The Wedding Diaries (38 page)

Authors: Sam Binnie

BOOK: The Wedding Diaries

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The Cotswolds

There’s so many nice places around here, it’s like a parody of English beauty. I’m a huge fan of Cirencester, particularly the open-air swimming pool that only opens in the summer and is still mostly freezing, and the lovely spaces in which there always seems to be cream teas in the summer. There’s a lovely B&B called No 12, which I thoroughly recommend.

Paris

Do I really need to say more? It’s Paris, people. Have you
seen
the diaries you can get there? (Particularly Bookbinders Design, 130 Rue du Bac.) And the
bread
? (See Du Pain et des Ideés, 34 rue ves Toudic, although really any bread in Paris is embarrassingly good bread.) Just go. Don’t even wait to get married. And if you’ve been there plenty of times before, just go again.
Anywhere
is good. It’s
Paris
.

Rome

Absolutely wonderful if you’re looking for an autumn or winter honeymoon. You can wrap up warmly and between the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, you can get tiny thick, syrupy cups of hot chocolate and giant, crisp pizzas. If you were so inclined, you could even order some spaghetti and recreate that whole
Lady and the Tramp
moment, but I suspect you’d look a bit simple-minded. I loved the Hotel Pantheon (www.hotelpantheon.com) – it’s right in the middle of everything, cheap as gelato, and friendly as anything.

Devon

Such a lovely, lovely county. Throw a scone and it will land somewhere beautiful. You can’t go wrong, particularly south Devon and Dartmoor.

Anywhere; stick a pin in the UK and have
an adventure

I can’t understand this mentality that your honeymoon must be absolutely the most expensive holiday you’re ever going to take, as if once you are married you are
never allowed
a holiday again
. Isn’t the point just to stay in bed together, occasionally eating, reading, and maybe noticing where you actually are? So why not just pick somewhere in the country completely at random? There are so many ways to find great stuff to do, and so many wonderful places in the UK that you are bound to find
somewhere
good. You can each have one pin and one veto, so you don’t end up going a) in the middle of the ocean or b) what a coincidence, to his team’s football ground (or equivalent). If you get into the spirit of it, you’ll have just as much fun investigating and planning a holiday in Nottingham, or Somerset, or Manchester, or the Highlands, as you would booking your Luxury Mango Pedicures at $400 a pop at some exclusive resort in the Maldives. And, if all else fails, there are spas all over the UK, so you can get a couple of days of face rubs and foot massages if that’s what makes you most happy.

Money

Top Money-Saving Tips for a Wedding

When buying a dress, ask for bridesmaid dresses, not bridal ones. They can often be just as pale, floor-length and delicious, but are a fraction of the price.
Cakes: look at ‘non’-wedding varieties of these too, or at least off-the-shelf. For something that’s mostly just going to go into people’s mouths, M&S’s wedding cakes are perfectly fine – delicious, even – and look totally wonderful when sparked up with some ribbons or feathers from somewhere like MacCulloch and Wallis (www.macculloch-wallis.co.uk).

That’s it, really. Ultimately, you could have 100 tips about saving money and will find them in any bridal magazine, but the only ones who can actually save it are the ones making the decisions. If you decide you MUST have designer shoes for your wedding day, I’m sure you can find a discount branch, an import shortcut, a voucher online. But you’ll save so much more when you realise how much people are willing to share with you, and how little you truly ‘need’.

Here are some things you could buy if you don’t blow £20,000 on a single day:

One unforgettable trip to anywhere in the world

Pretty great holidays for a few years

Simple holidays for a decade

A swanky gadget-filled new kitchen

A new Mini

Four Hermès Birkin bags

Carpeting for the walls, floor, ceiling and windows of most homes (inside and out)

A lifetime’s supply of paperback books

Of course, you can spend your money on what you like. And of course, it’s your wedding. But, seriously. £20,000? That’s deranged.

Finally, my attempt to lower your chances of future marital discord

I once read the ten questions every couple about to marry should discuss. I can’t remember most of them (it was ages ago) but I do think it’s worth considering these:

If one or both of you got very rich, what would you do with it?

Do you want children? How would they be educated? Would either of you give up work?

Do you both expect the same thing when it comes to your roles? Do either of you have a very ‘traditional’ (read: backwards) view on husbands and wives in the home?

If one of your parents needed care and couldn’t live in their home any more, where would they go?

Do you want to live abroad? Where do you see yourselves in ten years’ time?

What are your views on religion? Saving money? Eating things straight from the fridge with your fingers when really they need a spoon at the very least, if not a bowl as well?

Also:

How does your fiancé/fiancée treat waiters? Shop assistants? Cabin crew? Your siblings? Their own parents? If there’s anything other than kindness and respect, don’t be surprised when they turn out to be someone you – to quote
Singin’ in the Rain
’s Lina Lamont – ‘keeen steeend’.

That’s it. Enjoy yourselves. Be kind to one another. And good luck.

Read on for an exclusive extract from
The Baby Diaries
out in Spring 2013

October 31st

Have you ever had that feeling you’ve forgotten something? Something nagging away at the back of your mind – until just the right movement in your memory triggers something else, which knocks another thing down, and like some Indiana Jones death trap, you can feel the clank-clunking of motion in the hidden rooms of your brain, gradually bringing the forgotten memory swinging like a battering ram into your conscious mind. You know that feeling?

So that’s what I had yesterday.

I’ve been so busy since the wedding. Tony, my boss and head of Polka Dot books was as good as his word with my promotion, giving me six new authors before disappearing off on a three-month ‘travelling sabbatical’ to God Knows Where.

Thom’s been settling into his new life as a trainee teacher: to no one’s surprise, he’s loving it. But as his enthusiasm has spilled over into our evenings, we’ve spent a great deal of time together marking papers – him, clunky essays on
Wuthering Heights
, me, swathes of mostly unreadable fiction: thirty-somethings who have always dreamt of writing, aiming for Heathcliff and hitting Cliff Richard. So we’ve been dog tired, and when we’ve had time off we’ve been with my parents (half an eye always on my Dad to check he’s taking care of himself after his heart attack earlier this year), my nearly-new niece Frida, or our friends (those we hadn’t had to uninvite from the wedding). It was still great to be spending
any
time together where we weren’t arguing about money, or the importance of decorative accessories, or the social rules of such a complex endeavour as a wedding. But something kept nagging at me. Did we pay the register office? Had we thanked everyone? Was anyone still locked in the primary school reception venue? None of these nudged anything, although I worried at it like a tongue at a wobbly tooth. It would give eventually. And when it did, I just had to hope I didn’t have a huge apology to make to anyone.

Then, yesterday morning, Thom and I were comparing our weeks. Thom said he had me over a barrel, since I spent my time lunching authors and picking my favourite colour for a book jacket, while he was at the coal-face, earning every penny trying to hammer basic English in the heads of his students.

Me: You love it really.

Thom: I might love it, but I’m a hell of lot more tired at the end of the day than I ever was making spreadsheets all day. Surprisingly.

Me: Can it really be that hard?

Thom: Kiki. I dare you to try dealing with a room full of hormonal teenagers.

That was it. Clink, clunk. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Click. Click. Ka-dunk.
BOOM
.

I must have just frozen while my brain went into its noisy activity, because Thom stopped laughing at the mental image he’d conjured and looked at me, puzzled. ‘What’s up?’ he said. I stood completely still, calculating over and over, mentally flicking through the pages of my pocket diary – dates, dates, dates. Dates. When I managed to reconnect my brain with my voice box, I just said, ‘I think we need to go to the chemist.’

Thom got it immediately. We rushed out, no coats, no scarves, into the freezing October afternoon, hurrying to the chemist around the corner. Outside, it felt like Before for a moment – we teased one another about who would go in and buy it, until I remembered what the whole thing was about, and my face collapsed. Thom went in while I read the notices in the window again and again. A Great Time To Give Up Smoking! the sign read. Or, indeed, start, I thought. Then he was out, and we were hurrying home again, and I thought, is this time included in the three minutes you have to count off? If I walk home slowly will I know the result immediately? Then we
were
home, and Thom was bustling me upstairs, and I went into the bathroom and locked the door. When I took the little test out of the box, my hands were shaking so much and the adrenaline was coursing through me so I couldn’t read one word of the instructions.