Author: John Page 62 of 121

Previously in John’s life: John has married Jules, but within a number of hours, the bride is holding aloft a knife, with a meaningful look in her eye…

After the Wedding Breakfast, we cut the cake (which is not some childish fart euphemism. Honest), and posed for more photos. Actually, I should talk about the cake – it was designed and made by Claire Lewis, and instead of being made of fruit like many cakes it was a chocolate sponge, because, well, neither of us are big fans of fruit cakes (except as a slightly offhand description of our family and friends), and it was our day, so nyer. Anyway, it was a yummy cake (hopefully I’ll have some pictures to share soon).

The tables and crockery were cleared away, and after a while it was time for the First Dance. I’ve capitalised those two words for a reason. As Jules and I stepped out onto the dance floor, and our DJ filled the air with the strains of Nat King Cole singing The Very Thought Of You, something which no-one in the room knew was this: for the last couple of months, Jules and I had been having ballroom dancing lessons (at the place they rehearse for Strictly Come Dancing, no less). I don’t have any innate sense of rhythm or anything like that, but with the help of our dance teacher , we’d got a few moves choreographed. The lessons aren’t cheap (though nor are they particularly expensive), and practising at home had been quite hard work and sometimes frustrating as my feet and brain had refused to co-ordinate, but I have to be honest and say that as we started to move to the music, as planned, I thought that it had been worth every single penny.

“They’ve been practicing!” at least one onlooker said, and as we reached the middle section of the song and Jules and I circled each other – with an ease that was born more of muscle-memory than mental-memory, at least for me – I felt a great, big, stupid grin spread across my face. Shortly after that, of course, the DJ invited other people to join us on the dance floor, and we were swiftly surrounded by stumbling clods who got in the way of our finely-honed performance, but I decided to be indulgent of the amateurs. Ahem.

The final timetabled event of the wedding was one which the weather literally threatened to put a damper on, as at 10pm last Saturday it was raining heavily, but most of us stumbled outside (some folks stayed indoors and pressed their noses against the glass) to watch a Firework display. It was soggy, yes, but the Fireworks chaps went ahead anyway, and I’m very pleased that they did, because the display was great – lots of sparkly explosions to sate my wife’s desire for shiny things, and noisy booms and bangs and bright lights for … well, the likes of me. The display went on and on, and was frankly fab value for the money. At the end of it, in spite of all my English reserve, I cheered and applauded.

And after that it was drinking and dancing until people could take no more (but they didn’t seem to resent this treatment). And that, m’loves, was my wedding day, and as well as meaning everything to me on an emotional level, it also went really well on a practical level (the only thing I would have changed would be the weather, but that’s not something which is exactly controllable). A lot of people say that their wedding day’s the happiest day of their life, but rather than condemn the rest of my life to run a second-best to last Saturday, I’d have to say it was the happiest day of my life so far.

So, with the exception of the inevitable posting of a few choice pictures from the wedding as soon as I get hold of them, that’s about it for blog posts about the wedding. Well, maybe. I’m sure I’ll have some blistering insights on married life to share… ahem. Coming up, a return to the usual parade of cheap shots at people and things in the public eye, and self-indulgent posts about writing and life in London.

…I bet you can’t wait.

In the previous episode, we left our hero standing at the Registrar’s table, his bride beside him. Now read on…

Thankfully, none of the assembled folks decided to object when the Registrar asked if anyone knew of any just cause or impediment why Jules and I shouldn’t be married, and so we scooted through the vows and onto the signing of the Register. My handwriting may be increasingly unreadable, but as I signed my name and she signed hers, I thought of the words of Papa Lazarou: “You’re my wife now…”

And indeed she was. Papers were signed, and pictures were taken, and I kissed the bride and – to the strains of Gimme Some Lovin’, we exited the Regency Room as husband and wife. Pretty much out of sight of the guests, we giddily yelled ‘wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!’ and half-ran down the corridor like the overgrown infants we are.

At many weddings, the photographer calls the shots at this stage, ordering ‘female members of the groom’s family’ to stand with the happy couple, or sending a cousin to retrieve Auntie Susan from the toilet because she’s needed for a picture, but I have to report that the waywardness of all our guests meant our photographer had to give up on any kind of order to the pictures, and do what he could with those who were present. A comparison with herding cats would have been fair, so he had our blessing to go all free-form improv jazz with the sequence of his photos.

The Wedding Breakfast was held at 5pm, which must have been the latest breakfast I’ve ever had (and don’t forget that I was a student for a number of years), but due to the laydee’s clever planning and organization as regards both the table decorations and the seating arrangements, I heard a number of ahhhs as we entered, and a lot of ha ha has during the meal itself.

After the meal – much of which was locally-sourced and I suspect tasted all the better for it – came, of course, the speeches. The father of the bride wasn’t keen to do a speech, and since the day was about having a laugh rather than slavishly following tradition, we let him off, leaving it to myself and my Best Man to do the talking. Both Danny and I have some previous form when it comes to standing in front of people and talking, but I think it’s fair to say that we both felt a bit of pressure to come up with the goods.

Speaking for myself, I was pretty happy with the way my speech went – I managed to elicit tears from a few members of the gathered, and laughter from others, and thankfully at the appropriate stages in the speech; most importantly I managed to make it painfully obvious to everyone there – including my lovely now-wife – just how deliriously happy I was about marrying Jules, so the key point of my speech seemed to hit home.

Danny’s speech was top-notch, to my mind – honest about how we met and why we get along, and even when he referred to my feelings for Geri ‘Ginger Spice’ Halliwell, my bride didn’t flee in horror but instead stayed and laughed along with everyone else. It was just the sort of speech I hoped he’d make, and I was pleased it went over so well. If you’re reading this, Dan, many thanks – I knew you were the man for the job!

To be concluded…

So then, last Saturday (16th August), I got married. It was a day my now-wife Jules and I had been planning for over a year, and I’m pleased to report it went well, but of course, as one who uses seventy words when ten will do, I can’t leave it at that. So this is the first of three posts about the day – what I laughingly call ‘normal’ service will be resumed next week, but please indulge me as I regale / bore you with tales of the wedding; posts will be less blatantly self-absorbed soon, I promise.

First things first – we got married at Burton Court in Herefordshire. As you can see if you browse their website, Burton Court is a building with a history, and this is abundantly clear from the stuffed animals and archaeological treasures which litter the house, as well as – of course – its architecture and grounds. Many guests said to me how beautiful and / or interesting they thought the venue was, and I can only praise the tireless assistance of Edward Simpson, Burton Court’s Functions Co-Ordinator, who was friendly and accommodating, and without whom the day wouldn’t have been half the fun it was. If you’re looking for a venue for a wedding (or other event), you could do far worse than consider Burton Court.

Anyway, the civil ceremony was set for 3pm, and my Best Man Danny and I arrived at about 1.30pm. I chatted to him and the ushers a bit, and we finalised some details, until he eventually, and quite rightly, told me to stop faffing about and to go and get changed.

I’d decided that if there was one day in my life which merited lashing out on a made-to-measure suit, then surely it was my wedding day, and so my suit was made for me by Richard Thompson of Exclusive Tailoring (and indeed a testimonial by me appears on this page ). I wanted a suit which looked something like the one on the cover of this book, and Richard did a bang-up job taking this idea and making something which would fit me, and given my hair’s tendency to go wavy, not to look too much like The Eighth Doctor (though many might say that would have been a hell of an improvement).

Anyway, I donned my wedding outfit and went to mingle a bit before the wedding ceremony; in theory, this is the time when a groom’s supposed to get all nervous and unsure and wonder if the bride might not show up, but in all honesty I had no doubts at all about wanting to marry Jules, and she had made it pretty clear that she was intending to show up, so I used the time to swan around like the man of the hour (which I guess I kind of was) and to say hi to the folks who’d been kind enough to come – many of them from places quite a long way from Herefordshire.

The time came, though, for us to enter the Regency Room of Burton Court, where the ceremony was taking place, and after a brief chat with the Registrar, we sat down and waited for the Bride, accompanied by her father, to come in.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Stuart, who’s been married for some years, told me that turning round and seeing your bride come into the room is one of those moments in your life you never forget. When I heard the music and looked and saw her, I knew what he meant – in that real and biting and actual way that you know something, which is very different in practice than in some abstract theoretical way. It was a terrifically exciting moment, one which made my stomach free-fall in the best possible way, and Stu’s right, it’s something that I won’t forget as long as I live.

So she made her way to the front of the room, and the ceremony started, and instead of even the vaguest flicker of doubt, I had an overwhelming feeling of certainty, that I was doing the right thing, that I was marrying the right person, and as I looked at her and she smiled, I thought of the line from the Steve Martin film Roxanne (itself an update of my favourite play ever, Cyrano de Bergerac):

“This is my whole life right now. Standing here talking to you like this.”

To be continued…