The Wedding Diaries (11 page)

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

January 1st

Happy New Year, everyone. Mum and I had a horrible argument last night. We were all at Mum and Dad’s for pre-dinner drinks before Thom and I stepped out with Susie and Pete, and we were cheers-ing one another and chatting about our plans for the new year. Mum hoped her hair would grow, Susie hoped her bust wouldn’t, Dad wanted us all to be happy (same thing he wishes every year, except during one intake of students when our wellbeing was temporarily overlooked and he wished instead that the sixth-former who’d burnt a hole in the workbench with Dad’s miniature blowtorch would decide to do mechanics instead) and Pete announced his intention to build bunk beds for the Twins himself, to which Susie only raised a sceptical eyebrow. I said I hoped my swanky dress would bring everyone’s jaws to the floor, but then couldn’t help noticing the strange silence that followed my words. It went downhill from there:

Me: What? What is it?

Thom: Keeks, you know we can’t really afford it. Angelic as it may make you appear.

Me: Of course we can! Everyone knows weddings are expensive, so we’ll get a loan or something. It’s fine! It’s our wedding day.

Thom: I know, Keeks, but it’s more money than I think we should get into.

Me: [like a small child but reasonably sure I still have some high ground] But it’s our
wedding day
.

Mum: Kiki, maybe you should listen to your fiancé.

Susie: [to Pete] Uh-oh, no she di’int. Run. Run, Pete.

Me: What did you say? Why is this anything to do with you?

Susie: Seriously, Pete, leave my bag, let’s go. We’ve got children to think of.

Mum: Maybe Thom is right – maybe it’s not a good idea for you to spend all that money on your dress.

Me: [feeling fourteen again] It is NOTHING to DO WITH YOU! It is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Why don’t you just
LEAVE ME ALONE!!

Susie: It’s too late, Pete. Grab Dad and we’ll try to get behind the sofa.

Me: SERIOUSLY, Mum. This is MY wedding – not yours, not Susie’s—

Susie: Why are you bringing
me
into this?

Me: —not Mary’s from tennis, not Keith’s daughter’s who’s a doctor, and definitely not whoever’s child’s wedding you went to last year that had such amazing flowers that she’d done herself. OK? This is MY wedding, mine and Thom’s, and you need to STOP trying to control every tiny aspect of it. It’s OURS! Not yours! Not yours! Did you catch that?

Between Thom mentally cutting up The Dress and setting fire to it and Mum, as ever, eager to support whoever I’m disagreeing with, I
may
have lost it a teeny weeny bit. I told Mum that she never cared about me, that I didn’t want her opinion, and that I didn’t even particularly want her coming to the wedding. When Thom tried to calm me down, I told him that he’d better be careful or I wouldn’t want him at the wedding either. A dangerous silence followed that. Dad stood there, a bit blank and white-faced and kneading his arm, until Mum came over to him, talking quietly in his ear; when I started up again, she turned to me and yelled, ‘Just
stop it
, Katherine!’ She really must be serious if she’d broken out the Full Name Guns. We went home shortly after, safe in the knowledge that I had ruined the party for everyone.

TO DO:

Concentrate on what’s important here:

Hair – hairdresser? Keeping it in good shape in the run-up?

Gift list – decide where to go (John Lewis, Liberty, Selfridges)

Convince Thom a gift list is a good idea

Wedding stationery – samples for invitations, save the date, Orders of Service and thank you cards

First dance – dancing lessons?

See if Mother of the Bride definitely has to be on the Top Table

January 2nd

I was out this morning at my annual January 2nd brunch with Eve (our tradition: I buy her pancakes, she tells me about her mind-boggling New Year’s celebrations) and returned to the flat in the afternoon hoping for … not an
apology
, but
something
to show Thom was on my team. Thom was clearly expecting the same. We tried to talk to one another calmly but when I brought out this book and Thom saw all the magazine cuttings at the back, he drew back. ‘Don’t you want
our
wedding?’ he said. ‘Don’t you want our friends and family watching us say we love each other? Why do you care about what these people say you need: toastmasters and bloody … disposable place names?’ Thom gave a little smile. He was trying to keep us from fighting about this, but he was also definitely not getting the severity of his ignorance. ‘This IS my wedding!’ I said, holding his hands in mine. ‘This is going to be so beautiful and so perfect. I’m only going to get one of these and I want it to be right!’ Thom froze. ‘Again.
Your
wedding,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll let me know if I’m invited.’

We went to bed without speaking for the second night in a row. If anyone knows how to educate a man in the Ways of the Bride, please do let me know before I’m forced to knock on the doors of the Sainted Sisters of the Failed Wedding Plans and don my wimple (left over from a
very
messy 21st). But we’ve got enough weddings coming up this year – Jacki’s; our university friends; Annie, my old pal from school – that maybe Thom might see things aren’t as simple as he’d like to think.

TO DO:

Alcohol – white for starter, red for main, champagne for toasts and dessert?

Wedding website? Ugh. No.

Accommodation for wedding night – check out boutique hotels in Ipswich

Bridesmaids – what kind of dresses? Both the same, but in different colours? Same colour but different designs?

Find out what style Susie would be comfortable in a month after giving birth

Jewellery – vintage necklace or bracelet to go with engagement ring? Go back to the antiques market to look. Or ask Dad!

January 4th

I left work early today for my first fitting. Oh, how beautiful it truly is! I know it’s such bad luck for a groom to see the dress before the wedding, but I think Thom would feel so differently about all of this if he could see how perfect it is. I was never a child who fantasised about weddings or princesses or fairies – Susie and I were too busy running a cut-throat grocer’s shop from our living room, charging Mum and Dad all their hard-earned 1 and 2ps for empty cereal boxes and tiny hotel jars of jam – but this dress is everything I never dreamed of.

So I got back this evening on a cloud of air, thinking that if Thom could see me feeling this good about it, he’d be sure to come over to my way of thinking.

Wrong.

Thom: Have you been chatted up by someone on the tube again?

Me: Better.
Even
better than that.

Thom: Tony’s given you your promotion early?

Me: Ha! No.

Thom: You got a free sample of food from outside a shop.

Me: No. I had my first wedding dress fitting!

Thom: [silence]

Me: Oh Thom, you’re going to love it.

Thom: I didn’t know you’d decided on one yet.

Me: You did! I told you about The Dress!

Thom: Yes, you told me it was £2,300, so I thought we were looking into Plan B.

Me: You want our wedding to be a Plan B wedding? Because – what? I’m your Plan B bride?

Thom: Hold on a minute –
that
doesn’t even mean anything, and
don’t
turn this around on me. What are you paying for it with?

Me: I’ve put it on my credit card until I’ve worked out where it will go in the wedding budget.

Thom: Where it will
go
? I can tell you where it will go – everywhere! It will go everywhere in the ‘budget’ – which, incidentally, is a word you use with no apparent understanding of what it actually means – because there will be absolutely no space for anything else. There will be no venue, no food, no music, and no money for our future because you and you alone decided you needed this dress, and who are you to listen to anyone else?

Me: Thom – please—

Thom: I’m sorry, Kiki, but this is unbelievable. What part of ‘We aren’t made of money’ did you decide to completely ignore? Because it seems like all of it.

So that went well.

January 5th

No luck with Dad. I asked him if he might be able to make something for me for the wedding, and he looked uncomfortable. I laughed, and said of course, we would pay any costs if the material was pricey, that I’d do whatever I could to help. He chewed his lower lip, and said, ‘I’m sorry, love. I’m just not feeling that creative at the moment. And I wouldn’t want to muck something up that was so special on your big day.’ After last night’s fight with Thom, this is all I need. Could anyone care less about this wedding?

I’ve not heard Dad like that before.

January 7th

I could always do without Eve’s birthday parties at the best of times, but things have been tense between me and Thom since New Year’s. Having a birthday in early January is another example of Eve turning the lemons in her life (a birthday immediately after New Year’s) into glamorous party-lemonade: every year she pitches it as ‘A Hair of the Dog Party’, and every year, too many people turn up for the venue she’s arranged. So I thought tonight’s bash might be a good excuse for Thom and me to drink and dance our cares away, get out of the house and forget about the wedding for a while.

I got dressed for it in the toilets at work, which is certainly my least favourite start to an evening; I had to cram myself into a stall the size of a family suitcase and manoeuvre myself into my best party dress while desperately trying not to blind myself on the coat hook protruding at eye height. Sweaty but decent, I poked my head back in to wave at Alice and Norman, then took the lift down, left the building and ran smack into Carol, weeping at the bus stop, looking like she’d really settled in for the duration of this hormone-maelstrom. I knew I couldn’t get away without making at least a token gesture of concern, so I gave her arm a squeeze and asked if she was OK. I didn’t put an arm round her, or take a seat beside her, but she was about to burst with news of her affair with Norman which we ALL KNEW ABOUT ALREADY, so she refused to take any notice of the International Body Language of Hurrying, and I found myself positioning my face into shocked-but-caring mode and sitting next to her while she told me far more about herself than I ever wanted to know about anyone. She told me all about how long it had been wrong between her and her husband, and how she and Norman actually had a lot in common, once they’d started talking, which they’d done one evening when they were the only two left in the office, and it had just happened – she would
never
have planned this – but they hadn’t wanted anyone to know so please, please, I mustn’t tell anyone – the stress of keeping it from an office full of people (who secretly all knew) was tearing her apart.

It was forty-five –
forty-five
– minutes before I was allowed to get on a bus, which was then stuck in the most abysmal traffic the city’s ever concocted so I didn’t get to the bar until 8. Thom was already there, and it was clear from the state of him that he’d finished a terrible first week back at work too and had been unwinding pretty vigorously. He greeted me with a giant bear hug and pulled me over to the bar to get me a drink.

Thom: I’m sorry. I love you, Keeks.

Me: You do? Already? It does
not
feel like that time of the evening yet.

I was so tired but couldn’t see Eve to wish her a happy birthday, so I just took a booth in the corner. Unfortunately I didn’t see her assistant, Luc ‘Complains’ Compain, lurking in the booth either, and was trapped listening to his deadening French-accented litany of woes for half an hour.

Me: I’m really sorry to hear about your troubles, Luc—

Luc: Oh, GOWD! Iss not even like anyone list-
ens
to me when I know ’ow to fix these sings. Am one of ze young-est, cool-est pee-puhl in ze company, and may contacts are uh-mazing, but no one will list-
en
to mi. A know Eve’s your frrrriend, and she is
fabuleuse
, but zat pless! ’Ow zey ever make any mon-ay for zeir chari-tubble acts is beyond mi.

Me: Do you think you’ll move elsewhere?

Luc: A wissh! But A know zey need mi, so won’t give mi a gowd reference to let mi go anywhere else. But zey won’t give mi mowr mon-ay eizer. So A’m stuck somewhere zat A’m too gowd fohr. Kiki, iss such a bur-donn.

You know how some French accents just sound sexy no matter what you’re saying? Luc doesn’t have one of those. After half an hour Eve finally appeared, and with a smile at Luc (which instantly started him simpering) set me free. She hugged me.