The recent royal nuptials has brought forth a flurry of wedding-based blogs, so here I am, grabbing the bandwagon's tailgate with a small offering about my own first wedding (Part 1 - the New Dawn).
Wedding Part 1 (or WP1 as I shall now call it, though not to be confused with VPL) was a loooong time ago and both fiancée #1 and I were, in that appallingly familiar and well-worn phrase, very young: too young as it turned out... but that's a whole other story. So there we were, 2 kids getting married, but with very little control over what was meant to be one of the biggest days of our lives. For, perhaps like Kate and William, our self-appointed wedding planner was the grandmother - but we are not talking about any old grandmother here ..... oh no, this was my grandmother....
Now, my grandmother may not have been the Queen, but she could certainly act like one. Best described as “a very strong character” – you can keep your Boudicca, your Virgin Queen or even your Iron Lady... my grandmother could arm-wrestle them all... at the same time....blindfolded....whilst annihilating a pint of whelks with only her bare teeth. This was a novel little trick grandmother used to perform most Sunday teatimes: not the arm-wrestling you understand – the whelk eating - I don't think the Queen participates in either activity, but who can really know for sure. No, the matriarch of an East End family is never to be trifled with.....and especially if she's wielding a plateful of whelks.
Anyway, my bare-knuckled, whelk-munching grandmother paid for the WP1 (I'm sensing a royal pattern forming here), because she was the only one with any money and the rest of us, to use another of her many phrases, didn't have a pot to p**s in. Naturally, grandmother took this financial responsibility as an entitlement to run the show entirely to her own taste. As a result, I didn't have the dress I really wanted, or the veil, or the tiara, or the music, or the flowers or the food or...well, anything really. And fiancée #1was no help, he just hovered in and out of the scene, wheeling and dealing and making “arrangements” - such as the one with the photographer who threw in a white Mercedes + driver as part of some dodgy deal.... cash only - to be paid on the day. One can only hope Kate fared better....
But why, I hear you cry, did you even think of getting married at such an early age and without the means to purchase whelks or indeed, a pot to p**s in for that matter? Ah, my answer lies in our ingrained East End mentality. It was simply expected that the females in our family would grow up, learn to read and write (basics only), work in some menial job for a few years before getting married and having children. (This is beginning to sound more and more like the Royals as I go on, but without the washing/cleaning/ cooking bit). It was an eternal circle - back to the beginning and start again. The family female didn't have an education or a career, there was no need for any of that....they had a home and a husband and children to care for. The family female washed and cleaned and cooked. That's what they did and that's what I was expected to do. And so I toed the line...at that point....
Anyway, enough of the Royals -back to WPI. Grandmother's idea of a good wedding was to follow the time-honoured pattern of all the previous weddings in our family: namely a huge affair on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm, with relatives (who mostly hated the sight of one another) being bussed in from around the Mile End, Stratford and Upton Park areas – all to have a bloody good knees-up with a table-breaking spread, plenty of booze and the compulsory dancing of the conga. There were to be bridesmaids....loads of them and all in height order...page boys...a huge bouquet...a bloke in a kilt with bagpipes... a Chimney sweep..... the works. OK, maybe back to the Royals it is....
“I don't want all that” I pouted, but I had no support or back-up - fiancée #1 just shrugged... anything for a quiet life. So things resulted in a one almighty “pout-off” with grandmother . She sulked, she skulked, she moaned and groaned, she whined and whinged and tutted and wondered what the world was coming to because she'd never heard anything like it, but in the end, she relented. Two bridesmaids. No pageboys. Small reception with sandwiches, plates of ham and sausage rolls. No bus-loads of warring relatives. No conga. No bloke in a kilt with or without bagpipes. And definitely no Chimney Sweep.
And so it came to pass that an albeit toned-down East End WP1 went off without a hitch, apart from it being a bit of a windy day and my veil got caught in a rose bush outside the church oh, and the driver of the Merc acted like he was in The Italian Job... and yes he was paid in cash...on the day. Still, though I may have regrets about the arrangements, WP1 also taught me a very valuable lesson about other people controlling my life. For since then I have done my own thing and trod my own path, even though it may have been rocky and included some whopping great pot-holes. Oh, I am still immensely proud of my roots, but WP1 began the process of shedding some of that constricting East End skin and breaking loose. I do hope the Royals find a little of the same freedom...
Which leads me on to Wedding Part 2 (the sequel).....or WP2 as I shall now call it....
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