Revenge of the Wedding Planner (21 page)

Things went from bad to worse after that. The loved-up lovebirds mistook our politeness to indicate that NI was a happening sort of place where anything was possible. Next up on the agenda, the guest list. Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen! There were exactly 666 guests on the list. The happy couple had to plunder their old phone books to scrape together the last few dozen, and distant relatives were going to be flying in from the four corners of the globe. But the final tally was 666 and they’d even invited a few diehard fans to make up the numbers in case any of the relatives got lost en route to the ruined castle. Now, don’t worry, this devilish number had no real significance other than to impress the rocker’s fellow musicians and full-time hellraisers. That’s what he told us, anyway. But still, I knew there’d be a bit of a ruckus when the press found out. Especially if it’d been a slow week for real news stories.

I’m sure you’re getting the general idea by now, of where this wedding was going. And you’d be right. It was ‘Halloween Meets Bling’ on a grand scale. The wedding cake? Oh, yes. The bride-to-be wanted her wedding cake to stand five feet tall and take the form of a haunted
mansion. Complete with twisty-pointy turrets, overhanging balconies, iron railings on the overhanging balconies, trailing ivy on the iron railings on the overhanging balconies. Actual electric lights in the windows if it could be arranged. She said she had always, always,
always
wanted such a wedding cake. All her life, it was ‘all she had ever dreamed of’. Well, you need to get out more, my dear, I thought to myself. Even though I have a solid-stone gargoyle in my good room and a rather big collection of giant candlesticks. But, at least I don’t make a song and dance about my likes and dislikes, I keep them to myself. I was slightly puzzled at the model’s request for a haunted-mansion cake because she didn’t seem to be into serious rock music, but I suppose she wanted to impress her husband-to-be. And it was his money paying the bill so we said we’d do our best to find a baker who’d be willing to try. I had serious doubts we’d find a local baker, though. I said I’d find out how much it would cost to have a top chef kidnapped in Paris, flown to this country and forced to bake a haunted-mansion cake at gunpoint. And I was only half joking.

The meeting wore on and the requests got sillier. The groom-to-be fancied a red velvet frock coat with skulls embroidered on it and a red silk top hat to go with it. We didn’t envisage any huge problems there as Ireland is coming down with fashion designers since the Celtic Tiger woke up and began to roar. But could they make top hats, I wondered. Julie saw the shadow of doubt flicker across my eyes and inclined her head at me to say nothing. So I didn’t. I measured the guy’s head circumference and told him his aftershave was lovely. Shame about the halitosis
but then sustained drug-use can really bugger up your molars, so I’ve heard.

The bats! Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you about the bats. The groom-to-be also thought it would be nice to have real live bats released at dusk, just before the dancing and the serious boozing got under way. Julie and I exchanged glances at that one. There was no way the government, either north or south of the border, was going to allow such an infringement of animal rights, but we said nothing. We knew we’d come up with some less-controversial alternative and convince him it was fabulous and groovy when the time came. We discussed staging the ruins with lights and props. At one point I just knew Julie was about to volunteer the loan of my stone gargoyle but I interrupted her by offering tea or coffee or indeed a glass of champagne to our guests. I couldn’t take the risk of the pair of them or someone in their hefty entourage making off with my most prized possession at the end of the day. Which seems laughable now in the light of what actually happened, but life is like that, isn’t it? Full of surprises, is life.

Back to the doe-eyed bride: she wanted a fireworks display as night fell. Obviously, not too close to the bats being deployed, for humanitarian reasons. Although it would have been rather hilarious to release thousands of fluttery little bats over the heads of the crowd and then disorientate the bejaysus out of all of them with a few tons of gunpowder. Worth a clip on
You’ve Been Framed
, I imagine. Oh, God. So yes, she wanted red, white and blue fireworks to symbolize both her native France and her beloved’s home country, the USA. That seemed okay with us, although again we said we would have to consult
ancient rules and regulations regarding local council etiquette, and we weren’t exactly sure how much a bespoke fireworks display would cost. I didn’t think we’d be allowed to make a lot of noise near birds and wildlife, but of course we didn’t mention anything awkward at the time. That’s why we get paid a lot of money, Julie and me. Because we do all the boring stuff like making endless phone calls to reference libraries and police stations. And flattering stuffy old town mayors and vacuuming up any stray confetti before the next wedding begins.

My head was splitting by this stage and we hadn’t even touched on the catering. Julie knows some top chefs specializing in mini-bowls of Irish stew and best Irish seafood platters, but of course it wasn’t going to be that easy, was it? Oh, no. Our happy couple wanted to go all New Age and forward-looking. Or, at least, that was the image they wanted to project to the rest of the world. The menu was to be entirely vegetarian if not vegan. Julie looked at me when the two of them began a short sermon on vegetarianism. Julie can’t abide veggie sermons; she loves a nice fillet steak cooked rare. But we said it was a super idea and we’d look into pricing a top vegetarian chef right away. I joked about kidnapping another chef from Paris, but nobody laughed. It’s a serious business, getting married nowadays.

Slight problem with the food: vegetarian cuisine in this neck of the woods seems to consist of a few strips of soggy aubergine, deep-fat fried and served on a bed of undercooked brown lentils. Yuck! We’d really have our work cut out to find a decent chef willing to work in the open air.

‘Leave it with us,’ Julie purred, fluttering her eyelashes
at the rock star and admiring his girlfriend’s enormous pink rocks.

And that’s not a euphemism. There were three pink diamonds the size of golf balls on her engagement ring. It occurred to me then, and not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be easier to get myself a part-time job in our local chippy. Or even open a chippy of my own? The prices they charge, I’d be a millionaire in six months. But of course, I’d never do that. I must admit, I do enjoy my work most of the time, there’s always something exciting going on. Today is just a blip, I told myself. A little bit over the top and ridiculous but surely, as the preparations progressed, some of the more outlandish requests could be down-sized or dropped altogether? I mean, I couldn’t help wondering if this media-circus was going to damage the general image of getting married. I hoped the whole thing could be shoehorned into something more tasteful as the months went by. Well, no harm in hoping.

Next up, the invitations! Pop-up invitations, to be exact. To be handmade, naturally. A little paper vampire was to leap out of the card, they said, complete with a red-lined paper cape and fangs dripping paper blood. Nice. There’d be lots of information on the back of the invites too. The guests were to be told of the secrecy surrounding the location, the no-cameras rule and the
dress code
. Here we go, I thought. This will be good. And it was. The dress code for the wedding of the century was to be Rock Chicks and Vampires. And no exceptions were to be made, not even for the guests who were knocking on a bit. Or the forty-three relatives of the happy couple who were bona fide pensioners already.

Julie laughed her head off and said they were the wildest pair she’d ever met in her life, which cheered them up no end. I wondered how much dosh they were getting from selling the photographs. But still, there’s an awful lot of unhappiness in the world, I said to myself, and at least this ‘wacky’ wedding will give the readers something to talk about. So, yes, Julie said, we’d have some spare Rock Chick and Vampire costumes made up and stored in the marquee in case any of the guests didn’t get round to renting or making their own. I had an upsetting vision of some old dears staggering across the lawn of an ancient castle wearing fishnet stockings and satin bustiers, but luckily our clients didn’t see me making a face. Another potential
You’ve Been Framed
moment, I think you’ll agree, when the cloaked-up grannies and granddads go wading into a bunch of fresh cowpats. Note to self! I made a mental note to get the ‘housekeeping’ staff to remove any cowpats and wash down the grass well before the wedding began.

Thankfully, we were almost at the end of the meeting by this point.

Last up on the agenda: the goody bags. Our clients said they wanted to give out the ‘coolest freakin’ gift bags in the entire world’ at the end of the night. Well, that was no problem for our Julie. She was probably born clutching a goody bag, she told them. She had dozens of ideas for Rock Chick and Vampire gift bags, as it transpired. Vouchers for designer lingerie from Josephine’s boutique in the city centre. Lucky old Josephine, she always does well out of Dream Weddings. By the way, Josephine offers a mail-order service for the really hot
stuff so customers can buy all the gear they want without having to ask for it face to face. So Julie said she would pop a brochure and a voucher into every bag, for starters. Then there’d be lots of other lovely things. Red scented candles, toffee apples bearing the date of the wedding, black leather mobile-phone covers. Pots of scented face-and-body glitter, silver fountain pens and bottles of black ink. Semi-precious skull cufflinks, strawberry-centre truffles in a black cardboard box, mini-bottles of pink champagne. Letter-openers shaped like daggers. The list was endless. So was the string of zeros on the end of the rock star’s budget. Each individual goody bag (and remember there were 666 invited guests) was going to be worth £200 alone. That’s £133,200 on goody bags, I told them, whipping out the office calculator. Our man didn’t look surprised in the least. In fact, he looked thoughtful for a moment and then said to make it £300 as he didn’t want to look cheap. So, £200
K
on gifts. Well, that’s an awful lot of money, isn’t it?

Rock and roll, babe.

His words, not mine.

I had to excuse myself and stagger up to the kitchenette for a glass of water when I heard how much moola they’d set aside to pay for this ‘for the glossies’ wedding. I daresay the magazine was going to finance most of it. And it wouldn’t do either of their careers any harm. But still, the sheer scale of the event was very daunting to me. The expense of it all, the organization involved. Keeping the media at bay but still interested, the countless health and safety restrictions we’d have to get round. But Julie carried on like we get this sort of brief every day
of the week. I was very impressed with Julie in spite of my various doubts and misgivings about her relationship with Jay. For a while in that meeting, she was the same old Julie I’d grown so fond of. Her ‘I can do anything’ attitude was an inspiration.

The rock star and his lovely lady refused our offer of coffee and pastries when the meeting was over. They were just on their way to the airport, as it happened. Fashion show in Milan, they said. Julie air-kissed them both several times and said she had so many ideas she didn’t know where to start. They handed over the cheque and we all swapped contact numbers. I saw them safely down the lighthouse stairs and waved them off in their blacked-out limousine. When I got back up to the office, Julie was casually checking her make-up before going to visit Jay.

‘Start making preliminary calls, Mags,’ she said slowly, crayoning on red lipstick. ‘But don’t confirm anything until I okay it. Right? I’m just nipping out for a couple of hours. And if Gary phones tell him I’m having my nails done. He’d never dream of ringing the salon.’

Julie’s second home, the salon. It’s called the Beauty Spot.

Lovely little place.

‘Actually, Jay quite fancies me having a Brazilian wax. Or a Hollywood. Isn’t he outrageous? You know, I might just pop into the Beauty Spot on my way to Saintfield and see if they can fit me in. Hope it doesn’t hurt too much!’

And off she went skipping down the steps of the lighthouse, singing some sugary pop tune and happily swinging her big white handbag with the heavy bunch of
glass and silver charms attached. There was no point reasoning with her so I didn’t bother. I just sighed heavily, made a pot of tea in the kitchenette and prepared for a strange afternoon researching fantasy-cake design, the collecting and releasing of live bats (bound to be a law against the releasing of live bats for fun, I thought), red velvet suits, health and safety issues regarding ancient ruins and the hiring of busloads of security staff. All of it very vexing. Particularly the security staff. We didn’t want to go hiring the wrong sort who might cause more trouble than they were being hired to prevent. After two hours on the phone, I hadn’t come up with an awful lot so I did three things. I took a taxi into town to lodge the massive cheque in the bank for safekeeping. I bought some emulsion paint and various things to fix up the office in the lighthouse. And I sent Emma a massive bouquet of pink and white roses with a nice message attached. Since we now knew where the clinic was. They said it would be helpful if Emma got some cards and letters each week.

The message said how truly sorry I was about everything.

Really sorry for hurting Emma’s feelings, and best wishes from all of us.

Well, I was sorry. I couldn’t believe Emma was actually close to death that day in the lecture theatre, and only weeks before I’d hated her so much that I wanted to shove her down the stairs for tormenting my Alexander into giving up his architecture degree. I hoped the clinic would let Emma keep the roses when they arrived because they were very expensive indeed. Gosh, but I’m very good at
spending money. Once you get started and over the initial guilt it’s very hard to stop. Then, fingers crossed, I went back to the lighthouse and set out my paint-roller and tray in the office. I’m very quick at painting walls: years of practice, I suppose. I fervently hoped Julie wouldn’t land back to work when I was only halfway through and be cross with me for wasting time. But then I remembered her Brazilian/Hollywood surprise for Jay and I knew she’d be fully occupied for the rest of the day.