FIONA LOONEY ON THIS ‘MAD, BAD SOAP OPERA’

EVERYTHING was going beautifully until the happy couple realised they had irreconcilable differences over the cutlery. The bride-to-be, it turned out, had her heart set on forks with a fluted barrel, while her beloved favoured a more streamlined handle on his eating implements. Cue the mother of all arguments, until the groom eventually conceded in a torrent of bridal tears.

That was a moment, many moons ago, from – I think – Brides of Franc. And the row wasn’t over the cutlery the couple would live with for ever afterwards; they literally almost called the whole thing off over the shape of the forks that would grace the tables at their wedding reception.

Weddings make people nuts. I was once at the top table when the starters were brought out and the bride discovered, to her horror, her husband of five minutes had ordered the paté.

‘You had one job,’ I heard her hiss, ‘I hate you.’

A friend recalls his future mother-inlaw threatening to throw herself ‘off a cliff and into the sea’ over the seating arrangements. At that same wedding, the father of the groom cheerfully informed the bride’s sister that these things were all very nice, but they never lasted (he turned out to be surprisingly prescient, incidentally. The paté couple, even more surprisingly, are still happily married).

And these are ordinary people. Nice, calm regular people who all happened to get caught up in the madness that accompanies weddings. Now imagine how their big days might have played out with a couple of billion people watching them.

Meghan Markle, to be fair, is not exactly ordinary. She grew up in the slightly bonkers business called show, and as a result, has a fairly complicated family tree that seems to feature the word ‘estranged’ more than most.

But the drama currently playing out around her (formerly estranged) father, just days before the most anticipated wedding since her future father-in-law headed for the altar with Lady Diana Spencer (to be fair, Kate Middleton was just a bit too nice to attract as many headlines), is entirely recognisable to anyone who’s gone through the stress of the run-in to a wedding.

In Meghan’s case, her father seemed to have decided not to go to the wedding – at which he was supposed to walk her up the aisle – because he got caught out staging photos of himself preparing for the big day, for which he was paid (though not much, according to Meghan’s estranged halfsister). Oh, and then he had a heartattack. And now, with less than 80 hours to go, he reportedly says he’d like to go, but it’s still not clear who will be taking the short walk to the altar on Saturday.

Of course, relatives going rogue is almost as much a part of wedding tradition as toasting the bridesmaids. You can choose all your wedding guests apart from the ones you’re related to, and that creates all sorts of problems. Last minute hissy-fits happen in even the most unremarkable families.

Besides, everyone knows you can’t have Auntie Grace sitting at the same table as Uncle Tom (even if nobody now remembers why) – and most of us have had instructions about keeping an eye on some elderly unreliable who has a reputation for horsing into the sherry. And there’s usually someone who won’t go if somebody else is going, and several who don’t want to go at all and nobody wants them there anyway. And still they come.

BUT at least the ordinary madness and domestic dramas of weddings don’t make it much further than a few Instagram posts. Poor Meghan Markle and her family, estranged and otherwise, are currently under the world’s most powerful microscope, as the entire world media follows their every move – and, in some cases – offers them huge sums of cash to make some more.

Organising a wedding is one of the most stressful experiences anyone can go through; the additional strain on the Markle extended (and estranged) family is almost beyond belief. Small wonder there are wobbles.

There is an old cliché about the Royals being the most dysfunctional family in the world. But the less intriguing truth is that all families are dysfunctional, from the Windsors to the Markles to yours and mine.

But yours and mine are not currently waving and drowning in the world’s biggest goldfish bowl. No matter how much you’re looking forward to critiquing that dress come Saturday, it’s impossible not to have sympathy with all the principals in this mad, bad, real soap opera.

Let’s just hope, for the sake of their future happiness, that everyone gets to the church on time – and they’ve already had the difficult conversation about the shape of their forks.