Wedding Babylon Read online

  Anyway, I am in and out as quickly as I can and head off to Claridge’s, Richard James suited, Paul Smith booted and a hell of a lot more fragrant than when I arrived.

  This will be my first meeting with the happy couple and probably the only time I will meet the groom before the last week’s build-up to the wedding. Penrose don’t advertise and generally work on word-of-mouth recommendations. Bernard and I did have a chat last week about maybe trying to do some sort of publicity to try and drum up some business in these cash-strapped times. But then Camilla pointed out that we were booked up throughout most of next year already so there didn’t seem much point.

  It was the groom, Bill, who called me to arrange this inconvenient meeting. It is usually the groom who calls first. Afternoon tea at Claridge’s is not that unusual a venue for a meeting, but I do actually prefer going to the couple’s place so I can have a good poke around and try to work out what sort of people they are as a starting point for the wedding – modern or traditional, and, not to put too fine a point on it, just how much money they might have to spend on the whole thing.

  Bernard always insists on Googling the pair before he meets them. After so many years in the business, he is not fond of surprises. He likes to categorize his brides into groups – New Money, Old Money and No Money – so that he knows what he is in for. He says you can always tell by a girl’s fingernails what type of bride she is going to be. ‘If she has square-tipped acrylic nails and a Fox’s Glacier Mint ring, then you know you are in trouble.’ Not that he would turn such a customer away. Twenty per cent of total costs – which is what we charge – is, after all, 20 per cent, but he knows that he is in for a tough time. It is the No Money crowd that he is generally less keen on. I am of the opinion that you can do a great wedding for very little money. It just depends on the atmosphere, having enough alcohol and lovely guests. But I remember asking Bernard what you can get for £25k and he smiled.

  ‘Darling, you can’t get anything for £25,000.’

  Obviously you can. You can get quite a lot. But maybe you just don’t need Bernard to take 20 per cent of it along the way.

  Having said that, Bernard works extremely hard for his cut, a lot harder than the majority of the people who regularly carve off hulking great slices of the wedding pie, and there are plenty of those. Bernard’s thing is that he will do anything for the bride and groom and they can call on him – or indeed me – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Although obviously we don’t encourage that sort of behaviour – no one wants a lilac- or pink-rose crisis call at four a.m., but that is not to say we wouldn’t take it. In fact, I have taken many late-night and early-morning calls, but they are usually slightly more urgent. Like ‘Have you seen the groom?’ Which is one of the more bollock-sweating calls I have ever received.

  I’d organized a wedding in Tuscany and the groom had taken himself off somewhere, Lord knows where, at five a.m. to find himself, steel himself, etc. The only problem was that no one knew where the hell he’d got to by ten in the morning. His phone was off, the best man was still in bed, and there was panic growing around the palazzo that he’d done a runner. Fortunately, moments before I was about to take the bride to one side and suggest that her beloved might be having second thoughts, he sauntered in at eleven a.m. stinking very slightly of grappa.

  Bernard also needed a shot of grappa after that. In fact we both did. It is not the sort of conversation anyone wants to have with a bride on the morning of her wedding. Bernard’s mantra when he first meets the happy couple is: ‘We are in charge, from the first piece of printed matter to leave the office to the last piece of rubbish to be picked up off the floor at the end. We have total control.’ Husbands-to-be going AWOL in the Tuscan countryside are definitely not part of his plan.

  Walking through the revolving doors at Claridge’s, I am surprised how busy it is for a sunny Sunday afternoon. The afternoon-tea service is in full flow and almost all the green chairs and banquettes in the foyer are occupied. There are plenty of Americans in relaxed slacks, tucking into three tiers of cakes and dainty scones, as well as flustered families up in town for the day. A collection of bored rich women are picking the bread off the sandwiches and sipping flutes of pink champagne, and there are a couple of aged aunts who have probably just taken in an exhibition. I stand in the middle of the room, scanning it for a hand-holding couple who look flush with love and a recent engagement. From underneath the huge central flower arrangement, which is packed with more pink peonies than the Chelsea Flower Show, a slim dark girl with a deep Tango tan waves.

  ‘Clara?’ I mouth. She smiles. Her teeth are shiny white and regular – the girl’s had veneers. Bill, whose back is to me, gets up from his chair. Smoothing down his tie – I am now thankful I’m wearing mine – he takes a step towards me with his hand outstretched. He looks nice. He has large brown eyes, dark close-cropped curling hair and a generous smile. ‘Bill,’ I say, taking his hand. ‘Very nice to meet you.’

  ‘This is Clara,’ he says. ‘My fiancée.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She laughs just slightly. ‘It sounds so embarrassing.’

  ‘Good afternoon to you both,’ I say. ‘I am terribly sorry I am a tiny bit late. I’ve just come straight from another wedding.’

  ‘Whose?’ asks Clara immediately, leaning forward and crossing her slim brown legs. I notice she’s got red manicured fingernails and the Fox’s Glacier Mint. My heart sinks slightly. This is a girl who certainly knows her own mind. ‘Was it good? Any tips? Anything we can steal for our wedding?’

  ‘Well actually,’ I say, sitting down, ‘I was just wondering when yours was?’

  ‘Oh, right,’ she says, rootling around her feet and bringing out one of those large, rather expensive-looking handbags that are so important they actually get christened: Nancy or Luella or Kate. ‘We were thinking of maybe the first week in June and having it here.’

  ‘Here? Claridge’s?’ I check.

  ‘Yes. Why do you think we suggested meeting here?’ She raises her finely plucked eyebrows at me.

  ‘I meet a fair few of my clients here,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she continues, unperturbed. ‘Well – anyway – where’s your file?’ she asks suddenly as she pulls her own rather fat file out of her handbag.

  ‘I haven’t brought one. The first session is usually a bit more of a getting-to-know-you meeting. Finding out your likes, dislikes, what you might want from a wedding, what the time scale is – that sort of thing. So I know what sort of people you are and we can develop some sort of understanding, so that when it comes to the wedding I know you so well I can pre-empt your problems and know exactly what you might need before you do.’

  ‘Oh?’ she says, putting her file slowly back down on the table.

  ‘For example, my first question is always how did you guys meet, and then I usually follow that up with how did he –’ I nod towards Bill, who smiles, ‘the groom – propose?’

  ‘Right,’ says Clara, flopping back into her chair. ‘We’d better order a drink then, hadn’t we?’

  Over a glass of champagne and a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches that Clara doesn’t touch, I learn they met at work. They are both lawyers. He is more senior than her, but only just, and he proposed on Valentine’s Day, getting down on one knee in an Italian restaurant just off the Old Brompton Road.

  ‘It was so embarrassing,’ says Clara, wrinkling her short nose. ‘And he didn’t even have the ring!’

  ‘I wanted you to be able to choose the one you wanted,’ says Bill.

  Clara flashes her hand. ‘What do you think?’ she asks me. Being a bloke, it looks to me like every other solitaire diamond set in platinum I have ever seen, although it is probably verging towards the larger end of the scale.

  ‘It’s nice,’ I say.

  ‘Tiffany,’ she replies.

  ‘Lovely.’

  We all shift in our seats. I can feel my mobile phone vibrate in my pocket. This might be quite a long meeting.
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  ‘So here,’ I say. ‘And in a year’s time?’

  ‘Is that normal?’ asks Bill. ‘You know, to be thinking about things this far in advance?’

  ‘Average,’ I say.

  ‘Average!’ exclaims Clara, who clearly hasn’t been described as such since trying out for the school netball team.

  I go on to explain that these days if you want a ‘hot’ venue – and Claridge’s is possibly the hottest place in town to get married – then booking the place a year, a year and a half in advance is a good idea. English Heritage venues are booked up for most of next year already. Even the most inauspicious of stately homes are ridiculously busy and usually you can’t guarantee the date you want. The shortest time I have organized a wedding in is twelve days, but that person had originally hired and then fired us, only to re-hire us when the whole thing had gone tits up. She had the caterer and venue, which are the two most difficult things to organize, so we were only really there for the trimmings. We have had brides call up three days before the wedding asking us to crisis manage something, which is just not in our interests to do, and a florist friend of mine was once called the day before and asked to do the church, the buttonholes and the bouquet. The bride was furious when she was turned down. But normally it is advisable to try and book us a year to a year and a half in advance.

  Certain weeks are obviously more difficult than others. The last weekend in June is possibly the busiest, as that is the week before the schools break up. The first two weeks in September are always busy as that is when everyone has come back from being on holiday. The last two weeks in April are when things get going, as the weather is getting a little better and it’s a tiny bit warmer. May is a big month, so you have to be flexible as to the weekend you want, and also June. It begins to trail off in July and no one really gets married in August, unless they want a small wedding with a few intimate friends, because on the whole the world and his wife have buggered off.

  ‘I’ll check with the wedding team here tomorrow about next June,’ I say. ‘Do you have any date in mind?’

  ‘The twelfth,’ she says. ‘Which is the second Saturday.’

  ‘At least if we are here we don’t have to worry about the weather,’ laughs Bill.

  ‘That’s true,’ I smile.

  ‘But we would like it to be sunny,’ interjects Clara.

  ‘I am not sure Penrose can quite stretch to that, darling,’ says Bill, patting her on the back of the hand over the table.

  ‘I am well aware of that,’ she replies, her eyes narrowing as she withdraws her hand.

  ‘Um, any other initial ideas?’

  Clara gets out her fat file and, licking her index finger, starts to leaf through a large number of cuttings that she seems to have collected from a whole range of different wedding magazines.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, like the idea has only just occurred to her. ‘We’d like St Paul’s.’

  ‘Cathedral?’ I check. She nods. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘That’s possible. Are either of your parents MBEs, OBEs or Knights of the Realm?’

  ‘Sadly, no,’ says Bill.

  ‘Do you live in the diocese?’

  ‘Sadly, no,’ he repeats.

  ‘Well, then I’m afraid that’s your answer.’

  ‘Oh well,’ shrugs Clara. ‘If we can’t have that place then we want somewhere nicely lit. You know, with proper floodlights.’

  ‘I am sure I can sort something,’ I say. ‘But you have to be careful with churches. As places of worship, they are not just venues and sometimes vicars don’t like it when you come in and take over and start moving things around.’

  ‘I know that,’ says Clara, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘I’m Catholic.’

  ‘Are you?’ asks Bill.

  ‘Well, not really,’ says Clara, her head wobbling from side to side. ‘I’m lapsed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, flicking imagined dust off my trousers. ‘I suppose I should ask what sort of service you want, as that kind of dictates which church we should go to. Do you want a Catholic service? Do you have a local church that you attend?’

  ‘Um, no to both,’ says Bill.

  ‘We just want a wedding service,’ says Clara. ‘How about that nice church just near Vogue? I know someone who got married there, it was very Sex and the City.’

  ‘Right, well, that is something to think about, anyway,’ I say.

  ‘And we’d like an evening wedding,’ says Bill.

  ‘So that we can get straight from the church to the party,’ says Clara.

  ‘Well, you can’t get married after six,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, we were thinking more like starting at six and then out by seven,’ she says.

  ‘Legally you can’t, I’m afraid.’

  Quite a few elements of the current Anglican Church service stem from the Middle Ages, when marriages were more about money and property than love, and when churches were lit with candles. Then, couples had to marry during the hours of daylight – eight a.m. to six p.m. – to make sure that the vicar could see the faces of the people he was marrying, just in case an impostor was slipped up the aisle under the cloak of darkness. Equally the posting of banns (reading out the couple’s names and intention to marry on three consecutive Sundays within three months of the wedding) started out as an appeal to the community, all of whom of course attended church, to check that the couple could legally marry – that neither of them were already married or indeed related. First cousins, however, are allowed to marry in the UK, indeed in some communities it is the preferred option, with over 55 per cent of British Pakistanis married to their first cousins. These days it costs £27 to post banns, but there are doubts as to whether they will remain a legal requirement for much longer, as last year there were moves by the Church to abandon the practice altogether. You can also, for £100, apply to the archbishop to be married by licence, if you are in a hurry to get down the aisle. The only time I have had to do that was when the bride had very sadly been diagnosed with cancer, and she wanted to be married as soon as possible.

  Church hire itself is usually around £250, which when you compare it to how much the cost of the actual wedding is seems a bit of a bargain. Although other donations are, of course, gratefully received and the organist, the choir and any other ecclesiastical frill you want on top of your basic priest does cost more. But you’d be amazed when it comes to actually paying the bills how difficult it is to get couples to cough up. It seems they will happily pay £30,000 for an arch of flowers to decorate the entrance to Claridge’s ballroom, but getting them to give the church £500 is impossible. A few months ago I had a couple who just wouldn’t pay up. I called their various secretaries and PAs and assistants, only for the cheque never to arrive. It was becoming increasingly embarrassing as I kept on bumping into the vicar and I also needed to re-book the church. Somehow owing money to the church when the budget for the wedding had exceeded £500,000 seemed really rather unpleasant. It wasn’t until a tabloid newspaper started sniffing around the story that the couple finally paid up. I have to say I’d think twice about doing business with them again.

  ‘So it is an evening wedding you’re after. They are always good fun,’ I say, trying to sound a little more enthusiastic. ‘And definitely here?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Clara.

  ‘If you do go ahead with Claridge’s,’ I say, ‘you will have to use their caterers and their staff and one of their approved florists.’

  Claridge’s, along with most of the five-star hotels in the UK, is fairly straightforward to deal with. They have their approved list of people and suppliers, who consist mainly of staff plus a short outside list of recommended people, and that’s that. If your name is not down on the list you can’t work there. Talk to any quality florists and they will tell you that you have to be approved to work in any of the posh hotels. They need to know that you are a responsible florist who doesn’t chuck stuff all over the floors, furnishings and expensive furniture. In fact, most of these places ban v
ases of water altogether. Although quite how you get on to the list in the first place is anybody’s guess. It’s a closed shop. Even if you were the most talented new kid on the block you would not get a look in. The only way would be if a huge client were to book you, someone the hotel could not turn down, and they insisted that only you would do, then you might be able to break into the market. But otherwise you’re left out in the cold.

  Historical venues, including art galleries and museums, are even worse. They work on recommendation only and of course take a slice of the action. Most cream up to 10 per cent off the bill from their registered suppliers. Having said that, there are some less scrupulous wedding planners who get a cut from the venue for bringing the wedding there in the first place. There are so many palms being greased at any one time it is hard to work out exactly who is scratching whose back.

  So if a planner books a venue for, say, £15,000, they might well be getting a kickback from the venue of 10 per cent, as well as their fee to the client of 20 per cent of total costs. Then the caterer might well be giving 10 per cent to the planner too, as well as another 10 per cent to the venue. The same goes for the florist, the lighting guy and the band. All the caterers’ suppliers are also registered. So the wine suppliers and the blokes who provide the chairs and tables all pay up to be a part of the action. The list is endless. The venue explains away its charges by claiming that you are helping support a stately home or are paying for the use of their working kitchen, although over the course of a year they must make enough money to refurbish their piss-poor filthy facilities at least twice over.