How I'm preparing for 'The Wedding'

... or Dull, Dull, Very, Very Dull

If it hadn’t been for the frock and the cake I’d have been bored at both my own weddings.
And it’s so much worse when you’re ‘just’ a guest.
How DULL can something be? A whole day spent wearing something you probably won’t wear again (at considerable expense to yourself, unless you have a ‘range’ of wedding outfits you use on a rotational system and don’t care about fashion faux pas), of having to smile and – especially if you’re daft enough to marry into an Italian family – having to kiss people you wouldn’t ordinarily nod absently to in a queue at Sainsbury’s and you’ve even bought the Happy Couple a flippin’ present!

Then there’s the whole waiting around whilst photographs are ‘arranged’ and guests are shunted about and put into order and it gets painful and uncomfortable and BORING and all you want to do is find a nice sofa somewhere and a TV to flick on and watch whilst you wait for the Good Bits. Which never seem to come in my experience.

If you’re lucky the food’s okay and at least you get to sit down for a bit. Followed by a stand and a clap, then another stand and a clap then another….. oh god, so dreary….

In my head, if I ever had the idiot sense to get married again (which, in my fairytale, eternally romantic brain I hadn’t entirely written off the prospect of) I was going to do it barefoot under a majestic Oak tree on the top of a hill on a glorious late Summer’s evening, wearing denim and lace, with daisies in my hair. I had no idea who my Groom would be but our guests would also be barefoot and we’d have fish and chips brought to us in a van from the local shop and we’d eat from newspaper into the twilight hours.
I hadn’t got as far as music. Maybe there’d be a Harpist. I don’t know. There certainly wouldn’t be a bleedin’ DJ belting out “Congratulations” and “Angels” at every turn.

Nor would there be a bar. Perhaps some Elderflower Presse. And nobody would have to sit where they were told to sit and nobody would have to bring presents, and nobody would have to buy a special outfit to wear, in fact ties and hats would be BANNED; taking off of shoes would’ve been compulsory and more importantly I’d want people to HAVE FUN!

Which *ahem* okay, didn’t happen. But then I married a bachelor. And as he was the ‘baby’ of the family he HAD to do it in style, didn’t he?

I’d have been just as happy getting married in the back garden where I’d been proposed to, under the cherry tree with maybe the passing wildlife and a nosy neighbour as witnesses.

I seriously couldn’t contemplate marrying a Prince – even though I did have a bit of a hankering for Prince Andrew in my formative years (before I realised they were ALL going to be bald before they were 35). It would do my head in. I’d have to just put my foot down and say “Look, I’m sorry, William/Percy/Henry I don’t want any fuss, can’t we just have a nice quiet ‘do’ and run some shonky footage on the News at Ten?”

Big Day? The only Big thing about it for me is the lie-in I'm planning!