‘Trust me, Mum,’ said Diana, ‘my wedding is going to be the best wedding in the world. No expense will be spared.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I’m just going to remind Dad he needs to transfer five grand to my account for the deposits.’
Chapter Eight
Kate didn’t know what she had expected the atmosphere in a bridal shop to be like. Actually, she did know what she had expected. She had expected it to be like a wonderful girls-only tea party, full of excitement and anticipation. Full of happiness . . .
Well, there was to be no tea. That was quickly established. There was a sign on the wall as you walked into the self-consciously styled salon saying, ‘No beverages or food whatsoever.’ Beneath it was a picture of a teacup scored through to underline that such things were strictly verboten at Bride on Time. Kate understood that a spillage among so much white silk would be very expensive indeed, so no tea, but she was surprised that there didn’t seem to be much happiness going on either.
There were three brides-to-be in the shop that afternoon. All of them, Kate included, looked as though they were waiting for a dental appointment rather than to choose a wedding dress. As she hovered with her mother and sister, and waited to be told what to do next, Kate worked out that she was the eldest bride by at least a decade, though one of the others had two children in tow. Kate heard that particular bride discussing the children’s part in the wedding with a woman who could only have been her mother. They had the same pinched expression on their faces, as though constantly smelling something bad.
‘Jayden’s dad says he’s not going to let him come to the wedding at all, but I told him that I am Jayden’s mother and he will be there whether his father likes it or not. Anyway, after this wedding, Terry will be his father, won’t he? Darren won’t have a say any more.’
Kate winced at the thought of the custody battle brewing there.
The other bride, with her long, glossy hair and her beige patent Louboutin courts, seemed unnaturally poised for someone so young. She was accompanied by her mother, Kate guessed, and a friend or sister, who buzzed around her like a handmaiden. The younger bride gave Kate a very obvious once-over. Kate withered under her gaze.
‘Kate Williamson!’
Kate raised her hand as her name was called.
‘Oh,’ said the middle-aged woman with the clipboard. ‘I thought you were one of the mums.’
‘I’m already not enjoying this,’ Kate whispered to Tess.
Heidi was going to be looking after Kate that afternoon.
‘She’s the one from Vivienne Westwood,’ Tess whispered.
Heidi didn’t look like she’d started her career in a top designer atelier. She was five feet tall with hair the colour of overcooked red cabbage. Her cheap purple skirt suit, which strained over her stomach and hips, clashed violently with her badly dyed hair. All in all, Heidi’s appearance did not inspire much confidence in her ability to help Kate look beautiful on her wedding day. Still, according to Tess, women came from miles away for the benefit of Heidi’s expertise, and she seemed professional enough as she explained how the session would proceed.
Heidi handed over five plastic rings – each with a slit – that Kate was to place over the hangers of the dresses that she wanted to try on. She encouraged Kate’s mother and sister to help make the choices and advised that it really was a good idea to go ‘a bit crazy’ when picking out the first five. So many brides came in with a fixed idea of what they wanted and were horrified at the thought of trying on anything else, but with Heidi’s ‘five-in-a-day’ plan, they were forced to consider the alternatives and quite often they went home with something they would have turned their nose up at had they seen it in a bridal magazine. Heidi said she saw it all the time.
‘Fact is,’ she told Kate, ‘very few people have a proper idea of what they really look like. They come in here wanting a column dress when they would look so much better in a fuller skirt. Most women look better in a fuller skirt. Hides a multitude of sins, a big skirt does.’
Kate was sure that Heidi glanced at her thighs as she said that.
‘You a twelve to fourteen?’ Heidi asked.
‘Ten to twelve,’ Kate protested.
‘You sure? I think you’re on the larger side myself. Choose from the dresses in this section.’
Twelve to fourteen.
Kate decided she hated Heidi already.
‘Off you go.’
Tess, who had been sitting on a velvet chaise longue while the instructions were issued, leaped into action. She was delighted to have been given a mandate to pick out something for her sister to try on. Elaine, too, seemed excited.
‘I don’t want strapless,’ Kate reminded them both, remembering how she and Tess had only recently roared with laughter at the bridal supplement of the local paper. Every bride in strapless, no matter whether they had arms like sticks or biceps like hams. Strapless was to the 2000s what the puffball sleeve had been to the 1980s, even if arguably it wasn’t quite so flattering.
‘We’ll find you something lovely,’ Tess promised.
Tess and Elaine circled the room like two lionesses scouting out prey ahead of the pack. Kate took just one ring and advanced towards a rack of dresses as though she were approaching a rabid hyena. The other brides and their entourages were circling too. When the two other brides landed on the same dress at once, there was venom in their ‘After you’s. It happened several times. Each time, the bride who capitulated shot evil looks at the back of her competitor as the winner triumphantly placed her ring on the hanger. Kate supposed she could be thankful that shopping among the ‘larger’ rails meant she didn’t have to compete.
Prior to entering Bride on Time, Kate’s criteria for a wedding dress had been simple. It just had to be simple. In the brief time since their engagement, she and Ian had selected Marylebone Register Office as the venue for the ceremony and booked a slot for early March, the earliest Saturday available. As the register office of choice for London’s glitterati ever since Mick and Bianca Jagger made it famous, it was hardly the place to turn up looking like a crocheted loo-roll cover. In fact, Kate hadn’t intended to shop for her wedding dress at a wedding specialist at all. She had, in her rare wedding daydreams, imagined a knee-length white dress by Azzedine Alaïa, with matching coat, nipped in at the waist. She wanted to look chic for the wedding and have half a chance of wearing the outfit again afterwards. Looking for a Cinderella frock in a size twelve to fourteen was a complete waste of time.
But Kate was in Bride on Time because her mum needed cheering up, and what cheers the average woman up more quickly than the spectacle of thousands of Barbie-style frocks in one place? There was no harm in trying them on if it made her mum happy. It might even be a laugh. In that spirit, Kate finally placed her single blue plastic ring round the hanger of a dress so enormous a bear could have hidden beneath its skirts. The bodice was covered with big fabric flowers. The back was laced up with three different coloured ribbons. All in all it looked like something that even Katie Price might have declared a bit too rich for her taste.
‘I’ve chosen mine,’ Kate announced with relief. ‘It says it’s by Giovanni Lucciani. That’s a made-up name if I ever heard one.’
‘Oooh, yes,’ said Tess, in the Coronation Street accent she used to denote a joke, ‘that’s really lovely.’
Now the reason for all the ring-hanging became clear. The dresses looked so light and fluffy – all that tulle – but the accusation that they were ‘meringues’ was true in one sense only. They may have looked as though they had been spun from sugar and air, but they definitely didn’t feel like it.
‘Don’t even attempt to help me,’ said Heidi when Kate moved to unhook the dress she had chosen. ‘I’ve had years of practice at this. You need to have the right technique so you don’t do your back in. I reckon this dress is three stone.’
Kate could only gawp in horror as she contemplated trying on a dress that weighed as much as her niece.
‘Three stone. Perhaps I’ll go for something simpler,’ she said. ‘I only picked this one out as a joke.’
‘No,’ chorused her mother and sister. ‘We like it. You’ve got to try that one.’
Kate had the feeling she was doomed.
Chapter Nine
Unlike Kate, Diana already knew the ropes at Bride on Time. She had accompanied three other brides to their first dress fittings. This time was going to be so much more fun, now that she was no longer the bridesmaid but finally, thankfully, the bride. She didn’t know if she would ever forgive Ben for letting her think that she might make it to thirty without an engagement ring.
Anyway, here she was at last. She was slightly frustrated to see that there were two other brides in the ‘salon’ that morning but was soon reassured that she would be the centre of attention regardless. After all, Diana was being assisted by Melanie Harris, the proprietress herself. Add to that the fact that Diana was much more beautiful than the rat-faced woman with her equally ugly children and so much younger than the other bride. How old was that one? In her forties? Diana was surprised that a woman of that age was even considering a traditional wedding dress. Wouldn’t she be better off in a nice tailored shift dress with a matching jacket to cover her arms? Diana shared that thought with her mother, who agreed.
‘Thank goodness they do a good line in boleros,’ said Susie.
Melanie handed Diana her five plastic rings. Diana said she didn’t need any instructions.
‘Do you know what sort of thing you’re looking for?’ Melanie asked.
‘I know exactly what I want,’ Diana assured her. ‘I thought with my complexion, I should go for an off-white. I’m having pale pink flowers. Tea roses. They’re a type of rose named for Princess Diana, which I thought would be appropriate.’
Susie Ashcroft agreed. ‘She was named after Princess Diana,’ Susie explained to Melanie. ‘And a right little princess she’s turned out to be.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ Diana chided her mother playfully, ‘you don’t mean that. In any case, who isn’t a princess about her wedding? Doesn’t every girl deserve her special day to be exactly as she wants it?’
‘Yes, especially if her scumbag deadbeat father is paying.’
‘How about this one, Mum?’
Diana fingered a strapless dress in duchesse satin with a cathedral-length train.
‘Isn’t a cathedral-length train going to be a bit much?’ asked her friend Nicole.
‘Not if you’re getting married in a cathedral, like I am.’
Nicole shrieked at the news. ‘You’re not . . .’
‘It’s true.’
‘How on earth did you swing that?’ Nicole asked.
‘Daddy did the bishop’s kitchen. He got a discount; I get a cathedral wedding.’
Susie nodded. ‘It’s about time Dave turned out to be useful for a change.’
‘Oh my God, Diana’, Nicole was almost hyperventilating, ‘your wedding is going to be so grand.’
‘Where are you having the reception?’ Melanie asked.
‘Well, it’s going to have to be somewhere special to match up to the ceremony, isn’t it? Cliveden’s too far from the cathedral, which is a shame.’
‘Yeah. Pity.’
‘Can you believe Dad suggested that gastro-pub that overlooks Osborne House? I told him that if he thinks I’m going to have my wedding reception in a flippin’ pub, he can bloody well think again.’
‘It was probably his slut of a second wife’s idea,’ said Susie.
‘So anyway, I said if I can’t actually have my reception at Osborne House, then I’m having it at the Queen Victoria.’
‘The country club? That place is expensive.’
‘Yes, but can you imagine the pictures we’d get on the golf course?’
‘Oooh, yeah,’ said Nicole.
‘Have you made your mind up about bridesmaids?’ Melanie interrupted. ‘We can dress all shapes and ages.’
‘She’s narrowed it down to seven,’ said Susie. ‘I think that’s just about right.’
‘So a cathedral train will be no problem,’ said Diana, ‘with seven pairs of hands to handle it.’
‘Are you having a veil?’ Melanie asked.
‘God, yes! Bring it on.’
While Melanie went in search of a cathedral-length veil for yet another distinctly un-virginal bride, Diana began her dress hunt in earnest. She snatched two dresses from beneath the nose of the rat-faced girl with the snotty kids. This was going to be fun. Fifteen minutes later, it started to get more frustrating, spotting a possible contender only to find that Rat Face was going for it too. Diana felt the urge to slap away the other girl’s nicotine-stained hands when she saw them reaching out to touch the pristine fabric of the wedding gowns. Ugh. Mostly it was embarrassing to think that someone who looked so trashy could possibly share Diana’s taste.
‘You have got the same LV handbag,’ Nicole dared to point out.
‘Mine’s real,’ Diana snapped back at her.
What kind of wedding was Rat Face planning to have, anyway? Where would she wear her cathedral-length train?
‘At her Big, Fat Gypsy Wedding,’ Susie whispered in her daughter’s ear after Diana won the face-off for a third time.
‘My, that Marilyn strapless is popular,’ said Melanie when she saw that the two younger brides were in competition. ‘And the Meribel and the Ernestine. You ladies will have to take it in turns to try those three dresses. But you don’t need to worry about not being able to have the frock that you want,’ she assured her colleague’s client. ‘These are just our samples. Every dress is ordered in new.’
Diana knew that, of course, but it still didn’t stop a little bubble of anger from rising in her throat as Rat Face was first to find the fourth dress on Diana’s hit list. At least she did not face the same battle with the other bride. Diana and Rat Face were fighting over the size eight to tens. The geriatric bride would be lucky to squeeze into a twelve. Did Bride on Time even carry size-twelve samples? Diana supposed they must. Very few women were as lucky with their figures as she was. Except that it wasn’t really luck. Diana went to the gym five times a week. Rat Face obviously kept her figure by living on nothing but fags and booze.
‘Finished.’
Diana hung her final plastic ring on a dress by Giovanni Lucciani.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said her mother, admiring the multicoloured ribbons at the back of the bodice. ‘Really classy.’
Diana turned to Rat Face with a velociraptor smile. ‘Of course, in the end, the way a dress looks is really all about the class of the bride.’
Chapter Ten
While Rat Face and Diana had their wedding-frock face-off, Kate was already being helped into her first gown. Heidi explained that they would try the least voluminous dress first and gradually build up to the monster frock that Kate had only really chosen to make her mother smile and her sister laugh out loud.
‘We have to do it that way, otherwise you’ll be too shocked by the girth,’ Heidi explained.
Kate was pleasantly surprised by gown number one, which had been chosen by her mother. It wasn’t really much more extravagant than the average evening dress. Had it been in black instead of off-white, Kate might have thought it suitable for her law firm’s Christmas ball.
‘This is nice,’ said Kate as the skirt settled around her feet.
‘Come out into the main room,’ said Heidi.
‘Oh, no . . . I thought that . . .’
‘Your mum and sister want to see the dress, don’t they?’
‘I suppose.’
It was the other brides and their families that Kate didn’t want to show off to. Still, she shuffled out into the main salon. Her sister and mother made approving noises. The two other brides’ supporters seemed pleasantly surprised too.
‘I chose that one,’ said Elaine proudly. ‘I knew it would suit her.’ The other mothers praised Elaine’s taste.
But Heidi was shaking her head
. ‘Makes you look enormous here and here’ – she indicated Kate’s thighs with the aid of a stiffened tape measure – ‘and yet you’re like a Biafran up here.’ She indicated Kate’s décolletage. Kate looked down at her chest in disappointment. She knew she wasn’t exactly blessed in the breast department, but . . .
‘Now that you’ve got this dress on, I can see that your figure is what I would call a wooden spoon. You’re skinny as a stick down to your waist. Then . . . whoompf.’ Heidi made the sound of a hot-air balloon inflating prior to lift-off. ‘Completely out of proportion. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I get the idea,’ said Kate. ‘I’ll try something else, shall I?’
‘Yes. Bigger round the bottom,’ said Heidi.
Kate was just grateful that the third bride, the one that Tess had dubbed the ‘Mean Girl’, hadn’t been around to hear such a damning assessment.
Heidi refused even to let Kate out of the changing room in dress two.
‘No, no, no, not with your saddlebags.’
Saddlebags?
Heidi made what she must have thought was pleasant chat as she helped Kate get back out of that frock. ‘Doesn’t matter how much you exercise, I know – you can’t get rid of them. I’ve got a friend who had liposuction. It’s the only thing that works.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Kate.
‘She still didn’t have the figure to get married in a straight skirt, but I didn’t dare tell her. I always try to be honest with my clients about their figure faults, though. I don’t want you coming back here and saying, “Heidi, you let me look like the back end of an elephant on the most important day of my life.” I may sound harsh, but it’s for your own good. You’ve got to keep imagining what you’ll look like from behind.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kate.
Kate refused to show anyone dress three, which was practically see-through. Dress four, which passed the saddlebag test, was nonetheless met with instant disapproval by Kate’s sister.
Kate's Wedding Page 4
