I have always been very career driven and always tried to push myself to the limit in jobs that I have had. To travel the world, see the eight wonders, explore different cultures was also the plan, get some life experience; and as you can probably guess, I have never been travelling. I have been on holiday, of course, but this is not the same, sipping cocktails in a five-star resort in my eyes is not travelling. Some of you may disagree. The idea of travelling is great, but it is the reality; I am scared of everything—the dark, bugs, snakes, spiders—and I have OCD, which seemed to start after the night I lost my virginity as I felt so dirty and covered in germs and have done ever since. Anti-bacterial gel and wipes became my best friend. It is a lot better now due to medication and before my current job I worked in a school with children of nursery age. They would always have snotty noses and dirty hands and would clamber all over me, and I couldn’t wash my hands every five minutes as I had children to watch. I realised that nothing bad had happened to me, like I had thought. I didn’t get ill or catch a disease, nor did anyone around me, because I hadn’t washed my hands.
I never wanted children. I think that’s because I thought they came with marriage and that was something I had never thought would happen, so that’s why I just got stuck into work. But now, over thirty, I want nothing more than to get married and have children. One person can come into your life and make you see it in a whole new light.
We wanted to celebrate with everyone, share our good news, and thought the best way was to have a party. In a way, this is like a prequel to the wedding as you have to find a venue, sort out food, decorations etcetera. First things first, very much like the wedding, we needed to set a date and then look at possible venues. We didn’t want to spend too much money, so we were looking at village halls that were local or pub function rooms. We ended up booking a ballroom. It had a stage, a kitchen and a large bar with cheap drink, and also had an outside area that was okay. It was cheap to book, too. We could use all of the tables and chairs; they were a bit tatty but thought with a tablecloth and in the dark, who would know. We decided on a theme too: black, red and gold. Mainly because the chairs were red so thought that would be much easier. We got invites, which we posted to family and friends who were not local, and handed out the rest. This was not an easy decision who, to invite, as really if you invited these people to the engagement surely, they should be invited to the wedding.
We had six weeks until the party I had ordered decorations online. My sister, Chynna, had said she would be in charge of photographs and even made a banner saying “soon to be the James”. I showed this to Edward who went completely white, like he had seen a ghost. I think he was having a freak out about the whole, getting married thing; it was like this shit just got real.
The day of the party came around so quickly. My family came up during the day to help us decorate. I thought with us all being there it would take about an hour, but I was very much mistaken. It took a lot longer than that. We didn’t have enough tablecloths. I didn’t know where to put the tables or where to hang photographs and banners. This party had caused me so much stress. Edward did say to me that he would organise the rest of the wedding as he could only imagine what I would be like if this was anything to go by. I had spent a week before making a post box for cards. If I had known it was going to take that long, I would have brought one, saved myself the hassle, and I got three-D letters of our initials, which I had decorated and put them on a table by themselves surrounded by confetti and candles, but it looked more like a tribute at a funeral. I didn’t have time now, just had to do what we could. The black and gold theme was a bad idea I wished I had just gone for white and another colour. Coloured cutlery, plates, containers, serviettes were so much more expensive than white ones and were hard to find. We put a centre piece of red, gold and black balloons and a bowl of sweets on every table, with a decorative gold vase with fairy lights in. It looked a bit shit, not how I had imagined, but I didn’t have time to mess about. No one would care anyway. Soon it would be dark and everyone would be pissed.
I had been trying to get hold of Spence all day, but he wasn’t returning my calls or messages. He was meant to be coming up during the day to help decorate
