Don't Tell the Groom

by Anna Bell

  What am I going to do? Then it hits me. We’ll just get married next year. Who says we have to get married soon anyway? We’ll put it off a bit and I’ll save my arse off.

  Yes, that will be it. A wedding next year. What’s the rush? We’ve got plenty of time until we need to start thinking about stage five of our life plan (get married) and stage six (have babies). Plenty of time indeed.

  Chapter Three

  ‘This summer?’ I splutter. A cold sweat starts appearing over my forehead, which has nothing to do with my hangover from our impromptu engagement celebrations with our friends last night, and every bit to do with the bank statements. ‘The summer, later on this year?’ I ask again, just to make sure that I’ve heard her right.

  ‘That’s right, Penny,’ says Nanny Violet.

  ‘But surely that won’t give us enough time to plan?’ I say in horror. Or save up to replace the money I’ve lost playing internet bingo.

  ‘Of course it will. In my day people got married a few weeks after announcing their engagement. Of course, in my day people saved themselves for when they got married.’

  My cheeks start to burn in shame, as they do every time Nanny Violet mentions us living in sin. She’s not been our biggest supporter in that field. She rarely sets foot in our terraced house. I think she’s worried she’ll be struck down by the evil that clearly resides inside.

  ‘Things are a bit different now,’ says Mark, reaching over for his second mini Battenberg. ‘You have to book your venue quite far ahead.’

  I smile at Mark and my heartbeat starts to return to more of a normal resting pulse, rather than racing like in a spinning class.

  ‘We were thinking it’s going to be sometime next year,’ I say. I’ve gone through it in my head, and if I save really hard, like over five hundred pounds a month, then I’ll have replenished the wedding fund. I haven’t really given a lot of thought to how I’m going to save five hundred pounds a month but I’m sure I can make some cutbacks somewhere. I probably don’t need to have my hair dyed – isn’t the odd hint of grey fashionable these days? And I’m sure I could stop buying shoes. No, really, I could stop buying shoes.

  ‘Oh no, Penny, that just won’t do. I don’t think I’ve got that much time left.’

  Mark’s nan is always a bit of a doom-and-gloom merchant when it comes to talking about the future. I think it’s her way of making everyone go and visit her more. Just in case it is the last visit. I hope I’m not that morbid when I’m eighty-eight.

  ‘But next year would give us time to plan and give us our choice of venue.’

  ‘No, next year won’t do at all. I couldn’t bear to die knowing that I wasn’t going to see my youngest grandson get married, and you wouldn’t want to get married without me, would you, Mark?’

  I wasn’t aware that I had to plan my wedding date around Nanny Violet. I look over at Mark. Surely he’s going to step in and put his manly foot down? But upon looking at him I realise which woman in the room he’s going to listen to.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nan, we can bring it forward. Can’t we, Pen?’

  I’m about to argue how we couldn’t possibly, but it seems like Mark’s question was rhetorical.

  ‘I’m sure we could get somewhere for September or October, a nice autumnal wedding.’

  I try not to get too caught up in an autumnal-themed wedding fantasy with me in a dark ivory dress and my bridesmaids in brown or burnt orange dresses, with dried flowers in our hair. Before I mentally plan the flowers, I stop myself. We can’t possibly get married in September or October, no matter how great the autumnal theme could be. Unless we take it to extremes and have the wedding in a forest, and we do a variation on harvest festival from our school days where you bring cans of food with you, only this time we cook and eat them rather then giving them to the needy.

  But before I can protest that that is far too soon, Nanny Violet is back to her head-shaking.

  ‘No, no, no, Mark. That’s far too far away. You really are going to have to do it sooner, like May.’

  May? What is Nanny Violet trying to do to me? At this rate I’ll be the one in danger of not making it to our wedding, if my racing heart is anything to go by. May is only three and a half months away. There is absolutely no way we can get married in three and a half months.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling us, Nan?’ asks Mark. I can see the look of concern written all over his face.

  ‘I just think you’d be better off having a wedding in May.’

  ‘Well, that will be fine, won’t it, Pen? We all know you’ve got the wedding planned out on your mood boards and Pinterest, anyway.’

  I shoot a look at Mark and wonder what else he knows about my secret wedding planning. If he knows about Pinterest, maybe he knows about my online memberships to Confetti and Hitched. And if he knows about them, what if he knows about the bingo? But I shake my head. If he knew about that there wouldn’t be a wedding to plan at all.

  ‘That is a relief then,’ says Violet, staring directly at me.

  There’s something in the way she’s looking at me that makes me think she knows what I’ve done. It’s like she knows that I am a bad egg her grandson shouldn’t marry. Maybe this is a test.

  ‘Yes, May is it then,’ I say, holding Violet’s gaze to show her I’m not scared. ‘I can plan a wedding in that time. It will be no problem at all.’

  ‘Splendid,’ says Violet, as I try to come to terms with what I’ve just agreed to.

  If only I could share her enthusiasm.

  To be honest I don’t quite know why I agreed to take Nanny Violet to the library. I should have just run as far away as possible from her. I guess I naively assumed that I’d be able to use the time in the car to try and push the date of the wedding back. Even if we went for Mark’s autumnal suggestion I might be able to save some of the money.

  ‘Right, Penny. It will take me about half an hour to choose my books. Is that OK?’

  I glance at my watch. I’ll never make it back in time for the Saturday afternoon Midsomer Murders repeat now. ‘Yes, Violet, take your time.’

  Violet walks off with a spring in her step that makes me doubt that she’s an eighty-eight-year-old who won’t be with us next year.

  It’s been years since I last set foot in a library, and I look around to see if it’s changed. It still gives me that I’m-scared-to-breathe-too-loudly feeling, but somehow there’s something comforting about the space. I walk around seeing if anything takes my fancy – and then I see a sign on the door ‘Citizens Advice’. I remember the card the bank manager gave me and what he said about them being able to help me.

  I walk across to the door, looking over my shoulder to check that Nanny Violet isn’t watching, and when I see the sight of her blue rinse over in the large print section, I hurry through it.

  I wait outside on an uncomfortable plastic chair, and it isn’t long until a woman pokes her head out of an office door.

  ‘Do you want to come through?’

  I follow her into the little office and sit down opposite her. This time the chairs are more comfortable; it’s like I’m progressing to the headmaster’s office.

  ‘So what can we do for you?’

  I had expected the woman to be older, but she is probably only in her mid-thirties. I’d pictured a little old lady dispensing the wisdom.

  ‘Well, I sort of need financial advice.’

  ‘OK. Are you in debt?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You either are or you’re not.’

  ‘Not, then,’ I say for clarification. Blimey, this woman isn’t taking any prisoners.

  ‘Well, what financial problems are you in then, if not debt?’

  ‘I’ve lost ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘Ten thousand of your pounds?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I had joint access to it.’

  ‘Hmm, yours and … ?’

  ‘My fiancé,’ I say, doing my obligatory diamond-waving dance, then instantly regrett
ing it.

  ‘Right,’ says the woman as if I’m completely nuts. ‘So you said you lost ten thousand pounds. How did you lose it?’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘You lost ten thousand pounds playing bingo?’

  It really does sound bad when you say it out loud like that. I can’t bring myself to say anything, that’s how embarrassed I am right now. My eyes are firmly fixed on the old brown carpet and I just nod my head.

  ‘I see. Well, that isn’t very good, is it? Right, so you have a gambling addiction.’

  ‘I’m not an addict.’

  I’d like everyone to know I’m not an addict. It isn’t like I couldn’t give up the bingo. I’m sure I’d be able to give it up just fine.

  ‘You lost ten thousand pounds at bingo. I take it not in one go?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’m afraid to tell you this, but I do think you are probably addicted to it. When was the last time you gambled?’

  ‘A couple of nights ago.’

  Don’t hate me, I just needed to play once more before I quit. Just in case I could somehow win back all my money and then there wouldn’t be a problem.

  ‘So what was the ten thousand pounds? You said you weren’t in debt, so was it ten thousand pounds of savings or from your current account?’

  ‘Savings.’

  ‘OK, so what do you need advice about?’

  All those questions and she still can’t tell me what I need to know.

  ‘I want to know how I can recover the money. My fiancé and his nan want us to get married in May, and I want to know how I can make five thousand pounds suddenly pay for a twenty-thousand-pound wedding.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. Would you like to know about support groups and Gamblers Anonymous?’

  ‘I’m not a gambler.’

  ‘Look, you seem like a nice girl.’

  I sit up a bit straighter at that compliment.

  ‘But you have to realise that you have obviously got a problem. Whether you’ve got it under control or not, it is a pretty big deal. Now, I suggest that you go to a counsellor or Gamblers Anonymous. Or at the very least a support group.’

  I wince at the fact that she keeps calling me a gambler. Gamblers are people with actual problems. Like last year when a guy in our office gambled so much that he had his house repossessed. It was awful. I had to help him arrange temporary accommodation and help with the paperwork as he filed for bankruptcy.

  The advisor reaches down into a drawer and gives me an A5 flyer for a local gamblers’ support group. I take it to be polite – I can always throw it away as soon as I get out of the office.

  ‘Can’t you help me?’ I ask, pleading. The bank manager sent me here and now she’s going all slopey shoulders on me, too. What is it with these people?

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not a counsellor. I’m just here to give you advice. Like seek help.’

  ‘Great,’ I say sarcastically. I hadn’t meant it to come out that way.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m doing the best I can for you.’

  Now she is making me feel guilty.

  ‘No, I get that, I do. I’m sorry, it’s just all coming as a bit of a shock to me. You see, this isn’t very me. I don’t usually do things like this.’

  The woman is nodding her head as if she’s heard it a million times before.

  ‘No, I mean it. It isn’t like me at all. We were saving for our wedding and we were being sensible. It all started when Mark was studying for his accountancy exams in the evenings and I would think of the wedding and how Mark could contribute more for it than I could. One night I just thought I’d try another way to help out.’

  I wish she would stop nodding her head; she is reminding me of one of those nodding dogs you put in your car – the ones that freak me out.

  ‘Well, why don’t you postpone the wedding until you can save up? I take it your husband-to-be knows about your gambling.’

  I can’t meet her eyes as I don’t want to see her look of disapproval.

  ‘Don’t you think it might be best if you started by confiding in him?’

  ‘Look, I just need some advice about the money,’ I say, ignoring her. There’s no way I can tell Mark. No way at all.

  ‘OK,’ says the woman, sighing. ‘While I usually talk to people about managing debts, maybe we could talk about how you’re going to budget your money, if you’re not going to postpone your wedding. Have you given budgeting any thought?’

  ‘Not really. I did try to look into investments and interest rates in the week, but I’m never going to be able to scale my money up four hundred per cent in three months.’

  ‘OK,’ says the woman after a long pause. She starts to talk to me like she is talking to a simpleton. ‘How about you budget your wedding for five thousand pounds?’

  I laugh out loud. I laugh like it is the funniest thing anyone has ever said. A wedding for five thousand pounds. Is she kidding? I look up at her face. Evidently she is not kidding.

  ‘How do I do that?’

  My palpitations have started again. I’m beginning to panic and my breathing is getting shallower. I am starting to feel like I’m slowly suffocating.

  ‘I think it would help you if you made two lists. At first, why don’t you write out exactly what you would like – a dream budget – if you will.’

  That would be easy. I could practically give that to her off the top of my head, I know it so well.

  ‘OK, that’s easy.’

  ‘Yes, that one always is. Then in the next budget why don’t you try to forecast using the funds that you actually have.’

  ‘But I’ve got to shave off sixteen thousand pounds. How am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘Start with making a list and put things under columns of essential, nice extras and luxuries. Then you can go through the essentials and find if there are ways to make them cheaper.’

  ‘Like how? Get married in a sack?’

  ‘No, like buy a cheaper wedding dress. Marriage is not all about the wedding, you know.’

  Tell that to the magazines I’ve been subscribing to for the last two years. I don’t want to come across as a bridezilla as I am totally in touch with reality. It is just that I do want to have a princess wedding. I don’t want to scrape by with only the essentials.

  ‘Here,’ she says. She reaches down into her desk of everhelpful leaflets and she hands me one marked Budget yourself out of debt.

  ‘Catchy title,’ I say.

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s our most popular leaflet. It’s slightly different for you as you’re not in debt but the principles are the same. It is all about making a budget and sticking to it. Now, is there anything else I can help you with? Perhaps you want to do some volunteering work to fill your time to stop you gambling?’

  Has this woman not heard me? I’m trying to make money, not give myself away.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say attempting to be polite.

  ‘Well, if there’s nothing else?’

  ‘No,’ I say. She’s already ruined my dreams of a castle wedding and made me feel like I ought to be appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show.

  ‘Great. Well, good luck with the wedding,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mutter, pushing the leaflets into my pocket.

  What on earth am I going to do now? Thoughts of Mark flash through my mind. You see, it’s his wedding that I’m messing up too. I’ve told him that I’ll plan him this utterly spectacular wedding and I’ve totally fucked up. I’ve wasted our hard-earned money on empty dreams. And now we’re going to be eating something like baked beans on toast for our wedding breakfast.

  I go back into the main library and sit, trance-like, at one of the research tables. I cast my eyes over the budgeting leaflet the woman gave me. I don’t usually do budget forecasting, working in HR, but this leaflet seems to suggest that it isn’t that difficult. I take a pen out of my bag and start writing down the essentials.

  I’ve already blown my bu
dget by the time I’ve written wedding dress (£3,000), suits and bridesmaid dresses (£1,500) and reception entertainment (£2,000). I continue writing my list, incorporating venue hire, catering costs, alcohol, cars, and before I know it I’m looking at my dream budget of £21,000.

  I take a deep breath and try desperately to channel some inner calm from my yoga classes. My pen hovers over the wedding dress total. I can’t take any money off that now, can I? I mean, that’s the only wedding dress I’m ever going to wear.

  But amazingly I do manage to shave something off each of the other totals. I mean, Mark doesn’t need a bespoke suit made in Savile Row, does he? Surely we could hire his suit? And I’m sure the bridesmaids wouldn’t mind a dress from Coast rather than made-to-measure ones. And maybe we don’t need a hundred guests. If we had, say, eighty, we’d save on both the catering and the alcohol costs. See? I’m a savvy saver after all.

  But after doing the calculations, the figures still don’t add up to anything manageable. I know what I have to do. My pen hovers over the wedding dress total and I have to use both hands to put a cross through it. There goes any hope of a designer dress.

  I look down at my budget on the page and I wince in horror.

  Wedding dress – Vera Wang £3,000 £1,000

  Suits/bridesmaid dresses £1,500 £700

  Venue £4,000

  Catering – 100 80 guests @ £80 per head £8,000 £6,400

  Alcohol £1,000 £800

  Entertainment: band, and DJ £2,500 £1,500

  Misc. (favours/cars/presents/etc) £1,000 £700

  Total: £21,000 £15,100

  I’m practically weeping. If I had never played any bingo, then that would have been the budget for my wedding. And that looks totally doable. But now, thanks to my flirtations with Fizzle Bingo, that’s £10,000 over budget. Damn my attempts to get over twenty thousand pounds! If I hadn’t been so obsessed with having a Vera Wang wedding dress, we could have had a lovely wedding.

  The more I look at the numbers, the more I can’t see how I am going to skim anything else off this wedding. Really, I can’t. The figures look as squeezed down as I can make them.