So, after 5 years together and three years of cohabitation I popped the question to the soon-to-be-official missus last weekend. I don't like to be rushed.I was perhaps dangerously unprepared, having arranged nothing but two expensive-error-avoiding Haribos rings (different colours for choice) and a weekend away in a Suffolk town I'd never been to before. This necessitated on-the-hoof thinking. I had to spot the appropriate moment and act immediately. Whilst walking down a charming quay I saw a hexagonal Victorian rain shelter approaching. Perfect - quaintly old-fashioned setting, plus no gawpers. I manoeuvred her in and reached for my gelatine ring. Her nose wrinkled. "This is a bit like a toilet, isn't it?". The ring dropped immediately back into my pocket.
I eventually managed to find my moment at the end of the quay, creaking down to one knee as she turned away to film the view and berate me for not showing more interest in the local wading birds (not my preference at the best of times). She said yes and the sky was black with hats.
It does feel somewhat like getting to the top of what appeared to be a large mountain only to find a much more enormous one towering ahead. We are two chronically disorganised people who both really should be marrying someone practical enough to actually arrange it. I am fairly relaxed about the content and theme of the wedding itself. I fear she will be more exacting, and may have something like the following in mind.
She enters the enormous church on the back of her horse Stoney, who is serving as one of two best men and has transformed into a unicorn for the day. She is serenaded down the aisle by a Madonna medley performed by Take That. I am waiting for her dressed as she wishes I would always dress i.e. as if I've covered myself in glue and charged indiscriminately through Urban Outfitters. She is wearing a dress so intricate and complicated it has had to be assembled in a shipyard. The Very Reverend Gok Wan compliments her on her bangers and performs a beautiful service, during which the second best man ET presents the rings on a long glowing finger.
As we exit the church the Black Eyed Peas strike up one of their terrible hits, to the distress of both groom and congregation. Jean-Luc Picard ushers us into the Starship Enterprise, parked illegally outside. The excitement of this means that she misses the commotion in the church as will.i.am is brutally gored by one of the best men.
Onboard the Enterprise her expertise is called upon to defeat the Borg, the Cylons, the Daleks and Darth Vader. The occasionally tense atmosphere on the bridge is eased by the reformed Pink Floyd playing a few 4 hour song suites about despair and hopelessness. We are then dropped off at the reception, which is being held at a stables filled with dressage horses carrying trays of drinks on their heads. Neil Young provides the entertainment by playing 74 songs about his truck on a guitar with one string. We dance as the flashlights of Grazia, The Stylist and Horse & Hound pop and flare around us.
If you don't know her, this may seem a confusing mix of influences. It is, but I am reconciled to living with it all for the rest of my life - the future well-being of which, regardless of what wedding traumas await, now seems far more secure.
