So over 2,000 of you nosy buggers have taken a peek at why we cancelled our wedding venue - I’m sorry if the post wasn’t as dramatic as you were probably hoping.
We had visions of my ex-boyfriends clicking through all hyped up like “I KNEW she wasn’t happy!”
Not that I have 2,000 ex-boyfriends. That’s not what I’m saying. Sheesh.
Anyway for those of you who aren’t up to speed, I likes me a good detox, and scrapping our big barn venue for an intimate setting with our very closest friends and family has all just become part of that.
I’ve also been erasing toxic friendships and relationships from my life for the last few years now, saying goodbye to male “friends” who objectify me and fair-weather pals who just want to be a bridesmaid in as many Facebook photos as possible.
You get the idea - people I don’t necessarily have anything against but don’t want hanging around me like a bad smell, either.
We did a similar thing when Graeme and I got together, because damn he had some mean friends.
I mean like the kind who would shut me out of conversations in the middle of the pub the second Graeme went to the toilet, mean.
But this isn’t about those people, this about our bridal party.
Let’s go back to where it all began… *cue weird ’90s cloud overlay music*
The Best Man and the Usher
When we first announced that we were engaged, Graeme had not one, but three people with their eyes on the position of Best Man.
It was like the frickin’ Hunger Games.
The first was his brother, after having said to Graeme that he shouldn’t do a stupid thing like propose to me because y’know, all us bitches be crazy.
But nothing is more important than family so your brother is your “natural choice” for Best Man.
Next…
One of the first friends Graeme made when he first came to the UK - let’s call him Bob - was seeing a young lady who, sadly to say, many people find deeply unpleasant. Let’s call her Sandy.
I only had the opportunity to meet Sandy once, but having half the conversation revolve around how we simply must go to Dubai for the fake designer labels just told me that we didn’t have compatible personalities for the long-term.
No biggie.
The next few times Graeme saw Sandy he was expected to endure telling-offs about what a terrible friend he was to Bob.
Graeme ‘never invited Bob out anymore’, and why was Graeme still very close friends with Bob’s ex? Let’s call Bob’s ex Jane.
The last time Graeme saw Sandy, she was berating him in a crowded pub.
Graeme should obviously choose Bob as his Best Man, “ugh” Sandy bet Graeme would be inviting Jane to the wedding, “ugh” Graeme was a terrible friend, “ugh” Graeme needed to be a better friend to Bob.
Ugh.
Deciding he had had enough of Sandy, Graeme called her a very unpleasant word beginning with C in front of the entire pub and, having realised that all this anger and hatred must be coming in part from Bob himself, promptly dumped the friendship.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
By the way, I love the C word.
While all this was going on, Graeme and Bob had two other friends, let’s call them Richard and Steve.
Richard was so excited for us, so enthusiastic.
He had even begun writing his speech.
Bit keen.
But in all the drama going on elsewhere, and none of Graeme’s other friends being massively close to him, Richard seemed the logical choice.
Because while Bob’s ex Jane was a very close friend - possibly Graeme’s closest friend, in fact - weddings need a male Best Man, right?
So Jane would be a bridesmaid, Steve would be an usher, and Richard would be the Best Man.
That was decided in January 2015.
Let’s fast forward a couple of months *cue VCR whirring sound*
Over the next few months plans started getting sketched out for the Stag Do; with almost 30 months to go, Richard and Steve were planning a big lads’ weekend in Amsterdam.
At some point Graeme mentioned that he would really like for Jane to be there; they were basically best friends, after all.
But women are NOT allowed on Stag Do’s, he was told.
Richard was dead against it, while Steve wasn’t thrilled by the idea but hey, it was Graeme’s Stag Do.
Richard had also started to do some other strange things, including showing Graeme his payslips and how he pays sooo much tax.
Okay then.
Let’s fast forward some more to a night in December 2015 *whirrrrr click*
So over Christmas we had made the decision to cut the wedding down dramatically and move it forward by 11 months, so we’ve now only got nine months left to plan it.
We’ve already told everyone else who’s invited, and they all think it’s a wonderful idea; so much more ‘us’, so much less wasted money, etc.
The only person we haven’t had a chance to tell yet is Richard.
“Have you checked my diary?”
Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the response we were expecting.
We’d already checked his diary and planned the date around him, but still.
We tried to push on.
Graeme had decided that, with there being much less time for people to save for the Stag Do, that the plan would now need to change - it would need to be cheaper, shorter and easier for everyone who Graeme wanted to be there.
Good logic, right? Fair to everyone involved, right?
Graeme had also decided that he definitely wanted Jane there, despite Richard’s previous protests.
Well. You’d think we were suggesting World War Three.
Richard started arguing Graeme in circles; you simply can’t have a woman there, it changes the whole dynamic, the plan keeps changing, Richard simply can’t keep up, it’s not Graeme’s responsibility to make sure everyone can come to the Stag Do.
It just went on and on and on.
Richard’s wife, meanwhile, backs him up and rolls her eyes at Graeme whenever he revisits the subject.
Only two things stopped a full-blown argument happening that night:
- We were in Richard’s house and we have extraordinary self-control when we’re being hosted.
- Graeme decided he would need to check whether Jane even wanted to be at the Stag Do before letting the argument destroy yet another friendship.
A few days later, that’s what Graeme did; of course Jane wanted to come to Graeme’s Stag Do.
And of course Graeme then had to tell Richard to shove it after the argument that followed and the 40-minute phone call Richard made interrogating Jane demanding to know if she was the one behind all this.
And then for some reason Steve stopped replying to Graeme’s messages. Even though he claims not to particularly like Richard.
So now Jane was officially the Best Man.
And then Jane fucked it up.
The Groomsmaid
You know like when you’re in school and people start arguing about choosing sides and all that petty shit?
This will probably come across like that, but fuck it.
So we take Jane, who has her own friends and rarely sees Richard or Steve, out for a thank you dinner for being there for Graeme while people he thought were his friends have been so disrespectful of his wishes.
There are no status updates or Facebook taggings. It’s all very low key.
Some weeks later Jane comes to our home where her boyfriend ignores us on his phone. They go out to the pub with Graeme, where Jane and Boyfriend unexpectedly leave early as they’re up early for Boyfriend’s birthday the next day, leaving Graeme to come home early by himself.
Boyfriend’s birthday turns out to include Jane’s other friends, who we’ve been invited out with before but not this time. Lots of photos and tagging ensues.
A bit hurtful, but whatever, we’re not young and hip and will obvs cramp their totes coolio style.
And then Jane suddenly starts tagging herself in photos with Richard and Steve a few Friday nights on the trot.
Jane, who Graeme put before Bob, Sandy, Richard and Richard’s wife, who never made time for these people before now, who never tagged Graeme in anything, was now what - showing Graeme how much his loyalty really meant?
I hate seeing the person I love most in this world get upset by other people, so one by one I’ve erased every single one of Graeme’s shitty friends and freed up our time to focus on the right ones.
The Maid of Honour
And it turns out I had a shitty friend too!
So my maid of honour secretly really disliked a whole list of things about me and the things I’ve been doing for at least the last year, maybe two, before suddenly unleashing it all in a series of recent emails from secret Facebook accounts and email addresses.
It was all very mature.
I might not be the nicest person in the world. I know that, really, I do.
I may also be a “5-year-old” for blocking my best friend before asking her why she hadn’t replied to a couple of texts because I had a bad gut feeling after seeing her post passive aggressive photos on Facebook and starting arguments with strangers on Twitter the whole time she was deliberately ignoring my messages.
But what I don’t do is pretend to be someone’s friend or avoid telling them when they’ve said something that upsets me until I let my rage boil over and start telling them all about how their “bubble” is going to burst and that once their partner inevitably leaves them they’ll go back to going from man to man and how I won’t be there to pick up the pieces for “Queen Gofuckyourself”.
Thanks for that, mate.
The other Bridesmaids and the other Usher
I don’t have anything against my other two ex-bridesmaids. In my eyes we’re just not compatible as friends for a variety of reasons; one went on a group holiday with my ex that I’d arranged, not asked me why I suddenly pulled out of the holiday and was generally a bit of a fair-weather friend, while the other came as part of a pair with someone I wasn’t bothered about and it all came to a natural end months ago.
The other person we had in mind for an usher works for PepsiCo of all places and therefore hates my natural lifestyle - plus his wife used to bitch about Graeme and I in their house thinking we couldn’t hear her and was just a generally very unpleasant and unhappy woman.
Of course some people, from reading this one blog post with their degree in psychiatry, are going to judge me and/or Graeme to be the real problem.
People will believe what they want to believe, based on the limited information made available to them and their own learned perception of the world.
We understand.
I’ll just leave you with my humble perspective.
The kind of person to comment on a stranger’s blog with their expert opinion did, after all, follow my clickbait headline gagging for the goss.
Glass houses, peeps. Glass houses.
