RTW Fall

How’s this for a wedding from hell? A couple from Leeds has successfully sued an amateur wedding photographer for “ruining” their big day. Not by failing to get the obligatory shot of two rings entwined on soft-focus flowers but by allegedly pitching up 45 minutes late and making the bride wade through muddy puddles to take photos in the woods nearby. Apparently the photographer, who was paid for nine hours’ work but produced just 15 photos of the reception, spent some of her time posing for selfies in the photobooth. Ah, weddings. Sometimes I wonder whether they’re a symbol of commitment or just a 10-tiered metaphor for all that is mad about modern life.

Clearly the wedding was a little less perfect when the snaps arrived, but ruined? My response to this, as with almost everything about weddings, is, in a single capped-up word, PERSPECTIVE! If your relationship can’t weather some dodgy wedding pics, you’re in trouble. Successfully inhabiting married life is precisely about not responding to every minor disaster with “IT’S RUINED!” That way lies divorce or at least a roving eye. In order to go to bed and wake up with the same person every day of our lives, till death or something else we desire do us part, we need to take the opposite attitude. Not “it’s ruined” but “ah well, so I hate you sometimes, fancy another episode of House of Cards?”

Weddings are deeply stressful and shockingly expensive

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Anyway, there are only two things that can genuinely ruin a wedding. One: if the couple are not in love. Two: if the DJ doesn’t play Superstition-era Stevie Wonder. Everything else can be overcome with a laugh and a shot of perspective. And everything else plays second fiddle to the day-to-day challenges, sweetnesses and heartaches of a bog-standard marriage.

I’m not saying it isn’t possible to have your special day negatively affected by a fart at the altar or getting your train caught under the bridal Bentley (both of which have happened – I know because I watched the YouTube videos). Weddings, as well as being wonderful, generous, hilarious, loved-up affairs, are deeply stressful, packed with more tiny hidden disappointments than your average royal-icing-encased cake, and shockingly expensive. It’s the cost of getting married in particular that raises expectations to unrealistic heights. Couples tying the knot can expect to pay an average £30,111, according to Brides Magazine, which is much more than the average annual UK salary. When so much is invested, both financially and emotionally – plus all your dysfunctional family and friends are present and pissed – the stakes are off the scale.

The couple from Leeds are not the only ones to have felt that their day was ruined and sought legal redress. In 2010, Alan and Virginia Lynch reportedly paid £2,500 for three opera singers to perform at their wedding in London’s swanky Chandos House. They said the singers had been briefed to perform classics such as Nessun Dorma but horror struck when they broke into an impromptu Abba medley (which I think sounds amazing). Apparently the bride’s sister-in-law had to leave the room because the over-amplified sound made her feel sick. The performance was written off as “a disaster”. “It was more than just an embarrassment,” the bride said. “It spoilt what should have been a very happy occasion for me and all my guests.” In the end the unhappy couple took the company that provided the singers to court and accepted £1,500 as compensation.

Perhaps this is the way of the future: to spend more than we can afford on the ceremony, then spend more time than we can spare on the ensuing court case. Whatever happened to the honeymoon period?

I love weddings, mostly because I love seeing everyone dressed up to the nines and enjoy the bacchanalian pleasures of crying, drinking, and dancing like a fool. Nonetheless there is a lot about them that I find problematic, much in the same way that I love Bond films but also think they’re a load of sexist, retrograde guff. I don’t object to the showing off bit because the whole point of a wedding is a public declaration of your life choices as much as of your love: from your choice of partner to your ability to select ironic yet emotionally resonant names for your tables.

What I object to is the stress, the cost, the ungenerous behaviour from guests, the lack of perspective, the stultifying conventionality that can feel like a real affront to feminism (like men making all the speeches), the casual homophobia (during men’s speeches), the grabby attitude (that dreaded John Lewis gift list) and the pressure on the bride to diet for months so she can look outrageously thin while the groom simply gets to look good in a suit.

My partner and I had just two guests at our civil partnership, and they were also our witnesses, and our sisters. We went to a local register office then out for a slap-up lunch at our favourite restaurant, then to the pub, then home to dance on our living room rug. It was cheap, rock’n’roll, and lovely. Some of my friends who had fabulously big (and expensive) weddings get a bit wistful when they hear about it. I feel the same about theirs. In some ways our civil partnership feels like unfinished business. I would still love the party, with all its joys, disappointments, and collapsed soufflés. Life is too short for any number of crap photos to ruin it though. Or rather, married life is too long.

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