Revenge of the Wedding Planner (27 page)

Privately, I decided that as soon as I got home that night, or by the weekend anyway, I was going to bin my red bedroom curtains and my purple front-room drapes and consign most of the biggest candlesticks to the attic. Goth used to be great, I thought, when it was still an elitist obsession. But now that every Tom, Dick and Harry were in on the game I was beginning to go off it. Yes, I thought to myself, some nice pale and restful curtains that reminded me of stone or coffee would do the trick. Well, you never know when Bill or myself might need a doctor in the night. And I definitely didn’t want another humiliation like my father’s wake on my hands.

But, back to the wedding.

A small orchestra was playing a selection of Indie hits from the 1980s, with plenty of haunting cello and violin solos thrown in. ‘Eloise’ by the Damned was going down well, as was ‘Golden Brown’ by the Stranglers. The entire scene was lit with soft creamy spotlights, making everyone look younger and more attractive, despite the satin cloaks and what have you. And at the centre of it all, on a special podium in the marquee, was the magnificent wedding cake: black icing from top to bottom, complete with overhanging balconies, miniature iron railings and, yes, real working lights! The groom and his bride could cut only the top tier after the banquet, we’d warned them. The rest of it was mostly MDF casing and couldn’t be touched by anything that might conduct electricity. Such as a long-handled knife. But, all in all, it was fabulous, darling! The atmosphere was simmering like a pot-roast in gravy. Snatches of laughter and conversation drifted across the lawn and the photographers were having a field day.

It was Dream Weddings’ finest hour.

We didn’t worry too much when the bride was an hour late for the ceremony.

‘After all, it’s practically a woman’s duty to keep her future husband waiting at the altar,’ we joked to some of the guests.

Well, to keep him waiting on the
stage
, really, if we’re being honest. So although the groom did seem a bit jumpy as the minutes ticked away, Julie and myself weren’t
too
concerned. He was in bits after the first half-hour, poor guy. He kept pacing down to the castle gates and looking at his watch. Then he ducked into the bodyguards’ tent and came out five minutes later looking a lot more relaxed. But at the time I thought nothing of it. I was too busy helping the last of the guests into their velvet coats and feathered hats and evening gloves, to be overly concerned about the bride’s no-show. And it did take quite a while to distribute the black feather corsages and so on. By eight thirty the light had begun to fade slightly in the sky. Not getting dark or anything, but just an ominous gathering of clouds that cast a shadow over the marquee and the atmosphere in general. A cold breeze stole into the castle grounds and most of the elderly guests gave up waiting and went back to the marquee to bag a good table. Some of them joking about ‘not living for ever’, and those ladies who were wearing low-cut dresses reached for their satin and velvet wraps. Julie instructed the marquee staff to switch on the heaters and start warming the space up a little bit. We hadn’t wanted to get the heating going too early, you see. Because when the guests take their seats in a marquee it can get quite
stifling, quite early on. So, anyway, the faint hum of the blow-heaters duly started up.

And we all went on waiting.

Nine o’clock came and went and the chef (Russian, as it happened) said that some of the food might have to be discarded as it was drying up round the edges. He’d made a lot of ice sculptures on which to display the fruit salads and they were starting to melt. And the vegetarian gravy was a write-off, and so were the sauces and garnishes. He was very annoyed that his terrific catering was being treated so shabbily and he said he would never work with such amateurs again.

‘This entire country is cursed when it comes to food,’ he said rudely, staring with impatience at Julie and me.

I don’t know what
he
was worried about. I mean, he’d got his money and he was safely tucked away in a corner of the marquee with a nice little heater beside him and a stiff drink in his hand. Julie and I were the ones taking all the flack about the bride being so late.

‘Oops, watch that passionate temper of yours, my darling!’ Julie trilled but I could tell by the tone of her voice she was bricking it. We’d made dozens of calls to the bride’s hotel but we were always told by her entourage she’d be setting off shortly.

Liars! The ground underfoot was slightly damp and I noticed my own shoes had a creeping tidemark beginning to show above the sole.

‘
Where is she?
’ we hissed to one another for the umpteenth time. We feared she’d been kidnapped by terrorists at one point, and was surely about to be ransomed back to us. There seemed no other reason why
she could be so late. Well, Julie saw no other reason. I could think of one or two but I said nothing. The truth was too awful to contemplate. Julie was fit to be tied and I was trying not to throw up with nerves.

Nine thirty came.

Nine forty-five.

My stomach was in knots. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. It was literally in knots. I honestly thought I’d need major surgery to be able to visit the toilet ever again. I decided I was definitely getting too old to be a wedding planner any more. I’d have swapped my PA status for a chippy-girl’s pinny in a heartbeat. The hairs on the back of my neck were wet with perspiration and, to make matters worse, Julie was knocking back the vodkas without even the benefit of a mixer. My throat was sore from talking, instructing, laughing, consoling and bitching.

Ten o’clock at night.

Suffering Jesus.

It was pitch-black.

It was an out-and-out crisis.

Some of the oldest guests gave up entirely and went home, after collecting their goody bags and telling Julie and me the entire event was disappointing in the extreme. We bundled the loudest complainers into jeeps and got some of the security staff to drive them back to their various hotels. Then we discovered that there was no pink champagne left and the Russian chef had dumped half the food into a skip behind the marquee, and walked out. The Druid did his best, I have to say, casting a peace and harmony spell over the venue and providing a bit of a sideshow at the same time, but the buzz had been
completely lost. That impossible-to-define special magic that lifts a wedding out of the ordinary and upwards into something life-changing, was gone. And there was nothing we could think of to bring it back.

That’s the trouble with weddings: you can spend all the money in the world on the trappings and trimmings. But, at the end of the day, you do need an actual bride and groom (or a same-sex couple, let’s get with the programme) who’re willing and able to turn up, preferably on time, and actually
get married
. It was off the scale of weirdness, watching those OAP witches and warlocks collecting their luxury gift bags and buckling up in the security jeeps, shaking their heads and dismissing Julie and me as a pair of total fakes. I felt like shouting at them; had they never made a single mistake in all of
their
lives? I mean, just when did senior citizens become so intolerant in our society? You’d think a lifetime of experience would’ve made them see the funny side. Wouldn’t you?

Julie was looking ashen-faced for the first time in her illustrious career. I thought she was going to faint when I suggested we make an announcement to the crowd that the wedding was cancelled, and simply wrap the whole thing up. But just then, the white bridal limousine came purring up the castle driveway and the guests began to clap and cheer. Well, the ones who weren’t already drunk as skunks did. The rest just sat tight in the marquee and tried to warm their feet on the blow-heaters, guarding the plates of food they’d managed to cadge off the furious Russian chef before he departed the event. Some of the guests were having a kip under their car blankets. It felt like there was a war on, that awful atmosphere of doom
and gloom and hunger. The groom nipped back into the security tent for what I wrongly assumed was a lemonade shandy (him being off all artificial stimulants except for cigarettes, on his doctor’s strictest instructions), and then made to open the car door and lead his beautiful bride to the stage. I mean, to the altar. The magnificent, flower-laden altar where a select group of photographers and observers from the magazine were somehow still assembled and waiting with bated breath. And a battery of cameras, lights, light-reflecting umbrellas and endless loops of electrical cable. And a small generator.

I was physically and emotionally exhausted but Julie was jubilant in a desperate sort of way. She kept smiling and then swallowing hard as if her throat was drying up. And she’d knocked back quite a few vodkas, remember, even though that is totally against Dream Weddings’ policy. We never, but
never
, drink on a job.

‘Selfish bloody tart,’ Julie whispered to me out of the corner of her mouth. She was actually shaking with relief. ‘Making us wait for three fucking hours like that, who the hell does she think she is? She’s only a gawky model with massive feet, she didn’t win a Nobel prize, for fuck’s sake. I hate her, Mags. I loathe and despise that woman with every single cell in my body. I hate her a million times over, a million
million
times over. A million trillion times over. I hate her so much I want to rip her head off and spit down her throat.’

Well, this is interesting, I thought to myself.

How could Julie ever build on that level of hatred, I wondered, say the truth did come out? Even if she
was
born and bred in Belfast where hatred is taught alongside the
ABC (only in certain districts; we’re not all crazy). Julie had even started smoking again with the pressure of it all. I mean, cigarettes give Julie a light head usually, but she was so upset at the delay she wasn’t thinking straight.

Here we go, I thought, as the door of the limousine clicked open with a lovely expensive sound. Here we go at last. Happy days and hooray! Quick ceremony, up with the bats, firework display goes off, everybody gets too wasted to notice the food is buggered, the dancing begins and I go home to bed.

Come on.

Except the bride didn’t seem that keen to disembark.

Julie and I craned our necks to see into the back of the car. From what we could gather, the bride was sobbing gently in the back seat, a glass of brandy balanced dangerously close to the skirt of her billowing black wedding dress. Her make-up was flawless, naturally, and her dark brown hair was piled on top of her head in an elaborate beehive of interlocking braids. The flowers were simply heavenly, a small round posy of blowsy white roses. The most beautiful bride I had ever seen. And also the most depressed and forlorn. Of course, I knew that if she kept on crying, her heavy eye make-up would get smudged and smeared. Oh, bugger it! She made Janine Smith look positively skittish.

‘What’s wrong, my darling?’ said the groom.

Julie tried to jolly along the mood by directing the band to play a more up-tempo tune. ‘Never Take Me Alive’ by Spear of Destiny.

We couldn’t hear the bride’s reply. She just shook her head and drank the brandy and wept some more. The groom swiftly took off his red hat and clambered into
the back of the car, closing the door softly behind him. Julie and I exchanged glances. There was an undercurrent of tragedy in the air and, not for the first time that day, I had a vision of Jay and the supermodel in a moment of silent ecstasy in the lighthouse office. Her massive feet on the wall above Jay’s head. His face relaxed into a satisfied smile. Oh, dear God. My heart skipped a beat as Julie looked at her watch and inhaled deeply on a long brown More cigarette. Oh, my sweet God, I thought,
she has
! That silly supermodel’s actually fallen in love with Jay O’Hanlon and she’s going to call off the wedding. I staggered a bit and dropped my guest list and handbag, but that might have been because the damp ground had made my feet go numb. Julie approached the bridal car to see if she could be of any assistance. Immediately, I slipped my mobile phone out of my pocket and called Bill.

‘Please get here immediately if not sooner,’ I said to him as quietly as I could. ‘The shit is about to hit the fan. Seriously, I think there’s going to be a riot at this blinking thing and I don’t want to have to cope with it on my own. I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be violence.’

‘Isn’t Julie there with you?’ Bill said at once. ‘She’s surely not skulking off with that Galway-Romeo at a time like this? I’ll have serious words with her if she is, honey.’

‘Oh, she’s here all right,’ I said, swallowing down my panic. And she was, looking to-die-for in a floaty white
Hammer House of Horror
-style virginal ballgown and dainty tiara. ‘Only, I reckon Julie’s going to be the one to throw the first punch.’

‘Has this got something to do with Jay O’Hanlon?’

‘It might have. Bill, I know you’re going to think I’ve
lost the plot completely but I suspect the bride is about to tell the world she’s in love with our Jay. I didn’t tell you before but I think they’ve become rather pally in recent months. And now she’s turned up three hours late, in floods of tears. And she won’t get out of the car. I think they’ve been having an affair.’

‘Ah, for God’s sake, it never ends! Look, I’m on my way. You take care. And if it does kick off, just get out of the way. Do you hear me? No heroics, now, I’m telling you,’ Bill said and he hung up.

I smoothed down my full-length black lace skirt and crisp white blouse and turned around to look for Julie. But I didn’t have to look too far because she was standing right behind me.

‘What did you say about Jay?’ she whispered. ‘My Jay? Is that silly woman seeing
my
Jay? Tell me the truth, Mags.’ Fat tears were already running down her face.

‘Julie, now look, I’m not trying to say
anything
to you. I really don’t know what’s going on. I mean, don’t cry, please? It might have been a one-off thing? A bit of a laugh, that’s all it was. I’m not up-to-date on all this modern rock-and-roll stuff. It probably meant nothing whatsoever. It’s how celebrities greet each other these days. Kiss, handshake, shag, cup of tea and how are you?’