Happy Ever After?

What’s the collective noun for bridesmaids - a bevy? A beauty? Or even a bother?

How could I possibly stop writing about weddings when I keep stumbling across stories like this one in today’s Daily Mail.

When Michelle O’Reilly - a 44-year-old mother of three – got married on Saturday she was accompanied by a grand total of 24 bridesmaids. She just couldn’t bear to leave out any of her nieces, friends’ daughters or her own girls.

As the Mail observed, she is obviously a total romantic and believer in happy ever afters. She even named her youngest daughter Cinderella Rose.

Check it out on www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=467343&in_page_id=1770
(Sorry – haven’t figured out links yet.)

What's in a name?

Just got back to Blighty after a much-needed, thank-goodness-it’s-all-over holiday. I suppose I should now shut up. Or rename this blog.

I began it not long after New Year’s Eve. We were at a Wild West murder mystery evening with friends. When the daughter’s boyfriend rang the mobile just after midnight, my husband asked him if he could call back later as we were just about to learn whodunnit.

To his credit the boyfriend didn’t take this the wrong way. Particularly since it turned out that he hadn’t called to wish us Happy New Year. He wanted to ask if he could propose to our daughter.

When I started Mother of the Bride I thought it would have a shelf life of at least a year. But the happy couple’s decision to bring the wedding forward means I have gone from one persona to another in just six months.

And I’m not sure I like the sound of Mother-in-Law half as much.

3 tips on organising a wedding

1. Don’t expect official photographers to think.
You may have specified that you do not want formal firing squad family group pix – but you still have to explain what you DO want. It might seem obvious that you would like informal pictures of key family members such as the groom’s father with his wife or the bride’s brothers who are acting as ushers, rather than six photographs of empty tables just to show how nicely they had been laid. But take nothing for granted.
Oh, and should the reception be held in a school where the bride and groom teach there is really no need for the photographer to go to the trouble of snapping the school badge and motto – especially if it is in Latin and they don’t have a clue what it means.

2. Having a table seating plan is no guarantee of harmony.
It helps if you are acquainted with who you are putting next to whom. If not, do not assume that two people who are married to each other and live at the same address are still a couple – or, indeed, on speaking terms.

3. Sale and return is always sale and no return.
If drink is available, it will be drunk. Why would anyone ever think otherwise?

Barking mad

As my husband likes to put it, we haven’t lost a daughter – we’ve gained a dog-in-law.

The dog in question is the bridegroom’s Springer spaniel and we are dog sitting while they are on honeymoon. We are cat people and I don’t think this is a fair test.

The people at www.springerrescue.org.uk say that basically, ‘Springers are strong willed and active, always on the go. They love family life and are extremely affectionate, but need to be controlled.’

In other words, they take no notice of anything you say unless it suits them so to do. And they are probably the source of the expression ‘completely barking mad.’

Isn't she lovely?

So ... what can I say?

The day went without a hitch. (We're not mentioning the mobile phone that rang during the ceremony as that belonged to the bride's father. And we were a bit taken aback by the Celtic blessing the Registrar sprang on us, since both sides of the family are more Anglo Saxon than Celt).

But the bride was beautiful. The sun shone. They looked a perfect couple.

We came in only marginally over budget. And it was worth every last penny.

Not doing an Amy

Amy Winehouse may just bave won an award – but she’s rumoured to be in the doghouse as far as her mum’s concerned. Mum was less impressed with the singer’s low-key Miami wedding and is insisting on a proper do back home.
Our proper do kicks off tomorrow. A tiny part of me thinks it might have been a good idea if my daughter had done an Amy.
But most of me is really looking forward to it.

Buff Brides and other books

I normally have several books on the go at once. One for bed-time reading, one for the Tube, one that’s to be discussed at the next book club meeting, and probably one that made up the 3-4-2 but turned out to be more gripping than those I went out to buy.

The wedding has put paid to that. Losing myself in a book is usually the best way for me to escape from anything I’m finding tricky or emotional. But at the moment I just find myself reading the same pages several times over because I can’t remember where I’d got to.

Perhaps I should have bought some wedding-related books to dip into. Amazon has hundreds. Most are How To books – how to make the perfect speech, how to plan a perfect wedding, how to choose a perfect bouquet. Some titles made me smile.

I liked The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings (what to do if things turn out to be perfectly awful, I assume) and Buff Brides (how to be the perfect shape for your perfect day – definitely not in the same category as Bad Girl Bridesmaids: three all-new erotic tales).

There are a handful of serious books by American authors with titles such as Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. Another is White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, in which the author Chrys Ingraham argues that over-the-top weddings marry two of the most sacred tenets of American culture – romantic love and excessive consumerism.

Romantic love – now we’re talking. Jane and Rochester, Anne and Gilbert, any of the Regency romps by Georgette Heyer. And somewhere in the house I have a box of books my daughter loved when she was little. I’m sure there was a wedding in Brambly Hedge.