‘The canny bastard.’
‘I think the whole thing sounds exhausting,’ says Camilla, before answering her ringing telephone. But then Camilla finds paying the many hundreds of parking tickets she picks up a month very tiring as well. It is only when the bailiffs arrive and tow her Mini away that she finally coughs up.
She puts the call through to me. It’s a bloke calling up about getting married abroad. We are getting more and more enquiries like this – couples who have no attachment to a place or a country, choosing to get married there. It is partly to do with money. You get much more bang for your buck abroad. The catering is cheaper and the food is normally better. Also the weather is usually much more predictable, which negates the need for hiring a marquee or a great big overpriced venue. You can have the whole thing outside with flowers and lights in the trees and it will cost a fraction of what it would over here. As Bernard puts it, ‘Weddings abroad are for those cash-strapped couples with all the ideas and the taste but none of the money to back them up. They wouldn’t dream of having less than two hundred to their wedding, so Tuscany is the only place they can go.’
He is also of the opinion that couples marry abroad when they don’t want half their guests to come. They feel obliged to invite aunts and uncles but suggest they fly to Nice, which means half the family don’t come. He also thinks couples are a bit flashier when they get abroad. They hire drivers and smarter cars, which is all a little more amusingly ironic in Italy than it would be in Hampshire.
There is also the added problem of international weddings. If the girl is from London and the boy is from Canada, where should they get married? In the old days her parents would have paid for the lot in London, but these days the couple choose Cape Town and those they want come, and they are in control.
We have links and contacts in destination spots all over the world. The most popular are Cape Town, the South of France, Italy and Spain. We have done a couple on the beach in Bermuda and a few five-day events in the Bahamas. Bizarrely, we had an enquiry back in February for a wedding in Germany. Bernard got his knickers in a twist about the menu consisting entirely of bratwurst; fortunately we were called a couple of days later to cancel. Bernard was thrilled – I have never seen anyone more pleased at losing 20 per cent.
Anyway, these guys are interested in Ibiza in May, which I gather is one of the most perfect months to get married there. The countryside is still lush, the wild flowers are out, and the sea is just warm enough to swim in. He’s a photographer, she works in fashion; it sounds like they are planning quite a party. I have never done a wedding in Ibiza, but I don’t let this bother me. I start suggesting house parties and private chefs and a beach party and he seems keen on my pitch. I get them to book in for a meeting next week.
‘Of course,’ I say before hanging up, ‘I don’t mind coming out to Hoxton.’
Jez finally slopes his way into the office just as Bernard opens up his double doors.
‘Nice of you to pop in,’ says Bernard.
‘I’ve been here for ages,’ Jez replies. ‘Look, here’s my jacket.’
‘We all know the jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair trick, pretending you’ve just popped out. I was using that one before you were even conceived. Anyway, make yourself useful now you’re here,’ he adds, pulling out a crisp twenty from his crocodile-skin notecase. ‘Go and get me some WAG snacks.’ Jez looks blank. ‘I don’t know – some edamame beans – that’s what they all live on, don’t they?’
‘Well actually, I think some nice chocolate biscuits would be best,’ suggests Camilla.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Bernard. ‘The woman is getting married in a year. A carbohydrate won’t pass her lips until well past “I do”.’
‘Ice?’ I suggest. ‘I knew a bride who snacked on ice.’ Bernard glares at me. ‘At least she had something to crunch on.’
‘Have you called Alice yet?’ he barks. ‘She’s getting married on Saturday – she might have a few things to discuss. Anyway, when are you going down to the venue?’
‘Thursday afternoon.’
‘Cutting it fine, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Better not,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Give her a call – now! You!’ He turns to Jez. ‘Why are you still here?’
I get Alice on the phone and she seems delighted to hear from me. Apparently, she was just about to call to make sure that I am coming to her final dress-fitting tomorrow. I suggest maybe she would like to go with just her mother, but she won’t hear of it.
‘I wouldn’t have got this far without you,’ she announces. Her voice sounds so excited it is a little contagious. ‘This is going to be the greatest week of my entire life and it’s all down to you.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I reply. I love the last-week build-up to a wedding. It’s chaos, it’s hard work, but the bride is giddy with happiness and if you have planned it all properly, everything should just fall into place. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘Love you,’ she says, and then hangs up.
I sit back in my chair and look out of the window. I spot Jez wandering up the street looking for snacks for a girl who won’t eat, and I think this is going to be a good week. Who wouldn’t want this job?
Camilla interrupts my thoughts. ‘Call for you,’ she says. I nod and she puts it through.
‘Hi, it’s Clara here,’ comes a vaguely familiar, slightly bossy voice.
‘Clara?’
‘From yesterday?’
‘Oh right, of course.’
‘Now . . . about the cost of the wedding. Bill and I are planning to buy the flat next door. It’s quite expensive, actually. Two million pounds. So we were wondering if you’d mind reducing your price by five hundred.’
‘Five hundred pounds?’
‘Yes.’ She sniffs. ‘Do we have a deal?’
Monday p.m.
I FOUND MYSELF agreeing to Clara’s request, if only to get her off the phone. There was no point in arguing with her about five hundred pounds, and quite what that had to do with the fact that she was shelling out another two million I have no idea. All I could do was put the phone down on her. Thank God she’s having a London wedding and there’ll be no need to accommodate the staff, as Lord knows what tightwad hell-hole they would have put us up in.
Anyway Keeley, the footballer’s wife-to-be, will be here within the hour and Jez has been instructed to sort out the office. Under Bernard’s watchful eye, the old magazines are chucked, any droopy blooms are culled from the crystal vase of peach roses on Camilla’s desk, and any loose papers are piled behind the fern, where no one can see them. Fresh bottles of Evian are put on ice in the silver bucket with tongs in Bernard’s office, the cut glasses are polished, and Jez finally reveals his WAG snacks to the office.
‘Grapes?’ says Bernard.
‘Yeah, they’re healthy,’ shrugs Jez.
‘She is not in hospital,’ sighs Bernard. ‘And I don’t even have any scissors in the office.’
‘I’ve got some scissors right here,’ says Jez, snapping a yellow plastic pair at Bernard.
‘Grape scissors, you moron,’ spits Bernard. ‘Honestly.’ He huffs his way back to his desk. ‘You employ monkeys . . .’
The buzzer goes downstairs. Everyone stares at Camilla.
‘Come right on up – first floor,’ she says. ‘Courier,’ she replies to the unasked question. Everyone relaxes for a second.
There is nothing like a celebrity wedding to get the office on edge. We have done a few and they have all been exciting and a nightmare at the same time. Firstly, all celebrities, no matter how Kate Winslet bangers-and-mash low-key they say they want their wedding to be, always manage to take over. You become their ultimate sidekick. It’s much worse than with a normal bride, because they are used to people running around after them and obeying orders at the click of a finger. They also have so many whims to pander to, so if on Monday you decide you are having a low-key spit-roasted-pork
event, it could quite easily become a sit-down dinner for a thousand by Friday. They’re weather vanes to fashion. Victoria and David decided to have their wedding dinner à deux with Brooklyn next to them in a matching crib, because that’s what Mel B and Jimmy Gulzar had done a few months before at their wedding. There was no top table, just a small table for two and a couple of matching thrones. Not conducive to a rip-roaring riotous night of jolly conversation – but when you spend most of your reception posing for photos for a reputed million-pound OK! magazine deal, you can kind of see that the dinner is not that important.
Talk to Nigel about celebrity weddings and he says they bring him out in hives. Firstly, no one eats the food because they are either anorexic, bulimic or on drugs, and secondly, you never actually get to serve dinner properly. At the last celebrity wedding he did the party was kept waiting for two and a half hours while the famous and photogenic couple got snapped. Eventually the guests gave up waiting for their supper and went through to the marquee and started helping themselves. He, of course, was horrified, as he didn’t get to announce the dinner.
Interestingly, weddings have become much more fashionable recently in celebrity circles. It used to be a little un-hip to tie the knot, but now everyone from Pink to Peaches Geldoff, and from Liam Gallagher to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise have got married. Even someone like Cheryl Cole is standing by her vomiting adulterous footballer husband, despite his fateful night out with the lads. Celebs are always sharing how they want the happy ending and are looking for ‘the one’, which is a far cry from groovier days when ladettes had partners and no one would be seen dead walking up the aisle in a big white dress.
But now big frocks are everywhere. The bigger the better. The smaller the bodice, the bigger the skirt, the more marvellous they are. A girlfriend of mine who works in bridal wear blames Jordan. Actually, everyone who works in the wedding industry blames Jordan for everything. She really embraced the idea of a fairytale wedding and thereby gave the rest of the country carte blanche to do so. Bernard turned down the chance to do her wedding, and I kind of wish he hadn’t. Although the company would never have lived it down, it would have been quite fantastic to have been involved in such a ridiculous extravaganza. I can’t believe a gay man turned that chance down, but maybe his good-taste radar wouldn’t have been able to cope.
Before Jordan, it was considered embarrassing to want a big dress. The pink coach is obviously still embarrassing – Bernard was offered it recently for some wedding we were doing in Hertfordshire and he said he’d rather kill himself than send out any of his brides in that thing. But the dress was revolutionary. The meringue was dead and Jordan resuscitated it and spawned an army of big-frocked imitators. Hers was a Swarovski-decked puffball by Knightsbridge designer Isabell Kristensen, but Hollywood Dreams, a shop which stocks similar huge gowns, has been doing sterling business ever since. Never has the pink-net-and-satin business been so busy.
The door buzzer goes again and Jez practically chucks his cup of coffee down his front in shock.
‘Good afternoon, Keeley,’ says Camilla down the intercom. ‘First floor. We’ve been expecting you.’
We all hold our breath. Jez wants to see if Keeley’s breasts are quite as fabulous close-up as he imagines. I am secretly hoping that she has brought her premiership footballer husband-to-be with her. Camilla wants to check out her outfit, and Bernard just wants to look at her nails.
She knocks gently on the door and all four of us say, ‘Come in!’ Bernard gives us a group glare and hisses, ‘Get the fuck back to work.’ It is not quite as under his breath as he hoped. ‘Keeley!’ he declares a little too loudly by way of compensation. ‘Come in, come this way, come to the inner sanctum.’
Keeley is a veritable symphony of honey. She is a little taller than I imagined her to be, not the usual disappointing short arse that every celeb seems to be. And she is beautifully put together, with her honey-coloured hair and her honey-coloured skin and her honey-coloured terry tracksuit. I know it is Juicy Couture, but there is nothing couture about a tracksuit. She is wearing honey-coloured Chanel pumps and is sporting a matching handbag. She has a socking great Fox’s mint on her left hand, which appears to be the same size as the diamonds in each ear. Hubby-to-be must have bought the whole set when he was down at Hatton Garden – I wonder if he got some sort of stash discount.
‘Hiya,’ she says to everyone, flashing a bright white smile at each of us in turn, showing us the results of a clearly rather recent bleach. ‘Lovely to meet you all.’ She turns round. ‘And this is my sister, Danni. Keith couldn’t come along today, so she’s taken his place.’
Looking from Keeley to Danni, the phrase ‘the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away’ comes to mind. The poor girl. What must it have been like growing up with the honey goddess as your sister when, let’s just say, you were missed out when the pretty stick came tapping?
‘Hiya,’ says Danni, her shoulders all hunched.
‘Hi, Danni,’ I say, coming over and shaking her hand. ‘Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Coffee?’
‘A Coke,’ she replies.
‘Absolutely,’ I smile. Shit. None of us had thought of those. ‘Keeley, would you like the same?’
‘No, thanks,’ she says with a swing of her honey hair. ‘I’d like a green tea.’
Jez is dispatched at speed to get a full-fat Coke and some green teabags, while I follow Bernard and the girls into the inner office.
‘You’ve got a lovely place here,’ says Keeley, sitting down on the dark-green leather Chesterfield sofa. ‘Ever so chic.’ She rests her hands on her knees and crosses one leg over the other. I clock Bernard checking out her nails. They are white tipped but not square. Sadly not quite so ‘rich, thick and unopinionated’ as Bernard would have hoped.
‘So, ladies, welcome. It’s lovely to have you here at Penrose. I can’t tell you how excited we are about working with you,’ says Bernard, looking at both the girls. ‘First things first. Do you have a magazine deal, and if so which one are we dealing with? One of those exclusives where we have to keep everything a secret and spend most of our time running away from the press?’ Bernard sounds like he is being amusing and jovial, but in fact he is actually working out how much of a nightmare this wedding is going to be, and if he really wants to be a part of it. Sometimes even when the budget is huge and 20 per cent is really rather juicy, it’s just not worth the hassle.
‘Well, I’m not really sure at the moment,’ Keeley says. ‘My agent is talking to a few people.’
‘Would you like a piece of advice from an old queen?’ he asks.
‘Any advice would be welcome,’ she smiles.
‘Don’t.’
‘Oh,’ she says. This is clearly not what she wants to hear.
‘If they haven’t offered, then I wouldn’t go looking for it.’
Bernard goes on to explain that normally on the announcement of the engagement the big offers come in. Sometimes the magazines will call in favours, saying remember the topless photos of you that we bought to keep off the market? Or the photos of you shagging on a sunbed in Spain that we paid a fortune for so that no one else could run them? Well, now it’s payback time. And the control they have over the wedding can be extremely restricting.
The more famous you are, the more control you have. If you don’t command many headlines, then you may as well sell your soul down the river as well. Not only can they tell you what to wear, where to stand and what the theme should be, but they issue edicts like ‘No black, no red, no cameras, no mobiles.’ So your guests feel like they are turning up to more of a theatre opening than a wedding.
They also ask you if you have any famous friends, and if you are short, they invite along their own guests to up the celeb count and make your wedding look more showbiz. Out goes plump cousin Lucy in her mint dress, and in comes some actress from Emmerdale you have never met, let alone spotted across a crowded room. Instead of Aunt Edith sitting next to Uncle Fred, suddenly the li
kes of Bonnie Langford creep into your family snaps. The strangest bridesmaids turn up at the most star-studded events – how else did Martine McCutcheon end up at Liza Minnelli’s side when she was marrying David Guest at their seven-figure-deal, ten-page-spread wedding?
And then of course there are the photographs. Who takes them? Are they any good? Can you have picture approval?
‘No one wants to end up in the same situation as poor Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly,’ says Bernard.
‘I’m sorry?’ says Keeley.
‘I mean, did he sell the photos without telling the Palace because he needed the money? Who knows?’ says Bernard. ‘But Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, who organized the wedding, must have known what was going on and should have made it clear.’
‘Right,’ nods Keeley.
‘Hello! magazine has never been invited to a private royal reception before and no one knew who they were, because no one was introduced, and there are certain rules and regulations when photographing the royals. You can’t snap them eating or drinking. All pictures have to be approved for publication and these weren’t. And the magazine was told to leave the major royals alone, so those girls Kate and Chelsea really got it.’ He sighs. ‘And now, of course, if they bleat about press intrusion they don’t have a leg to stand on. It’s a mess. So,’ he looks across the table at Keeley, ‘if you don’t have to sell your big day, then don’t. If you can’t afford the most expensive caterer, then don’t have them. If you can’t afford to have five hundred guests, have three hundred.’
‘It’s not about the money,’ she interrupts.
‘Although it’s not to be sniffed at,’ he replies. ‘In the olden days the most you’d get was £400,000, which is what Emma Noble and James Major managed to pocket for their wedding. Before then it was more like £250,000. But Posh and Becks broke the barrier. They got a million, but that’s only because Richard Desmond was convinced the Sun had offered the same. Their agent apparently fell off his chair when the call came in. Catherine Zeta and Dinosaur Douglas got a million as well, and now everyone’s hoping for those sort of figures.’
Wedding Babylon Page 6