The Complete Shambles

Thirty years ago, I had never expected to be planning my wedding. Truth to tell, I had never particularly expected to get married at all. Growing up with four brothers, I had been kept far too busy during my formative years dodging footballs, cricket balls, and home-launched plates of sausages and chips to have had the energy to dream of bridal veils; and while in my young adulthood I was aware that people did fall in love – and sometimes even with people who were inclined to love them back, which I found impressively well-organized – the notion of marriage seemed somehow for other women than me, women who had grown-up things like kitchen scales and savings accounts, women who never ran out of laundry detergent.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Because I did not live entirely in a cave, I did attend a few weddings along the way, occasions during which I drank a great deal of champagne and noticed dimly that the bride was wearing a long white dress, and seemed happy to be doing so; but since I had not immediately planned to follow in her footsteps – and since, lord knows, hordes of suitors had not been battering down my door to beg me to – any further details sailed as far over my head as I had wished some of those crickets balls had back in my childhood.

Then, one day when I was on the verge of middle-age, I met a man at a party. And we talked, and discovered we liked each other, and when he asked me on a date I said yes. And we talked a lot more, and discovered we liked each other a great deal, and a few months later, when he asked me to marry him, I said yes to that, too.

And suddenly, I was planning a church wedding.

To say that I was ill-prepared for this task would be an understatement. My mother was long gone – and God rest her soul, she was never what you’d have called a wellspring of practical advice anyway – my other women relatives were back in Britain, and most of my married friends in Los Angeles had plighted their various troths in their back yards, or on the beach, or in dubiously binding ceremonies on exotic islands far away. A traditional church wedding for me was uncharted territory indeed.

I did what I always do in these circumstances. I bought some books and studied up. And step by step, Virgil to my own Dante, I guided my bemused self through to the end of the labyrinthine journey.

Mr. Los Angeles asked me, just the smallest bit nervously, if I wanted an engagement ring. When I replied that I had never seen the point of having a lump of money sitting on my finger which could have been used on a trip to Europe, he looked relieved. At least, he did until I started planning that trip to Europe.

I introduced Mr. Los Angeles to the priest who would marry us, a snowy-haired Barry Fitzgerald wannabe, who took him aside with brow furrowed in concern and hissed nervously, “She’s intelligent, but can she make a cup of tea?” Mr. Los Angeles’ response is unrecorded.

Mr. Los Angeles and I attended the church’s compulsory couples’ retreat, which was surprisingly enjoyable, except that the one we were sent to was for some reason not in friendly bohemian Westside Los Angeles but up the coast in posh Santa Barbara, where the other fiancées compared their diamond sizes and the nice woman who was leading the group handed out notebooks for us to write down our thoughts, reassuring us not to worry about any literary quality, since, she added waggishly, “It’s not as if anyone here is exactly a professional writer, is it?” and everyone laughed merrily at the notion, while I shrank into my seat, feeling the horns curl from my forehead and the cloven hoofs sprout from my extremities and praying that no one would ask me what I did for a living.

I went to a department store to make out my bridal list and got the most terrible case of giggles when the assistant asked me what I envisioned for formal china.

I went to dress shops pleading in vain for a hundred and one women with upswept hairdos to show me a wedding dress that would not make me look like a collapsed meringue, and burst into tears when the hundred and second, suddenly shrieking triumphantly, “Who says you can’t wear blue for your wedding?” brandished a rag-like garment that was the precise shade and color of my summer uniform from St. Angela’s Providence Convent grammar school for girls.

It all came together at last. By omitting the word “wedding” from my shopping expeditions, I had acquired a creamy, dreamy, lacy dress that was reminiscent of neither schooldays nor whipped egg whites. I had gathered five small bridesmaids, all looking adorable in green gingham frocks that could be worn again. I had invited three grown-up attendants, wearing their own favorite dresses and looking pretty lovely, too. I met my father at the church door, and we made it all the way down the aisle to the altar without once infuriating each other, which was something of a record in our relationship. Mr. Los Angeles and I repeated the correct vows, addressed each other by the correct names, and when Mr. Los Angeles kissed the bride, he did so with such enthusiasm that Father Wannabe-Barry rapped him smartly over the head with his prayer sheet and declared firmly that, “That’s enough of that, now.” On the video, you can see Mr. Los Angeles wincing in pain.

The reception was where I was looking forward to relaxing. A wonderfully bossy caterer friend had swooped in, produced an array of festive fare for a buffet line, and recommended we not bother about seating assignments, but let everyone fend for themselves; since all the wedding books agreed that the only strict requirement for this part of the ceremony would be for the bridal party to sit at the bridal table, this seemed ideal to me, and as Mr. Los Angeles and I floated into the car to take us to friends, champagne and good wishes, I felt each care recede like scraps of confetti blown into the wind.

What nobody had thought to write in the wedding books was that the American understanding of the bridal party is different from the British; that, while in Britain it traditionally includes the bride’s family, in America it traditionally does not.

With the result that, while Mr. Los Angeles and I were busy greeting friends in the reception line, my British family were approaching the bridal table with assured step and buttocks bent confidently seatwards. Only to be intercepted by a tall, broad, and all-American usher with a polite but firm, “Sorry, dudes, you can’t sit here.”

My immediate family were philosophical about this. For my brothers, any benefit attached to sharing a meal table with their sister was marginal at wildly optimistic best; and my father, spent from our triumph of family harmony in the church, was no doubt relieved not to be asked to push our luck further. However, the party contained another member, my mother’s sister, a magnificently combustible grande dame known to my generation as Aunt Alicia. I happened to adore Aunt Alicia, who was generous, unconventional, and, when in the mood, hilariously funny; but she was also what you might reasonably describe as a pungent taste, and when Aunt Alicia was unhappy, you knew it.

And Aunt Alicia was very unhappy indeed. Aunt Alicia, in fact, had never been so insulted in her life. Aunt Alicia’s place was at the bride’s table, not among the hoi polloi who had known the bride for barely five minutes. Aunt Alicia was a respectable widow and the mother of six children, and before any bloody upstart American man think of addressing her as “dude,” he might try pushing six out himself and see how he liked it. Aunt Alicia’s niece’s wedding was a complete shambles, did the rest of the room hear her? (they did). And in case Mr. Los Angeles’ Sunday school teacher, sidling nervously in from the bathroom, had missed her point (she hadn’t), a complete and UTTER! BLOODY!! SHAMBLES!!!

Storming to the first empty table she saw, she swept it clear of the handbags, coats, and various items temporarily left there by the people who had previously believed they were occupying it, established a rival court of herself, my father and brothers, two more aunts and a couple of cousins, and commanded the offending usher to soothe their wounded spirits by delivering copious quantities of wine, which she consumed with gusto while continuing to voice her opinion of the occasion.

The previous occupants, returning from the buffet with their food, were required to set their plates aside to retrieve from the floor their gear and tackle and trim, and then set themselves to struggle to eat their meal – since more guests had arrived than expected and all tables were by now occupied – standing up.

Which was particularly unfortunate since the previous occupants’ party consisted of Mr. Los Angeles’ boss, Mr. Los Angeles’ boss’s boss, and, in a particular mark of honor for Mr. Los Angeles, Mr. Los Angeles’ capo di tutti capi himself, forgoing his golf game especially for the occasion.

“Who was that woman?” Mr. Los Angeles’ capo asked him when he returned from our honeymoon.

“My wife’s aunt,” said Mr. Los Angeles.

“She lives in London, right?” asked the capo.

“She does,” affirmed Mr. Los Angeles.

“That’s – what? Five and a half thousand miles from here?” said the capo.

“Something like that,” said Mr. Los Angeles.

“Good,” said the capo.

To the end of Aunt Alicia’s life, she was reliving in glorious technicolor the complete shambles of her niece’s wedding day. But Mr. Los Angeles and I will celebrate its 30th anniversary this week, so something must have gone right.