ‘(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life’. Annie and Steve hurried to the dance floor and I tried to make up my mind which was worse: terrible speeches which went on for hours, or no speeches at all. I did feel slightly cheated, and was desperate to hear their justification for the meal choices (unlikely speech content, admittedly).

After dancing together for fifteen minutes (‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Summer Lovin’, ‘Angels’) Steve left the dance floor and disappeared upstairs. After half an hour with no sign of him, and as Annie looked like she was flagging out there (‘Love Shack’, ‘Baggy Trousers’, ‘My First, My Last, My Everything’, ‘Time Warp’) I took it as my cue for me and Thom to go and pay our respects.

Me: [shouting over the music] Annie! You look so beautiful!

Annie: [also shouting] Hi Kiki! Thanks so much for coming!

Me: Thanks for inviting us!

Annie: I hear you’re getting married soon too!

Me: Yes, this is Thom!

Annie: Will Steve and I be invited?!

Thom: [squeezing my hand, hard] Oh, Annie! We haven’t even set a date yet!

Annie: Really? I thought Kiki’s mum said—

Me: This is such a lovely wedding, Annie! You’re giving us so many ideas!

Annie: Do you really like it? Steve thought it might be too much, but I think it’s worked out well!

Me: Is Steve OK? He went upstairs a while ago, didn’t he?

Annie: Yeah, I think he gets a bit stressed sometimes! He’s gone for a bath – he might be back later!

Me: He’s …? Right. Well, thank you so much for inviting us, Annie! It’s so great to see you after so long!

Annie: Yes, let’s meet up after all of this! We mustn’t leave it so long next time – although of course there’ll be your wedding!

Thom: [dancing me away] Nice to meet you, Annie!

Me: I’ll call you!

When we’d danced all the way to the edge of the dance floor, Thom said, ‘You didn’t mean that, did you? You won’t really call her, will you?’ I said, ‘Not bloody likely. She’ll have me hand-making hologram favours for our wedding if I get too close.’ Thom said I was too cool for school but he loved me anyway. Then we found a three-quarters-full bottle of wine on the top table, and snuck away with it to the gardens. I ended up quite enjoying that wedding.

March 25th

I had a day off today, to make up for all the extra stuff I’d had to do with Jacki lately, and thought I’d get some wedding shopping in. I know I can’t tell Susie about it, but to prove how wrong she was about keeping our mother out of the wedding loop, I called Mum yesterday to see if she wanted to come and look at some possible decorations with me. Mum sounded slightly stressed, then immediately said begrudgingly, ‘No, no, that’s fine. I’ll come.’ I thought: You see, Suse? This is why I build an impregnable loop to keep Mum out of these things, but just said, ‘Thanks Mum! Shall I see you at Oxford Circus at 11? Is that OK?’ She grumbled a bit more, but agreed to meet me, and signed off with, ‘I’m sure that’ll be very nice, Kiki.’ Hold on to your hat, Mum, this sounds like a wild ride.

We were both fifteen minutes late, thank goodness, but she arrived thirty seconds before me, just long enough, apparently, to call my phone four times to find out where I was. Tentatively reassured by my actual presence that I hadn’t been kidnapped, we started our trawl of the shops. It became instantly apparent – as if we hadn’t known this before – that our tastes were diametrically opposite: she loved union flag bunting and glittery fake flowers (‘Aren’t they
fun
!’), while I favoured pastels, tarnished silver, fat ribbons and old glass. She kept bringing things to me, too, like a simple-minded Labrador in Laura Ashley, saying, ‘This is nice? Don’t you want one of these? Sheila’s daughter had a set like this on each table.’

I thought of Susie, bit my tongue and smiled at Mum. I lasted an hour less than I thought I would and had to make my excuses to get home early, but to keep her happy, I’d ended up coming home with the perfect decorations for a high-camp super-patriotic sweet-sixteen. Thom told me he kind of liked the look, and I had to break it to him that everything was going back the next day. ‘Even this?’ he said, twirling a blue-lace-and-white-ribbon garter above his head.

‘Especially that.’

March 30th

Bloody Susie. Still no word. Just because
I’m
missing
her
does
not mean
that I’m going to be the first to pick up the phone. She’s an idiot.

Speaking of responses (or lack of), most of them in now, amazingly, although some of them were bad news. My friend Lucy can’t come – she sent a passive-aggressive message that she’s moving house around that time, and since ‘some of us’ don’t have jobs at multinational corporations she’d be struggling to afford a hotel. I’m assuming she’s being a dick about Thom’s job, rather than mine, otherwise she’s been wildly misinformed. All my old housemates can come – good – and almost all of the Accountancy Massive.
Oh
hurray
. Ella and Vuk can come, but Ruby can’t, since she
was
seeing Vuk when we all travelled together and now Ella is. Nice number reducer. Thom’s cousins can both come, and mine are still dithering. Thom’s two favourite boffins, Phil and Malcolm, have also given their yes vote. Real hurray! But I am surprised and disappointed by how many people say they can’t come because of expense, hinting subtly or not-subtly-at-all that we should have organised the whole thing around them. I despaired:

Me: I don’t understand – aren’t people pleased to be invited to these things? Isn’t it special that we want to share this with them? Why is everyone being so mean? Why can’t everyone be nice when we’ve invited them to our wedding day?

Thom: I know you’ve put so much effort into this, and this will hopefully be the only wedding you host, but … think how many we’ve been to over the last few years. How much have we spent on presents, and clothes, and hotels, and drinks? And we’ve liked everyone whose wedding we’ve been to—

Me: We didn’t like Annie and Stephen.

Thom: And some of the people we’ve invited from my work haven’t even met you, let alone seen you enough to be glad of the expense of it. And in August, most of my office shuts down; those Caribbean holiday lodges aren’t going to visit themselves, you know. Everyone might love a wedding, but not everyone even
likes
being a guest.

Am I marrying the least romantic man in the world? Could he care less about his own wedding?

A nice evening with Thom, in which I was more inspired than ever to show him how much this wedding meant to me and how perfect it was going to be for both of us. In high spirits, we were snuggling on the sofa like old days. He had his arm around me as we watched an old Buster Keaton film and talked over the jangling piano score about where we’d go on our dream holiday.

Thom: Bali.

Me: Japan.

Thom: The Maldives.

Me: Sardinia.

Thom: Mmm … Would you settle for Paris?

Me: Ooooh, when?

Thom: For our honeymoon. Wasn’t that what we were talking about?

Me: Yes, but … I thought …

How could I admit that I thought he was surprising me with a little pre-wedding treat, and that yet again he was turning my wedding dreams into Euro-ashes. Paris? For our honeymoon? Paris where we’d been plenty of times before, where we’d gone as students, where Thom had thrown up a batch of dubious snails? Paris? Not tropical beaches and silent waiting staff to provide you with all the smoothies one newly-wed can drink; not million-dollar yachts and black-tie casinos; not Paradise but …
Paris
?

April’s Classic Wedding!

When Charles visited the farm, they talked about preparations for the wedding, they wondered in which room to hold the dinner; they imagined the dishes they would need, and what should the entrées be?

Emma, however, yearned to be married at midnight, by torchlight; but Père Rouault wouldn’t hear of it. So there was a wedding feast, with forty-three guests who sat eating for sixteen hours, which carried on the following day and into the next few days.

*

The elder Madame Bovary had not opened her mouth all day. She had not been consulted about either the wedding-dress, or the organization of the banquet; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars and smoked until daybreak.

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

April 1st

With two weeks to go until Jacki’s wedding, I took a much-needed afternoon off work today for my second fitting. Joy! That dress doesn’t ever stop being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And also … bad times. Thom came home from work and wouldn’t even give me a kiss. He stood across from me in the kitchen while I grated cheese for the lasagne, and passed a bottle of beer from hand to hand while he talked.

Me: [nervously] How was your day?

Thom: Complete garbage. It’s a hateful place to work. But I’ve been thinking. And I think we need to talk.

Me: Is it about how beautiful my dress looked today?
Very
. Or is it about your suit? Because I think I’ve had a thought about the way we can make it vintagey, without having to dig you out some suspicious-smelling old actually vintage suit. There’s this amazing—

Thom: Kiki, stop. It’s this whole wedding. I don’t think we have the money—

Me: But we’ve already paid the deposit! That four grand is gone! And we’ll find the money, everyone does—

Thom: But I don’t
want
to find the money. I don’t
want
that money to go missing from the rest of our lives! Why are we always fighting about this? What’s happened here? This whole thing is becoming a monster, and I don’t know if I’m happy being part of this anymore.

Me: Wait, is this …? I’m loath to say it, but – well, it is April 1st …

Thom:
No
, this isn’t a bloody joke, Kiki! Annie had a ‘fancy’ wedding. Annie and Steve had a
really
‘fancy’ wedding.

Me: For the top table at least.

Thom: She will have spent months planning it, maybe years. They will have saved up, and saved up, and saved up, and all they will have to show for it is wedding photos with loads of flash reflections and all the tinfoil they’ll ever need. Is that what you want? A stupid wedding that everyone laughs about, because you were too busy competing with God-knows-who to actually remember what this whole thing is about? Anyone can have a ‘special’ wedding, Kiki, like anyone can have a credit card and a massive debt, but what separates us from wooden spoons is that we can understand that these decisions will affect our future. Maybe it’s time you woke up and understood that no one is going to wave a wand for you to have the million-pound wedding you think you need.

Thom slammed his bottle of beer on the counter, and it fizzed open and sprayed him. He didn’t even laugh, just sighed and set about cleaning up. I put the lasagne in the oven, half-covered in cheese, and tried to help him clean up too.

Me: [trying to stay calm] Thom, I do understand all that. I really do. But you are providing me with nothing but problems instead of helping me make this a wedding for both of us.

Thom: Because it’s becoming ridiculous, and I can’t bear to see you behaving like this. Who
are
you? What are you
doing
? This shouldn’t all be so difficult. Do you know what you’ve been like to your parents? Do you have any idea how you sound when you talk to them? When you just put your head down on the table when your mum is trying to talk to you, don’t you have any idea how hard it is to be on your side? And I
want
to be on your side! Christ, Kiki, your mum winds me up too, but do you know how your face looked when your parents ‘only’ gave us £3,000? £3,000! Do you have any idea how much that is? What are you
doing
, Kiki?