Sam Binnie - The Wedding Diaries

Me & Thom

Susie & Pete (if he’s in the country)

Twins

Mum & Dad

Thom’s Mum & Dad (Alan & Aileen) (10)

Eve & her +1 of doom

Jim and his +1

Alice (& Gareth?)

Carol (& husband Vincent)

Norman from work & his +1? (Does Norman have a special someone? How can none of us know this? What goes on behind that silent façade?) (10)

Rich (Thom’s best man) and his girlfriend Heidi

Dave, Jules and Andy and their +1s, and Ben & Hester (Thom’s school pals) (went to Ben & Hester’s very drunken wedding a few years ago but we haven’t seen the other three since then)

Six boffins from Thom’s uni course and their +1s (names from Thom – have only faint memories of them)

Fiona (my first boss) and her boyfriend Mark

Nick & his fiancée Rose, Tim, Clare and Sara (uni housemates) and their +1s (haven’t kept in particular touch with Tim and Clare, but can’t invite some and not all)

Five of my course-pals from uni and their +1s (lived briefly with Lucy after graduation and see her about twice a year, but mainly get news of the others from her) (they were utterly hilarious at uni, though)

Ruby, Ella and Vuk (friends from travelling) and their +1s

Other Tom from terrible holiday job I did when I was 17, and his +1 (50)

6 aunts, 7 uncles and 15 cousins between me and Thom (mostly me), including the v entertaining wonder that is cousin Emma (28)

8 horrible sweaty men from Thom’s previous accountancy division with their anorexic, thick-haired public-school girlfriends/wives

10 horrible piggy men from Thom’s current accountancy division with their slimdim Eurotrash girlfriends/wives

2 quite nice men from Thom’s current accountancy division and their also-nice girlfriends

1 horrible fat sweaty boss from Thom’s current accountancy division with his brutal, cold-eyed wife, living in terror that she’s about to be usurped by one of the Eurotrashers and she’ll be left with only their eight-bed townhouse, the Courchevel ski lodge, the New York apartment and the villa in Nice to comfort her (42)

So, as it stands, that makes 140, and that doesn’t include the ‘family friends’ I’m sure Mum will insist on. It’s fine. We’ll get that down. Jacki’s will be over 400, she tells me, so really it’s still a nice quiet number.

October 3rd

It turns out that venue hunting is basically just like house hunting, with the only difference being that I will never get to live in places with a ballroom and an east wing. The money is just as eye-watering, though, and the venues themselves make me queasy in the same way that Alice’s Hermès handbags do: I don’t want to pour a cup of tea inside it, but the mere fact of its existence in proximity to me means it could happen. And I might, could, burn down a wedding venue. One careless sparkler, one stray sky lantern, and England has lost one of its top beautiful buildings (but also an entire wunch of bankers and accountants, so maybe the Daily Mail will go easy on us after the event). Thom was supposed to come, obviously, but his work was so horrific this week that he has to go in this weekend too. He was hugely apologetic last night, but I can see how stressed he is, so I smiled and said I didn’t mind at all, that I’d give him a full debrief and he wouldn’t miss a thing. He suggested I take Susie instead, but when I called her she said Pete was due back from a trip from which he’d be really jetlagged and the Twins had friends coming over, so she was stuck there.

When he left this morning at 7am, Thom gave me a kiss on the tip of my nose and said, ‘I hope you have a nice day. What about Alice?’ I told him I wasn’t sure she’d want to, but sent her a text to find when she woke up, giving her the rough breakdown of the day, and saying she could join me at any of the venues if she fancied. I got a text back immediately: WITH YOU IN 30 MINUTES.

She was as good as her word, and I made us a pile of bacon sandwiches to keep us going while she outlined quite how lucky I was that things had turned out this way.

Alice: I’m truly sorry that Thom can’t make it today, but you are now in the safest pair of hands there is. I’ve seen it a hundred times, Kiki, people get swept away by a nice staircase or a draped ceiling, and their numbers and plans go out the window. I’m not going to have you signing up to some townhouse rip-off just because the lady spoke nicely to you.

Battle-ready, we aimed for three of my shortlisted venues today, and there was a definite fleeting thought at their prices that if this is a business they can sustain, something is seriously wrong with the world. Who has that kind of money ? (Besides Alice and her family.) And why aren’t they spending more of it on C-list celebrity autobiographies and cookery books that are tenuous tie-ins from successful but un-cooking-related television series? (See Polka Dot’s The Duchess’s Diet , with some poor model done up like a Downton Abbey extra.)

First stop today was Fairley House, a Georgian townhouse just off Hampstead Heath, its chequered path shaded by two elegant plum trees. The house looked beautiful from the outside, but was actually quite dark and poky inside. I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach – how to tell them it wasn’t right, without offending them or convincing them that I simply couldn’t afford it. After five minutes and a swift tour of the space, Alice looked disappointed.

Alice: Thank you so much, but this really isn’t what she’s looking for.

Me: [shocked] Alice.

Alice: It’s too small for us, the lighting’s wrong and the flow-through from dining room to ballroom isn’t ideal.

And that was it. ‘Alice!’ I said out of the side of my mouth, trying to smile coolly at the staff as we walked out. ‘You can’t just tell them that.’ She turned and took my elbows. ‘Kiki, this is their business. It’s not their first born. You need to focus .’ It’s then that I realised that Alice was right, and I was lucky to have her. Sorry, Thom.

She was equally relentless with the other two places. One had mould in one corner of the main hall (Me: ‘It’s … vintagey?’ Alice: [hissing] ‘It’s a bloody airborne toxic event ’) and the other was decorated like a gentlemen’s club, circa 1905 (Alice: ‘Still, better than a gentlemen’s club circa 2005’). We were still without a venue at the end of our day, but Alice had some great leads for me; places in less salubrious areas of London, but central enough that I would still pay a reassuringly eye-watering fee.

October 7th

Rose rang me today, of Nick and Rose (the Noses as we think of them), due to marry in May. I do like them so much, even if they do have more money these days than seems sensible for anyone who is not a national public service. But they are actually very sweet, and I’ve known Nick for years, back when he was one of my university housemates with big City plans. Rose turned him from potentially a fairly revolting Banker Playboy into a middlingly revolting City Worker (slightly lower down the revulsion ladder) and although they still do things like buy new plasma flat-screens for every room because Sony have released a new generation model, they are funny and very thoughtful for Rich Folk. After small talk, Rose seemed to want to say something else to me.

Rose: Kiki?

Me: Yes, Rose? [thinking, Please don’t ask about that time Nick and I kissed when we were nineteen. For everyone’s sake]

Rose: [deep breath] I’d like you to be my bridesmaid. Well, one of my bridesmaids. What do you say?

I didn’t say that I was deeply surprised and slightly perplexed, both by the offer and the manner in which it had been ordered of me. I screwed up my face, knowing she couldn’t see me, and said I would be honoured. She’s so lovely, but I genuinely cannot fathom why she would want me to be her bridesmaid. It is kind of her, though.