Wedding Planners

'Hold everything!  This new app's suggesting that you might not be suitable.'

Try as I might, I just can’t get all het up about the gay marriage controversy presently engaging all hands from everybody’s chum, D Cameron, the Arch of Cant, and the two ladies in front of me in the Post Office today who, unlike Dave, agreed that “Well, its not natural is it?”

Personally, I couldn’t give a flying bouquet. People do what they will do.

Then there was a programme on R4 all about “wedding planners”.

Funeral planners I’m ok with. First off, the subject can’t do it for themselves, and hopefully their friends and relatives are too cut up to be able to face lots of digging or pyre lighting. So they pay some experts to do it.

But WEDDING planners? One of the contributors to the R4 prog was an American lady who went on and on about “getting it right”. True, she was enthusing about the increasing demands to plan gay marriages which must have their own peculiar wrinkles, like how best to silence Aunt Betsy who thinks its not natural, but her drift was really about all and any marriage.

I just wondered how it worked. "Here’s £50000. Make it so. By the way, the bridegroom has ginger hair and Tourette’s".

I’ve only ever been to one Big Wedding. What are they about? Making a statement? Marquees, duckboards, goody bags, band, millions of guests, free bar. Honeymoon in the Maldives. I wonder now if all that razzle-dazzle was the work an expensive “wedding planner”. I know who paid for it – her Dad - who was and still is, loaded, but at the time of writing, further details are unavailable due to the happy couple separating last October. She ran off with a software designer from Stevenage. (Why do they always “run” off ?) So much for the statement.

But its not just the rich who do this. Lots of couples who by dint of the fact that they’re skint can’t employ a wedding planner, but still go large on the nuptuals. They do it themselves. From hiring traditional garb from Moss Bross or Pronuptua to laying on cars to take all hands to church, hotel, registry office or stone circle. Then the bride and groom take off (from Manchester) for a similarly frugal honeymoon. In the Maldives.

OK, OK, I’m being a spoilsport. What’s wrong with a big splurge, DIY or otherwise? Besides, you only do it once, right? Well, do you? I have an acquaintance who’s been married four times. FOUR! And each time, the wedding was of the Big variety. My belief was beggared, I can tell you. The last three weddings featured the SAME band, for goodness sake.

Me? Well if I ever tied the knot again – not that too many people in old folks’ homes do that – it’d be “Abide With Me” in the church, posh sandwiches from Waitrose in the front room, then a couple of nights in the local Travelodge for a bit of a lie down.