Forget the suit, the stag do, even the speech. There's a much bigger issue on the horizon...

I blame the jam. Two years ago, in a refitted barn somewhere in Gloucestershire, we attended a wedding dinner that featured a starter I can't remember, a main I can't remember, a pudding I can't remember and – here it comes – a dinky souvenir pot of jam, made by the bride herself.
 




That I remember, since Mrs-to-be has never allowed me to forget. I've
written about music, clothes, speeches and even Twitter in these columns, but the most common refrain of our pre-wedding life has been this: when we marry, there is to be Something Like The Jam Claire Did.
 


So for the headache I currently have, and for the blank page in my wedding notebook that makes the headache worse the longer I stare at it, I blame the jam.
 


It was an inspired move, that stuff. Claire and her husband are a well-off but down-to-earth couple – an abominable combination, since it shatters the illusion that your relative penury is spiritually healthy – and envied for their mastery of the lost art of keeping house.
 


Now settled in Perth, they cure their own meat, grow their own veg and chop their own firewood, in between bouts of surfing, spider-dodging, croc-baiting, and whatever else people do for fun over there.
 


You can imagine them peddling jams and preserves as a post-retirement
cottage industry, so it was like a little gift from the future.
 


Even better, it was the most low-maintenance of mementoes: no cute ornaments or gooey photos to find a suitable place for, no recriminations when the couple visit and their gift is nowhere to be seen. All it asked of you was that, at some point that decade, you ate jam. Not really a chore.
 


How do we top that? There's nobody you can go to for advice on this – it was the element of surprise that made the jam so charming. In any case, if I ask my friends what they want as a wedding favour they're just going to say 'a bridesmaid' and try to high-five me.
 


All I can tell you is what I've dismissed. Definitely out of the running: anything with a photo on it (nauseating), varnished conkers (mystifying, unless you were spying on us during a pivotal date), DVD burns of the music video we're basing our first dance on (hard work and illegal anyway), homemade pickle (exactly what Claire did, only savoury), homemade soap (technically an insult).
 


Is it possible there's only one good favour idea out there, and Claire got dibs on it? If you've got any, I'm at nath_midgley@yahoo.co.uk. In the meantime, it's back to the headache and the blank page. Wish me luck.
 



words Nathan Midgley

Copyright WED Magazine 2011