Wedding Bells

 

I don’t know what you’re doing this fine (I hope) summer Saturday, but I am on the east side of South Africa, in Kwa Zulu Natal, celebrating the marriage of my only son (child #4) to his beautiful Xhosa/Zulu fiancée.  

There will be no writing done today; just an adjusting of outfits and collective squeals of excitement, together with a spectrum of appropriate ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Ahhs’ as we express our delight in a day of unbridled rejoicing.

However, as we’ve approached this auspicious occasion, it’s got me wondering about the people who write up the wedding columns in local papers.  You know the kind of thing: Colonel and Mrs Hugo Parsley-Corrigan of Little Uppington-on-the-Wold hosted the elegant nuptials of their daughter Harriet Griselda to Rupert Archibald Lexington-Smythe of Chalfont-cum-Tifflywink on Saturday 14th June at St Thistlewaites’ church.  The bride wore a Fiona Twang silk-lace-chiffon dress with copious ruffles and a sweetheart neck line.  Her twenty-three bridesmaids were vision in lemon and mint and the page boys wore sailor suits in matching shades.  The reception was held at Enderborough Hall for 300 guests after a champagne and canapé event on the lawn.  A twelve-piece orchestra provided accompanying music from Tchaikovsky, Dvořák and Puccini.  The couple are honeymooning in Antigua. Or something.

(Photo: at my niece's wedding last month)

I don’t know if any ACW-ers have ever been employed in this genre of writing, but I do wonder how many ways there are to say than Miss X and Master Y got hitched last weekend with all the usual accompaniments.  

27 dresses is a 2008 rom-com that features just such a writer, Kevin Doyle (James Marsden), who doggedly writes his copy each week while hoping to break into serious journalism.  Meanwhile, Jane Nichols (Katherine Heigl),  has a cupboard full of bridesmaids dresses, hanging on to the futile hope that she’ll wear them again – even the monstrous ones – but continually fantasises about her own fairytale which she hopes will become a reality when her boss finally falls in love with her.  Being a rom-com, of course, it all turns out fine in the end.  Whatever.

So, what has all this got to do with we ACW writers? The theme of weddings has me wondering how many of us have written about weddings in our fiction or non-fiction work, perhaps a flash-fiction piece, short story or maybe a scene that has yet to see the light of day.  I’ve never gone down this route myself (yet), although I was recently given the gift of an idea which would allow me to venture into this topic in a humorous children’s story, so maybe there’s one in the pipeline.  How about you?

Meanwhile, you’ll have to excuse me as I need to pull on the wedding glad rags, gather my confetti and enjoy the mother-of-the-groom day in all it’s African gloriousness.  But for those of you in the northern hemisphere, feel free to be inspired and begin (or go back to) something inspired by this theme.  As you were.

Jenny Sanders has spent the last twelve years living between the UK and South Africa. She writes faith-inspired non-fiction: Spiritual Feasting (2020) asks how we can ‘feast’ when life serves unpalatable menus; Polished Arrows (2024), explores the allegory of  God shaping us to be fired effectively into our culture and contexts.    

             

Jenny also has two published collections of humorous short stories for Key Stage 2 children: The Magnificent Moustache and other stories, and, Charlie Peach’s Pumpkins and other stories. She is available for author visits and creative writing sessions in primary schools.  She loves walking in nature, preferably by a river, and has a visceral loathing for offal, pineapple and incorrect use of car indicators on roundabouts.