Shirtsleeves

Things have been rusty with me, writing wise, lately. Apologies for how very unpolished this is.

The book club discusses, over lightly iced tisanes, their various weddings. Joan is late, as usual, but they started the main discussion without her once, about Lady Chatterley's Lover ("scandalous" was the general consensus), and collectively felt so bad about it that they no longer even question waiting. Margaret is speaking now, fingers brushing the air her voice hums through, sending them all on a journey to a small woodland chapel and the retrospective hilarity of the vicar's border collie trying to be part of the ceremony.

"It wasn't exactly how I dreamed it would be, even if poor Archangel hadn't been there, but I don't think that really matters. I had been planning this wedding since girlhood, and, well, Arthur didn't have many opinions so I was free to go with all of my cherished ideas. And I worried and panicked for absolutely months (didn't we all), but none of those things seemed to make much of a difference. I could have married Arthur in a cowshed wearing a burlap sack and I think it would have been just as perfect."

The book club is unanimous in their agreement with obvious truism. Violet remarks that she, too, had her girlish dreams go awry through catastrophe after catastrophe ("and would you believe that David's best man had a heart attack on his way to the cathedral with the rings and we had to be married using ribbons from my flower girl's hair?"), and Louisa remembers how her husband had had his own plans and they had very nearly come to blows several times in creating a synthesis that would please them both.

Soon the room is a-twitter with remembrances of the ideals - "I wanted the bridal party all to come in on ponies, as any nine-year-old would after reading Black Beauty" - and the eventual realities - "We had to serve cold soup from the rehearsal dinner because my father thought having two separate menus was a waste of money".

When Joan walks in, stumbling over herself with apologies, she is greeted with a chorus of voices demanding that she share how her girlhood dreams had shifted for her actual wedding. She pours herself a glass of the iced raspberry (Annabelle feels secretly vindicated) as she thinks, then slowly shakes her head.

"You know, I don't think I planned out my wedding, when I was little. I didn't ever really want to get married, or not enough to think about it. I think the first time I even looked at a wedding dress catalogue was when I realized I'd fallen in love with Tobias, and I only started seriously considering details after I decided that if I ever did get married, it would be to him."

She notices that they are all trying very hard to have sympathetic faces, trying very hard to relate to her. "Of course," she continues, gesturing expansively, "when the old idiot finally got around to asking me, he wanted to have the groomsmen in tuxedos and I had to tell him I wouldn't marry him unless they all wore grey tweed before he gave in."