The Wedding Diaries (10 page)

That has to be a sign.

TO DO:

See if there’s any way Mum & Dad’s offering could be bumped up

Start selling Polka Dot’s stationery supplies on the black market

Train as Raffles-like thief

Practise by pinching work kitty for Polka Dot’s Christmas party tomorrow

December 17th

WHAT A GREAT NIGHT! Dinner, and singing, and talking – and WE ALL TALKED so MUCH and it was LOVELY! Dancing with brilliant Dan Alice Carol Judy everyone is FRIENDS and we’re all going to make our BOOKS so SUCCESSFUL, and it will be BRILLIANT.

Shhhhhh … Thom wants to know what I’m doing but I
can’t tell him about the dress
… It’s bad luck for the groom to know about the dress before the wedding day
shhhhhhhhhhhh.

I can’t write this when I’m lying on the floor. GOOD NIGHT!

December 18th

Mum rang.

Mum: Morning!

Me: [taking a moment for some silent, beneath-covers sobbing] Is it?

Mum: [singing at me] Was somebody out last night?

Me: [trying not to remember Norman and Carol’s karaoke duet after we’d left the restaurant] It was the work Christmas dinner.

Mum: Fine. Do you know if your cousins have got their invitations yet?

Me: [groaning] I don’t. Do you want me to call their postman and ask if he remembers delivering it? That seems the simplest way of answering your question.

Mum: So you have sent them out?

Me: Oh! That’s what I was forgetting. To send them out. To send out my wedding invitations. Oh well, I’m sure someone will turn up.

Mum: Kiki. You have sent them, haven’t you?

Me: [taking a deep breath to control the nausea and the room-spinning] Tell you what, Mum. I’ll ring Cousin Emma’s postman, and ask him to give you a call when he remembers if he delivered it or not. Deal?

She let me go eventually, when I’d finally told her they were probably stuck in the Christmas post.

I should probably get going on those.

TO DO:

Invitations: design, produce, address and send

Don’t tell Mum

December 20th

I went back to the first Wedding Shop again, the one I’d been to with Susie. The lady who opened the door to me recognised me, which also felt like a sign, and knew exactly which dress I’d come about. I apologised for not making an appointment and explained that I knew they must be busy, but I wanted to get my order in before Christmas. ‘A Christmas gift to yourself?’ the woman smiled as she typed all my details into the computer. I smiled back at her and tried to ignore my shaking hands. Adrenaline? I
know
this is the right thing to do. In years to come, when he thinks back to me walking down the aisle, Thom won’t mind this money in the slightest. I handed over my credit card, and the deal was done.

I took Thom out for his ‘relaxing evening’ tonight; the Dogs. We each had a twenty pound note to bet as we liked, and I shouted us a burger and beer each. I was placing £2 bets, winning here and there, until I suddenly realised I had £40.

Me: Hey! I’ve doubled my money.

Thom: Are you going to make us roll around on your winnings in bed tonight?

Me: [considering] Mmmm … no, they’re mostly coins. It doesn’t seem very comfortable. But look at those profits!

Thom: Are you about to develop a gambling addiction?

Me: Would that be relaxing for you?

Thom: No.

Me: Then … no, I am not.

I took my mammoth winnings for some more beer and we went home to roll on the remaining cash (converted into two tens and a fiver).

TO DO:

Attend fitting in January

Second fitting in April

Collect dress in July

Find the money to pay for it somewhere along the line; not from betting on greyhounds

December 24th

I in
no way
spent Christmas Eve getting last-minute presents that I’d been intending to buy for months and never got round to. Pete will
love
a box set of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(an important influence for the Twins in their formative years) and Mum, I’m sure, could use another box of Turkish Delight (I buy her one every year). And Susie’s just lucky the garage was open late enough for me to get her some screen wash and a disposable handwarmer. Which I’m
sure
is what she wants. Oh, plus a beautiful preggo dress and some medical-grade Ryan Gosling DVDs, for when she’s in dire need of lifted spirits.

In the evening Thom and I went to the pub with Jim and his lovely band of music friends from the studio production team, plus Zoe and her stunningly handsome and remarkably sweet American boyfriend, Zac, both of them away from their families for Christmas. Zoe is so lovely, it breaks my heart how shittily Pedro treats her. That’s it for this evening. I may have had a few ciders tonight and I need my Christmas bed.

December 25th

Merry Christmas, you handsome wedding diary, you. What a lovely day it’s been! Thom woke me up with some aspirin, a large vat of orange juice and a giant sausage sandwich. That man is amazing. We lay in bed for a long while, listening to the Christmas Day service on Radio 4 for my nostalgia fix, and occasionally canoodling when my cider shakes subsided, until I could contain myself no longer and we abandoned ourselves to giddy Christmas Day merriment, rushing through to the Christmas tree and the presents underneath it. Most of them would be coming with us to Mum and Dad’s in the afternoon, but there were enough under there to make me feel a) thankful that I had spent much much much more money and time than we had agreed on Thom’s gifts, and b) like a tiny child desperate to open those parcels with my own name on. Thom mixed us a jug of un-Carlow-like super-fresh Buck’s Fizz (hair of the dog – it’s
medicinal
) and rang his parents for a Christmas Day chat, while I picked our first presents, for me and for him.

To make this both more painless and to make my truly grasping nature a little more clear, let me break it down.

From me:

An old hardback edition of
Moby-Dick

A jar of home-made tomato chutney that Thom loves

A silk tie

Silver cufflinks

A pair of handsome shoes that he’d been debating whether he could afford for months

A leather wallet

From him:

A roll of double-sided sellotape

Some of my own socks in a beautiful jewellery box

Some chewing gum, not even my favourite flavour

A Wispa (that was fine – I actually really like those)

I have to say, things weren’t looking good for Thom – by which I mean I was trying to hide my tears, because crying over rubbish Christmas presents is both revoltingly immature and completely understandable – when he said with mock-casualness, ‘Oh, hang on – is there one more thing for you there?’ It was a little parcel, the size of a book. Heart leaping a little, I peeled off the paper to find a standard stationers’ diary, plain black. ‘Um … thank you?’ ‘Keep looking,’ Thom said, ‘oh ye of little patience.’ So I opened up the diary, flicking through – and I noticed little slips of paper and envelopes stuck to certain pages. Looking up at Thom, I saw he was really grinning now, so I picked open one of the tiny envelopes on February 14th and found two tickets to the cinema. In June, there was a formal invitation to a seaside picnic, and in October, a voucher for a Halloween costume of my choice. There were more scattered throughout, at least one each month, personal, thoughtful and utterly, utterly brilliant. At the front of the book on the details page, was a credit-card-sized golden card, with looping writing spelling out ‘One filthy night of your life’; I looked at Thom and he said, ‘Check the small print.’ Turning the card over, I read: ‘Definitely redeemable more than once’.

We made it to Mum and Dad’s a bit late. My mum said it best when she opened the door to us and saw my face – ‘Kiki, you’re a very lucky girl.’ If only she knew.

The rest of the day was spent in great glee, feeding Susie whichever Christmas treat she decided she wanted to taste at any given moment (brave Susie, pioneering gastronomer even in her delicate condition, forcing down sausage roll after marzipan fruit after mulled wine after stuffing ball after devil on horseback after mouthful of brandy butter after another sausage roll) and opening useless presents from Mum (a dog-shaped wall coat rack, a book on women in eighteenth-century Spain, and a really fat dark-blue candle that looks like her ugly blue sofa laid a wax egg) and lovely presents from Suse (a vintage tablecloth in the exact shade we drooled over in
Elle Deco
last month, a book on Marie Antoinette) and the Twins (a home-decorated jam jar filled with peppermint creams and tiny chocolate brownies). Mum gave Dad a new soldering iron, which he must have needed since he’d clearly been doing some overtime at his workbench at the college. He’d made a gorgeous mobile for Susie’s foetus, with golden birds and horses swirling off each branch, ready for its arrival in the summer, and two new silver and ribbon Christmas decorations for the Twins. Gawd bless us, every one.

December 26th

So twenty-four hours is still just about my limit at Mum and Dad’s house. It’s not the Twins’ ungodly rising hour, nor the Boxing Day food-hangover. It’s Mum’s relentless passive-aggressive wedding tips:

1. Kiki, have you thought about what food you’ll be serving? Chicken is quite a
   safe
   option, isn’t it.
   
2. Kiki, have you decided who’ll do your flowers? Because it does seem ridiculous to spend Thom’s money on some stranger when I could do it for nothing.
   
3. Kiki, darling, I think Pam’s daughter regrets so much not having invited the whole family to her wedding. It really was such a shame.
   
4. [confidentially, but at normal volume while everyone else sits in the same room mere feet away] Kiki, are you sure you want to go with such a big wedding? I know Thom’s worried about the cost of these things.
   

I can’t quite explain how much that woman annoys me. Is it that we’ve barely made a single decision yet, but she’s already knocking our choices? Or that she wants us to have both a big-enough-for-all-her-friends wedding
and
a small-enough-that-Thom-won’t-even-notice-it wedding? Or that Thom’s paying for it all, like she needs to worry about the dowry she’ll hand over to my new owner? Or that a kind offer (‘Darling daughter, would you like me to do your wedding flowers for you?’) instead comes laden with guilt, insult and presumption? GAH.

Thom and I had been going out for six months before he met Mum and Dad. Dad was welcoming and kind, and Mum talked without a break, speaking over Thom’s answers to her questions and generally making me clench my fists under the table.

Afterwards, we drove back to his in silence. I tried to break it.

Me: Wow, look at those clouds.

Thom: [silence]

Me: Do you know that they mean a storm is coming?

Thom: [silence]

Me: I think that’s so interesting.

Thom: [silence]

Me: Really, though. The world is so fascinating. There’s so much in it, even stuff you didn’t think you could be interested in. I think, if the right person explains it, absolutely
anything
can be interesting.

Thom: Except …
your mum
?

There was a terrible moment where we watched his comment slowly roll to a stop between us, then I sniggered, and he sniggered, then we both laughed so hard he had to pull the car over.

Thom packed our overnight bags, made our hasty goodbyes and stuffed me under his arm and out of the house before I said a few things that might make Father Christmas take his presents back. My word, it was good to be home. Thom thought it best if I checked my golden giftcard was still valid – and thus Christmas merriment was restored.

January’s Classic Wedding!

‘I’ve come to say that we still have time. It can all be cancelled and corrected.’

‘What? I don’t understand anything. What’s the matter with you?’

‘What I’ve told you a thousand times and can’t help thinking … that I’m not worthy of you. You couldn’t have agreed to marry me. Think. You’ve made a mistake. Think well. You can’t love me … If … it’s better to say it.’ He talked without looking at her. ‘I’ll be unhappy. They can all say whatever they like – anything’s better than unhappiness … Anything’s better now, while there’s time …’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said fearfully. ‘You mean that you want to take back … that we shouldn’t?’

‘Yes, if you don’t love me.’

‘You’re out of your mind!’ she cried, flushing with vexation.

But his face was so pathetic that she held back her vexation and, throwing the dresses off a chair, sat closer to him.

‘What are you thinking? Tell me everything.’

‘I think that you cannot love me. What could you love me for?’

‘My God! What can I …?’ she said, and burst into tears.

‘Ah, what have I done!’ he cried and, kneeling before her, he began kissing her hands.