The nitty-gritty and the prickly

Autumn – a season of crisp mornings, lovely orange and brown retro colour palettes, Kinks’ songs, food wrapped in pastry, endless piles of knitwear and the constant dilemma of whether it’s too early to crack open the mulled wine.

It’s also the time of year when many of our cuddly animal friends burrow deep underground for a long, long rest. How I envy them. There is nothing in life I value more than sleep. So much so that my gran once told me I am the only child she has ever known to jump up and down with joy when told it was time for bed.

Unfortunately, D and I are getting married in February, so the only thing I am burrowing this autumn is my head in the sand.

For the past few months people have regularly asked me how the wedding planning is going, to which I have just shrugged. I have sorted all the essentials and because I am not attempting a DIY wedding (I lack even the most basic craft skills) I have avoided weekends spent up to my ears in card, glitter and glue.

Sadly, this period of nonchalance has now come crashing down around me. It all started the other week when I said “oooh, we’ve just passed the six-months-to-go mark”, to which my bridesmaids sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment before pointing out there was actually only a little over four months to go. Cue panic stations.

The thing is, I have a tendency to remain stationary in my panic station, panicking but doing very little else (is it still too early to start heating the mulled wine?). I also have a habit of harping on about how much I have to do so I can avoid actually doing it. Not a day goes by without me realising I have wasted yet another lunch break looking at pictures of ‘celebrities’ in shows I don’t even watch (The Only Way is Chelsea Shores?), when I should have been utilising this time to call hairdressers and email registrars.

No-one wants to talk about the nitty-gritty of wedding planning because, to be honest, it’s boring. Deep down I know I am the only person, probably on the planet, who longs to discuss how expensive plastic menu stands are. And I have to admit that I too am fast losing interest in the nitty-gritty. In fact, I would like to prepare our guests now for the fact they might be attending a wedding with no plastic menu stands at all. You don’t need to say it – I am already ashamed of myself.

These last few months are all about the nitty-gritty. Booking hair appointments, attempting to buy things no one ever needs until they get married (plastic menu stands, matching vases, endless peacock feathers – my shopping list makes it look as though I am preparing to open a burlesque joint). There’s picking readings, bullying friends and family into doing readings, attempting to sort out three separate play lists, selecting napkin colours, fighting a losing battle to convince D to start looking for something (anything) to wear, mounting a search for beauty products that will transform me into Brigitte Bardot, printing, printing, endless printing.

Oh to be one of those go-getter brides who make stuff happen. Instead, I have fancy card but no printer, readings but no one to read them, a DJ but no playlist, a face but no heavy duty make-up to transform it, and rapidly spreading eczema – which everyone knows is the sexiest bridal accessory going.

As always, I blame the bridal blogs and magazines, who tell me that by this point I should have ordered my thank you cards, coordinated the mother of the bride’s and the mother of the groom’s outfits and arranged a rehearsal dinner (um, is takeaway pizza served in my living room in front of Jaws not OK then?). One of them even advises that with three to five months left to go, brides should:

Select your baker, then choose your cake, groom’s cake, and mints.

Of course, the brides-to-be doing all this will manage to source, broker a deal and complete the exchange on their mints without breaking a sweat, unlike me who DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THERE HAD TO BE MINTS. Clearly I’m not cut out for this s**t.

This is the point every bride-to-be reaches when they wish they had taken the sage advice of their fiancé and booked a trip to Las Vegas. Right now I could be doing nothing but shopping for a pink velour tracksuit and learning the words to Are You Lonesome Tonight. Speedy annulment aside, I have had to admit to myself that Britney Spears was deeply wise to spend less than an evening immersing herself in wedding planning before giving up and taking the plunge six hours later.

We are past the point of being able to plan a Vegas wedding now, and the endless list of nitty-gritty things to do has pushed me into a crazed, almost hallucinogenic, state of panic. It’s got so bad that as a form of escape, I like to day dream I’m a hedgehog.

Autumn is like Mardi Gras if you’re a hedgehog. After a year of neglect, people start to leave out dishes of catfood (yum) or milk and bread (NEVER give hedgehogs milk and bread) and build cosy dens of leaves and twigs for you. OK, many of those dens are not intended as such and will be ritualistically set alight on November 5th, but you win some you lose some. Best of all, a hedgehog does not spend autumn in a state of panic about guests who have yet to RSVP, or about meeting with an award-winning hairdresser when their own barnet looks like Leo Sayer’s most of the time. Instead, they spend the season in blissful hibernation (providing they survived the whole Guy Fawkes Night debacle).

How I envy them.

So, while you’re enjoying kicking leaves, oohing and ahhing at fireworks, or just staring goggle-eyed at The X Factor, I will be sitting in a dark room banging a plate with a spoon. Pity me…