Wedding Babylon

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  But before Alex, Trudi and I can discuss the oleaginous advances of Mr Oxford, there is a high-pitched scream and sprinting out of the house comes a rather plump-looking child.

  ‘Liberty! Liberty! Get your arse back here now!’ Richard’s sister, Katie, comes storming out on to the terrace, waving what looks like a bridesmaid’s dress in the air. ‘Get yourself back here now!’

  ‘No!’ shouts the tearful Liberty from behind a rhododendron bush down by the stream. ‘I hate it. I don’t want to wear it.’

  ‘I don’t care what you want! You asked to be a bloody bridesmaid and I’ve coughed up 120 quid for the privilege, so get back here. Now!’

  Sobs emanate from behind the leaves, which are joined by great long sniffs as I approach.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

  ‘No!’ she says, turning to glare at me with red tear-stained eyes. Her pale-brown hair hangs lankly by the sides of her large flushed cheeks, and a column of snot shoots in and out of her nose each time she sniffs. It is not a pretty sight.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Not unless you can help me lose a stone overnight,’ she cries.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Is the dress too small?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, her face crumpling. ‘They measured me six months ago and I’ve grown. It’s not my fault. I am twelve.’

  ‘It’s your job to grow at twelve,’ I say.

  ‘But now I am a laughing stock. I can’t be a bridesmaid. I am too fat for the dress and that’s that.’

  ‘I think I know a man who can fix it.’

  ‘Really? You’re just saying that.’ She shoves her hair behind her ears and wipes her nose on the sleeve of her tight pink T-shirt.

  ‘No, I am not,’ I say. ‘It will involve a bit of time and money, but I am sure we can sort it out. I’ll have to make a phone call first.’

  Simon is charm itself when I call him. As a clinically obese teenager himself who still has eating issues as an adult, he is only too happy to help a pubescent girl who has porked out of her dress. He promises, if I manage to bike him the dress, that he will get it to Bernard, who is coming down to oversee the wedding early tomorrow morning. He says he won’t charge, as it is such a small quick job and he clearly feels a certain sense of solidarity with the pubescent overweight.

  So by the time the furious Katie comes marching towards us both at the bottom of the garden, the situation is solved. This earns me a grudging ‘thank you’ from her, but a very fabulous warm hug from Alice. Even her mother manages a stiff smile, although I can’t help thinking she was rather hoping that Liberty might not make her aesthetically challenged appearance down the aisle after all.

  Back in the marquee, Alex and Trudi are getting along nicely, filling the tables with stunning lilac and pink flowers and pinning small bunched twists of lavender to the back of every white chair cover. It is amazing how a marquee comes alive once the flowers are in place. Alex is gossiping about a friend of hers who has just come back from doing a wedding in the Middle East.

  ‘There were twelve of them out there for nearly two weeks doing the flowers,’ she says, picking up twists of lavender. ‘They worked from six a.m. through to two a.m. every day for twelve days, prepping five thousand vases at a time. They had sixty thousand roses that needed cutting and dunking in water.’

  ‘Imagine the rubbish,’ says Trudi.

  ‘I know,’ agrees Alex. ‘It was huge. They had ten thousand white orchids flown in from Malaysia and eighteen thousand lilies from Holland, all for this incredible display where they were just dripping off the balcony. They had urns that took ten men to lift at one time.’

  ‘What was the budget?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, there wasn’t one, but the flowers cost £400,000. But that was without the vintage crystal and silver bowls for the roses or the bespoke vases for the orchids. It sounded incredible. There was a dinner for eight hundred women in the evening in a marble marquee that was made for the event, with marble floors and water features. There was no drink, no men and an awful lot of couture.’

  ‘How dull,’ says Trudi.

  ‘It was all over in an hour and a half.’

  ‘Where were the blokes?’ I ask.

  ‘They were having some sword-fighting dinner in tents in the desert.’

  ‘That sounds much more exciting,’ sighs Trudi. ‘I think I’d much prefer to be a bloke if I lived in the Middle East.’

  ‘But there were so many dinners and lunches,’ continues Alex. ‘Each had new flowers and there were new venues for each – there was a garden party where the place was decked out with white spray roses and white urns and white furniture and white umbrellas that had all been shipped in. And the clothes they all wore! Valentino for breakfast, Chanel for lunch, Lacroix for the garden party and Dior for dinner. He said he had never seen so many frocks in his entire life, and the queue of Bentleys lined up outside the party was extraordinary. Apparently they asked him to sign a contract saying that he would never re-create any of the floral designs ever again.’

  ‘But everyone puts roses in a crystal bowl,’ says Trudi.

  ‘I know,’ agrees Alex. ‘There are some things I would be very happy never to repeat again.’

  ‘Like the orange and yellow arum lilies with orange beads in red vases?’ laughs Trudi. ‘That is the only time I have ever seen you cry.’

  ‘Well, it was so disgusting, and the vases the bride insisted on using kept falling over because they were so goddamn cheap, and the caterer minced over and said, “Oh, this is different.” That was enough to make me lose it. Never again am I doing something I hate because the bride wants it. I think I’d rather lose the job than go through that humiliation again.’

  Alex and Trudi continue discussing the various hideous floral displays they have witnessed, while I am distracted by the sound of a horn in the drive. To my relief it is a truck pulling a luxury-lavatory trailer. A rosy-cheeked chap with thick straw hair sticking out at all angles leaps out of the driving seat. There are two other blokes sitting next to him in the front.

  ‘Hi there!’ he says, smiling, with a broad hand outstretched.

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nods.

  ‘Am I glad to see you.’

  ‘So I gather,’ he says, pulling his jeans up over his flat stomach. ‘Nice place.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How many people are you expecting?’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘This should do it,’ he says, nodding over his shoulder. ‘But it will probably take quite a battering.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I say, looking a little confused.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ he says, grinning broadly, looking for signs of jest on my face. ‘A posh wedding? They’re the worst. The sick, the sex, the knickers we find in the system, the foot marks on the ceiling. They only ever happen at the posh weddings. They kick the doors down, use every flat surface available for cocaine. There are always wraps of the stuff everywhere the next day – that and a bloke fast asleep in the cubicle.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ I agree. ‘Now you put it like that.’

  ‘I tell you, mate,’ he says, walking round to the back of the truck. ‘The worst are those polo matches. We did one the other day where a girl called up to ask if we could get her wallet out of the loo. What did she have that out for, I wonder? The wealthier they are, the filthier. They just don’t care. Where do you want it?’

  ‘The other side of the marquee. We have built a tunnel for it.’ I point down the garden.

  ‘Right,’ he says, pushing his thick fringe off his forehead. ‘Can we go through the field? If not, you should tell the lady of the house we risk buggering up her lawn.’

  After some swift negotiating, Louise finally agrees that ‘just this once’ the truck can take the loo trailer through the field. Peter cranks the engine into gear and to the accompaniment of Louise’s yells, sighs, winces and instructions he eventually manages to get the lavatories somewh
ere approaching the back of the marquee.

  ‘Pavel! Andrei!’ shouts Peter at his two Polish assistants. ‘Here.’ He mimes lugging the trailer the final ten yards to the back of the tent. ‘We’ll need to tap power from somewhere,’ says Peter. ‘And you need to ask the bride what sort of music she wants in the lavs. Also,’ he adds, ‘I think you should suggest to her that she not use these on the day. The amount of times brides have got the blue stuff on their dresses – it’s bad, and it doesn’t come out.’

  ‘I had suggested that she use the lavatories in the house already,’ I nod. ‘Also we all know what’s in that stuff.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nods and laughs.

  The blue loo systems are sealed units, so whatever chemicals are put into the system are then pumped around and around. So the more people use the lavatories, the more potent the concoction that gets pumped around. The blue liquid that is used to flush the lavatory is not water, or blue liquid and water, but the contents of the previous occupant’s bowl. Knowing that, quite why anyone would want to spend any time in a cubicle involved in drug-taking or romantic pursuits is beyond me. It is effectively one big churning cesspit that gets more full of cess the longer the party goes on.

  ‘The other day,’ continues Peter, while guiding the trailer, ‘someone made a huge mistake, and it wasn’t me, because I was called in to fix it, but they put the vacuum system in the wrong way round, so when you pushed the button to flush, the thing just blasted back at you.’

  ‘No shit!’ I say.

  ‘Well, actually, plenty of shit,’ he replies. ‘What I found weird was that after it happened to two or three people you would have thought everyone else would stop using them. But no. About eight or nine people were covered in blue crap before someone suggested that perhaps no one should use the loos.’

  About half an hour later everything is connected up. The spotlighting works inside, there is hot and cold running water in the taps and some Chris de Burgh on the stereo.

  ‘Is this the bride’s choice?’ I ask, wincing slightly.

  ‘No, it is the standard testing CD,’ says Peter, fiddling with the soap dispenser. ‘She is looking for some music in the house. You’ve got no attendant in these toilets,’ he continues, screwing up the dispenser, ‘so can you make sure that someone keeps an eye on this stuff?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have had it up to here,’ he says, tapping his forehead, ‘with people nicking my Molton Brown. Every time I do a wedding like this it happens. Do you know, a mate of mine did a posh do at the Tate the other day and they had Jo Malone in the lavs, and they were all cleaned out before the main course! This same bloke did these really smart loos with Aynsley china door handles and hand plates, and someone pinched everything, unscrewing the lot with a nail file. It’s not that they really want the stuff, I think they just have a few drinks and think, why not?’

  ‘Well,’ I say, brushing down the front of my suit and puffing myself up with indignation, ‘I can assure you, this is not that sort of wedding.’

  Friday p.m.

  WALKING BACK UP to the house, I am beginning to regret my sweeping assurances that this is going to be a perfectly run and well-behaved wedding; I can hear Louise swearing from here. She is ordering Alistair and Trisha out of the kitchen and shouting at Richard and Andrew to go and do something useful. I knock tentatively on the kitchen door, only to hear her yell, ‘You are ALL ruining what is supposed to be the best FUCKING weekend of my life!’

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ says Peter, who, much to my surprise, has followed me up the garden.

  ‘Oh!’ I say, turning around.

  ‘Oh!’ Louise reiterates, desperately trying to regain her composure. ‘And will we be seeing you again?’

  ‘You probably won’t.’ He smiles over my shoulder. ‘We are coming very early on Sunday morning, before any of you are awake. We need the toilets back for a corporate do on Monday morning, and they take twenty-four hours to turn around.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ smiles Louise.

  ‘Who knew there was that much money in shit,’ laughs Alistair. ‘Quite literally, where there’s muck, there’s brass.’

  ‘Alistair!’ hisses Louise, her lips all pursed and affronted.

  ‘Absolutely,’ laughs Peter, as if he has never heard that joke before. But then he’s pocketing a cool £2,000 for a weekend for a loo that costs just £220 to clean up and turn around, so the joke is clearly on us. ‘See you guys around!’ he smiles. ‘Or perhaps not.’

  As Peter leaves the drive, the courier arrives to take Liberty’s dress back to London. Katie comes ambling out of the house, as if moving faster might actually kill her.

  ‘Make sure it’s back by tomorrow,’ she says, holding the pink frilled dress aloft.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, taking it from her dimpled hand. ‘I was actually thinking Monday,’ I mumble, trying hard not to kick the woman in the shins.

  ‘You what?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing. Of course, tomorrow morning, as soon as we can.’

  One of the problems of being a wedding planner when it comes close to the actual big day is that the family can start to treat you like a servant. I have had some real cheeky bitches asking me to go and get them fags from the pub, or a drink from downstairs, or top-up cards for the bridesmaids’ mobile phones. Which is why I mostly try and keep out of the family’s way. My duties are to make sure the marquee is looking good, the caterers are behaving, that everything is arriving on time and that what has arrived is correct.

  Talking of which, I had better quickly run through the order-of-service sheets with Richard that I have just walked past in the hall.

  I find Richard smoking on the terrace with his feet up on one of the cream brushed-wood dining chairs that he appears to have taken from the marquee. He is on the phone, apparently talking to an usher.

  ‘Yeah, right, yeah,’ he laughs. ‘There’s a lunch at the Fox and Rabbit in the village before the wedding, for the ushers, at about twelve. Yeah – too right!’ He roars with laughter and throws his fag into the flowerbed. ‘Dutch courage! Catch you later.’ He hangs up.

  ‘Not too much Dutch courage, I hope,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ He looks at me like I have interrupted a deep and profound thought.

  ‘Not too much of the old shandy.’ I make a drinking gesture. ‘I had a vicar who refused to marry a couple once because the groom was too drunk. He didn’t think he was of a right and sentient mind, or whatever the expression is, to understand what he was saying, so they had to call the whole thing off and wait until a week later.’

  ‘Shit,’ says Richard.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agree. ‘Can I talk to you about the order of service? I just want to check a few things with you.’

  ‘Hi, babe,’ says Alice, arriving on the terrace in a denim miniskirt and white T-shirt. She sits herself down on a deckchair next to Richard. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I just want to go through the order of service,’ I say, handing them both a copy.

  ‘Haven’t we been through this a hundred times?’ sighs Richard, stretching into a yawn.

  ‘We’ll have a chance to go through it again at the rehearsal this afternoon, but I just want to look at the printed copy to make sure it is all OK with you guys.’ I pause. They are both looking at the sheets, one more enthusiastically than the other. I opt to carry on while I have any semblance of attention. ‘So you are coming down the aisle to the Queen of Sheba?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Alice nods.

  ‘And the hymns are “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”, “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven” and “I Vow to Thee, My Country”?’

  ‘That’s right – I think,’ says Richard.

  ‘And the readings are 1 Corinthians 13 and The Prophet,’ I say, looking down at the sheet. ‘And 1 Corinthians is being read by your dad, Alice?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She nods. ‘He was practising this morning at the cottage, apparently.’

  ‘And T
he Prophet is Andrew? And he’s OK with that?’ I ask.

  ‘Er, well, I haven’t asked him yet,’ admits Richard, scratching his crotch with embarrassment.

  ‘What?’ yells Alice, leaping out of her chair and suddenly sounding worryingly like her mother. ‘You were supposed to ask him two months ago!’

  ‘Yeah, well, some of us have jobs,’ he snipes back.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her hands go straight on to her hips and her teeth clench. This is clearly an old argument.

  ‘You know what that means. You’ve been getting married for at least the last six months and everything else has taken a back seat, including your work,’ he says, staring back at her equally defiantly.

  ‘What are you now, my boss?’ Her shoulders shake with anger.

  ‘No, it’s just that every single one of your mates has had it with the bride thing,’ he says. ‘“How can she say that? Doesn’t she know I am getting married?”’ he mimics. ‘“I can’t do that – I am getting married. I don’t have time – I am getting married.” You’ve got a fucking planner!’ He points at me. ‘How goddamn difficult can it be?’

  ‘Yes, well, some of us like to do things properly, which is more than can be said for you, because you can’t even remember to ask the best man to do a reading when you see the bastard every goddamn day of your life. In fact, I think you spend more time with Andrew than you do with me!’

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t nag!’

  ‘I don’t nag!’

  Just as I am wondering quite how to extricate myself from this domestic, my phone goes. It is the vicar, asking if someone will collect him from the station. He has been in the neighbouring diocese all morning and the taxi company said there was a forty-five-minute wait. I pass on the message to Richard and Alice and they both look at me, extremely irritated by the interruption.

  ‘OK, then,’ I say, looking at their tense faces. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replies Alice. I turn to walk away. ‘And another thing,’ she barks. ‘Take your fucking feet off the fucking dining chair. We have spent thousands of pounds hiring this shit – the last thing we need is for you to bugger it up and lose us our deposit.’