The Wedding Diaries

First dance – choreograph?

Clothes for ushers and best man – suits, ties, boutonnières, shoes, socks (forbid bright fashion/novelty socks) (unless in line with colour scheme)

Organise tastings for wedding cake at different bakeries

Arrange swearbox for Carol at the reception

December’s Classic Wedding!

Grace went out and bought a hat, and dressing for her wedding consisted in putting on this hat. As the occasion was so momentous she took a long time, trying it a little more to the right, to the left, to the back. While pretty in itself, a pretty little object, it was strangely unbecoming to her rather large, beautiful face. Nanny fussed about the room in a rustle of tissue paper.

‘Like this, Nan?’

‘Quite nice.’

‘Darling, you’re not looking. Or like this?’

‘I don’t see much difference.’ Deep sigh.

‘Darling! What a sigh!’

‘Yes, well I can’t say this is the sort of wedding I’d hoped for.’

‘I know. It’s a shame, but there you are. The war.’

‘A foreigner.’

‘But such a blissful one. Oh dear, oh dear, this hat. What is wrong with it d’you think?’

‘Very nice indeed, I expect, but then I always liked Mr Hugh.’

‘Hughie is bliss too, of course, but he went off.’

‘He went to fight for King and Country, dear.’

‘Well, Charles-Edouard is going to fight for President and Country. I don’t see much difference except that he is marrying me first. Oh darling, this hat. It’s not quite right, is it?’

‘Never mind, dear, nobody’s going to look at you.’

‘On my wedding day?’

The Blessing

Nancy Mitford

December 2nd

Dinner at my parents’ tonight. Mum and Dad’s house is nice – it makes me feel like a child again – but is also dreadful, because it makes me feel like a child again. So I can kick my shoes off and lie flat out on the sofa, watching the TV sideways, but it means too that everything about it bothers me: the fussy lampshades, the boring wallpaper, the general porridgeness of it. Dad’s added some nice touches since he’s been working at the college and got to know the local arts community – there are vases and pictures where before there were only terrible satin-finish school photos of Susie and me – but I still feel it’s basically the house that taste forgot. It’s not ugly, it’s just … dull. It makes me want to paint my house daffodil yellow and fuchsia, only because it’s not the 1960s anymore, no one can actually afford a house around here. I’m just waiting for my parents and Susie to die, and I’ll be laughing. (After the funerals, of course.)

Mum had made her supremely delicious chicken tagine with four hundred different spices (you know I love you, Mum; although it’s not entirely because you’re an amazing cook, that really doesn’t hurt) and it looked like we were about to make it all the way through the main course without anyone mentioning the wedding. Then Mum said: ‘Kiki darling, have you thought about letting me make your wedding dress? We can go through my old patterns to find something you’ll like. Those full skirts are easy enough to do, and we can add decoration to that strapless bodice that everyone has these days, if that’s what you’d like.’ I pushed my plate to one side and put my head on the tablecloth and tried to imagine myself somewhere else. Thom put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Keeks, do you think that might be helpful? Isn’t that a way for you to get exactly the dress you want?’ I raised my head and blinked to force the tears away, while my BLOOD BOILED. I tried to stay calm.

‘Thom, I’ve found exactly the dress I want. When you factor in the stress of fittings with … someone you know, and the reliability of the designer brand, doesn’t it seem like a false economy to have someone else do it? Everyone knows what a mistake it is to get family involved in stuff like that. Doesn’t anyone remember how messy it can be when a relative teaches you to drive?’

We Carlows all took a moment to recall our beautiful family car, and how much less beautiful it had looked after my first driving lesson with Dad. Dad, usually Forgiver of All Sins, hadn’t been able to talk to me for almost a week after that.

‘Fine fine fine!’ Mum said with a false cheery voice. Dad massaged his jaw with a pained expression and Mum took his other hand. ‘Are you alright, love?’

Dad winced a little, then smiled back at her. ‘I am, Tessa, I am. A bit of a sore jaw tonight. Too much chatting, obviously.’

I laughed. ‘Obviously, Dad. We can never get a word in when you’re about.’ I felt Thom and Mum look at one another, but was grateful enough for the interruption to not chase that glance down and kill it bloodily all over the dining table.

TO DO:

Check waiting times and delivery times on The Dress

December 6th

Am I simply having troubles with my priorities? Or am I a monster? A growing suspicion that it’s the latter. Susie invited us over for dinner last night, for Pete’s birthday and some early Christmas cocktails. For once she actually had both booze and Pete in the house, and was sloshing the former merrily into beakers as soon as we’d walked in the door. We toasted one another, with all the festive spirit mulled wine invites:

Susie: To friendship!

Me: To brotherhood on the high seas!

Pete: To the kingdom of Neptune!

Thom: To mermaids!

Susie: To milkmaids!

Pete: To milkmen! Speaking of which, Suse …

Susie: Are we blaming it on the milkman this time?

Me: [a bit tipsy already, laughing] Wait, what? Are you pregnant or something?

Susie: [pausing] … A bit?

Thom whooped and grabbed Susie, then Pete, and gave them huge hugs. I was a bit staggered – pregnant? Due in July? Which would mean next year would be entirely about the new baby? A new baby which would be there crying and sicking milk up during our wedding? Jesus, no, I am a monster.

Susie looked like she’d been slapped when she saw me hesitating, so I gave her an enormous hug and told her that she would be the finest milk-machine at our whole bash. She didn’t really like that either.

December 8th

Thom had a horrible day at work today. They have a new client, a ‘nutrition group’ conglomerate that includes all the no. 2 soft drinks, chocolate bars and potato-based snacks in Europe and Asia. They are rich, and powerful, and from everything Thom says they have a massive potato-based snack on their shoulder (accountant humour) from missing out on the no. 1 spot in every field. Apparently they spent $17 million on a marketing push in Korea which saw them hit the top for a fortnight, before they went back to their familiar, uncomfortable second-tier position. The men who came to deal with Thom today are hardly people you’d invite to a house party – pigs at best, full-on pricks at worst – but he’s always aware of how nice he has to be to them so that his company can get a little piece of their money, of which they’ll give an even smaller piece to Thom to keep his brain working on how to make these men a little bit richer, etc. Put it this way: when Thom talks about his job, it makes me want to bake a thank you cake for Carol and Tony and Raff and Jacki. And today was even worse than normal, because today Thom was supposed to show them some fascinating little Monaco loopholes which would make them jig all the way to the bank, and he’d spent the last week checking and double-checking all the figures and the byzantine laws that help rich men stay good and rich, and had everything lined up in a snazzy little presentation for them, neat and clear and simple. But when the time came to start pointing his clicker – or clicking his pointer, whatever – he found that the screen was empty, as was the computer file, as was his USB stick. His secretary came in and had a go too, but there was nothing to be found, and after ten minutes of staring at the company’s most handsome meeting room (while enjoying the finest coffee and biscuits money can buy and spending the time not tapping their feet in silence but comparing notes on their holiday homes and children’s school fees) the Gloucester Old Spots starting getting their bristles up, saying at slightly louder than shouting volume, ‘Bloody joke of an accountant, this one,’ etc. Quel charme. Thom took a deep breath and apologised for the 4,000th time, then from memory gave them all the facts they needed and passed around the very detailed and very boring document he had prepared over the last few days. But they didn’t want to know. Of course, they did want to know, and they’ll be back in a week or so to get the plotting plotted, but men like that enjoy knowing that Thom will receive a royal ticking off, probably from a former school chum of theirs.

Maybe Thom’s been hoarding all our money for his flight to Mexico when they all finally get too much. Maybe not.

December 10th

Alice and I enjoyed a – cough cough – extended lunch hour today, starting on our Christmas shopping. We’d elbowed our way into Liberty to admire the beautiful homeware rooms, when Alice spotted a sign, nudging me: ‘Wedding Lists available here’.

Me: [sighing] Oh, Alice.

Alice: Uh-oh. Don’t ‘Oh, Alice’ me. I think this was an error.

Me: I didn’t even want a wedding list before, but just think…

Alice: I am thinking. I’m thinking that if your fiancé finds out I’m to blame for you wanting your wedding list at Liberty, I won’t even be allowed at your wedding. And that will make me so sad. [pulls exaggerated sad face]

Me: [laughing] Alright, alright, I surrender. But a wedding list does seem like bloody good fun, doesn’t it?

Alice: I’m not sure I like that look in your eye, young Kiki.

I promised I wouldn’t do anything to get her banned from our wedding. She looked sceptical. How many other things have I not even thought about yet?

December 11th

Tonight was Thom’s work Christmas dinner. Every year they hire out one of the huge banqueting halls in a London hotel, invite everyone in the company, from the big cheeses to the secretaries, give everyone a plus one and access to an open bar, and let mayhem commence. We were on a table of twelve, and although officially I was seated next to one of Thom’s colleagues, he had swapped places to talk shop on the other side. Instead, I was next to his wife, Della – of a month, she insisted on telling me – while Thom chatted to the woman on his other side. Despite my best efforts, my eyes were drawn inexorably down to her hand, which waited, fingers tapping, to show the enormous ring. She laughed when she saw me looking at it, saying, ‘It’s subtle, isn’t it? Well, I thought I certainly deserved a reward.’ I thought: maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe she gave her husband a kidney. I’d want a giant piece of jewellery if I gave Thom one of my vital organs. Although maybe I’d want it shaped like that organ: a lung-shaped pendant. A liver-shaped brooch.

Della: We both work so hard that I thought it would be nice to have something to show for it, you know? We’re working over eighty-hour weeks, we bought our first place together before the wedding, and I knew a year ago that I wouldn’t just want some tiny little thing [flaps hand as if it’s almost too heavy to lift] for the rest of my life. D’you know what I mean?

Me: [trying to laugh] I do, actually! [lifts up hand]

Della: [looks mortified] God, Kiki, I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry. That’s a beautiful ring, anyway. Was it one in the family he had to use?

Me: No, Thom chose it for me. It is an antique, though.

Della: [putting her head on one side] Oh, well, well done you. Flying the flag for anti-consumerism.

Me: [taking a deep breath] Della. What do you do?

Della: Oh, I’m in the City. I’m a compliance consultant.

She saw my baffled/uninterested face, and proceeded to describe her job to me, but I tuned out after a while. Here are the highlights:

It’s mainly about managing client relationships [I start wondering how many strip joints she’s had to take those clients to] and ensuring their prime point of contact … blah blah blah … promotion of services within assigned accounts … blah blah … winning engagements … increased fee incomes … blah blah … supporting a new business direction … blah … allocation of resources for productivity levels … Ten minutes later I’d necked four glasses of wine and she stopped pitching to me, and switched gears to talking about how terrible it was that people were clamouring for any kind of financial regulations, and criticising bankers was a dreadful bore and utterly self-defeating. I suddenly felt very drunk.

Me: How exactly is it self-defeating?

Della: Well, all the banks will just up sticks and go to Dubai, or Singapore.

Me: And is that a problem?

Della: Well, the banks pay billions of pounds of tax every year, don’t they?

Me: But do they pay all the tax they should? Do they make our country’s life better?

Della: [scoffing a little] Yes, they employ thousands of people. Not everyone is a senior executive, you know.

Me: Of course, that’s true. So why do senior executives get so much?

Della: Because they all work so bloody hard.

Me: But what is that work? What do they do? Why couldn’t other people do it? Hasn’t there been a study to show traders are no better at trading than a rolled dice? What do they add?

Della: Oh, Kiki, that’s a bit of a socialist, naïve view of things. We can’t just run the country on nurses and teachers, you know?

Me: Can’t we? Can’t we? What’s the intrinsic worth of the City jobs? What do they do for us? If the company set up just to employ those people didn’t exist, who would employ them? It’s like ouro … orrob … oroboro … shit. Maybe not that. But their employable skills are in an incredibly narrow band, aren’t they? [trying to hold up fingers close together, to indicate narrowness] They don’t make tables, do they, or build houses? [I’m faintly aware of Thom tapping my arm] Do they? Or do you? Does your bank build a house? [Thom drags my chair away, with me on it, and swaps it with his, leaving me next to a smart looking woman in her forties]

New lady: She’s bloody awful, isn’t she? I had to sit next to her last year, and she spent two hours telling me that public sector teachers are a drain on the country.

Me: [sobering up] Sorry, I’m Kiki.

New lady: Liz.

Me: What do you do, Liz?

New lady: I’m a teacher.

After that, I had a gay old time, sitting with Liz and chatting about our work and families. But I felt Della and her husband glare scornfully at me for the rest of the night, before Thom got me home and gave me quite the talking-to.

If that’s what you want to call it.

December 15th

Bad days. Tony invited me into his office today just to remind me how much we’d spent on Jacki’s book, how much that represented of our annual budget, how much space our Sales team had had to beg for in the supermarkets, and how, basically, the first book I’d ever officially been given for Polka Dot would be the deciding factor in whether any of us got a bonus this year. ‘So you’d better make sure this Perfect Wedding is pretty perfect, yes?’ If I didn’t think that thought about four hundred times a day anyway, I would have brought it to Tony’s attention that no one at Polka Dot had received a bonus in the four years I’d been working there. But thank you for the added pressure. I sulked back to my desk and tried to go over the publicity plan with Alice.

Then his mother arrived.

I could hear her coming from the other side of the building, clattering up the stairwell, banging her oversized golf umbrella against everyone and everything she could, calling out, ‘Anthony! Anthony!’ like her forty-seven-year-old son was a runaway pup. She knew exactly where he’d be, and eventually made her way into his office after knocking piles of books over and pushing paper off any surface she could reach. The door slammed, but we could still make out every word she barked at him.

Pamela: Anthony, what the devil is this I hear about a bloody wedding book? What kind of trash is this?

Aha.

Tony opened his office door.

Tony: [nervously] Kiki! Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?

Pamela, apparently, is disgusted that we’re publishing the book of a soap actress, convinced that we’re essentially becoming Heat magazine because we’ve got a celebrity telling us her wedding plans. I’m unsure what the difference is between this book and any of the other celebrity stuff we’ve done in the past – could it be that people may actually have heard of this celebrity? – but Tony had told his mother that I’d bought this book, that he hadn’t been happy about this but I’d argued him round and it was on my head. Pamela looked me up and down and gave a snort.

Pamela: I hope you know what you’re doing, young lady.

Tony gave me a beseeching look. I toyed for a moment with the idea of pleading innocence, of explaining the unlikelihood of me being able to buy so much as a dictionary for the office, let alone a red-hot celebrity wedding book, and turning a mystified face to Tony for an explanation. But I also knew in the long run that yes, Tony would take the credit from Pamela if this book went right while I would take the blame if it went wrong, but Tony would not be able to defer my promotion again, once I took his side on this.

Me: I think we’ve got a great chance with this title, Pamela – the market’s there, the product’s good and the costings add up.

I suddenly thought: Shit, if she actually asks me about the costings I’m going to have to faint or something, as I hadn’t seen a single figure on this; but she just looked me up and down again and shooed me out of the office. Phew.

Thom didn’t have a good day either. After last week’s PowerPoint debacle, the pig-men came back as predicted but Thom’s boss, Rowland, has also made it clear that he’s not in his good books. Thom suddenly has to put all the figures past him, and – horror of horrors – has to ‘come and see him’ each night before he goes home. There is no more humiliating discipline at that level, and none more difficult. Thom must time it perfectly – too early and he’s a soft-handed workshy, too late and he’s made his boss sit and wait for Thom to decide to go home, and probably ruined a perfectly good booking at the Ivy. He’s really struggling with this, so it’s probably not entirely my fault that our conversation tonight went:

Me: How was your day?

Thom: Don’t ask. Please, tell me about yours. Distract me from the horrors of the corporate crunch.

Me: [delighted to be asked] Well! Jacki’s cakes were finally ready to be photographed today, and they were … amazing. There was one classic wedding cake with a giant silver crown on top, and one bombe glacé entirely covered with gold leaf, and forty tiers of cupcakes that were individually iced with Jacki and Leon’s initials, and a six-foot wall of cake pops that made up a giant portrait of Jacki and Leon. Now, while I think it’s got impact, I priced up the wall of cake pops and I think that, aesthetically, it might be a bit … de trop.

Thom: For CHRIST’s sake, Kiki, can’t you think of ANYTHING else? We aren’t. Made. Of money. Can you please understand this? I don’t want golden cake walls or a fountain of liquid sugar. This isn’t bloody Willy Wonka, it’s our wedding. Why are you so determined to make a joke of this whole thing?

Me: Wow. That joke really backfired. It actually was a joke, Thom.

Thom: [staring at the table] …

Me: Maybe … I’ll just … go to bed. And think about the political situation in the wider world.

TO DO:

Take Thom out for a relaxing evening

Ask Norman if what Tony said about our bonuses is true

See if I can get The Dress tax-free in the US and ship back with someone over there for a holiday (Alice)

Rings – vintage to match engagement ring?

December 16th

At the wedding shop today for the final snaps before Jacki’s wedding. I was cramming my notebook in my handbag when Reception rang to say my taxi was there, which was something of a surprise since I’d been planning to take the tube. Getting down to the street I found a black cab waiting with its door open – and getting in, I found bloody Pedro in the back, flicking through an issue of Wallpaper like he hadn’t chewed me up and spat me out last time we’d met. He didn’t look up but said, ‘I thought you’d like a lift.’ We rode in silence through the streets until we got to Pudding Lane, where Pedro leapt out of the cab and into the shop. I saw a cab pull up behind us, full of his assistants and equipment, and watched as Zoe got out and came over, saw my sad face peering through the cab window and put her head on one side, saying, ‘Did someone leave you with the fare?’ I was still so wiped out after Thom’s overreaction last night that even these few moments with Pedro left me dumbfounded, so I got out and let poor Zoe deal with it. I heard my phone go, and fishing it out thought that I had a message from Jacki – delayed? Most unlike her – but saw it was actually from Judy the Intern. ‘Did u no bout Carol n Norman? WOW!’ What the …? Does anyone not

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