L I V E 2 4 -SE V EN WEDDING WOE S
A MINEFIELD FOR THE SOCIALLY INSECURE Susan Blanchfield regards the wedding culture as it is in modern Britain today…
We all love a good wedding but as Debrett’s cheerfully puts it, a wedding is ‘a minefield for the socially insecure’ and ‘a source of inter-family tension’. Here is a light-hearted look at three different styles of wedding and how Debrett’s grim pronouncement might apply…
Working class weddings are usually the most lavish in relation to expenditure versus income; they are no expense spared, ‘nothing is too good for our princess’ events. The bride, wearing a strapless number, will generally carry a full complement of bridesmaids of assorted shapes, clad in revealing matching gowns, and unfettered tattoos. However, the church ceremony is almost incidental to the Reception, which will be a ‘big do’ in a function room of a posh local hotel. Standard essentials include a photographer and video to capture every moment of the reception as well as the ‘evening do’ for the few hundred revellers who didn't make it onto the wedding breakfast list. Inevitably, the free flowing booze will have calamitous effects on any fractious family relations and towards the end of the evening, there will be a fight
and/or blazing row between family members, gleefully captured by the videographer and eventually anonymously uploaded to YouTube.
The anxious lower middles and middle middles generally hold a far more prudent ceremony. Preparations for the event are cloaked in consternation; they are, after all, the classes for whom books on wedding etiquette were invented. As well as furtive discussions about relatives who might ‘lower the tone’, great effort will be spent on ensuring the ‘serviettes’ match the colour of the flowers which in turn, pick up the tones of the Mother of the Bride’s wedding attire, etc. Inevitably, the Bride will be mortified when none of the guests notice her hard work and after a few drinks, will begin huffily pointing out her colour schemes. Meanwhile, the miserly ‘per head’ calculations will cause the ‘fine wine’ to quickly run out and the Best Man will get nervously drunk on cheap red plonk causing his carefully prepared speech to be reduced to a pulp of rambling inappropriate anecdotes about the Groom’s ex girlfriends. He will spend the rest of the evening miserably slumped in a corner, the object of relentless dagger like, lemon lipped disproval from the Mother of the Bride and a gaggle of elderly aunts.
Upper middles will disdainfully distance themselves from the inhabitants of Pardonia, especially if that is where they originated from. Their weddings will almost certainly eschew the traditional, and amongst the urban, educated uppers, will strive for effortless, expensive simplicity with a twist. This can rather backfire for the guests. The food for example, might be Patagonian king crab inventive but not necessarily appealing for all palates. After the wedding breakfast, a renegade group of elderly relatives, bemused by the awkward food, will leave immediately after the speeches to make a break for the chip shop.
We all love a good wedding - whatever the class or style, there’s something heart-warming about watching two people make serious vows in these trivial times, no matter who they are or how they do it. If you are a guest, relax and enjoy and if you are the participants…well then, best of Debrett’s luck!
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