How To Marry Your Husband

by Anne Brooke

  Once this is over, they can get on with the joyful business of being engaged. They decide to get married in September – Olivia doesn’t like summer and much prefers autumn as a season, plus it will give her a chance to finish the Hi-Tech Secretarial course she’s studying for through work. As an added bonus, September isn’t a busy time for accountants – of which Kieran is one – as the tax season is sufficiently far away not to be something to worry about.

  However, once the date is finalised, they suddenly realise there are a great deal of things they need to do before the Big Day arrives. Far and away the most important of these is to get to know each other better.

  Of course, Olivia and Kieran have known each other for many years but Olivia sees their engagement as a golden opportunity to take a closer look at who they both are, what they want out of their life together and how to make their marriage the best it can be. To her mind, it’s the ideal time to take a relationship refresher course.

  For a few days, they discuss couple counselling but Kieran’s not keen. What’s private, as far as he’s concerned, is private, and Olivia respects his view. Eventually, they decide to attend an Engaged Encounter weekend run by the Anglican Church nearby but open to all engaged couples of any faith or none. It helps Kieran and Olivia to focus more clearly on their relationship and plan how their marriage will be. It gives them an aim and, being committed administrators at heart, they both love an aim.

  Two things they learnt at the course are these: first of all, whatever they do during their engagement and throughout their whole married life, it’s important to do as much of the planning and organising together as a couple that they possibly can. The second and most important thing is this: above all, be kind to each other, as they’re on the same side.

  Olivia and Kieran promise each other to remember this always, no matter how challenging life may turn out to be.

  Their promise is soon to be tested. Particularly when the reaction of Olivia’s mother to their engagement is taken into account. The trouble is that her mother has never entirely been convinced her only daughter will ever get married at all. Olivia has never been a girly girl, which to her mother’s mind is a shame as she’s really the most girly mother possible, at least amongst the parents of Olivia’s friends.

  Now her daughter is getting married, Olivia’s mother throws herself with all her customary enthusiasm and more into the pink-tinged romance of the engagement period.

  The first real hint Olivia receives of this sudden outpouring of maternal bliss is the card. She sees her mother’s handwriting on the envelope and knows instinctively what it’s going to be – their first engagement card. A moment to cherish. She rips it open, stares in astonishment at the picture on the front, and then turns to the verse inside.

  She can’t help it. She starts to laugh and finds she can’t stop.

  “What’s up?” Kieran yells from the living room.

  When Olivia is unable to answer, he finds her in the hallway, still unable to stop laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks her, his lips twitching.

  For an answer, Olivia hands him her mother’s engagement card. It’s a plain white card on which two bright blue cartoon lovebirds are winging their way to a nest made out of sparkly hearts and roses.

  Kieran’s face turns pale. He opens the card and his face turns even paler, if that were even possible. Inside is written this:

  “Love birds like you

  deserve a love nest for two!”

  His expression makes Olivia laugh even more. Honestly, it’s the most unsuitable card anyone has ever given her in her whole life. What was her mother thinking?

  Kieran’s mind is obviously working along the same lines. “Do you think your mother is quite well?” he asks her. Then he too dissolves into laughter.

  However, Olivia’s mother’s engagement madness isn’t quite over yet. The second – and far more terrible sign – are the gypsophila slippers. This parcel arrives about a week after the card, and Olivia fears it’s something her mother has thought long and hard about.

  This time when she arrives home from work, she takes the parcel into the kitchen where Kieran is chopping vegetables for dinner before opening it. She suspects she might need some kind of emotional support when the contents are revealed.

  “It’s from Mother,” she says.

  Kieran stops chopping and raises one eyebrow at her. “Should we call for the doctors?”

  “Very possibly. Only one way to find out …”

  She opens the box. Inside is a pair of sparkling silver slippers decorated with plastic gypsophila. They outdo the card for bling about a thousand times. This time, it’s Kieran who starts laughing first.

  “I’d better get the gin,” he says. “It’s going to be one hell of a phone call.”

  Olivia can only agree.

  She’s taken two full swigs of the gin and tonic Kieran thrusts into her hand before she dares pick up the phone.

  Her mother answers on the third ring. By now, Kieran is dancing round the hallway, holding the slippers on his head like a triangular hat and Olivia can’t help laughing again, though she had every intention of having a Serious But Kind Chat with Mother. Sometimes, these things just have to be done.

  “Oh dear,” her mother says between Olivia’s guffaws. “Did I go too far with the slippers?”

  The answer is a heartfelt yes, and further laughter on the part of both women and there are, thankfully, no more packages.

  The slippers are deposited in a drawer and never seen again …

  Chapter Four: Invitations

  Olivia soon finds there is a myriad of wedding invitation styles to choose from, and neither she nor Kieran have any idea which suits them. Would they prefer formal or informal, zany, witty or just plain fun? From what they’ve read in the wedding magazines – of which Olivia now has a whole collection – the invitation is supposed to give a hint about the style of the wedding. However, they don’t have the first idea whether their wedding should be traditional, contemporary or – horror of horrors! – even quirky. Olivia for one isn’t convinced she knows how to do quirky though on occasions in her life she’s given it a jolly good go. However, being a square is her natural position.

  Here they are then, Friday night in Kieran’s shared flat, with about thirty different types of invitation spread across the living room carpet. They’d started the discussion in Kieran’s room, but there wasn’t enough space to get an overall view. Olivia made sure earlier in the day to pick up a decent amount of possible choices, to cover every design feature she thinks might be desirable. They have white, cream and pink, and even one in green. They have cartoons, champagne glasses and churches, they have soft focus ones and those that look as if the images have been carved into the card like an etching. Not that Olivia knows for sure what an etching is, but it sounds sharp, and vaguely scary. She wonders whether she ought to start again.

  She isn’t convinced she’ll be able to. “What do you think?” she asks her very quiet fiancé.

  “Okay, from amongst this mound of the sublime, the ridiculous and the genuinely strange – I mean who actually wants pink kittens on their wedding invites? – is there anything that screams ‘us’ to you?”

  Kieran reaches out and taps the pile of sample cards as if afraid they might bite him. Or bearing in mind the height – Olivia has probably gone overboard in how many samples she’s brought back – he may well be wary of being engulfed in stiff card and printer’s ink.

  “I suppose cats might want them,” he says.

  “Cats?”

  “Yes, they might want the card with the pink kittens on.”

  Olivia marvels once again at her fiance’s ability to launch into the surreal when confronted with a practical challenge. Still, she’s keen to know what he thinks so goes along with it.

  “Yes, they just might,” she agrees. “So I’ll discount that one. What do you think of the others? You’re the one who knows about colours and stuff, n
ot me.”

  Kieran is a keen photographer, having got a degree in Photographic Sciences a few years back, and loves nothing more than messing around with lenses and tripods. A word which always makes Olivia giggle.

  Kieran shakes his head. “Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re just as good as anyone else, and anyway, there’s more to pictures than just colours.”

  “I know – it’s all in the lighting – just like you always say!”

  He leans across and gives her a quick kiss. “Good to know you occasionally listen to me.”

  “Always. But what about these invitations?”

  A couple of minutes later, they are sitting on the sofa, snuggling up with a glass of wine each. In Olivia’s opinion, snuggling and white wine – she dislikes red with a vengeance as it makes her mouth look like a tomato – are absolute necessities whilst tackling any kind of planning exercise, and wedding invitations are no exception.

  Ten minutes later, the pile has been divided into three categories: Cute but Not Us; Cute and May be Us; Elegant.

  The Cute but Not Us pile is discarded and that is the absolute end of the pink kittens, sadly. Which leaves the Cute and May be Us pile and the Elegant one. Olivia is quite keen on the Elegant pile, and Kieran goes along with her. However, only five minutes of sorting through makes it very clear that Elegant tends to include a scattering of gypsophila (just like her mother’s dreaded shoes!) and other far too pretty white flowers over the image, and Olivia isn’t a flower person. She isn’t planning to carry a bouquet, but only a small prayer book given to her for her confirmation. This means more than flowers ever will.

  “I don’t think Elegant is us either,” Kieran says with a sigh. “I think we’re more Quirky and Christian, though I don’t know if that’s a category we’ll find in the shops.”

  “No, you’re probably right there, but let’s go back to the Cute and May be Us pile. You never know.”

  They flip through and again find lots of possibilities, which might suit other couples but not them. In the end, Olivia drains her glass and collapses across the sofa in what she might have liked to call a swoon, if she’d been a swoony kind of girl.

  “I don’t know. All these are hopeless. I’ve no idea what on earth made me think they might be any good.”

  Kieran pours more wine, always a good solution. “On the other hand, we know what we don’t want.”

  “Which is?” asks Olivia, taking a generous swig of wine.

  “We don’t want what everyone else wants. We want something to suit us. So if we can’t find it on the shelf, why don’t we get a designer to do it?”

  Olivia blinks. “Aren’t we trying to save money?”

  “Yes, we are. But this is a one-off event which I hope will last us all our lives. Do you still have the artist’s details you picked up when your mother was organising the church art exhibition last year? He was good, wasn’t he? Perhaps he can do an invitation for us.”

  “Yes, maybe he can,” Olivia says with a smile. “And we could even do a theme, so he does the service sheets as well. A theme – listen to me! Maybe with the same kind of picture on both? What do you think?”

  “I think you’re pretty darn near perfect, that’s what I think.”

  While Olivia searches for the all important artist’s business card, she sees from the edge of her eye that Kieran is busy practising his Smug Look. She has to stop herself smiling. It’s a gift he has no need to practise. When she finds the card, she kisses him.

  “There, you see,” she says. “I’m perfect now.”

  For the next half hour, she and her loved – and sometimes smug – one thrash out exactly what should be on the card and end up with a picture of her mother’s church where they plan to get married. Olivia has a photo she can send to the artist and, with a bit of luck, costs won’t be too high. At the very least, it was one step forward in the jungle of wedding paraphernalia they are preparing to face.

  Speaking of which, isn’t it about time Olivia thinks about The Dress?

  Chapter Five: The Dress

  Olivia isn’t a woman who gravitates towards dresses. She lives her life in trousers and a wide selection of polo or tee shirts. And by trousers she definitely doesn’t mean jeans – which make her (surely non-existent) stomach stick out.

  So when Kieran asked her to marry him and she had the ring successfully on her finger, the next important item on her list after the invitations is The Dress. What on earth is she going to wear that will make her beautiful and slim and elegant and graceful and sparkly, all at the same time?

  She has no idea. So she asks her fiancé. “What do you think I should wear to the wedding, darling?”

  Kieran’s eyebrows leap up several notches and the look of a terrified rabbit spotting a passing farmer with a gun crosses over his face. He isn’t at his best with discussions about female fashion, at any level. “Whatever you think is best?” he offers uncertainly, before adding with a dash more confidence, “You’ll look lovely whatever you wear.”

  He always says that, and Olivia isn’t sure it’s useful. She will have to try another tack.

  “Well,” she says, drawing the word out to a ridiculous length. “I look good in green. What do you think about that, or maybe blue?”

  This time Kieran looks truly shocked. “Aren’t you going to wear white?”

  Olivia stares at him. “I look awful in white! If I wear anything white, I look like I’ve been in a fight with a zombie and come off worse.”

  “That can be a good look,” Kieran protests, warming to his theme. “Anyway, aren’t there all sorts of different shades of white these days? There must be one you like.”

  A good point, well made. She remembers when Jo got married last year and had talked about this very issue. At some point they discussed concepts like ivory and cream and ecru – whatever ecru might be. Another thought occurs to her.

  “Do you mean you’d like me to wear white at our wedding?” she asks her fiancé.

  At being asked a direct question, Kieran turns pale but holds his ground. “It would be nice,” he says with a gulp. “It’s traditional.”

  “But would you like it?”

  A pause, then, “Yes, I’d like it.”

  Olivia smiles and gives Kieran a big hug. “Then of course I’ll wear white,” she says. “I love it when you express an opinion on my stuff – it’s so rare! I’m sure I can find one of those mystery shades of white that suits me. Just you wait and see.”

  Funny then how the hunt for The Wedding Dress becomes a huge palaver. Olivia starts off feeling certain it will be simple. All she has to do is work out whether she looks better in ivory or cream – white, with her fair colouring, is a no-no from the off – then buy a dress which is okay. So she plans to go dress shopping with her mother. Olivia’s mother isn’t her first choice for a girly shopping experience, but as she is visiting her parents at the time anyway, it seems like a good idea. Besides, Olivia’s mother has the wisdom of being a keen dress wearer (unlike Olivia herself) and has also already been married, twice, so is to all intents and purposes the nearest thing to an expert Olivia can think of.

  However, the shopping expedition is depressing and, by the end of the day, the dresses and the shops – they’ve visited every single wedding shop in the local town – blur into a nightmarish swirl of organza and lace. Olivia suits neither of these fabrics. She finds her oh-this-is-interesting-and-thank-you-for-showing-it-to-me lie face quickly enough. What she doesn’t find – or come anywhere near finding – is a dress which suits her. It’s obvious the local wedding shops aren’t used to a 29-year-old bride, and are instead entirely focused on dealing with brides barely into their teens.

  At one shop, the name of which Olivia instantly wipes from her mind, the head assistant takes one look at her and shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know what we can do about you,” she murmurs. “Have you got any idea what you might like?”

  “Something adult and non-shiny, and nothing too tradition
al,” Olivia responds. She’s about to add an explanation about how she’s really only just started her search and she’d welcome any other ideas (though possibly not from someone as confrontational as the said assistant) when the woman swings round and grabs a handful of dresses from the rail.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll try you in these.”

  Olivia isn’t impressed with the selection given to her, all of which seem to be shiny, ultra-traditional and for women at least ten years younger than she is. However, there is no time to object as she and her mother are whisked away to the changing room in the corner.

  “Let me know when you’re done,” the assistant says and disappears to the other end of the shop where there is obviously something far better to do.

  Olivia and her mother are left well and truly alone. For a long moment, they stare at each other, and then they both start to laugh.

  “Well!” Olivia’s mother says. “Somebody got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But I suppose seeing as we’ve been left with this little lot, you might as well try it on.”

  “I suppose so,” replies Olivia, doubtfully, as she sifts through the treasures. She discards four of the seven at once as being far too frilly. She picks the least shiny of the rest of them and starts to struggle into its complex folds. Still chuckling, her mother helps her, and finally they arrive at a position where Olivia is more or less wearing the dress, rather than it wearing her.

  Olivia can’t see much in the changing room mirrors. “What do you think?” she asks her mother.

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. There’s a big mirror in the main salon. Why don’t you look in there?”

  There’s something about her mother’s expression that doesn’t bode well. Olivia makes her way out of the changing room and into the main salon, heading for the mirror she’s glimpsed on her way in. She almost knocks down the sales girl, but to be honest she isn’t too bothered – as Olivia is preparing for the worst.