Daniel Clay Reflects On A Weddingy Start To The Summer

Hello HedgeEnders.  It’s not going to be much of a column this week, I’m afraid. I’m far too depressed.  And, as usual, it’s my wife’s fault.  Already, and please remember we’re not even in June yet, she’s dragged me to three weddings this year.  Three.  And, even worse, two of them took place over consecutive weekends.  Even by my miserable standards, it’s been a pretty miserable time.

    As if being dragged to so many weddings in such a short time-span hasn’t been bad enough, they’ve all taken place on crucial days of the football season.  And so, for this week’s column, I’m going to take you through the three ordeals my wife and her friends have forced on me so far this year.

I mean, if I had to suffer them, I don’t see why you shouldn’t too. 

    Wedding One was planned for the day Man City played Man United live on TV at lunchtime.  Even more importantly, Spurs played Chelsea live on TV that very same teatime. 

This might not sound like a big deal, but Spurs needed Man United to beat Man City for Spurs to have any chance of going above Man City in the race for a Champions League place.  We then needed to beat Chelsea to capitalise on Man City’s slip-up.  With me so far?  Good.  I’ll continue: 

So, where did I find myself at kick-off time for the most crucial Manchester derby in the history of my life?  In a churchyard in the middle of nowhere while the bride and groom – who I’d never even met before – had their pictures taken to the backdrop of women screaming as their high heels sank into mole-hills and graves. 

A churchyard, I hasten to add, that had no satellite TV and, even worse, no mobile phone signal.  So I tried to get one by climbing on a bench and waving my phone about in the air. 

    “What are you doing standing on that bench,” my wife hissed at me, coming across to try and pull me down but instead getting her heels stuck in a grave.  

    “Trying to get a flipping phone signal,” I hissed at her.  “It must be half-time by now.”

    “You and your flipping football,” she hissed back at me.  “Stop being so flipping selfish and come and pull me out of this grave.” 

“Yeah, yeah, in a minute.  Just let me find out the score...”

“But you can find out the score at the reception.”

“If there’s a phone-signal at the reception.”

“Of course there’ll be a phone signal at the reception.  We’re in Dorset, not the Dark Ages.  Now get down off that flipping bench and help me dig my high-heels out of this grave.”

But there wasn’t a phone-signal at the reception.  And there wasn’t satellite TV either.  And what happened?  Man United beat Man City with a last minute goal and Spurs beat Chelsea 2-1 and I had to walk what felt like three miles to pick up a phone-signal to find out. It should have been one of the best ever days of my life, but it turned out to be yet another day spent in an uncomfortable suit jostling with a bunch of complete strangers at a bar being serviced by one docile teenager wishing the draught was Stella not Carling and sighing over what could have been.

To make matters worse – and they do always get worse, don’t they? –  the arguments over the second wedding started long before the first wedding even took place, when it dawned on me it clashed with FA Cup Final Day and Spurs were due to face Pompey in the semi-final. 

We were having a meal out with a group of friends when I realised this. 

“If we get through...” I threatened under my breath, scowling.

“If you don’t come...” she threatened back, scowling, then beaming as one of her friends poured her more wine.     

“Why does it matter if I go with you anyway?” I reasoned.  “Your friend doesn’t even like me...”

“Because,” she said, “If we lived by that rule, we’d never go anywhere...”

“If we beat Pompey,” I said, emboldened by the amount of people sitting eating around us, “I’m not going...”

“If you don’t go,” she said, not caring about the amount of people sitting eating around us, “I’ll suffocate you in your sleep.”  

That was the last word we had on the matter.  Well, until Pompey went two-nil up in the semi-final.  Then she just laughed in my face.

What gets me about this, though, is that the second wedding wasn’t even a wedding. The bride and groom had legged it abroad to get married and now, two weeks later, were having a reception to celebrate with everyone who hadn’t been able to join them for the ceremony they’d had overseas.  I mean, am I missing something here?  In my world-weary and painful experience, one wedding-type event in your lifetime is bad enough, but two, to the same person, in a matter of weeks...

When I tried to make small-talk about this point to my wife on the way to the reception she shook her head and said, “Look, do me a favour tonight, will you? Just stay in the corner and keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her.  “That’s what I plan to do.”     

So, then, to recap, the first wedding had ruined the perfect football Saturday for a Spurs fan, the second wedding wasn’t even a wedding and could have ruined my chances of sitting back and enjoying Spurs play in the FA Cup Final for the first time in nearly a decade.  So when does the third wedding take place? 

That’s right.  During the Champions League Final.  Seriously, you couldn’t make it up.  On the hottest most perfect Saturday evening for sitting in the Shamblehurst Barn in T-shirt and shorts and kidding myself I might be watching Spurs do this in twelve months time, I’m on a train to Portsmouth and relationships with my wife are at an all time-low:  “You do it on purpose,” I accused her through the medium of small-talk.  “You and your mates have got together and strategically planned these weddings to ruin my life.  I dread to think what you’ve got planned for the World Cup...”

And this is the most terrifying thing about the whole experience, Hedge Enders, because, when I uttered those words, my wife just looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and smirked.