Wedding or Marriage?

It was exciting, getting married, she decided. It had not been a surprise when he proposed to her. After all, they had been living together for several months, and everyone told them what a perfect couple they were.

Caught up in the romance of the moment, she was overcome when he gave her the ring he had designed for her. She had dropped many hints about the gems she favoured, and he had clearly taken note. She admired it, twisting her hand so that the light glanced off the facets.

Following the engagement party, there had been a bridal shower with all her friends in a local hotel. It was not where she intended the wedding reception to take place, she told them. That was going to be truly fabulous, a fairy-tale setting.

After that, she set about organising her wedding. In truth, she hired a wedding planner - money was not really an obstacle. Whatever she wanted, she could have. Her fiancé encouraged her. ‘It’s the most important day of your life,’ he said, kissing her hand, and she smiled prettily, thinking how lucky she was to have found the perfect man.

As the day drew nearer, she found herself short-tempered and impatient with him and he responded in kind. Excitement had given way to disenchantment. The day had to be perfect, a day to remember forever, and it was all proving too difficult.

Many nights they went to bed in silence, turning their backs on each other. ‘Wedding nerves,’ her friends told her. ‘You’ll be fine.’

They apologised to each other, promising to try harder. He went out often with his friends, to give her time to herself, he said. She was relieved when he left and tense when he returned. Romantic moments were few and far between, but they convinced themselves that everything would settle down after The Day.

They could not agree on a honeymoon destination and decided to delay it. ‘You’ll be too tired to appreciate a honeymoon,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked so hard. You need a break.’

She agreed, but wondered if it was true. After all, she hadn’t put in much work for the wedding – she had left it all to the planner – and she didn’t work, not really. She just had a little part-time job in her friend’s tea shop. It was not arduous, and it made a change from thinking about wedding favours, and canapés. Actually, it was the wedding planner who suggested options – all she had to do was say yea or nay.

Time shortened and the lists grew longer. The bridesmaids quarrelled about their dresses. The table plans had to be adjusted to adapt to the latest fallings-out between their friends. The wedding favours were wrong. The florist put up her prices overnight and it was too late to contract another. The caterers had problems with their suppliers.

The wedding dress, an impossible confection of silk and frothy lace, seemed just too much, all of a sudden. ‘I want a dress that I can wear, not one that wears me,’ she sobbed to her mother.

Increasingly, her life felt disjointed, like a jigsaw badly cut from cheap cardboard., the pieces difficult to fit together. He felt helpless, but did not sympathise. She could not make herself understood. He didn’t know what to say. Her words came out jumbled and incoherent. He asked her to repeat. She offended unintentionally, was hurt when he grew angry. He asked questions. She answered. He doubted. She wept. He shrugged.

Theirs was not the fairy-tale romance everyone had assumed. Love’s young dream consisted of froth and impossible demands.

Everyone reassured her that her experience was normal, and she persuaded herself that they were right. Why, then, was she so miserable?

The wedding day dawned dry and sunny. Make-up and hair were completed early, cosmetics concealing the puffy eyes and haggard face of the bride. She just wanted the day to be over now, and settle down to a happy married life.

Her parents shook their heads, thinking that the marriage should not take place. His parents agreed. Too late! The plans were already afoot, the cameras set to roll. So, bride and groom met at the altar and pledged their troth, each knowing that the other was lying, making pledges impossible to keep, each wondering how long it would be before they could be set free.

Many decades later, she reflected on the day. She knew that she had placed too much emphasis on The Day, The Dress, The Cake, The Guest List, and all the other incidentals. Neither of them had thought at all about marriage and what it entailed.

The divorce was swift and painless. He remarried. She did not.

‘If only’ . . . the two saddest words in the world.