Brides, just embrace the chaos (even if Uncle Hamish isn’t in a kilt)

EXACTLY one year ago today I was, as my mother might say, up to high doh. A couple of days earlier, Nicola Sturgeon had announced that the country would move to the much-trumpeted Level 0 the following week. If all went well, ‘remaining restrictions’ would be lifted on August 9.

This was welcome news for someone whose wedding was just one month away. Of the approximately 72 windows open on my computer screen at any one time, three were revolving guest lists, one if we could have 50 guests, one if we could have 80, another if we could have 100 or over.

All three had corresponding table plans arranged by household bubble (if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to arrange all your family and friends into household bubbles on a socially distanced table plan for a wedding you’re not even 100 per cent sure will go ahead, let me just say that if the option came up again, I’d rather undergo root canal surgery).

Other dilemmas remained. Would my bridesmaids have to wear face masks when they walked down the aisle? Would we be able to serve the cake? Could we go ahead with a ceilidh? And most important of all, would I be allowed to hug my own mother?

It’s curious to look back on now, with the benefit of hindsight. Like most tortuous struggles that result, ultimately, in a happy ending, I had forgotten just what an absolute nightmare it all was.

Having already delayed our wedding by a year, at a time when we should have been celebrating our first anniversary we were navigating an evershifting landscape of rules and regulations more complex than the plot of Finnegan’s Wake. Nicola Sturgeon had become my de facto wedding planner. It wasn’t exactly every girl’s dream.

It is a very different picture this year. All restrictions around nuptials have long since been dropped and we are in the midst of a marital boom, thanks to a backlog of pandemic weddings. In the first three months of 2022 alone in Scotland there was a 21 per cent rise on the five-year average.

That doesn’t mean, however, that everything is sunshine and roses for this year’s couples. There are so many weddings this summer that there is currently a national kilt shortage. One

NEW research has discovered that slim people eat less. It was conducted, presumably, by the Institute for the Statement of the Bleedin’ Obvious.

hire firm reported dealing with weddings every day of the week until October, and seeing around 1,200 garments a week going in and out of their stores. That’s a heck of a lot of tartan.

Marquees, too, are in short supply, while florists, make-up artists, photographers and musicians are all booked up at least a year in advance, making any last-minute changes almost impossible.

When you get engaged, everyone flocks to tell you that you must make sure your wedding is ‘all about the two of you’, but the truth is, pandemic or not, planning a wedding is hard work, whether it’s your mother-in-law who sticks her oar in or, in my case, the First Minister.

There is a lot of sitting about and saying things like ‘yes I know we went to their wedding, but have we seen them since?’ Arguments about things you never knew you could argue about, like flower vase size, or whether to go for the ancient or modern version of the family tartan, or if you really need a pork pie wedding cake in addition to the tower of cheese (granted, that may just have been us).

AND yet when I have, over the past year, recalled moments from the run-up to our delayed, unstable, pandemic wedding, I don’t remember the bad stuff. What instead floods back is the anticipation, the excitement, and small moments like sitting at the kitchen table with my future brother-in-law trading jokes as we made up the wedding favours, or the night my fiancé and I first practised our first dance. The First Minister had no say in any of that.

And so, I say to the brides and grooms of 2022: embrace the chaos. Yes it will be stressful, yes there will be times when you secretly want to wring your future spouse’s neck, and no, it won’t all go without a hitch.

But ultimately, what everyone tells you is true: it’s your day. It’s special, and magical, and you’ll never forget it. And nobody will care if Uncle Hamish isn’t wearing a kilt.