My most excellent friends Nic and Wilf are getting married today! So, in their honour, I present my top ten pieces of wedding day advice.
1. If your dress has buttons down the back with tiny button loops, do them up and undo them a few times before the moment when you are running forty-five minutes late for the ceremony. That is not the time to have your bridesmaid attempt to do them up for the first time. That will lead only to nervous panic and a call made to the seated guests for your bridesmaid’s all-capable mother to come in and help. If said mother is a nurse by training, this may cause mild panic among some of your guests, not to mention to your long-suffering intended who has been standing in front of everyone he knows for the best part of an hour, nervously cracking jokes accompanied only by his brother and his cat.
2. Drink a chocolate milkshake some time in the morning. Even if you can’t manage to eat anything else until after the ceremony, it has all the essential nutrients you need to keep you upright. This I learned from my Dad, who did it on the morning of his wedding.
3. If you must eat a banana for energy after you have had your makeup done, but while still in your bathrobe, don’t let the photographer capture you trying to do so without smearing your lipstick. It just looks porny.
4. When you walk down the aisle, don’t grin like an idiot. Keep your shit together. Remember that a veil is see through: try to look serene and bridal, not like you’ve just been called by a game show host to come on down.
5. For the groom: Your mouth will become very dry while you wait for your bride. There will be people watching and photographing you, so drink a little water. Try to remain hydrated enough that your top lip doesn’t retreat and glue itself to your top gum, leaving your teeth completely exposed in a chipmunk fashion. Even if it only happens for a second, it will be immortalised on film.
6. Drink more booze: At three am, you do not want to be the soberest person at your wedding, attempting to convince others that there is no need to travel home in the boot of their car, or helping your dad roll your passed-out friends off the jumping castle before deflating it for the night. Leave that to someone else.
7. Keep an eye on your facial expressions during the speeches. Again, the cameras will be on you and no-one likes to see the bride looking openly jealous that her new husband’s speech is funnier than hers.
8. Dance with all the old people.
9. Forgive your brother when he tells you the next day, ‘I had three things I wasn’t going to do at your wedding: walk through a closed screen door at the rehearsal dinner, fall backwards off my chair during the wedding dinner, and pick you up and drop you while on the dance floor. Sorry I did all of them.’
10. Be open to new things on your wedding night. Mine was the first time Gusto ever climbed under the sheets and vomited on my naked thigh. It was such a thrill to have a husband to clean up the cat sick instead of a boyfriend.