Getting engaged is one of the most exciting and happy times in anyone’s life and visions of radiant brides and handsome grooms’ exchanging vows and dancing till dawn on a glorious summer’s day shimmer into view. Mum will get out ‘the book’ that she’s been making notes in for the last ten years and even though it is only 4pm, Dad will head for the drinks tray with a sigh thinking “there goes the next shooting season. I did think Angus might wait for a year or ten, although he did do the right thing and ask me over a rather boozy lunch at the club, but I had rather forgotten about that. We might even have to go to the Lake District in a tent rather than Cape Town this year”. Perhaps *Mr Jones will buy that field after all.
Within minutes of arriving the excited (bordering on joyful hysteria) conversation leaps from a guest list of 400 ‘of my closest friends’, a dress by *Marcello (based in Rome), the service at Wells Cathedral, to professional choirs, photographers who took some gorgeous pictures of The Duke and Duchess’s daughter’s wedding, towering clear span marquees, catering by one London’s famous catering companies, and a band “that I danced to when we went to *Emily and *Hugo’s wedding in the South of France, Mummy, don’t you remember, I sent you a video and told you how fabulous they were”.
Suddenly, downsizing from *Foxhinton Hall which has been in the family for 400 years seems like a good idea and *Sophie is the eldest of three! Why couldn’t they all have been boys! Anyway, eloping must be encouraged. I think we MUST sell a field or two – I will ring *Mr Jones in the morning!
When your mobile phone call limit has reached its max by calling your old nanny now retired and living in the Bali, and you have drunk all the champagne you can and the happy couple have moved on to celebrate with their friends, you can sit down with Goose and Finty (such a shame she is too old to have three litters before the wedding) in front of the fire (must remember to turn off the central heating immediately) and share that look that says that you will do all that you can to make *Sophie and *Angus’s day one to rival that of TSHs Prince and Princess Tiddleypush of Bolivia – (oh blimey, do we have to ask them? What about security??”).
As I am sure you can appreciate, that with nearly 30 years’ experience organising weddings and events from London to Cape Town, Marrakesh to Mauritius, if you need some help and advice on where to start, then I would be delighted to meet you.
*Names have been made up
* I have taken huge poetic license while writing this