The lure of lavish weddings – and how women can ignore cold feet

WALKING down the aisle towards the man she was about to marry, Gemma Andrews could see her mother up ahead wearing her best hat and, beside her, her grandmother tearfully clutching a handkerchief.

All eyes were on her. A sea of faces smiling, dabbing their eyes and wishing her luck. This was meant to be the happiest moment of Gemma’s life. Why, then, was her stomach in a knot and a sense of panic rising? Why did she feel like turning around and running and running until all of this was far away?

The dreadful truth is that even though Gemma was about to make her vows, she knew she didn’t love the man standing at the altar.

She knew, just moments from now, she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

‘This will sound like the most awful and shallow admission,’ says Gemma, who married aged 27 five years ago.

‘But I walked down that aisle, with the people who love me most in the pews either side of me, knowing that I didn’t want to marry the man waiting for me. I just felt too embarrassed to admit that I had cold feet.

‘Planning the wedding had taken over our lives to such an extent, I had lost sight of what really mattered. But to call the whole thing off would have meant losing face.’

With a depressing inevitability, the marriage ended three years later, in 2015, with Gemma — who now lives with her new partner, Michael Andrews, a 30-year-old security guard — starting divorce proceedings on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.

She’s now joined the ranks of almost half of divorcees who knew on their wedding day that their relationship was doomed, according to a poll by a law firm.

With weddings becoming grander and more expensive each year — in the Seventies, a couple typically spent €2,200 on their big day; today, it’s more like €32,000 — it seems that a growing number feel compelled to go ahead with their big day, through guilt or financial obligation, even when they know for certain the union is going to end in divorce.

Tellingly, as wedding costs escalate, so do divorce statistics — research in 2014 found that the more people spend on their wedding and engagement, the more likely they are to end the marriage.

Meanwhile, half of couples accept considerable financial help from their parents to cover the cost. Little wonder a doubting bride might feel she has no choice but to suppress her worries and just say: ‘I do.’

CERTAINLY for Gemma, calling off the wedding would have meant throwing away the €12,000 her and her fiance had saved for two years and letting down her family. Her grandmother had also made a contribution.

‘I simply couldn’t have lived with the guilt of her losing her money. In the end, it seemed easier to swallow all my doubts and go ahead with it anyway,’ she says.

‘In the weeks running up to my wedding, I had endless worries about whether I should be going through with it, yet I didn’t confide in anyone. It was embarrassing to admit I was getting cold feet for no other reason than, during the two years of planning and arranging this wedding, I had lost sight of why I was doing it, and had fallen out of love with my fiance.

‘Now, of course, I realise the wedding wasn’t about making a lifelong commitment to someone I wanted to grow old with — it was about making real the pictureperfect day I had imagined for myself since childhood, while keeping up with my friends who’d all got married before me.

‘My ex-husband was my first serious boyfriend. We had been together since I was 18. By the time our wedding day came, I just didn’t feel able to voice my reservations, as so much time, effort and money had been invested in the day.’

Jenny Marks, founder of the wedding planning firm Complete Bliss, says she can sometimes spot a marriage that is unlikely to last as early as the initial phone call.

‘It can be as simple as the tone of her voice — launching straight into: “I want this, I want that,” as though she’s determinedly pulling off a huge social event, rather than arranging a really special day.

‘Weddings have become synonymous with a huge show, with the ceremony itself only a small part of an enormous event.

‘I routinely plan weddings where the costs run to €60,000 or more. Often, the parents are paying a huge chunk, if not all of it. Imagine being a bride and starting to wobble as the big day approaches. ‘All this money and effort that’s being spent on her, all those people who are emotionally and financially invested in that perfect day. The pressure to go ahead, however uneasy she might be starting to feel, is enormous. ‘The guilt she might feel at the idea of saying: “Actually, folks, stop everything, I’ve changed my mind” would be horrendous.’ Competitive parents can get as carried away as the bride. ‘The bride will want everything Instagramperfect, while her parents will be making their own statement to the friends they have invited. The pressure to match what their peers have laid on can be huge.’ Jenny has seen brides go into meltdown on their wedding morning, turning seemingly small details into huge issues. ‘One girl broke down in hysterics when she realised the napkins no longer appeared an exact match to the blue flowers on the tables under the marquee lights.

‘She was distraught. But, actually, I think the real issue was that she’d spent so long planning the perfect day, and now it had arrived she was worrying about whether she wanted the life coming after it.

‘The wedding she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl had turned into a runaway train, and it hit her that it was too late to jump off.’

Meanwhile, for every couple whose parents can stump up enormous amounts towards the costs of a modern wedding, there is another who must find every penny themselves. Very often, the debt puts the marriage under pressure as they struggle to pay it off.

Family lawyer Amanda McAlister says she has helped divorcing clients who are still saddled with that debt. She is also not surprised to receive calls from women who are weeks away from their weddings, asking her to draw up prenuptial agreements.

And she hears from parents, too, who may suspect the impending marriage is unlikely to last, yet, like the bride, prefer to forge ahead anyway. ‘They’re typically wealthy parents who want to protect their legacy,’ says Amanda.

And, of course, it’s not only young women who are falling into this trap. Second-time weddings can be just as lavish, with brides so happy to have found another ‘life’ partner, they turn a deaf ear to any warning bells.

Vivienne Lambert, who’d already been married previously, signed the divorce papers to end her second marriage in 2014. But she admits she’d had doubts from the moment her ex-husband proposed 12 years earlier.

A naval officer, he told her at the start of their relationship he was being posted to Australia for three years, and Vivienne didn’t baulk when he suggested she join him.

‘I was happy because I’d always wanted to go to Australia. It seemed like an adventure.’

But things began to move along at an alarming speed and Vivienne, 65 and a retired business owner, started to worry. Just nine weeks after their first date, he proposed.

‘We were in South Africa and, at the top of Table Mountain, he pulled out a ring,’ she says.

‘As I stared at the solitaire