Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [18]
Before I started planning my own wedding I flattered myself that I’d be too sophisticated to fall victim to the worst excesses of bride behaviour. Before too long, however, I found myself agonising pointlessly over flower arrangements; quarrelling with Tony over the guest list, as if the whole world would turn on its axis if we sat my Uncle John near his Aunt Rosemary; and forgetting to eat for approximately three months, so that my dressmaker kept reprimanding me for having to take my wedding dress in further at each new fitting.
Finally February arrived, and with it the rains. It rained for almost two weeks straight! By this stage I had lost all sense of rational perspective and fretted dreadfully, everything depended on my wedding day being sunny. For a time the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range weather forecast became my Internet homepage and I cursed my stupidity for deciding on a wedding day in the most hot and humid month on the Sydney calendar. In the end it rained until the lunchtime of the day before my wedding, the Saturday morning of the big day dawning bright and sunny. I took this to be a glorious omen.
The service was held late in the afternoon, so I had a day of primping and pampering with my ladies-in-waiting beforehand. My dress was ivory duchess satin, strapless, and I remember stroking my hands down the folds of the skirt, enjoying the sensuous feel of the heavy fabric. I had a matching veil, pearl earrings and carried a simple bouquet of cream roses. The hairdresser and make-up artist performed their magic and, for the first time, on that day of days, when I looked in the mirror I really did think I was beautiful.
Mum, dressed in a blue floral print with matching navy shoes, fluttered around. Dad, in his best grey suit, was as proud as punch. ‘Darling you look fit to be a queen,’ he declared, his eyes watering a little.
By the end of the reception I was getting quite blasé about the compliments, although definitely the highlight was when my fourteen year old cousin, Toby, who hitherto had never expressed a word of approval about anything, declared that I looked ‘hot’.
Tony agreed. When I was walking down the aisle, arm in arm with my dad, he shared with me one of his special looks and mouthed the word ‘beautiful’. My recollection of our wedding vows is hazy; I was feeling too besotted with my handsome prince at that time.
We sipped champagne while the wedding photographs were being taken, with the glittering harbour, its bridge and the Opera House as our backdrops. Everyone is smiling and happy in those photos, except for my new mother-in-law who looks like she’s sucked on a lemon. And the food at the reception was declared to be excellent, and the speeches were proclaimed to be witty and not too long, and everyone had a jolly good time and got a wee bit tipsy and the whole day was just picture perfect.
And if this was a traditional fairytale we would leave our hero and heroine at this point and let them go off to live happily ever after, but, as you know, this is a modern fairytale and my life got more interesting after the wedding, and not necessarily in a good way.
4
The prince and princess find their dream castle
We honeymooned on Big Island in Hawaii, staying in a luxury bungalow with its own swimming pool and twenty-four hour butler. We explored the rainforest and volcanoes, sipped champagne in our private spa, ate too much, slept too late, and made love whenever we felt like it. For the first time I felt completely content in our togetherness, and indulged my new husband by allowing him to abandon me for two afternoons of golf, a growing passion of his. Everyone deserves a