Chief driver, page boy dresser and best man organiser - that’s me!

It says a lot about the in-laws. It says a lot about the in-laws when the Husband texted me on Thursday morning asking, nay, telling me that my services would be required after all on the day of THE WEDDING, which gets capital letters because of its all-consuming status as THE event of the year.

By the time you are reading this, happily sitting in Dundalk and wondering whether to ate the very last of the Creme Eggs, or whether you could get more in the sale in Tesco, I will have probably pulled the final strand of hair out of my head with the stress of what THE WEDDING, on Easter Tuesday, has given to me.

The whole thing has been going on since the Husband’s brother and ‘ the woman’ decided to get engaged at Christmas. And they didn’t give anyone much notice, opting for a cancellation at a fancy hotel near Enniskillen on Easter Tuesday. Since January, I have been squirrelling away the couple of pound, spending it on new shoes for the kids, who are page boys and an outfit for myself.

Cheap as I am, I was delighted when a friend offered a dress for free and have spent less than €75 on getting the rest of the items required to ‘ take the bad look off it’. My Ma would say I have gone overboard, while the Country Living Sister was appalled at much of what I had purchased.

They’re not going to be at the wedding, and I will only be playing up to the stereotype that the in-laws, who are from the upper class seaside town of Bangor, have of me. In short, they think I’m a rough quare one from Dundalk who has about as much class and sophistication as the dead dolphin that washed up on the North Down coast last year. I don’t intend to disavow them of that stereotype any time soon.

The Husband is one of two best men, as the groom was unable to chose between his two brothers. And with the Lads being page boys, I had been thinking that after I had got them all dressed and organised, I was pretty much done. Alas, it was not to be.

On Thursday, the Husband texted me saying the groom had been on to him that morning wondering if, seeing as the Husband doesn’t drive, I would take him from the hotel to the church on the morning of THE WEDDING. How can you say no to that? I had been hoping to get away without having to vacuum my car, opting instead to give the child seats a lick of the cloth and hope for the best. But now I am left wondering where to get the car valeted and news of my new job as chief driver sent my colleagues into a fit of laughing, which lasted most of the day.

Who knew there were so many comedians? ‘I can just imagine you, pulling up outside the hotel, fag in hand, shouting at the Wee Lad in the back seat to stop messing, telling the Big Lad to quit carrying on and roaring for the brother in law to get his arse in the car, as you haven’t got all day’, said one.

Another said that I would have to get ribbons tied onto the front of the car and yet another suggested that I would have to supply a beverage of one sort or another for the groom - a ‘settler’ if you will - for the estimated 40 minute journey to the church. As if I didn’t have enough to do, getting all the crap together to spend two days in Fermanagh with the childer driving me up the walls?

I thought, I told my colleagues, that I would give the brother in law ‘one of my talks’ on the way to the church. There was an explosion of laughter as every one of them said that it was not a good idea. The poor chap wouldn’t know whether he was going to a wedding or a funeral by the time he arrived at the church.

And one colleague laughed: ‘Sure 40 minutes in the car with you and he will be dying to get married to yer one. He knows that it could be a lot worse!’

I’m not marrying him, but, as I will be telling the groom: ‘It says a lot about the in-laws’.