We all want our wedding to stand out from the rest. But how far do you take it? One man ponders...

Billy Bragg reckoned that "Marriage is when we admit our parents were right". That may be going a bit far - my parents put goats milk in their coffee, and they're definitely wrong about that - but there's some truth in the idea that having a wedding at all means you've got one eye on convention.



Convention is all well and good for me, up to a point. I don't want mum, dad and assorted other relatives wondering why the maid of honour was juggling swans' hearts, or how much the jelly helter-skelter cost, or whether it was a real wedding at all and not just 'One of those flash mobs'. But most people harbour an urge to stand out - and if they don't feel it most of the time, they soon do when they start planning a day that's about them from dawn until dusk.

So my latest job, as the creative one who's always Doing His Writing, was to come up with a twist. A hook. Something that gives us a safe and manageable edge. That a safe edge is a contradiction in terms is irrelevant: I'm the creative one, and those were my orders. So I put forward several excellent ideas for themes and activities, like 'Gentleman Explorers' and Zorbing. But they didn't get much traction, on the grounds - if I'm any good at interpreting withering looks - that I didn't seem to be taking it 100% seriously.

I turned to TV, which seemed to be good for a few ideas: on one reality show they ditched the reception buffet for a fish and chip van, which is only just shy of genius; on another, the groom, best man and ushers performed a Bollywood song-and-dance routine, which is perhaps a little further away, but still close enough to get people talking.

Then I realised both of these things had happened on a programme where the whole point is to not run things past the bride first, and that if I'd been given that kind of power our guests would be rolling around in giant plastic balls dressed like Dr Livingstone. It's touch and go whether our relationship could have survived that.

After about a week of wholly unsuitable ideas she took pity on me and suggested that a colour theme might work – at which point I remembered that my mum walked down the aisle in a brown dress and a huge, floppy brown hat, and that nobody in our family has ever forgotten it. Turns out my parents were right after all.

words Nathan Midgley

Copyright WED Magazine 2010