We were on holiday in Thailand and, as you do, decided to go for a walk on the moonlit beach. Another couple were there releasing a lantern, and it really was the most romantic of settings. My boyfriend dropped to one knee and did the deed – not that I can remember a word of what he said – and of course, I said yes. Romanticism was cut short however – the crashing waves combined with all the beers I’d necked that evening meant I needed to get back to the hotel and use the facilities, sharpish. Of course then we had to call our parents and all our friends and tell them the good news, so by the time we were ready to go out and celebrate all the bars were closed (except for an Irish bar, which was blasting out ‘Cotton Eye Joe’). Instead we went back to our room and shared a lukewarm can of lager from the minibar. The next day, I woke up with food poisoning.
Katy, Chesterfield
‘Okay so, here’s the thing.’ Nora’s face was far too concerned considering the subject matter. ‘So, Harry prefers documentary-style photography. You know, lifestyle approach. But I think I’m leaning more classic. And I really love the sort of depth that shooting on film gets, right? But Harry thinks digital is much more crisp. I honestly don’t know what to do. Help!’
All four bridesmaids eyed each other in the hope that someone else would speak first.
Daisy bit. ‘Okay, back up here a sec. What the eff is documentary-style photography? What, are they gonna serialise your wedding and stick it up on Netflix?’
‘Do you have some examples?’ Cleo agreed.
‘Did you not see the stuff I pinned onto the Photography Board?’ Nora asked impatiently, grabbing her iPad and navigating to the Pinterest app.
‘I did,’ Sarah assured her. ‘It’s the sort of reportage style, right? Candid rather than posed? It’s nice. Really modern.’
Nora bit her lip. ‘Is modern what I’m going for?’
Sarah laughed. ‘You tell us, sweetie!’
Bea rolled her eyes. ‘How can you go for modern? I mean, when the very concept of marriage is completely—’
‘Traditional,’ Cleo butted in (she wasn’t sure where Bea had been going there, but her word choice was probably less tactful than ‘traditional’). ‘Bea’s right, though, surely you need to think about whether or not you’re going to have a traditional or modern venue, set-up, not to mention the dress …’
‘All the wedding blogs and magazines say that the best photographers are booked up years in advance,’ Nora argued. ‘You need to get your deposit with one as soon as possible. So the whole wedding planning is literally at a standstill.’ She shoved the iPad at Bea. ‘So what do you think?’
Biting back the response that she thought Nora was veering into bridezilla territory, Bea cast her eye over the selection of wedding photos that Nora had pinned for reference. She couldn’t see masses of difference: woman in white, man in suit, bright flowers in bouquets, bright teeth in smiles. She passed the iPad across to Sarah.
‘What was the style you and Cole had for your wedding pics?’ she asked her. ‘I guess I liked that sort of effect.’
Sarah was visibly delighted with the praise; Bea-compliments were few and far between, even for the people she really liked, and Sarah was pretty certain, most of the time, that she was not of that number. ‘Well we had quite a contemporary photographer. Unusual angles, strong light. But then we had an urban wedding. It probably wouldn’t work as well for those sorts of rustic, burlap-and-lace-type weddings you pinned, Nor.’ She passed the iPad to Daisy, who held it out so Cleo could see too. ‘And I really wouldn’t worry, you know. Cole and I put our entire wedding together in just a couple of months, after all. You have bags of time.’
‘Yeah, but I think you need to think venue first, hun, I really do.’ Daisy passed the iPad back to Nora. ‘All things will flow from there.’
‘Okay.’ Nora deftly switched Pinterest board to the ‘Venues’ one. ‘Well, here’s the shortlist.’
Daisy arched an eyebrow as she saw the number of thumbnails pinned. ‘More like a longlist. So, for starters, I think you need to strike some of these off.’
‘Okay, so here’s the thing …’ And Nora gave her most winning smile, the one that all of the girls recognised as the precursor for asking some outrageous favour.
* * *
‘So should we, like, hold hands or something?’ Eli might be massively out of his comfort zone, but it wasn’t in his nature to do a half-arsed job.
Bea laughed. ‘It’s not like they’re going to be watching out and will take us to one side if they think we’re not touchy-feely enough with one another. There aren’t going to be any Fake Fiancé Bouncers. Relax.’
‘You know, when we made plans to do something together this weekend, this really wasn’t what I had in mind.’
‘Hey, I’d hardly been dreaming that when I visited my first wedding fair it would be with you, you know,’ Bea shot back, slamming the car door for emphasis.
Eli grinned his disarming grin. ‘Really? Don’t you remember our beautiful wedding day?’ He clutched dramatically at his supposedly broken heart.
Bea rolled her eyes but decided not to fight the smile. It was the day Elliott Hale had been formally inducted into their little group of friends. Nora had been to a family wedding the weekend before and was full of utter Catholic pomp about it, promising she’d show Bea how it was done by officiating a marriage between her and a willing boy on the playground that lunchtime.
When neither Harry nor Cole proved willing … ‘You, then,’ seven-year-old Nora had decreed, waving impatiently at a nearby classmate. Young Eli was stretched and gangly (oddly, for someone who would grow up to be of an average height) and had knees that seemed way too large for the rest of his legs. He’d looked up from his Pogs in alarm.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’ Already an older sister several times over by then, Nora had little-to-no patience with slow uptake. ‘Come over here and be the groom.’
Reasonably obedient by nature – back then and now – Eli had obliged, gathering up his snackbox and his Pogs and moving across to stand with the four of them; he’d never managed to completely extricate himself again.
‘Of course I remember, snookums,’ Bea teased, moving closer to fling a companionable arm around her friend’s shoulders as they made their way down the crunching gravel walkway that lead from the car park to the venue. ‘Shame that didn’t work out. At least we’ll always have the playground.’
‘Welcome to Hucclecote Barn,’ a smiling woman in a matching skirt-suit the colour of a new bruise greeted them, handing them each a goodie bag. ‘When’s the big day?’
Bea curled her ringless finger away behind the plastic handles of the bag. ‘We haven’t booked anything yet,’ she lied smoothly. ‘It’s early days. In fact, we’re not just here to see the suppliers at the fair, we’re here to look at the Barn as a possible venue.’
‘Oh, super-duper!’ the lady beamed. ‘Well, why don’t you two have a good look around and later I can connect you with our events coordinator?’
‘That would be … super,’ Eli concurred, thankfully avoiding eye contact with Bea, who was quite sure she had never heard the term ‘super-duper’ used non-sarcastically before in her life.
‘Super!’ agreed the goodie-bag lady, waving them on. ‘Enjoy!’
Bea and Eli chuckled quietly to themselves as they moved away. In front of them was the Barn-with-a-capital-B in question, liberally draped with charming cream and baby-blue bunting flags. They thought they’d be getting there early, but the fair was already in full swing, suppliers hawking out their services and wares from display tables erected in a wonky semi-circle around the main doors. Couples, arm in arm, twirled leisurely around the outside.
‘I don’t think this place suits us or our wedding plans, Bea my darling,’ Eli decided, faux-regretful. He gestured at a stall selling bedazzled bridal wellington boots. ‘It’s a bit twee.’
Bea thwapped his chest with one of the glossy wedding magazines she’d found in her goodie bag. ‘Oh, is that because you’re more a castle-with-a-cream-tea sort of guy, dearest?’
Eli laughed. ‘I do actually wonder what these allocations say about Harry and Nora’s opinion of our personalities. Like, why do we get the hay bales and horseshit and Baz and Cleo get the stately home, huh?’
‘Barlow begged off this morning, actually,’ Bea told him, looking down at the messages about just that in the WhatsApp bridesmaids’ group. Barlow was one of the other groomsmen, although with a busy pub to run Bea wasn’t quite sure how much help he was going to get to be in the run-up to this wedding. ‘He’d arranged for the assistant manager to come in and cover him but she called in sick. Cleo’s had to call up this guy she knows from work and get him to drive her out there.’
Eli immediately looked interested. ‘What guy from work? Is it Mr Fifty Shades?’
Bea sighed; Eli was always pretty interested in what Cleo was up to, naturally. ‘Seriously, Eli. We’ve talked about this. This is how you start rumours.’
‘I’m just saying! Who calls themselves Gray? He’s just asking for the comparison.’
‘Well, until he’s asking you for planning permission help to build a red room of pain, it’s probably an unfair comparison.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind. Because we architects get that all the time, by the way. Gotta be constantly on the lookout for all the sex perverts. Speaking of which, where’ve they sent Daisy?’
‘Nowhere. Unsurprisingly, Daisy felt like it probably wasn’t a wonderful idea for her to tell the guy she’s been on five dates with and only shagged for the first time last week that they were going wedding venue window-shopping,’ Bea pointed out.
Eli’s fair eyebrows disappeared into his fringe. ‘Fair enough!’ Even though that year he was knocking on the door of thirty, Eli persisted on modelling his look on boybands-of-the-day; he’d had frosted spikes as a kid, greasy curtains as a teenager and now had some sort of floppy, asymmetrical ‘do that meant it took him twenty minutes to style it so it looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He tended to date equally irritatingly coiffured women; the last one had a severe undercut dyed in an elaborate leopard-spot pattern. Daisy had got so shit-faced once she’d tried to stroke her. ‘Cole and Sarah?’ he queried.
‘Apparently Sarah has a doctor’s appointment today, or something. Jesus. Look at this,’ Bea tutted from the depths of the so-called goodie bag. ‘Mixed messages much? I’ve got a box of gourmet truffles in here, and a leaflet that gives me my first month free at Slimming World.’ She looked up. ‘What have you got?’
Eli rummaged through his (helpfully colour-coded blue) bag. ‘Ooh, truffles too; nice. Er, discount vouchers for wine at Majestic; very nice. Austin Reed catalogue. Erm.’
‘So no subtle signals that you are a fat, hideous creature and that you should starve yourself until your wedding day, then?’
‘Nope.’ Eli grinned and popped one of the truffles into his mouth. ‘Now come on, you fat, hideous creature, let’s get on with it.’ Bea allowed him to push a truffle through her lips, managing to stay atop of the urge to nip at his fingertips. Just. ‘Have you got the checklist open?’