Until about a fortnight before our wedding, I was having a ball. I just loved planning the day down to the very smallest detail and had such fun bespoogling. Collaborating with so many creatively talented people, many of whom I will never meet face-to-face, was a joy and a privilege.

But during the final days my mood changed.  Everyone told me to enjoy the last lap of the run-up but I found that well-nigh impossible. A number of practical problems arose which stole some of the magic and I started to feel increasingly anxious about the whole thing.  Given that we had been planning the day for 16 months, I had expected the last fortnight to be relatively relaxed.  Not so.  It was a frenzy of activity with every minute allocated to some wedding related mission.  Sleeping became difficult as I lay awake trying to soothe all my wedding worries with contingency plans.

I developed OCD checking the weather forecast at all times of the day and night and at one point it looked so poor that John bought two full length hooded bridal macs for MoH and I to wear.  Then there was my Dad’s heavy cold: I was panic-stricken that it might develop into full-blown ‘flu. And I became like a crack heroin addict, repeatedly snorting First Defence to ward off any germs that might come my way. Then there was my worry about motorway congestion: what if the choir and organist, travelling from London, were delayed? Two of the hymns we had chosen had the most beautiful words, but no one, including us, had the faintest idea of the tune.  I remember lying in bed the week before the Big Day cataloging all my concerns to my then H2B.  He’d nodded off long before I’d got to the end of what had developed into a very lengthy list.

In the event, not one of these fears materialised:  the weather was exactly as we’d hoped: golden autumnal sunshine and clear blue skies; my Dad recovered from his cold; I neither succumbed to any bug nor suffered the ill effects of over-dosing on First Defence and our jaw-droppingly amazing choir arrived in good time without incident.  So when I stepped out of the vintage Rolls Royce at All Saints Church in Sherbourne on that most glorious morning I stepped into 6 hours of nuptial perfection, the memories of which John and I will forever treasure.

So, join me again soon and I will share some of the details of the wonder and joy we experienced on the day of our marriage. Be warned, though, you might need a hanky. I sure did.