Rose
2009
Rose Maguire: is getting married today! Looking forward to becoming Mrs Cian Grahame. Love you, Cian, with all my heart and can’t wait to start our life together! I feel so lucky to have you love me Xxxx #weddingday #Blessed
It was perhaps a mistake to drink three glasses of champagne the night before my wedding. After a fitful sleep, I woke with a sore head and a mouth as dry as the Sahara. I had to be up early, of course. The hairdresser and make-up artist were arriving at 8.30am and my parents’ house was already starting to come alive as the day began. My bridesmaids would be here shortly – and my mother had promised us all a hearty breakfast. Not that I felt I could eat – my stomach was in knots. Nerves were normal, weren’t they?
Looking out the window, I saw it was dry and offered up a silent prayer of thanks to whichever one of my relatives had put the Child of Prague in their garden to try and encourage the weather gods to be kind. I knew Cian had been very much hoping that a lot of our day could be spent in the grounds of the hotel, basking in the sunlight and enjoying a relaxed affair. He would be more relaxed himself now that the weather looked as though it would behave itself – and if he was relaxed, then I could relax a bit too. An artist’s temperament, he called it – when he got himself wound up about something he couldn’t quite control.
For a bloke, Cian had surprised me with his notions of what he wanted our wedding to be. He had very definite ideas. I’d been lucky, a few friends told me. Most men didn’t really care and had to be pushed to going out and sorting a suit. Cian was the opposite; he was obsessed with the detail of it all. He wanted a day that symbolised us and what we meant to each other, he said. We didn’t need anything big and showy, he said. The most important thing was our marriage, not our wedding day, he said. I couldn’t argue with that – even though I suppose I had always dreamed of a big day surrounded by as many friends as we could fit into a decent-sized hotel for a party into the early hours.
Cian was right, of course, when he pointed out that our budget wouldn’t stretch that far. Yes, his book had sold and was selling relatively well as these things go – getting him some great reviews – but it seemed that ‘relatively well’ didn’t put a lot of money in the bank. Not that the money really mattered, I had reassured him, but I knew he felt it. Felt he should be providing more.
‘I don’t want to start the rest of our lives in debt,’ he said, ‘I’d feel I was letting you, and us, down. Let’s just make it about us – and our closest family and friends.’
He talked about it so warmly that I started to relish the idea of something more intimate. Something more low key. Just forty of us, me in a simple dress, my hair dressed with flowers. I’d even go barefoot if the weather allowed – and we’d skip off early in the evening, forsaking the big evening do, to spend a week in the South of France – a wedding present from my parents.
Cian’s guests were small in number – a couple of friends, his agent, a cousin who was acting as best man. His parents didn’t keep well and had retired to Cork but they sent their best wishes and a cheque for £500 towards the cost of the day. So we tried to balance the numbers a little – not make it look too uneven. It put noses out of joint for a few great aunts and cousins – but they weren’t as important to me as Cian was.
It would be nice not to have the pressure of making all that small talk with distant relatives and neighbours who had only been invited because their postcode matched ours. I actually found myself looking forward to it even if it was different from what I had thought I would want. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the look on his face when he saw me walk up the aisle towards him.
I wondered, would he cry? Would he smile? Would he give me one of his super intense looks?
He had whispered down the phone to me late the night before that I was his – that I would always be his. It would be me and him against the world – and that with me at his side he was sure he could do anything.
‘This is forever, isn’t it?’ he’d asked, and I caught an air of something unfamiliar in his voice. Doubt? Fear? ‘I swore I’d never do this if it wasn’t forever – for better or worse and all that,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I’d said, telling myself it was okay to feel a little nervous even if I wanted the lifelong commitment I was about to make.
‘Morning, love,’ my mother said, rapping on my bedroom door and pushing it open. ‘Are you all set?’
There was something about seeing her there – hair in curlers, dressing gown on, familiar and warm and loving, that made me feel a bit weepy. I couldn’t help it, and before I could say anything she was sitting beside me, holding me.
‘It’s a big day,’ she said, hugging me and kissing my head. ‘You will be happy, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘But you know you always have a home here. Always. You are always my girl.’
‘I love you, Mum.’