From This Day Forth

... but I'm not convinced that you can please all of the people even some of the time. If the 'time' in question happens to be the six months or so running up to your wedding, forget it.

It's possible that your two families get along like a house on fire. I do hope so. They may meet up for tea and cakes every Tuesday, or play a friendly round of squash together after work. They may agree how wonderful it is that the pair of you are getting married, and how nice it would be for your little cousin to be a bridesmaid/Auntie Vera to make the cake/Uncle Roger to be the DJ/the reception to happen in the White Lion. If that's the case, and if you actually agree with all that, you're a luckier newly-wed-to-be than I was.

It's likely, however, unless they have grown up side by side and gone to all the same parties, that they will have entirely different ideas about how such things as weddings ought to be arranged. These different ideas will, of course, be reflected in you and your fiancé(e), but no doubt you will have sorted them out between yourselves. Justifying your decision to your prospective in-laws is a different matter.

My mother delights in recalling how little she spent on the wedding - they had a ceremony at the registry office, a reception on the back of a vintage bus (my father's) in a layby, the cake was served off a packing case, and they completely forgot about flowers for the chapel, but the couple in there before them had left theirs behind. Everybody - but everybody - came, and they had a great time. This is how my family does parties: too many people and not enough money, and somehow it all works out just fine.

My husband's family, on the other hand, does things by the book. You may have noticed that there are many books on weddings. They tell you what is expected, and, chez lui, what is expected is what is done. In my family, doing what is expected is boring and expensive. So, you see, we were set up for tears before we even started.

It's not just family. Your next-door neighbour will have an opinion on Brides Who Wear Their Hair Short, the one on the other side will have an opinion on Brides Who Wear Their Hair Down, and the one over the road will have an opinion on Brides Who Wear Their Hair Up. His best friend can't stand purple, and her best friend can't stand yellow. The best man will be terribly offended if you don't use real champagne, while the chief bridesmaid's brother is an alcoholic, and she will become terribly twitchy if anyone displays the slightest signs of merriment. I have opinions, for heaven's sake. I won't share them, because the last thing you need is to worry about whether some strange woman from the internet approves of your flower arrangements.

The point is, you have no hope of pleasing everybody, and there is no answer to this. There is no magic wand that you can wave that will make everyone like what you want to do.

Before you rush out to drown yourself in a vat of cheap sparkling wine, let me say this: don't do anything just because it's 'expected'; do it because you want do. I don't care whether it's expected by your family, their family, or Emily Poste's Guide to Etiquette. Only do it if you can think of a good reason. We couldn't think of a good reason to have pictures taken during the signing of the register, so we didn't.

Not wanting to offend someone is a good reason to do or not do something, but will not doing it, or doing it, offend somebody else? You have to think one step further and ask why it would offend someone. Did they make the cake? If so, it would only be reasonable to serve the cake early in the evening before they have to go home. If they have nothing to do with the cake and just don't like the colour of the icing, that's their problem.

It is your wedding. This is not an excuse to be selfish, but it does mean that you have the final say. Think through what you want to do. Think why you want to do it, and be prepared to fight your corner - or, rather, to justify yourself in a calm, clear manner. It's not easy, but it's the only way.

'Special' is a word that gets bandied around a lot, usually with a 'your' in front of it and a 'day' behind it. If you're already so fed up with this that you've thrown your coffee cup through your monitor at the sight of the subject line, I apologise. I'll try to get through the rest of the post without using it.

Like all clichés, it has some truth behind it. Yes, this is an important day, and, while for the pair of you it may be - should be - less important than all that follows, it will be the one day that everybody's looking at you.

Most catalogues, books, websites, whatever, ask you what you want on your special (sorry!) day. Some go so far as to tell you what you want. It's interesting how often what they think you want happens to be what they want to sell. I'd like to ask: what's important to you, as a couple?

What's important? What is unique to the pair of you? What makes you different from anybody else? And how can you work that into your wedding day?

A personal anecdote seems appropriate at this point. My husband and I met at university. To be precise, we met in the university chapel choir. We sang the same part; we stood next to each other; occasionally we shared music, when there wasn't enough to go round. Music - singing - was an important part of our life together, even before we had a life together.

Five years later, by now living in a different city, singing in a different choir, we got married. We didn't even have to think about this one. Of course the choir would sing at our wedding. Of course we'd give them something meaty to sing. Singing was an important part of our life together.

In the event, we had three hymns, two anthems, and a psalm. We put the full music for the hymns and the psalm in the order of service, so anyone who wanted could sing any part they liked. Of course, we could also sing along with most of that, apart from the bits where we were walking somewhere or signing something. We even had a reading that exhorted us to 'sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs'. We were pleased with the service. It was a reasonable reflection of ourselves, and what we liked, and who we were.

The reception, however, terrified us. More specifically, the prospect of the first dance terrified us. We can't dance, neither of us. We couldn't then and we can't now.

We could, however, sing.

Oh, yes, we did. We had a First Song. We sang the Duet for Two Cats, the most famous work Gioacchino Rossini never wrote, and we nailed it. Because standing up in front of all our friends and family screeching 'Miau' through two octaves was 'us' in a way that drifting around the dancefloor to I will always love you could never be.

So, what's important to you? What is special about the pair of you? Roller blading? The works of Charles Dickens? Wine tasting? Coffee? Doctor Who? Grand opera? Knitting? Hiking? Ruined castles?

And how can you work it in? I bet there's a way. Even if the registry office won't let you bring your motorbikes in because they're worried about oil on the carpet, you can do what you like at the reception. Go away and think about it.

Next: on pleasing all of the people all of the time.

Once upon a time there was a young couple, and they had decided to get married. They borrowed books. They looked at websites. They looked at the local newspaper, and found that there was to be a wedding fair within the next few weeks. Ha, they said, we should go to that, and see what there is to see.

There was one problem. It was on a Sunday, and that Sunday was the day of the Italian Grand Prix. This was a problem. The solution was obvious, of course: one would go to the wedding fair, and the other would stay at home and watch the race. Easy peasy.

I mention this tale in order to highlight an irritation that a lot of couples will encounter. No, I don't mean the conflict between sports and weddings. (That said, it's probably a good idea to check whether there will be a major sporting fixture on your chosen day, particularly if either family is composed of lunatic football/cricket/golf fans, since it's annoying if people are rushing out to the nearest pub every five minutes to check the score.) What I'm talking about in the above scenario is the assumption that will invariably be made by somebody: that the one who spends their Sunday lunchtime discussing cake and photographs will be the bride, and the one sitting at home in front of the TV set will be the groom. Goodness only knows how civil partnerships mess with their minds.

In our case (yes, that was us above) it wasn't really a problem. Some of the people at the wedding fair looked a bit confused to see a groom wandering around on his own. Most of the bride's friends thought that she had arranged things very nicely. But sometimes you come across something like this, and you just want to throw the catalogue out of the window:

'On your special day, you want your groom to look perfect...' (Quoted from memory, because I do actually seem to have disposed of the offending publication, but I promise it really was something like that.)

Look at those assumptions. There are at least three in there, two of which I'll examine at a later date, but perhaps the most egregious is the one that not only is the bride doing all the work, she's also making all the choices.

This seems to be a hang-up from the days when the bride's mother organised the whole thing, and all the groom had to do was to turn up on the day, reasonably sober, and wearing his best suit, which he probably owned anyway. The days when the bride had nothing better to do than sit around waiting to get married, and wasn't working 9-5.30 to help pay for the wedding. Those days are gone. At least, they're gone for those of us who have to hire our best suits. The norm these days seems to be that the couple plans the wedding together, with more or less input from both sets of parents. So why, why, do companies persist in selling to only one half of the couple?

Heigh-ho. It's an irritation. I suppose all we can do is ignore the assumptions and do whatever it was we were going to do in the first place. Grooms: keep going to wedding fairs, and ignore the funny looks. There is no biological reason why you should not make decisions about cake, photographers, and yes, even formal suits, if you are so minded. Leave your bride at home. She'll thank you for it, if she's a fan of Sebastian Vettel.

Beginnings are tricky things. That would be why I've been staring at a blank screen for the past five minutes, wondering what to write. That would also be why weddings are tricky things. A wedding is the beginning of a marriage. Note that I don't say only the beginning of a marriage. Beginnings are important things, the start of all that comes after. The wedding is important, and I wouldn't be writing this blog if I didn't think that.

It's important, and therefore it's important that it comes off in a way that you, your other half, and the people you care about are reasonably happy with. My purpose in writing this blog is, in some small way, to help you achieve that with the minimum of anger, debt, resentment, or outright bloodshed. I've learned some things. I want to share them.

The world is full of books, magazines, websites, future in-laws, best friends, and sales representatives, all of them queueing up to tell you how you should have your wedding. I don't want to do that. It will be easier for me, because I'm not trying to sell you pink organza favour bags, or uphold some crackpot family tradition, or run your life for you. I can say what I can think. Better than that, I can say that it's OK for you to think what you think. And that's something that Plan Your Perfect Wedding will never do.

I'll try not to tell you what you should do. I'll stay well clear of telling you what you have to do, other than in the 'it is a legal requirement that...' sense. I will say, 'Here is what I did, and here's why I think it worked', but I certainly won't expect you to do the same as me. I simply hope to offer moral support, a detached viewpoint, some perspective.