Bride's Column: Wedding Planning

I'll admit it: I wasn't a brilliant bride. By brilliant I mean one of those fabulous forces of nature who glides towards her wedding day simultaneously juggling life and work commitments with crafting table settings and invitations, whipping up chocolate truffles for the favours, sewing customised sashes for the flower girls' frocks - hey, maybe even baking her own wedding cake and brewing some homemade sloe gin for the drinks reception while she's at it. Fact is, I didn't leave myself nearly enough time to do any of these Super Bride tasks if I'd wanted to. And, I discovered, the week before a wedding throws up all manner of jobs and issues that you - well, I - didn't really anticipate.



Step in groomzilla and his wingman: one brilliantly organised best man. I had a taste of how the week was going to pan out on the Monday before our wedding. At 7am that morning, I was woken by the thud of bass beats and the chug of an engine coming to an abrupt halt outside our house, followed by a thud on the front door. It was our best man, Chris - a laptop and notebook tucked under his arm, all set for a full-on day of wedding planning.

The rest of the week panned out rather like an episode of 'Don't Tell the Bride', with Brendan and Chris sweating it out over marquee plans, detailed diagrams planning the flow of people around the reception site and a scale drawing of the church to ensure each guest would be seated in an appropriate place. Thanks to Chris, a colour-coded itinerary of the wedding day even popped up in the inbox of each member of the wedding party with daily updates.

Chris applied his technical background and organisational skills drawn from a decade in mining management to the fine art of wedding planning, while Brendan utilised five years experience of running a wedding magazine to co-styling the marquee and reception site.

All this sounds like I didn't do anything - in fact, I'd already spent many an hour poring over marquee decor on Pinterest and discussing details with our suppliers. But a magazine deadline falling on the week of the wedding didn't leave a huge amount of time to iron out the finer organisational details. My bridesmaids and I organised the backstage pass table settings and the seating plan. Then there was all manner of last minute appointments, from wedding dress and bridesmaid fittings through to every bride's prerogative: a manicure with my 'maids and, of course, the all-important pre-wedding facial.

It would have been impossible to get it all done. Besides, we've always championed getting the groom involved here at Wed - and this was the perfect opportunity to exercise that ethos while making the wedding very much a two-way celebration. Besides, Brendan was never going to be the type of groom to sit back and let me organise everything.

"Isn't it the bride who's supposed to be stomping around the marquee looking tense?" one of the team from our catering company remarked the day before the wedding. In our case, it was Brendan. He was at the site from the moment the lorry rolled up, agonising over the position of the marquee and apparently cradling his head in his hands on more than one occasion as he deliberated over the layout.

On the eve of the wedding, I was drinking wine with my friends at our local pub while Brendan was tweaking the decor inside the marquee. The next morning, he was on hand to ensure the parasols and hay bales were sited in the perfect positions. All the while, Chris constantly had his iPhone in hand for trouble-shooting, while organising the ushers and slotting in last minute speech rehearsals. It was a planning partnership made in heaven.

But you can plan, plan and plan some more - but the very nature of a wedding comes with unplanned happenings and spontaneous moments that throw the carefully colour-coded itinerary out of the window. When our enthusiastic vicar ran over time during the ceremony, I became aware of some nervous watch-glancing going on to my right and Brendan actually whispered, "We've got a schedule to keep to!" Once again, I found myself turning the pre-conceived notions of typical bridal behaviour on its head and replied, "So what? This is brilliant!" and Brendan nodded, soothed by my chilled out attitude.

And so the rest of the day swung into its joyous, musical, words-fail-me-wonderful way. So we were behind schedule thanks to traffic chaos and an impromptu singsong outside the church - so what? The food was piping hot, the atmosphere was magical, the sunset sublime and everyone had a wonderful time. And Brendan and Chris? As soon as the speeches were over and done with, they drank, danced and had a merry old time. Schedule? What schedule?


illustration Maria Taylor Illustration www.mariataylorillustration.co.uk


Copyright WED magazine 2013