‘None,’ I say wholeheartedly.
‘Then we’re good. Don’t sweat. You’re too beautiful, and so is the weather, for either of us to be getting stressed.’ He lies back, hat over his eyes again.
‘You’re a smooth talker, Warren.’
‘Maybe, maybe.’
When this is all over, I really must find a nice girl to set him up with. He might just be a perfect man.
Production call us over for mic’ing up, but it all goes so fast and no one is willing to entertain my curious questions about what we’re up to, so soon Warren and I are back on our big squishy seat with the enormous plastic binder. The lighting is good here, and I catch a roving cameraman come in, so I wave him over.
‘We were going to go through our wedding binder if that’s alright?’ I say, my voice a little higher than usual. I don’t know this team, they seem to be local, but he gives us the thumbs up to get going.
We smile and kiss and flick through the pages. It’s all the vendors the show is using, and I recognise quite a few brands as being UK based.
The first few pages, which he skips past, are the ring options which he explains they already flicked through.
‘Lucky I love my engagement ring,’ I beam, flexing my hand in front of me. He did well; a tasteful diamond with small pearls around it, quite vintage, a little camp.
I flick through to the venue options. Some are in London,which makes sense for production ease given we’ll all be living there in apartments as of next week, and a few dotted around the country – I suspect some of them might be geographically close to our various homes as I spy one in Liverpool.
It would be easier for Mum. Though saying that, I haven’t really thought about the logistics of getting her there. It’s not that I don’t want her there, I do. But a potentially whole-day wedding could be a month of spoons for her. And that feels like too big an ask when this isn’t real. I need to talk to her about it, off camera.
God, I hope she’s okay.
I push down the worries that threaten to spill up, and flick back through the pages. They’ve thought of everything: caterers, musicians, florists, entertainment, celebrants of various stripes and religions. Everything we might need for our televised nuptials.
The cameraman wanders off after a while, presumably because there’s only so much of two people flicking through pages that a person can watch.
I know that we won’t necessarily get our first choice of any of these venues, so I need to work out a kind of hierarchy.
The dream one, though, the one that makes my heart flutter, is the huge space in the Barbican glasshouse. The high ceilings, the light, the beautiful plants filling the space. If I was gettingrealmarried, that’s where I’d want it to be.
I kept hold of my warehouse notebook, so we draw up tables for ranking options. Warren wants Nigerian food served by people who know how to cook it, so I defer to him as we build an ideal menu together. Our venue needs to be wheelchair accessible, which knocks out a good four or five, leaving us with the beautiful tropical glasshouse in London, a big country house, and a kind of plain registry office set inside a nice building near Liverpool.
It almost feels real. Except it’s not real at all.
The sun is high above us, and I’m about to go inside to cool down in the air con, when a voice comes over the speakers announcing that group filming will commence shortly.
‘Challenge time,’ I murmur.
‘Well then, wifey,’ Warren says, standing up and holding out his hand to help me up too. ‘Let’s go win our dream wedding.’
Script: Challenges intro
[Karina and Lucas stand together in the villa’s back garden.]
KARINA Our first challenge is the River of Life, where couples will answer trivia about their partners and their relationship.
LUCAS Get two matching answers? You both move forward together. Any disagreements mean you’re stuck right where you are.
KARINA And the first couple to meet in the middle have a chance of winning something incredible for their weddings. But that’ll go to the couple who know each other best.
LUCAS We’re fair here. Second place gets second pick, and so on down the list. So it’s all to play for! How do you think we’d do?
KARINA [laughs]Darling, after twenty years, I’d hope we’d win.
Chapter TwentyCarys
