The Happiest Day of Your Life
…or is it? Of course it is! Your wedding is the one day in your life you get to dress up in a fairy-tale gown marry your Prince Charming. It’s the day all your relatives have to be nice to you (and each other), the day you get to call each and every shot and the day when you, the bride, are indisputably the centre of attention. Sounds perfect? Well, if it was that simple, we novelists wouldn’t be able to write book after book set around weddings, their attendant families and everything that can – and does – go wrong. But where do we get that inspiration from?
I loved my wedding day: it was as perfect as you could hope for – although it very nearly went horribly wrong. It began the week before the ceremony when I walked into the church and found the organ covered in plastic sheeting and the vicar announcing that there was going to be a stage and full theatre lightning up in front of the altar. A stage??? Nobody had told me I’d be saying ‘I do’ in the full glare of a professional spotlight. I was after the clean lines and stained glass windows of a medieval church! Luckily, after much begging and pleading (and quite a few veiled threats from my mother) the stage was dismantled in time for the ceremony and everything went ahead as planned. Twelve years on, and my stress levels are just about back to normal.
And what about the moment that every bride secretly dreads – when the vicar or the registrar asks if there is anyone in the congregation who knows ‘due cause or impediment’ why she should not be joined in holy matrimony? Well, it happened to a friend of mine, although luckily he was the vicar not the bride. At the crucial moment, the Best Man blurted out ‘She’s not good enough for you mate!’ and everything ground to a temporary halt – temporary because, of course, ‘not being good enough’ isn’t a valid reason to stop a marriage taking place. The worst thing was, my friend tells me, not just that the Best Man blurted this out, but that he was probably right…
It’s this combination of love and high drama; beautiful costumes and a well-rehearsed script; meticulous planning but the tiniest chance that everything could still go spectacularly wrong which gives writers like me such inspiration. Throw in the odd dysfunctional family member, a lost love (or two) and, in the case of ‘Save the Date!’, a mischievous Jack Russell, and you have a pretty potent literary mix.
However, it’s always important to keep that fairytale ending in mind. What we want from a really good wedding is the promise of true love. So, to all the brides and grooms – fictional and otherwise – who will be making their way up the aisle this summer: may you find the happy-ever-after that you are looking for and I hope, I truly do, that it is indeed the happiest day of your life.
Family weddings can be hell.
…and, marooned in Italy for her cousin’s nuptials, Ailsa can be forgiven for thinking that this one is worse than most. With the bride and groom at loggerheads and the guests in uproar, it is a million miles away from the rest and relaxation she’d been hoping for.
And then suddenly, in the middle of the mayhem, she comes face-to-face with Nick, the man she walked out on just a few months earlier.
How can Ailsa help get the wedding back on track when she and Nick can’t stop arguing? But if they do, she might remember why she fell in love with him in the first place – and then there really would be trouble.
Allie is kindly offering one of our lovely Romaniac readers a chance to win a copy of her new release, Save The Date. All you have to do is leave a comment, by Friday evening (14th June), telling us about the most outrageous wedding ceremony moment you witnessed, first-hand, or were, indeed part of. The one that makes us go ‘Ohhh!’ the longest will be the winner. Good luck.
Thank you Allie for popping in to Romaniac HQ and leaving this brand, spanking new copy of Save The Date, released June 20, 2013, but available for pre-order from Amazon, here.
You can find Allie on Facebook here and follow her on Twitter, here.
Congratulations on your new book. We look forward to reading it.
Love,
The Romaniacs xx
The Romaniacs 
Congratulations on the publication of your latest book Allie. I sounds like a great summer read and would cheer a reader up even when it rains. Looking fwd to buying it, reading and reviewing. Good luck.
Woohoo, happy launch day ~ this is going straight on my TBR! XX
Sounds fabulous Alli! Definitely going on my TBR list, too. I’ve no ceremony stories but my bridesmaid ended up in a pond. Loved seeing my MIL being bounced right off the adult bouncy castle, too as some of the guests got over enthusiastic during the photographs. They were all meant to be sitting like good boys and girls. There’s a lot to be said for a free bar 🙂