‘I suppose not.’ I smile. I doubt she has kept down anything solid for at least a decade. She’s got the haunted, bloodshot-eyed look of someone who ‘purges’ on a regular basis. Either that or she is about to cry again. ‘Can I get you anything else?’
‘No, I am fine, thanks,’ she says. ‘I had an apple on the way here.’
‘So how are you?’
‘Fine.’ She smiles and makes an attempt at a breezy face.
‘Good. I am pleased.’ I open the file on my desk. ‘I am not quite sure what we are supposed to be getting through today.’
‘Well, last time we chose a green tablecloth and I am afraid I don’t like it any more. I showed it to my mother and she said the only people who have green tablecloths are the elderly on their dinner trays in hospital.’
‘It is not green,’ I say. ‘It’s sage.’
‘Well, it will clash with what everyone is wearing.’ She smiles tightly, as if the matter is closed. I hate it when you think that something is sorted, only for a problem to surface once the mother or mother-in-law has shoved her great big fat middle-aged oar in.
‘OK – what did your mother say that she wanted?’
‘It’s not my mother, it’s me,’ she replies, shaking her glossy blonde hair. ‘It’s all very well for you to sit and judge, but you don’t know what it’s like having to be in the middle of everyone’s opinions and ideas.’
‘No, I am sure—’
‘It’s hard, really hard being me.’ She reaches into the pocket of her flowered dress and pulls out a snotty handkerchief. ‘Especially when my fiancé is so unsupportive. I show him samples and ask him what he wants and he says, “Choose what you like” and so I do, and then he turns round and says that it’s crap. That I can’t make choices, that I have bad taste, that things I choose are ugly. When he just can’t be arsed to look himself. All I know is that everything I choose is shit.’ Her head flops forward and she starts to cry. Her shoulders heave up and down and she sniffs into her hanky. ‘So we are having the toile de joie.’
‘OK,’ I say. It’s the mother’s choice. Mothers love a toile de joie. It reminds them of stately homes in the 1970s, when all the sofas and chairs were covered in burgundy bucolic scenes from yesteryear.
‘And we shall have it in the dark blue, and then have a dark-blue tablecloth over the top,’ she says through her sniffs and sobs.
‘Can I make suggestion?’
She looks up at me like I have just asked if I can sleep with her mother and if the whole family can watch. ‘What?’
‘That you have pale-cream linen over the top, not navy blue.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it will look very old-fashioned and a bit like some corporate event in 1978. And I also think if you want to have the toile de joie you might consider the burgundy. You are having an autumn wedding – the reds and russets are a theme, are they not?’ Her newly purchased breasts begin to heave. I have overstepped the mark. ‘It is only my professional opinion. You can do what you like.’
‘But that’s not true. I am so indecisive. I don’t know what I like. I don’t know what I want. My parents never loved me, you know . . .’
For the next fifteen minutes Kathryn goes on to tell me – and indeed Camilla, who is wandering back and forth, in and out of Bernard’s office, packaging up the placement cards – all about her childhood. How she was sent away at the age of seven to boarding school, how no one ever came to see her at half term, how she was always farmed out to friends in the holidays. She goes on and on. As a result she is now so unsure of herself, so cowed, she can’t even choose the tablecloths for her own wedding.
‘I mean, it should be an easy thing, right?’ she says, imploring me with her pink eyes as tears pour down her cheeks. ‘It should be so easy, anyone can do it. But I can’t. I’ve got no confidence. Do you know, I can’t even see myself walking down the aisle? I look in my head and I see nothing.’ She hits the side of her head with the palm of her hand. ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have no idea what I am going to look like.’ She stares at me, sniffing, waiting for me to say something.
‘Um . . . you’re going to look great.’ I pause. This registers, but it is not enough. ‘Beautiful. You are going to look beautiful. Truly beautiful,’ I embellish. ‘The most beautiful bride in the world.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispers.
‘Pleasure,’ I say. Jesus, I think, I wonder if Craig or Kurt or whoever she is marrying realizes that he’s got a nutter on his hands.
‘Only me!’ comes a shout from the door.
I look across. Never have I been more delighted to see Caroline in my life. She may be a Tango-coloured stalker but at least she is positive and upbeat and not totally, utterly and unfathomably insane. She is just a little bit rich and a little bit bonkers and she fancies me. All the above is dealable with; the weeping bride is not.
‘Caroline!’ I declare effusively. ‘How very lovely to see you.’
‘I am so glad to find you in at last,’ she replies, waving a very small black bag at me. ‘You have no idea how many non-essential purchases I’ve made at Chanel this week as an excuse to come over to this part of town. The door was open so I came right up.’
‘Honest as ever,’ I smile.
‘You know me, darling, I have the tact of a rattlesnake!’ She hoots with laughter. ‘Caroline,’ she says, taking Kathryn’s hand and shaking it. ‘I am one of his ex-brides.’
‘Ex-brides?’ she asks, a little confused, still thinking about herself.
‘Married for three years and four weeks, not that I am counting at all!’ She laughs again. ‘But they are brilliant here, they’ll get you anything you need. Are you having the lanterns? Are you? Oh, you must, don’t think that because everyone has the lanterns they’re rubbish, because they’re not. Everyone has them because they are just fabulous and so romantic. I mean people actually cried when we lit ours, and most of them were bankers, who we all know have no soul.’
‘Sorry?’ asks Kathryn, clearly wondering where all the attention went. ‘Are we having the lanterns?’
‘We haven’t got that far yet,’ I reply. ‘We have yet to choose the tablecloths and the themed look for the wedding.’
‘Keep it simple, simple, simple,’ suggests Caroline. ‘There is nothing more ghastly than anything overcomplicated. God, like that . . .’ She picks up the swatch of navy-blue toile de joie and looks at me. I round my eyes, willing her to stop, but she doesn’t notice. ‘I can’t believe you’re still offering this crap. This is the sort of stuff that women who think the annual golf-club dinner is the social highlight of the year force upon their daughters. You should get rid of it.’ She chucks it in the bin. ‘It’s far too gin and Jag for you lot.’
‘My father’s got a Jag,’ mumbles Kathryn.
‘Darling! So’s mine. Nearly all fat old men have Jags!’ She laughs again. ‘Sorry,’ she says suddenly. ‘Was I interrupting something?’
‘No, no,’ I insist. ‘Kathryn was just winding up. I think maybe you should have one more think about it all. And let’s chat on Friday morning, with a view to putting another meeting in the diary next week?’
Kathryn takes herself and her pockets of snotty tissues out of the office, while Caroline slips into the ready-warmed seat. Fortunately, Camilla is very much around, tearing off strips of Sellotape and sheets of brown paper, so Caroline’s knee-touching, footsie and breasts-resting-on-my-desk as she pretends to rattle around in her bag for important things are curtailed. Camilla even perches half-buttocked on my desk for a good five minutes, grilling Caroline about her children, husband and latest foreign holiday.
Finally Caroline licks her finger and leafs through her pink croc diary.
‘So I am thinking end of November for the party,’ she says.
‘When is your birthday?’
‘December the eighteenth,’ she says. ‘But that is so close to Christmas, so I am going to bring the party forward. Who wants to be confused with Je
sus?’
‘Quite.’
‘Honestly, everyone’s livers are screaming by the time it gets to my birthday. So I’d like them fresh and pink at the end of November. Everyone will be desperate by then.’
‘And it is your thirty-second?’
‘I shall be thirty-three,’ she says, flicking her striped hair and pouting her puffed collagen-filled lips. Without wishing to sound mean, she looks a hell of a lot older. There is something about rich women and grooming. A little bit is fine, but too much is ageing. The tan, the blow dry, the collagen, the botox, the fillers, the designer clothes, the padded black-and-gold Chanel handbag, all make her look more like she is knocking forty and less like she’s just crossed the thirty threshold.
‘And an intimate dinner for . . . ?’
‘Forty,’ she says. ‘Or possibly fifty. It depends on how many of my friends I see in the South of France this summer.’
‘OK.’ I start making notes.
‘And I want Nigel,’ she says. ‘He makes the best hazelnut meringue ever.’
We run through a few more details about the night. She is suggesting that we put up some sort of Bedouin tent in the garden, with real fires to keep the guests warm. But she holds back on some details, as she wants to secure another meeting on home turf.
‘I know,’ she says, like the idea has just occurred to her. ‘Why don’t we meet up at my house next Tuesday? Geoff is away and I’ll cook you dinner.’
Before I can invent an excuse or worm out of the rendezvous my mobile goes and she chooses this as a great time to make her excuses.
‘Hello?’ I say, watching Caroline head for the door, waving and mouthing ‘See you next week.’
‘It’s Alice.’
‘Oh, hi, how are you? Your placements will be with you this evening; they’ve been redone and look great. They are on their way to you this afternoon.’
‘Great. Thank you. Have you seen the cake yet?’ she asks, her voice buzzing with excitement.
‘Yes!’
‘Is it fantastic?’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I can’t wait!’ she squeals. ‘Um, one other thing, I heard from a mate who was at the wedding you did last weekend—’
‘Right.’
‘She was one of the bridesmaids.’ Oh no, my heart starts racing. Please God let it not be the one I shagged. ‘Josephine?’
Thank you, God. It’s Matron.
‘Oh well, anyway, she said that there was a great ice bar and how fantastic it was, and I want one.’
‘It’s a little short notice.’
‘But I want one.’ She clears her throat. ‘If whatshername had one.’
‘Sarah.’
‘If Sarah had one then so can I.’
I get these kinds of calls all the time. It’s a sort of wedding one-upmanship thing. If so and so’s daughter had X, then our dear lovely daughter must have X and Y. It used to be businessmen in competition with their partners or associates, however it is increasingly happening between groups of friends or acquaintances. Bernard is always posing the question ‘What is the wedding for?’ Is it for the bride and groom? Then it should be kept simple and full of their friends. Is it a businessman showing off to his friends just how rich and successful he is, how far he has come, how he is a man of taste and distinction? Then you should pull out all the stops – and invariably they do.
Most people think that it’s the WAGS and the celebs like Wayne and Colleen and Madonna and Guy who really shell out on their weddings – and I suppose £5 million is quite a lot of money for a weekend. But it is the businessmen who really spend the money. A couple of years ago Russian oligarch Andrei Melnichenko dropped a cool $35 million on his wedding to a former Miss Yugoslavia, Aleksandra Kokotovic, shelling out a rumoured $3.6 million for Christina Aguilera to sing just three songs. And the world’s fifth-richest man, Indian steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, threw a $60 million extravaganza in honour of his daughter Vanisha’s nuptials. The family sent out twenty-page invitations in silver boxes. Mittal put up a thousand guests in a five-star Paris hotel for the five-day affair. One night there was a party at Versailles; another event reportedly took place at a wooden castle temporarily erected in the Parc de Saint Cloud.
Mittal’s event almost rivals what is considered to be the most extravagant wedding of modern times. The 1981 wedding of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, who recently became the ruler of Dubai, to Princess Salama, earned that honour with its $44.5 million price tag ($100 million at today’s rates). His family built a stadium big enough to hold twenty thousand people for the celebrations, which lasted an astounding seven days – hopefully long enough for the couple to greet all the guests. A quarter of a century later, it is still listed as the most expensive wedding in the Guinness Book of World Records.
That makes the wedding of Marie-Chantal Miller to Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece a relatively small knees-up for 1,300. Held at Wrotham Park near Barnet in Hertfordshire, it was attended by 162 crowned heads of Europe, making it the largest congregation of crowned heads gathered together in the UK since the Coronation. They dined on foie gras, asparagus, lamb and a selection of veg, with a symphony of desserts. They danced until four a.m. and then enjoyed a champagne breakfast. There were Greek dancers and fireworks displays. They recreated the Parthenon using a giant marquee in the garden.
Really, when you are dealing with this level of money, the only thing that holds you back is your imagination. We have imported elephants from France for a party – for some reason we couldn’t source any from the UK. We have had deer roaming free, as well as the odd zebra to enhance a black-and-white theme. Last year we re-created Venice for one client. There were revolving stages and huge palaces and performers and musclemen who shipped guests along canals in giant gondolas. In the middle of dinner we froze over one of the canals and then sent out some ice-skaters to perform. In the background we had re-created giant Canalettos that were five metres wide and three metres high. Hidden amongst the landscapes were cherubs whose faces had been replaced by those of some of the guests. And all this was realized in all its finery in Fulham Palace.
One of Bernard’s phrases when asked how to spend big money at a wedding is, ‘Do you want to melt it or burn it?’ There is nothing he loves more than a few ice chandeliers slowly losing value above the host’s head. Or a fabulous fireworks display that can burn through £60,000 in twenty minutes. Although his current favourite is a company called Aquatique who choreograph water to music, which is so spectacular he likens it to bringing Vegas to the English countryside.
I dash out of the office and leap into a cab while talking Alice though the pros, cons and prices of an ice bar. The bar itself is around £750 a metre, and she would need at least a couple of metres to create some sort of an impression. There is also an entertaining ice-shot-glass option at £25 for fifty glasses, or indeed ice plates for the ice cream. Nigel loves using ice plates for his puddings as it saves on breakages and washing up. As I come over the brow of Notting Hill, Alice finally comes to the conclusion that she wants all three – the bar, the plates and the shot glasses. That should get them talking in Sussex.
I pull up outside Esther’s flat just as Simon is arriving with her wedding dress. It looks totally fantastic in a low-key glamorous sort of way: a slimline fitted dress with a scooped neck and rosebuds all along the neckline.
‘Simon!’ I yell as I leap out of the cab.
‘Mate!’ he replies, keeping his foot in the door. ‘You’re cutting it fine!’
‘Jez has been at the venue most of the day. I’ve just come from the office.’ I run towards him. ‘You look great!’
‘Mykonos,’ he says. ‘Long weekend.’
‘Weren’t you doing last-minute adjustments? Slaving over some Swarovski crystals?’
‘Fuck off,’ he says, running his free hand over his tanned bald head. ‘There is more to couture than bloody shiny shit.’
I have known Simon for about five ye
ars and he is one of the best couture wedding-dress designers around. He trained on Savile Row, so is famous for his sharp cuts and smooth lines. His great signature dress is held together using four seams, and each seam takes a day to complete, such is his precision. It appeals to the obsessive in all of us. The dress he loathes to make is the Jordan special, the meringue with a sweetheart bodice. But fortunately he has an amazing reputation and can pick and choose his clients; it is rare that a meringue ends up on the mannequin in his studio.
I have been to his studio just around the corner from here and watched him work a few times. It takes a certain type of bride to be able to work with him. They are usually quite well off, as his dresses range from £3,000 to £16,000 (though that particular one was hand-beaded by Locks of London, one of the finest beading companies in the world, who bead for the Queen). And the bride’s other quality is that she has to be imaginative. Simon has complained to me before about how some girls can’t actually visualize their dress. They need to see a dress and to touch it before they buy. Simon would normally spend the first of his three fittings talking to the bride and trying to work out her likes and dislikes. It usually only takes twenty minutes before he starts to sketch. But if they don’t know what they like or want, it is impossible to make any headway. They also don’t have any knowledge of silks and fabrics; they just repeat things they have heard, so he finds himself having to put them right.
‘I’ve had girls actually asking me for Thai silk, like it was something to be aspired to,’ I remember him telling me once. ‘But it’s shit. It has a nasty slug in it and it is no good to work with. It behaves very badly. The best silks are from Italy and France.’
The two of us march up the six flights of steps to the third-floor flat, to be met by Esther in her cream embroidered-silk dressing-gown. Her hair is up in a chignon, her make-up is pale and she has a small sprig of lily of the valley in the curls at the back of her head. She looks totally radiant and extremely happy.
‘Come in,’ she beams. ‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’
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