by Greg Du Pille

Created on: January 09, 2009

About 25 years ago, I used to be married to someone else. We were only together for a couple of years, and this is the story of our wedding day. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the omens before we went through with it.

My then girlfriend and I lived together in a small one-bedroomed flat. We had been together for about 9 months and we were about 26 years old, and much more naive than we knew. We thought we could organise a wedding. We were wrong.

My girlfriend's Mother was a reasonably famous actress in the UK in the 1960's. She had appeared in hit TV serials and was still a featured name on West-End billboards. Her Dad was a former Hollywood B-movie actor but they had divorced some years before and were not on good terms.

Now, I understand that it is usually the bride's mother who is responsible for making the arrangements, but I don't really think she wanted to be at the same event as her former husband and so she told us that she was sorry but she would be on stage in Hull on the day of our wedding and couldn't come.

This was probably related to the manner of her falling out with her former husband, who she had come home to find dressed up in her clothes. I think she feared how he might turn up on the day and with whom.

So, the day was left to us to organise and boy, were we incompetent! On the night before the wedding I was ironing my suit and I casually asked my girlfriend about the three things that I had given her to accomplish. She said that she had bought her outfit, but she had completely forgotten to book a photographer or organise the wedding cake!

A panicked shuffle through the Yellow Pages ensued and I was at last able to secure the services of a photographer who was available the next day. My girlfriend assured me she would find a wedding cake and have it delivered to the reception.

And so the big day dawned. My girlfriend had spent the night elsewhere and my brother turned up in his beautifully restored Singer Sunbeam, and he pressed a large amount of cash into my hand "for expenses", and then it was off to the Registry Office in Hammersmith.

My soon-to-be-wife's father had turned up (dressed as a man, thank goodness), with his new wife and a large collection of his theatrical friends. When the ceremony started, these people started to flash their cameras, to which the female Registrar objected. "I'm sorry", she said, "I must not appear in any photos". Remorselessly the thespians flashed, and we giggled as the ceremony was delayed. At

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