“I really should have done a dry run of this in the rehearsal,” I think, flippantly, as I both hear and feel the Chantilly lace overlay of my wedding dress tear on the latch of the vestry window.
It's all very well knowing exactly how long it takes - in steps, actual time and bars of music - to walk up an aisle, but it’d be a whole lot more useful to me right now if I knew whether my five foot six inch frame could physically fit through this window. And if so approximately how long it might take to do so.
“It’s not like you didn't know weddings were a scary business,” I chide internally, as the memory of my first brush with matrimony pops into my head.
I was only five at the time. A damn sight younger than the paint that’s currently flaking off the shutters as blithely as I’d sailed past poor old Ben at the altar just now and getting cosy with the raw silk material the torn lace has exposed. I know they say rebound relationships don’t last, but I’m willing to bet even a Stain Devil won’t be separating those two anytime soon.
My brother and I were allowed to go to my uncle Mick’s wedding. I can’t for the life of me remember where it was. Dublin, I guess. Geography wasn’t my strongest subject back in the mid- to late-80s. Or a subject at all, actually.
All I can really remember about the day is shoulder pads and fear.
The bride’s nephew Nigel - an older man at the age of seven or so - took a shine to me. He told his dad he was going to marry me, and proceeded to spend the day chasing me - actually chasing me - around the wedding venue.
Either the adults didn’t notice what was happening or didn’t think me being hunted into an underage, forced marriage by a seven-year-old with coiffed blonde hair and a pink satin cumberbund was a priority.
I was running for my life though. I’m getting sweaty again just thinking about it.
“Maybe it’s not my fault,” I muse, trying to remember back to my first year psychology lectures in college.
“Maybe that early trauma set up some weird ass neural pathways or something, which mean that weddings scare the bejaysus out of me. And in this instance leave me with no option but to try and escape by attempting to squeeze my generously proportioned arse through this minuscule window."
Something’s happening!
“God bless sweat,” I rejoice, as I feel the window frame finally ease past my hips. “I think it’s effectively oiled me past the tipping point.”
And with that I fall in a happy heap on the gravel pathway that surrounds the church, only a borrowed car and a hotwire away from freedom.
