My mother of the bride message for Meghan’s very modern mum!
Dear Doria,
HOW very refreshing that, as mother to the bride of the year, you have decided to take a major role in her wedding.
The bride’s mother’s traditional role is to buy a hat, keep calm, and carry on sorting the table plan.
But Meghan has described you as a ‘free spirit’. And now Kensington Palace has confirmed that, in a break from tradition, you will have your own role at the wedding, meeting the royal family beforehand and accompanying Meghan in the car to St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
And now it’s expected that you will walk your daughter down the aisle on Saturday, because of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle.
I played a major role as mother of the bride when my daughter Rebecca married nine years ago. Some of my contributions worked brilliantly. But not all. So perhaps I could offer a little advice.
Our family wedding was boringly old-fashioned by today’s standards. The bride, my daughter Rebecca, wore a long white dress. The groom, Jim, wore a suit with a white rose in his button-hole. There were two adorable flower girls and a crowd of friends and family gathered to celebrate.
So far, so conventional. Just one sad gap. Rebecca’s beloved father Desmond Wilcox had died eight years before. So I took on his role — and I even made the speech.
In Desmond’s absence (and Lord, how we all felt it), I did wonder if I should walk my daughter down the aisle.
Normally, of course, that’s the father of the bride’s star turn. Who can forget Diana gliding down St Paul’s on her father Earl Spencer’s arm, him almost floating, chest expanded with joyful pride?
In the end, I chickened out. Rebecca’s brother Joshua took her down the aisle instead, while I stood watching them come towards us, a moment I will never forget.
Did I cry? Obviously I did, at the sight of all three of them at this crucial moment, her father there in spirit to applaud them.
It is wedding etiquette for the bride’s dad to make all the financial decisions. My daughter Rebecca had very strong views, like every bride, especially about the dress. So I gave her a rough budget, then went to Australia to visit my sister.
I came back jet-lagged and collapsed on a boutique’s gilt chair, while Becca tried on her first choice, a trendy off-white number with jagged pointy bits hanging off the hem.
I said it was ludicrous and so was the price. It didn’t help that Becca had to wake me up to get my opinion, instead of, as she had hoped, wiping away a maternal tear. So she wasn’t speaking to me at all during the next two visits to dressmakers.
Fortunately the classic and elegant dress she chose, by Ian Stuart, pleased us both.
I can’t imagine Meghan will have made the wrong choice. She clearly knows what looks young and modern — she’s expected to wear a €100,000 number from British couturiers Ralph & Russo — and I certainly don’t expect you, Doria, as a marathon runner, will fall asleep. You have too much stamina. How you’ll need it!
Good luck with the reception. Rebecca wanted hers to be held in a tent in our garden where, she now confesses, she had been planning this moment from the age of six by pacing in a stately manner across the grass with a pillow case on her head like a wedding veil.
So we trimmed and manicured the lawns and flower beds to make the backdrop of her dreams. You’ve already got that sorted nicely in Windsor Great Park.
BUT how to solve the table plan? It’s traditionally the mother’s job, which I did my best to avoid. I made a radical suggestion. Why not do away with it entirely? Let the guests sit where they like?
So many of my friends have spent days and nights crawling around the floor with labels, trying not to sit Great Aunt Flora next to all the other great aunts she hates. And trying to find an algorithm which would seat the richest relative next to the groom’s boss so as to impress them both, without alienating everyone else. But Rebecca insisted that it would cause immense confusion not to put a plan at the entrance to the tent, and place cards on the tables.
So we compromised, and gave the guests tables at which to sit, without place cards, so if there was a guest they wanted desperately to avoid, they could. As far as I know, it worked.
Why not suggest that, Doria, to the Lord Chamberlain, or whoever deals with precedence problems? He might jump at the idea and let all the kings and queens and cast members of Meghan’s show Suits sort themselves out.
The menu and the wine list were the next headache. Here I delegated all decisions. The bride chose the food: chicken pie with a strawberry pavlova instead of cake, and I applauded her choice.
The father of the bride is supposed to decide the wine, but I left that to the bridegroom and his friends. After all, they were likely to drink the most.
Which left me with one last decision. Who should make the father of the bride’s speech? For some reason which seemed good at the time, I decided that would be me. I don’t have a clear idea exactly what I said. Becca has golden hair and dazzling blue eyes like the Aegean sea, and that inspired me to reminisce about her conception, which happened on the Greek island of Mykonos.
I remember Becca groaning. She told me later that was way too much information. In fact, she thought even mentioning her conception was inappropriate — in case you have a similar inspiration.
I redeemed myself at the end of the evening, when the taxis didn’t turn up, by shoving a Burberry mac over my outfit and dropping the guests back at their hotels.
They were charmingly grateful and it was the least I could do, since according to the wedding etiquette books the bride’s father is in charge of transport, too.
And, in parallel, it has fallen to you, Doria, to look after your daughter’s golden coach.
Once at Windsor, you will enter St George’s Chapel, where rumour has it you might be braver than me, and walk your daughter down the aisle.
Enjoy it all. I know you will find it a wonderfully bonding exercise for mother and daughter. We’ll all be watching — and all know that she has chosen you to be at her side for this special moment — just as you have been all her life. Esther x