weddings

Want to restore your faith in humanity? Go to a wedding

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20160625_132441I didn’t think I was going to write anything today.

Ever since the news came on Friday morning that Britain had voted to leave the EU, I’ve been wandering around my house like a lost soul. I’ve been behaving like I’ve just been dumped – stress-eating chocolate, staring at the wall whilst hot water runs over my head in the shower, and feeling like every song I hear on the radio is about it, in some way. The world seemed so topsy-turvy that I thought “Sod it” and bought a punnet of ripen-at-home nectarines, despite the practically built-in assumption that they won’t ripen, they’ll just stay rock hard for two weeks, soften for an hour, and then turn green. As luck would have it, they’ve actually come up lovely and now sit on my kitchen unit as a little symbol of hope.

I didn’t think I’d blog today because I was worried that my usual subject matter – relationships, confidence, and generally trying to get around without falling over – would seem too trivial at a time of such uncertainty. And then I went to a wedding and realised that just isn’t true.

I sat in a church yesterday and watched two lovely people get married. I went to their reception and listened as the people they love said wonderful things about them. I heard about guests who had travelled to be there, I saw people who didn’t know each other making friends, and I cried – like I always do – as the groom told a room full of people how much he loves his wife.

It’s hard not to feel optimistic in this kind of setting. Because relationships are everything. They’re how we learn to care about other people. They teach us how much luck is involved with how somebody comes to be the person that they are. And they help us realise that without compassion, love and understanding, we’re going to end up alone.

Everybody you see at a wedding wants the best for the bride and groom. That’s why they’re there. It’s why they’ve given up a whole day for it, why they’ve got dressed up smartly, and why, in many cases, they’ve decided to wear heels for 12 hours straight. You don’t do something like that lightly.

We’re all capable of doing amazing things for the people we love. We don’t think twice about it – they’re part of us so we give them our time, our ears, and, if we’re feeling particularly generous, perhaps even one of our Percy Pigs.

And in my view, the world works best when we want the best for other people too – even if they’re not on our Christmas card list, or from around here. When we’re able to look beyond the people in our immediate lives and see human faces that deserve just as much safety and joy as everybody else.

I’m deeply concerned that such a huge amount of the propaganda and rhetoric being shared of late has positioned certain people and areas of society as ‘other’, as a problem to be removed. No good has ever come of such a viewpoint and I’m startled to see it spreading so far and wide.

I’ve always said that I don’t use this blog to talk about politics but, really, politics is just about people – together we decide what kind of world we want to live in. I consider myself to be an observer of people. I notice stuff and I write it down. And what I’m seeing horrifies me. Usually there’s a bit of humour in it but I’m struggling to find any of this funny, except in its absurdity.

So maybe talking about relationships isn’t so trivial after all. Because without them, what are we? Just individual people, living our lives and not giving a damn about anybody else? I’m no expert but I don’t think that is going to work.

I’m nervous about what is to come, what the future has in store. But for now I will hold on tight to the optimism I felt at yesterday’s wedding, and to the knowledge that love and unity will always win over division.

When dear friends get married: Why I always cry at weddings

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When you get to our age, you find yourself going to a lot of weddings.

It’s how people in their late twenties/early thirties spend their weekends – we go to weddings, we go to hen and stag dos and we have conversations about how much worse our hangovers are now that we’re old. We’re a lot of fun.

And it’s very easy to feel cynical about all these nuptials. Weddings are tiring, our feet weren’t made for wearing high heels for 12 hours straight (particularly the boys), and our stomachs takes days to forgive us for eating our meals at funny times of the day.

But that stuff is all just logistics. The real reason we go to weddings is well worth getting a few blisters and a confused tummy for.

I’ve seen lots of my friends get married now. Real, dear, close chums with whom I’ve shared various periods of my life – school, university, jobs, that time when I learnt that I don’t get on with Sambuca… We’ve grown up together, one way or another, so when one of us gets married, it feels like a big day for all of us.

There’s not much else that we get to see our friends commit to that is so significant (though the pals who witnessed my ‘let’s wear nothing but fuchsia pink!’ phase might feel differently) so being there to witness it is a real privilege.

And for me, seeing a close friend walk down the aisle to marry the person with whom they’ll spend the rest of their life is enough to bring not just a tear but a flood to my eyes. While lots of people express joy through smiling, I do it by turning my face into a waterfall. I’ve tried not to do it, to think of all the make-up I piled on just moments before and hold it together, but I fail every time.

And if my friend getting married cries too then I might as well just call it a day and go to bed – I’m such a mess by the time they’re pronounced husband and wife that you’d think I’d been watching The Notebook. Whilst newborn babies manage to behave beautifully throughout the ceremony, it is me who needs to be carried out and wiped down.

But I actually think it’s a good thing. However you express pride in your friends, whether through tears, grins or high fives, it’s good to show it. One of the best things about being an adult is being able to look back on the times we’ve spent with our chums – the nights in eating cheese, the nights out dancing to cheese – and feel utterly amazed that somehow we’re suddenly grown up enough to do something as serious as getting married. The fact that one of our parents hasn’t stepped in to tell us to stop showing off and calm down still amazes me.

For all the panda eyes and weeping and resulting dehydration, weddings remain one of the best ways to spend a weekend. Seeing a friend looking happier than they ever have before (with the small exception of that time the DJ played a Five vs Blue megamix on their hen do – good luck beating that, hubby!) is just about as good as it gets.

And whether you’re likely to cry during the ceremony or not, I still recommend taking a packet of tissues with you to a wedding. At our age, the hangover you get the following morning is enough to make anybody sob.

Will it be cold there? Will I get a seat? And other things grown-ups think about

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hand-gelYour brain changes as you get older.

You think more about the weather, the next time you’ll get to sit down and how much washing you need to get done, and less about about parties and hair glitter and whether you’re ready to take the dance routine you made up to Picture Of You by Boyzone to a wider audience.

And I guess it’s inevitable now that we’re responsible for more than just our social life and our cassette collection – there are bills to pay and gardens to weed and conversations about the benefits of online grocery shopping that just have to be had.

And this change of focus affects pretty much everything – our approach to going out, to seeing friends, to deciding what type of surface we’re willing to sleep on…

And even though we’re not so old that we’re not still presented with some of the same opportunities as there were when we were younger – there are still parties (weddings), and gigs (YouTube) and even sleepovers (cohabitation) – when they do come up, our grown-up brains will think about things that wouldn’t even have occurred to us when we were younger. Allow me to compare – though please note that, as a person who was young in the nineties and early noughties, my concept of what a young person thinks about may be slightly out of date.

Scenario 1: Going to a party/pub/wedding/on holiday/on a train/leaving the house to do anything whatsoever
Young person thoughts: Will there be booze? How do I get the booze? Will he/she be there? Is this the right occasion for me to wear my skirt-trouser?
Adult thoughts: Will I be too cold? Will I be too hot? Will water be readily available? Will I get a seat? What is the toilet situation? Is there a lot of walking involved? Will there be dickheads?

Scenario 2: Selecting a new dress
Young person thoughts: Is this something Baby Spice would wear? Do my platform trainers go with it?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a pocket that will hold a tissue? Can I wear proper pants with it? Is it dry-clean only? (Because if it is, you can forget it.)

Scenario 3: Choosing a new handbag
Young person thoughts: Is it big enough to hold this inexplicably enormous ring binder I insist on owning? And this tin pencil case I’ve covered with my initials written in Tipp-Ex?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a good zip? What is the pocket situation? Is it so deep that I’ll never be able to find anything? Is it big enough to hold an umbrella, cardigan and Tupperware box? Does it have a good handle?

Scenario 4: Somebody coming to stay at your house
Young person thoughts: Is it a boy? Does he smell? Could I beat him at Street Fighter II?
Adult thoughts: Are they clean? Do they respect bathrooms? Will they notice that I haven’t dusted the television?

Scenario 5: Going away for the weekend
Young person thoughts: Will there be a TV? Can I watch Gladiators?
Adult thoughts: Will I be back earlier enough on Sunday to do my washing? Will there be dickheads?

Yes, we think very differently now.

I don’t remember when things changed; when antibacterial hand wash started mattering more to me than my mobile phone, or when I first wanted to bail on a trip to the cinema on the off-chance that somebody might sniff during the film… but now that we’re here there’s no turning back.

But thankfully it doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun, we’re just a little more prescriptive. If you can find us a wedding party with comfortable chairs, a steady supply of H2O, sparklingly clean toilets and with a minimal number of dickheads on the guest list, then you’re in for quite the party.

And if there happens to be some Boyzone on the playlist then that’s even better. I’ve been working on a little something I think you’ll enjoy…

We got married

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Charlotte and Leon 2013_ Ceremony Photograph _27Good day dear readers and welcome back! Since we last met I have successfully become married (and maintained said marriage for a whole four weeks), been to the other side of the world for a honeymoon in Bali that was so good I WEPT when we left, and discovered that life as a married woman is very, very similar to life as every other type of woman I’ve ever been. (Should anything change, you’ll be the first to know).

For my first contribution to the world as Mrs B, here’s a run-down of what it’s like to have your wedding day, should any of you wish to give it a go. I strongly recommend it.

1. Throughout the morning, you will feel like you are about to do a bungee jump and that 120 of your family and friends have come to watch and photograph the occasion.

2. You will not eat. Sorry, eat? Food?! With your lips that are the only thing stopping you throwing up your intestines? Oh no. And as a result you’ll feel dangerously weak by 9pm, go in pursuit of something, anything to keep you going through the dancing and discover that your friends and family – who are apparently GANNETS – have eaten every last morsel.

3. You will spend very little time with your new wife/husband. Don’t panic though – you’ve got the honeymoon and the rest of your born days together so a little space won’t do you any harm.

4. As I’ve said before, getting married is like being a celebrity for a day.  But what I’d forgotten is that, in this scenario, it’s your friends and family who have come to see you, not some crazy strangers who’ve bought your album or stared at your airbrushed face in a magazine and convinced themselves you could be BFFs if only you could meet. And with that comes guilt that it’s mathematically impossible for you to give them all the attention they deserve. So the least you can do is make sure there’s enough booze available so they won’t remember the neglect.

5. You will never wear a better outfit in your life. Unless you have a few thousand pounds to spend on your attire every day in which case we are VERY different people.

6. You will say ‘Thank You’ more times than you will inhale. And you will mean it, too.

7. Going to the toilet is the only privacy you will get all day. And it’s marvellous. Two or three minutes of solitude without having to thank anybody or make your hilarious “I’ve not eaten since Thursday!” joke (that isn’t really a joke) for the 120th time. To any future brides, I strongly recommend purchasing a dress you can negotiate for bathroom purposes without assistance. Your bridesmaids will also be most grateful.

8. The first dance is a bizarre experience. This is best explained through the medium of pros and cons:

Pros

– It’s a chance to show your friends that you can be both wicked sick cool and profoundly romantic through the selection of just one song.

– You get to have what is basically a really big revolving hug with your new husband/wife which makes up for the total lack of time you’ll have spent together during the day.

– You can even have a little chat about how it’s all going if you’re feeling ambitious.

– It’s another opportunity for people to see just how well co-ordinated your outfits are by holding them really close together.

Cons

– You are not a dancer. And especially not one who is experienced in dancing in a full length dress and shoes you forgot to wear-in. You have nothing to offer to this dance floor.

– Your friends and family have no expectations of you – frankly, they find watching you rotate as bizarre as you do – but you can’t help but feel that you’re letting them down by failing to have a routine prepared.

– Having everybody watch you with their camera phones held up to their face is equivalent to each one of them saying: “You can’t dance; you know it and I know it. And now Facebook is going to know it too.”

9. The ceremony is the best bit. When you’re planning a wedding, the actual marriage part is just one of many, many logistics – even if it is, arguably, the most important one – and, as a result, you don’t take the time to look forward to the loveliness of saying so many super swell things to each other in such a simultaneously public yet private way. But, as it turns out, that part was positively dreamy, which is good seeing as that was the whole point of the day.

10. You do not have capacity in your brain to look forward to the day as much as you will wish you had when it’s over. It’s not possible. Your head would explode.

Wedding dilemmas: The guest list

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IMG_2901They say it’s the hardest part of any wedding. And they’re right.

I thought the dress would be difficult. Finding an item in which you look so incredible people gasp for air in your presence sounds tough. But it turns out that anyone will look nice in a wedding dress. Even someone who still has a skin condition only babies get 27 YEARS after they were born.

And finding a venue was easier than I thought too. They have food and tables and are willing to serve you booze until the early hours of the morning. What’s not to like?

But the guest list is tricky. It’s sensitive, it’s complicated and – above all else – it determines whether you’ll be so strapped for cash after the honeymoon that you have to eat your wedding cards to survive.

So how do you choose who to invite? There’s a lot of advice around about what justifies an invitation to a wedding: how long you’ve been friends, how close you are, the likelihood that they’ll buy you that Cath Kidston rolling pin you’ve had your eye on… but very little on how to rule people out. So here’s a check list to help slim down those numbers:

1) Do they get dangerously over-excited in the presence of food and booze?
It’s customary for guests to be given some kind of meal and beverage at a wedding. And if black or deep red were the colours brides wore then this may not be a problem, but white and cream are much less forgiving. One ketchupy paw here, another gravy soaked cheek there and all of a sudden your couture looks like a mucky tea towel. So choosing guests who don’t need hosing down after dinner is advisable.

2) Will they think it’s funny to shout out mid-ceremony?
When I’m standing at the altar and the shit is about to get real, I can’t imagine I’ll be in the mood for jokes. As entertaining as it is when somebody bursts in during a soap opera wedding at the ‘Does anybody have any reason why these two mugs should not be married?’ moment, I don’t think it would be so funny in real life. So if you’ve got a friend whose pursuit of laughs is likely to outweigh their fear of being punched in the face with a bouquet, maybe leave them off the list.

3) Would your fiancé be better off marrying them?
The groom’s final chance to make a run for it before the ball and chain is attached comes when he’s arrived at the venue and is watching the guests arrive. So be careful not to invite anyone who might make him think he’s made the wrong choice. For example, my other half likes festivals and camping and generally being sociable outdoors. I, on the other hand, don’t even like watching festival coverage on TV because all the mud makes me angry. So I won’t be inviting any women with a penchant for portaloos lest he realises at the last minute what he’s missing. Best to opt for your most offensive acquaintances to make sure you stand out as the best option.

4) Will they notice if the registrar’s eyes don’t match the centre pieces?
As a couple for whom it took more than 12 months to change the light bulb in our bedroom, I think it’s unlikely that we will be organised enough to ensure every detail of our wedding is perfect. And that’s fine as long as nobody mentions how much of a shame it is that the wedding vows are not written in the same font as the invitations, or that the sausages on the barbecue are not the exact pink of the flowers. So I recommend crossing off any perfectionists you know and prioritising your less observant friends and relatives – they won’t notice if the wedding car banner actually says ‘Just Barried’.

5) Can they dance?
The best thing about wedding receptions is that everyone lets their hair down and dances like idiots until their feet can take no more. And just as good singers are not welcome at karaoke, good dancers have no place at weddings. I want air punching and hip thrusting and the occasional robot. So if you’re as dangerous as I am on the dance floor, leave anybody with rhythm or co-ordination at home, they’ll just make you look bad.

So there you have it. It’s a cut throat approach but at least it’ll prevent you having to spend your big day in a marquee the size of Wales.

Or if you choose to opt out then just make sure you buy some honey. Card can be ever so tasteless on its own.