Here Comes The Bride

“Oh, look! Here comes the bride,” my mother said to me, at some godforsaken hour of the morning [8am,] with a beaming grin on her face.

“Hmm,” I grunted back, in no mood for bullshit. It might’ve been my wedding day, but that didn’t mean, I had to be happy in the morning.

“What would you like for your wedding day breakfast?”

My mother knew the answer before I’d even answered. “Runny egg and soldiers, please.”

I couldn’t make runny eggs. I still can’t. She’s the only person that has ever been able to make them just the way I like, and it’s always been my go-to breakfast when I found myself at her place in the AM.

My little sister came in, helping herself to some cereal, joking about drinking the champagne [Martini Asti Spumante – my absolute favourite bubbles.]

“Absolutely not,” my mother barked. “No booze for the bride until after the nuptials.”

Thankfully, absolutely nobody listened to her, and I’d been snuck two bottles of the stuff, glass by glass, before I’d even gotten to the runny egg. Those bubbles saw me through a family breakfast (ew,) a handful of phone calls (double ew,) and halfway through makeup and hair.

As the hairstylist twisted threads of my hair into little ‘roses,’ I stared at myself in the mirror. Was I really doing this? Was I really getting fucking married?!?! It seemed like such an absurd idea, still, even though it was the morning of the Big Day and I was almost halfway to bring ready.

By the time we’d gotten me into my dress and tied the corset so tightly that I thought I might pass out, I was stone cold sober… and definitely thinking hard about pulling a Runaway Bride.

Everything that had happened in our relationship suddenly flooded my mind. The closet. The trashed flat. Those stupid sunglasses. The great sex. The winning-back. Aerosmith. His best mate’s girl. All of it. I searched for an open bottle of Asti, then guzzled it down, straight from the bottle, not caring who saw me or how mad my mother got. It was either drink or run… and my dress had cost too much for me to turn back now.

In a slightly drunken daze, I posed for photos with mother, then Pops, then little sister, then some grandparents, then some aunts and uncles, then whoever else was around but shouldn’t have been, before letting someone, I can’t even remember who, lead me to the car: a white Rolls Royce.

I was bundled into the car, people folding and fluffing my dress so it would fit in there with me. Faces were blurred at that point. It was almost as if I was watching myself from above, not living in my own body. That’s when the tears started, slowly at first, then getting heavier until I had definitely fucked up the makeup that my mother had just paid who knows how much for.

“Are you okay?” my Pops asked.

We were on the move. Everyone was making their way to the registry office… and I was on my way to my wedding.

“Pops, I don’t want to get married today,” I told him, every single part of my body violently shaking and still crying.

“This is just last minute jitters,” he told me, holding my hand. “Everyone gets like this. I almost did a runner on your mother.”

He didn’t know what had happened between Whisky and I up so far. Nobody did. Just me, Bestie (some,) The Girl I Can’t Forget (some,) and Whisky himself. I could’ve told my Pops. He probably would’ve rushed me out of that car and far away, as soon as he possibly could. But he looked so smart and so proud in his suit, and I knew how excited he felt to give me away (even though I had actually wanted my Gramps, but everyone said no.)

Off we went.

When we pulled up outside the registry office, I saw him. Whisky. He was standing with the Best Man, smoking a cigarette. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“You ready?” the driver asked.

“No!” I answered before she had even finished the sentence.

“Would you like me to drive around again?”

“Yes, please.”

Pops tapped my arm. “What’s going on?”

I wanted to tell him everything. It was right on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t want to get married, and here were all the reasons why. I tried to tell him all the way through drive-around number one, and number two, and number three. Instead, I stayed mute.

“You need to make a decision here,” the driver said, in a kindly way. She tapped my leg. Well, my dress. My leg was about three feet under it.

She was staring at me. Pops was staring at me. Everyone waiting outside the registry office was staring at me. He was staring at me.

I should’ve ran.

Instead, I got married.

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Cake Smash.