The Wedding Diaries (13 page)

Clifton: Bloody hell, my gal, is that a ring on your finger?

Me: Yes, Clifton, it is. Plans for next summer; I’ll finally be made an honest woman.

Clifton: And is he fully aware of the mission ahead of him?

Me: Ha ha. Very good.

Clifton: Does he know the kind of forces he’s up against?

Me: Ha. Yes.

Clifton: And have you given him any weapons? Need a bloody nuclear arsenal against most women these days. Poor lad. It
is
a lad, isn’t it?

Me: Yes, Clifton. It’s a lad.

Clifton: Good-oh. So what’ll your name be once you’re married?

Me: Kiki Carlow.

Clifton: [confused] The fellow’s got the same name as you? He’s not a relation is he? That can get damned messy.

Me: No, he’s not a relation. We tossed a coin over whether I would take his name, close down my bank account, resign from my job and renounce my right to vote, or whether he’d just have to marry an equal human. Fortunately it landed on tails, as he says he really likes the free books from this place.

Clifton: Oh, one of
those
, are you. Well, good luck to him!

Me: Yes, Clifton. Quite. Shall we talk about using your military contacts to promote your new book, yes?

Fine, I didn’t say that last bit. But I wish I had.

January 29th

What delicious, creamy, crumb-based larks! Off to Maison Edith today. For tastings!
Tastings!
Of
cakes
! And all you have to do is get wed (and have Monica Warner up in your grill with her toxicity for the last four years). If they advertised that first point more widely, those marriage rates would sky-rocket. Although, to be fair, the divorce rates would probably do the same, after everyone suffered their sugar come-downs. Thom and I took pity on my pregnant, sugar-craving sister and invited her along for the ride to Maison Edith itself: a stunning old Tudor house near Holborn, its windows stuffed with cakes and buns and gateaux of every kind, like the witch’s house before the arrival of Hansel and Gretel. If that was what it took, I was completely willing to be caged up and fed sweet treats for the next few months, while Thom did all the sweeping and carrying. Actually, that isn’t too dissimilar to how we live anyway.

We were greeted at the door by the most friendly young Italian man, who showed the three of us around each cake and explained our options if we didn’t want to go with a standard tiered cake: towers of meringues, profiteroles or macarons, a deep fruit pie with our names on in pastry, or even a trifle with our initials in silver balls. We were all so excited to get digging in with the spoons, when he said, ‘Ah! Here is Ma-ry. She weel help you with all theengs weddeeng.
In bocca al lupo!
’ and gestured to someone behind us. As we all turned, Thom said to me, ‘Did he say we were going into the wolf’s mouth?’ and the three of us saw Mary at the same time: a furious-looking, sour-mouthed, grey-haired woman who would not have looked out of place twirling her keys on a prison ward.

‘
Girl
I went to school with’, Monica said? That was quite some gamble, allowing me to meet someone of whom she was a school contemporary, age-giver-away that it is. If we’re charitable, we can maintain that perhaps Mary was a Home Ec assistant and not a classmate at all. Which would explain how she appears approximately twenty years older than Monica. She looked us up and down, and said, ‘Which of you is … “Kiki”?’ I raised my hand, hoping I’d misunderstood her tone and she’d show a little more of Hansel and Gretel’s friendly witch mode before she tried to kill us and eat us, but she just frowned and said, ‘Come with me, please.’

We all got a bit giggly then, like naughty children, and followed her down the corridor pushing one another to go first, until we came to a giant taster kitchen with huge glass-doored fridges and massive steel tables, one with a tray filled with handfuls of tiny spoons and little disposable paper bowls. Mary stood on the other side of the table, and placed both her hands carefully on the surface. With a curt sniff, she said, ‘Wedding cakes are traditionally fruitcake. If either of you suffer from any
allergies
,’ and she took a moment to consider this most revolting of concepts, ‘then we can alter the recipe. Do you have any allergies?’ We shook our heads. ‘Fine. Then we can go ahead with the wedding cake as planned. You may choose the decorative icing, if you don’t want white on white.’

She nearly got away with it too, but Susie was clear-headed with sugar-lust and called her back.

Susie: We were talking with your colleague upstairs—

Mary: Oh, yes, Mario. He doesn’t work on weddings.

Susie: But he said we could have anything we wanted. Is that not actually the case?

Mary: Are you getting married too?

Susie: No, it’s my sister and her fiancé here.

Mary: So … it’s not your wedding, then?

Me: [sensing there may be more than crumbs spilt on the kitchen tiles any minute] No, it’s our wedding. I think neither of us are huge fans of fruitcake – we came here to try and find some alternative that might work for us, and liked lots of the things Mario was suggesting. We’re planning quite a unique wedding, and we’re hoping to do things a bit differently, so a cake of some sort to match that would be great.

Mary: [huge sigh] Doing things …
differently
. Of course. What did you have in mind?

Thom: [taking up the baton] Please may we try the profiteroles?

Mary clenched her teeth in ill-disguised rage, then reached under the table to a hidden shelf and took out a warm choux bun glossy with dark chocolate with a tiny bit of cream bursting out. My mouth exploded with saliva just looking at it, but Susie reached across and put the whole thing in her mouth.

Me: You greedy hog. I hope that chokes you.

Mary: [sighing again, to me and Thom] I suppose
you’ll
want to try one too?

It was like blood from a stone, but we did finally get to try everything we wanted. The trifle was beautiful, fruity and fresh with a rich eggy custard, and the macarons were meltingly rich, in a wild rainbow of colours. But in the end we chose a reasonably traditional option: a lemon and rosewater cake in two tiers, with garlands of tiny tea roses around each tier (Thom didn’t really care about that bit). For the pleasure of Mary’s company this afternoon and our lovely two-tier cake, we will be paying them £380 one day soon. Is Monica getting a cut of that? Cripes.

TO DO:

Start a wedding cake business to pay for our wedding cake

Find out if there’s a trend for slightly wonky home-baked sponges instead

Think about cake-based vows?

Wait for this crazy sugar-high to wear off

February’s Classic Wedding!

Meg looked very like a rose herself, for all that was best and sweetest in heart and soul seemed to bloom into her face that day, making it fair and tender, with a charm more beautiful than beauty. Neither silk, lace, nor orange flowers would she have. ‘I don’t want a fashionable wedding, but only those about me whom I love, and to them I wish to look and be my familiar self.’

So she made her wedding gown herself, sewing into it the tender hopes and innocent romances of a girlish heart. Her sisters braided up her pretty hair, and the only ornaments she wore were the lilies of the valley, which ‘her John’ liked best of all the flowers that grew.

‘You do look just like our own dear Meg, only so very sweet and lovely that I should hug you if it wouldn’t crumple your dress,’ cried Amy, surveying her with delight when all was done.

‘Then I am satisfied. But please hug and kiss me, everyone, and don’t mind my dress. I want a great many crumples of this sort put into it today.’ And Meg opened her arms to her sisters, who clung about her with April faces for a minute, feeling that the new love had not changed the old.

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

February 4th

Jacki came into the office this afternoon to get some writing done. She’s so funny, and was exactly what I needed; she keeps up a running commentary while tapping away at a little laptop she carries everywhere in her gigantic Mulberry handbag. We made tonnes of lists – chapter headings, things we need to cover (where to get the best bra for your wedding, what emergency items your maid of honour needs to carry around with her on the day), a small chapter on things to avoid (d-i-v-o-r-c-e, inviting exes to the wedding) and notes for everything she wanted to tell her readers about her own wedding prep and the day itself, from how Leon proposed to wedding night lingerie. Fine, it wasn’t
Anna Karenina
, but I admired the fact that she wanted to write it, and that she genuinely wanted to put helpful things in there too. She wouldn’t only recommend the lingerie she wore, in the upper hundreds, but insisted on putting in tips for every budget and look.

She went up in my estimation four million times more after Tony toddled from his office and burst into our room, saw what we were doing and rubbed his hands with glee. ‘Ah, Jacki, I look forward to seeing your diet section as well – all the brides want to be in great shape for their wedding day! I could do with a few tips myself,’ he said, rubbing his stomach for good measure. Jacki smiled so sweetly at him, like she was receiving a wonderful gift from this tubby, balding, charmless man, and said, ‘Oh no, we’re not doing that here. We want every girl to be happy whatever she looks like!’ Tony hesitated for a moment, then recognised the flash of steel in Jacki’s eyes and left the room, with ‘Good, good, good …’ trailing behind him. Here’s what we ended up with instead of a diet chapter:

Looking the Best on Your Wedding Day

Can you climb the stairs without falling over? Have you eaten a piece of fruit this month? Do you see your toes when you look down? Then relax!!!! You can spend six months eating just olives and grissini (I like to think of this as the Cocktail Bar Diet), and walk down the aisle a size six, only to feel grim and dizzy all day and balloon to a size thirty on your honeymoon, or you can find a dress that bloody well fits you and shoes you can walk in, and stride into your church/synagogue/register office/other to see the face of the person who wants to marry you and live by your side forever and ever. Look at that face and think: did he/she ask me to marry him/her because they hoped I’d stop eating and change my shape and probably my temperament dramatically? Or maybe – just maybe – does he/she love the person I am inside?!

So. Eat some fruit, find a good corset, dance your socks off and smile at how good you’ll look in photos when you’ve got someone who loves you standing beside you.

God. I love this woman.

February 6th

All of us over to Susie’s for her birthday lunch today.

Mum: [rubbing Susie’s back] Happy birthday! How are you feeling, ‘Mum’?

Susie: Urgh, please don’t do that. It’s so meta.

Mum: What’s ‘meta’?

Susie: It’s meta when your own mum calls you Mum. It feels like I’m in a science-fiction film.

Pete: Don’t touch her today, Tessa. I went to give her a kiss this morning and she tried to mace me with her deodorant.

Susie: Is
this
how I planned to celebrate my thirtieth birthday? I might be a little hormonal. But none of you have a – [looking around to check the Twins aren’t about] fucking
alien
growing in one of your internal organs right now. Do you?

Dad: Hem, hem. Language, Susan.

Susie: [grinding her teeth]

Pete: I’ll get the cake.

I don’t think Suse is having the best of pregnancies. I think she misses the heady days of her youth, when the celebration for a birthday of this magnitude would have lasted a week and taken in several different countries. I gave her a hideously expensive stretch-mark cream and a gorgeous maternity pillow, and tried to distract her with flippant talk of venues and the absurdity of honeymoon flipflops, but she looked like she was going to eat me so we all went home.

February 14th

On our first Valentine’s Day together, I invited Thom up to my revolting student house (after bribing my housemates to stay out
all
night), made him a romantic meal and got so drunk I blacked out on the sofa. Last Valentine’s tapas disaster meant that we spent the following six months having careful, two-steps-forward-one-step-back conversations about whether we both wanted to marry, and whether we wanted to marry one another. Which isn’t half as romantic as it sounds.

But tonight was a perfect romantic date. In my Christmas diary, Thom had tucked two tickets to a double-bill of
Crocodile Dundee
s I and II at a tiny cinema in Hampstead, and we were enjoying two enormous burgers in a café around the corner before the films started. I’d just given myself a mayonnaise moustache – never not funny – to make Thom laugh when Eve and her date-for-the-night appeared in front of the café, done up in expensive clothes. I looked for a fraction too long, and Thom turned to see what I was looking at, which then caught Eve’s eye. She gave us a huge smile, said something to her date and pulled him into the café after her, coming over to our table and surveying our greasy napkins and my mayonnaise face. ‘Kiki!
Thom
. What a … romantic place. This is what saving money for a wedding looks like, right?’ she laughed.