The Wedding Diaries (36 page)

• Your mum wears the wrong-coloured shoes.
  
• Your flowers aren’t the ones you agreed with the florist.
  
• The groom has got a black eye.
  
• Your bridesmaid wants to wear her hair down, instead of up.
  
• Your bridesmaid wants to wear her hair up, instead of down.
  
• The dog ate your wedding cake.
  
• The vicar keeps referring to divorce rates (I’ve been to a wedding like that).
  
• Your venue suddenly and inexplicably smells of chip fat.
  
• Your brother-in-law gets drunk and knocks over a table.
  
• Your now-husband’s ex ‘accidentally’ spills red wine over your wedding dress.
  

Now here are the things that might matter:

• You don’t show up.
  
• Your groom doesn’t show up.
  

That’s pretty much it. Get that into your skull and you’ll enjoy the day so much more.

Wedding Inessentials

Favours

I have never, ever, ever,
ever
been to a wedding where anyone commented on the favours. You could hire someone to hand-carve each guest’s likeness into a diamond biscuit flaked with gold, and not one person will give a shit. No one cares about that stuff. I have been to weddings both with and without favours, and no one has ever said, ‘Do you know what that beautiful ceremony and wonderful party was missing? Sugared almonds with the couple’s initials on. I just don’t feel like they’re
really
married yet.’ And if you know anyone who would ever say that, then you absolutely must not invite them to your wedding.

Seat covers

It’s a chair. We know it’s a chair. You know it’s a chair. Please don’t spend hundreds of pounds buying dresses for the furniture because they are ‘ugly’. Do you what’s ugly? Spending hundreds of pounds on furniture clothes, when you could blow that cash on several meals at Arbutus in Soho instead. Who will care about the naked chairs? See above, for people who care about a lack of favours.

Table confetti

Are you kidding? Table. Confetti. Confetti for the table. If there was one single item that showed Capitalism as a busted economic ideology that had now started to eat itself, table confetti would be it. (See also: table beads, table gems, table crystals.)

Anything mini

If it’s worth having, it’s worth having full-size. If full-size would look ridiculous, think how much more ridiculous it is in dinky little miniature. So, miniature buckets in which to stuff sweets: no. Giant buckets full of pick and mix (if you insist on treating the whole thing like a children’s party): better. Mini champagne bottles: no. Normal-sized bottles of champagne chilled to within an inch of their lives: sure, why not.

Crackers

I can’t believe the manufacturers of these have managed to expand their market into weddings, and I can’t believe poor befuddled newly engaged women are falling for it. If you’re getting married in December by someone dressed in a red and white suit and your meal is turkey and all the trimmings, by all means, cracker away, but if your theme is Country Garden Chic or Hawaiian Cocktail Party, don’t start panicking about finding the exact shade of crackers for your place settings just because you saw them once in a bridal magazine and the woman on the front in the veil was really smiling.

Disposable cameras

In an age where every Tom, Dick and Harry has a spectacular camera right on their phone, it boggles my mind that anyone would still be buying disposable cameras for weddings. Here’s what happens: you spend around a hundred pounds on disposable cameras (one for each table and a few spare). Most people are too sober to use them at the start of the night (or are just taking photos on their phones, as they have now done for
years
), then once they are drunk the cameras suddenly seem like hilarious retro fun. There will be six blurred photos taken of friends they’ve just made grinding on the dance floor. No other photos will ever be taken with them. They will stay undeveloped in your home for the next three house moves, and in the future someone will find them and bring them to
Antiques Roadshow
, where, since they are mostly unused, they will be worth thousands.

Everyone and everything colour matching

This is really where the myth of it being ‘The Bride’s Special Day’ is at its most evil and pernicious. Somehow brides are sucked into this belief that this means the wedding day will look, sound, taste, smell and feel as if it’s been put together by Mario Testino, Nigella Lawson and Sophia Coppola. This is never going to happen. Ever. You might look the most beautiful you ever have done, because even my bed looks particularly delicious when dressed head-to-toe in fresh, clean white, but everyone else may be tired, drunk, ill, may forget their lines, may have children who have no care for perfectly lined up centrepieces, may have changed their mind about which dress they’re wearing at the last minute, or may just have started smoking today apparently to piss you off, because you quit for the wedding and this isn’t making it any easier. When you take all this into consideration, the idea that you can make all these things match: bride’s bouquet, bridesmaids’ posies, bridesmaids’ dresses, bridesmaids’ shoes, bridesmaids’ hair jewels, the napkins, table cloths, flowers on the tables, flowers in the church, car, buttonholes for all men in the party, balloons, table decorations, ribbons, bunting, mother of the bride’s hat, mother of the bride’s clothes, mother of the bride’s eyeshadow, groom’s cravat (I totally hate cravats anyway, utterly and completely – isn’t a smart suit and tie about 4,000,000 times smarter?), groom’s
socks
, groom’s pocket square, best man’s tie (or cravat), best man’s socks, best man’s pocket square, flower girl’s basket of petals, guests’
confetti
… when you’re trying to dictate the colour of the biodegradable rice paper your loved ones are throwing at you, I think alarm bells should start ringing. Not only because I share Anna Wintour’s alleged disdain for matchy-matchy, but also because with all those objects, complete colour meshing is never going to happen, so I think it’s JUST MUCH EASIER if you just give up and go with the flow. Let some disorder in. This is life, joyful and chaotic and real, not a Cher music video.

Hen parties – Dos and Don’ts

DO:
Ask all the people you really like. Don’t worry if they aren’t all coming to the wedding, or don’t know one another: the more the merrier.

DON’T:
Go abroad. Unless you are a wealthy heiress and your guests will never once have to reach for their wallets, keep it local. There’s now some terrible arms race for hen parties, where, because
she
made
you
go to a French vineyard,
you
have to make
her
go to Sweden. Why, just because you’re getting married, do you think anyone wants to blow their entire annual holiday budget just so you can have company in Disneyland Paris/Ibiza/Las Vegas/the Moon? It’s
crazy
. And however much all your friends say they don’t mind, they really, really do. Days off work, flights, hotels, extra clothes, ridiculously-priced cocktails – it’s insane. If you love these people, find a comedy club in your local area, paint one another’s nails (or whatever floats your boat), get some ridiculously-priced cocktails (locally) and enjoy the night before staggering home to your respective loved ones. If you don’t love them and feel since it’s Your Wedding they should support Whatever You Want To Do, then, frankly, you don’t deserve a hen bash and should go and sit in the corner and take a good long look at yourself.

DO:
Find out what your friends like doing, rather than just assuming you all have to go to a chocolate workshop then sport L-plates in a filthy but brilliant bar. You might all turn out to be secret Terry Pratchett freaks, and you can sit around dressed as trolls and wizards and form a new lifelong bond with Christine in HR (who you originally only invited so you could get more time off for your honeymoon).

DON’T:
Get so drunk you make tired-and-emotional phone calls to your fiancé (this applies to grooms calling their fiancées, too). This is just a handy rule of life – no drinking and dialling – but weddings are fraught enough, without anyone spilling the beans about a workplace crush that actually Means Nothing, Darling, when it really does mean absolutely nothing. No one wants that.

DO:
Dance, and do karaoke. It’s just about the best thing in the world, whether you go to one of those tiny, freaky underground bars in Soho, or hook up some console to your TV and invite the neighbours round to join you and your friends. I’ve known very, very few people who genuinely haven’t enjoyed themselves once it’s there in front of them.

Stag parties – Dos and Don’ts

DO:
Indulge your inner child. From asking around, the best stag parties have involved driving, shooting, paint-balling, building a massive campfire and/or killing a pig (personally, I’m
desperate
to go on a Hen night like this), so why not do something other than go to a bar with seventy other super-drunk men in busy city centre? Think how rarely you’ll get all your best mates together in one place. Then think of all the brilliant stuff you can force them to do if you hire a narrowboat together and you declare yourself Captain.

DON’T:
Seriously consider a lapdancing joint, really. Do you remember when Iceland’s first female Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, confirmed the ban on stripping and lapdancing bars in the country, saying, ‘I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale’? Not that it seemed there was much getting used to: fewer than 10% of Icelanders were opposed to the ban. Doesn’t that sound nice? Isn’t that
better
? So if you want to claim it’s ironic, or someone else is arranging it, or it’s ‘your last time before you get married’, just remember: urgh.