The Wedding Diaries (24 page)

Cara: Hi, is Tony there, please? This is Taz Taylor’s assistant.

Me: Hi Cara, it’s Kiki. Tony’s not here at the moment – can I help?

Cara: Oh
Christ
, Kiki. The signing’s due to start in an hour, and Taz has decided he can only do it if he’s sitting at a specific antique mahogany desk. He says all other furniture makes him look fat.

Me: Cara. Where’s the desk?

Cara: [beginning howling] We don’t know! He’s seen it once but can’t remember where.

Me: Shit. Can’t he sign standing up? Or … in bed? Very sexy-celebrity-fuck-you?

Cara: No, he … hold
on
… [sounds of a struggle]

New voice: Who is this?

Me: It’s Kiki. How can I help you?

Taz Taylor: You get me my fucking desk, or you can kiss goodbye to this signing. You hear me?

Me: Absolutely, Mr Taylor, we’ll get that desk over to you within the hour.

He’d already hung up, that grubby little scumbag, but I’d had an idea. Who did Taz Taylor worship more than anyone else on Earth? Madonna. And where had Madonna stayed on one tour in London? The Dorchester. Giving him time to move away and start screaming at someone else, I rang Cara back and explained the plan, then called the hotel and told them exactly what we would need.

Fifty-five minutes after, four porters brought a mahogany desk down from the Audley Suite to the Pavilion, as Cara recounted to Taz how we had called all round the city and contacted every antiques dealership in West London, until we’d discovered – fancy that! –
the
very mahogany antique desk that Madonna had loved so much when she’d stayed here. The manager, accompanying the desk on its journey, added that she’d loved it so much that she’d wanted to buy it from the hotel, but it was a very special design from an era that prized the perfect proportions of the human body in furniture, and a very, very rare antique. They’d turned down her kind offers and she had been seeking its twin ever since.

Taz did the signing. But thank Christ alive that Jacki always said she’d rather sport an eighties wet-look perm than have him do her wedding hair.

TO DO:

How to make our Redhood Farm wedding unique from Nick & Rose’s: magician?

When making wedding decision, remember a useful rule of behavioural thumb: WWTTND (What Would Taz Taylor Not Do)

May 29th

Another Thom trip! Less to write about this one. A weekend in a beautiful B&B outside Cambridge, during which Thom managed to forget his horrible work-stress enough to do a lot of rigorous testing that the gold giftcard was still valid.

(It was.)

June’s Classic Wedding!

In the midst of the turmoil, preparations went forward for Scarlett’s wedding and, almost before she knew it, she was clad in Ellen’s wedding dress and veil, coming down the wide stairs of Tara on her father’s arm, to face a house packed full with guests. Afterward she remembered, as from a dream, the hundreds of candles flaring on the walls, her mother’s face, loving, a little bewildered, her lips moving in a silent prayer for her daughter’s happiness, Gerald flushed with brandy and pride that his daughter was marrying both money, a fine name and an old one – and Ashley, standing at the bottom of the steps with Melanie’s arm through his.

When she saw the look on his face, she thought: ‘This can’t be real. It can’t be. It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up and find it’s all been a nightmare.’

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

June 4th

Today was the most fun I’ve ever had doing imaginary shopping. We picked our wedding list with super-futuristic hand scanners, running around the shop and scanning everything that caught my eye (grabby) or that Thom deemed useful (yeah,
sexy
). Wedding list, you say? Indeed. The conversation about this whole process was
stunningly
pain-free. Last week over dinner, I’d really dug myself in for a long session of haggling, but actually:

Me: Thom, I’ve been thinking about a wedding list. I know you didn’t like the idea before—

Thom: Oh God yeah – I can’t bear the thought of guests spending money on things we’ll never, ever use. Did you see some of the stuff the Noses were given by people who insisted on going off-list?

Me: Um … what?

Thom: I think it’s a really good idea. But two conditions: we have lots of cheap options, and we only give out details if anyone asks.

Me: Um … OK. That was weirdly easy.

A few days later I was still carrying that shell-shock around with me when we hit the floors, clutching our scanners like weapons of mass selection. Thom looked at my excited face and reminded me: ‘Kiki. Nothing too huge. Small things for any friends who want to get us something. Deal?’ I squealed and sprinted down the escalators to the crockery department, and started zapping all the gilt-edged bone china I could lay my lasers on. After a minute or two I heard a polite cough behind me. Thom. With a heavy heart, I started deleting those £75 plates and bowls from my zapper, and moved over to the boxes of crockery: £60 for the full set. Boooooooooo. I guess I should probably have waited for him to leave the floor before I started scanning the £6,000 rugs, too.

TO DO:

Calligrapher to write the place names, seating plan, table names?

Toasting drinks – shot glasses with pomegranate seeds and ice cold gin? Peach bellinis?

Wedding day kit for Thom – razors, balm, socks, little note

Shirt for Thom – embroidered collar?

Underwear – go for fitting at Rigby & Peller

Jewellery – look into vintage tiaras or jewelled hairpins, since Dad can’t help

Confetti cones from old book jackets?

Shoes for the wedding – Louboutins?

June 6th

Thom came home from work an odd shade of grey. I went to kiss him but he took one of my wrists in each of his hands and sat me down on the sofa. I was frightened, as a hundred terrible possibilities raced through my head.

Thom: Kiki … I’ve lost my job.

Me: Oh, God.

Thom: I’m so sorry.

Me: Thom! Why are you sorry? I’m sorry for you! Oh Thom, are you OK? What happened? What did they say? Are you alright?

Thom: I’m fine, Keeks. I’m pissed off, but it was hardly a bolt from the blue.

Me: What happened? Are you OK?

Thom: I’m fine. Really. That sweep of redundancies over the last couple of weeks; I thought I was safe, that it was over. I should have known I was still in the firing line. Ha! Literally. All that shit about the PowerPoint, and having to check in with Rowland every night. I should have seen this was coming, there’d been rumours for ages … But what about the wedding?

Me: What
about
the wedding? What’s that got to do with it? They weren’t sponsoring it, were they?

Thom: Err … they kind of
were
, actually. That salary they’ve been giving me – that was going to be covering all that stuff at the wedding.

Me: But – we
can
still get married, can’t we?

Thom: [hugging me] Of course we can! Please still marry me? It just means that it’ll have to be a lot smaller. We can go through your lists and work out what we can still afford. Kiki, I’m sorry, but Redhood Farm might have to be rethought.

Me: [trying to hold it together] Oh, Thom, don’t worry about that! It only matters that you’re OK.

Thom: Kiki, it’s alright. I’m fine. You can talk about the wedding if you like.

Me: We can fix this. I’m sure we can. We can make this all OK again. [dying inside. But
will not
cry]

We talked for a long time – about cutbacks whispered about for a long time at the company, about the souring relationship between Thom and his boss, about how long Thom had been unhappy there – really unhappy, not just unhappy because he isn’t an astronaut or a zookeeper – and how really, really, once the shock wore off, he was happy, although frightened, but happy that this meant he would have to take action about the situation and work out what he really wanted to do with his life. He apologised for being so stressed at me over the last few months.

While I write this, I try not to think that Thom may have known this was coming. I try not to think about anything, especially not the possibility that I won’t have my dress, or the caterers, or Redhood Farm, because every time I do think about them I forget that this is Thom’s problem and something I need to support him through, and instead I find that I am a horrible person, and almost crying again.

June 7th

I had plans to see Greta tonight, but was going to cancel to be with Thom. He said I was being ridiculous and he didn’t want me becoming a shut-in just because of his joblessness. Why is he in such good spirits about this? I did as he commanded and met Greta for dinner in Chinatown. She greeted me with, ‘You did
not
tell me how hot your fiancé is. How is
he
keeping?’

Me: [starting to cry] He lost his jo-o-ob.

Greta: God. Kiki. I’m so sorry.

Me: No, I’m sorry. Please don’t think I’m a crier. I never cry. Don’t judge me.

Greta: [laughing] I’m not going to judge you, Kiki. Are
you
OK?

I felt ridiculous enough that I managed to stop crying, and tell her everything. About Thom’s horrible job, about my dreadful inclination to immediately think about our wedding, about the pressure it was putting on him, about how I thought I was becoming a terrible person.

Greta: Have you drafted any emails with a minute-by-minute breakdown of the day?

Me: No.

Greta: Are you getting to your wedding by helicopter?

Me: No. But that sounds good.

Greta: Have you slept with Thom’s brother?

Me: No. He doesn’t have one.

Greta: Shame. But I guess you’re in the clear.

I hope she’s right.

When I got home, I told Thom about his new fan. He said, ‘Oh,
reeeeeally
?’ in his most perverty voice, clearly delighted with his conquest. I’ve got to show him
some
ray of light in his life.

June 8th

I went over to Mum and Dad’s after work today, to tell them about Thom’s job. I was nervous – I didn’t want them to worry, and I certainly didn’t want them echoing Thom’s concerns about going ahead with the wedding we could no longer afford – but in the end I never got to tell them at all. Mum handed me a pile of bridal magazines from her friend’s daughter in a most distracted manner (no lectures about not reading them while drinking a cup of tea or tearing anything out before she’d called her friend to get her daughter’s permission) then went up to see if Dad was awake yet (he was having another nap). She came down again to say that he was still asleep. I asked her what on earth she’d been doing to the poor man to exhaust him like this, and Mum stared at me like I wasn’t really there. Tough crowd. I didn’t fancy breaking the news to her alone, though, so I made my excuses again and went home.

I really need to talk to Susie about this. What’s up with those two?

June 10th

Home isn’t great right now either. I think Thom’s still slightly in shock. He doesn’t sit around in a dressing gown watching
Loose Women
and eating pickled onions from a jar; instead he’s up and dressed by the time I leave the house each morning, tapping away at the computer or making lists and phone calls about which he is most mysterious. I’m waiting for the crash. I think this denial is about to come and bite us all, big time.

I ventured a comment that may well go down as the least popular suggestion since Herod suggested cutting down on the baby population:

Me: Thom – it might be too soon to be searching for silver linings for this whole thing, but won’t your redundancy money mean that we
don’t
have to worry about the wedding?

Thom: How come?

Me: You were there a while, weren’t you, and those places don’t throw you onto the street with only the coppers from their pockets, do they?

Thom: So what, you’ve spent that money already?

Me: [gulping] No, of course I haven’t spent it, but you said that we’d have to find some kind of solution to you not having a job anymore, and it seems … a bit … like we’ve got … a solution? [fading off]

Thom: Kiki! I don’t know
when
I’ll find another job. I’ve got rent to pay here, and bills, and I’ve got to eat, and I’ve got no idea how long I’ll be doing all that on the money they’ve given me. And even if I found a job tomorrow, how many people get given that kind of money? Imagine what we could do with it! That’s a flat deposit! And you want to spend it on one day’s dress and dinner?