She looks up as she moves across and scatters icing sugar over the towering chocolate cake, with its bulging cream filling. ‘If you’d like a mini cupcake, help yourself from the tin.’
I don’t need to be asked twice. ‘This is one perk of the job I can live with.’ I dive in and in the time it takes her to shake her sugar dust, I wolf down four. Then blame the numbers on the stress adrenalin.
Poppy looks up from arranging flowers on top of Saffy and Travis’s cake. Her face breaks into a satisfied grin. ‘There you go. I knew you’d start to love weddings if you came to enough of them.’
That makes me wrinkle my nose. ‘So long as there are cupcakes, I adore them until the people arrive. Then I’m a lot less enthusiastic.’
Poppy hustles me away. ‘Off you go.’ She calls over her shoulder as I wander off. ‘Don’t worry about the kids either. Immie and Gracie were settling down to aFrozenfest as I left. Go and have fun with your empty venue. The Winter Garden is astonishing.’
The ceremony room she’s talking about is every bit as beautiful as she promised. Poised and waiting, with its rows of chairs, and a snowstorm of rose and gypsophila posies tied to the row ends with black satin ribbons. There are huge glass and stainless steel lanterns with flickering candles and two lots of tables for the register signing, both with the word LOVE in big letters lit up with fairy lights. As I move into the ballroom next door with its fairy light clouds hanging from the high beams, I’m gasping at how pretty it is. There are long tables, and black and white flowers in narrow wooden boxes along the centres, with candles in jars clustered around them. And the black tablecloths, with white damask overlays, look stunning against the silver cutlery and shining glasses.
It’s so peaceful as I photograph the table settings with their single white roses, and favour parcels tied with black and white bows, it almost feels like being in the studio at work. There are fifteen blissful minutes when I’m just thinking I might be able to do this, then there’s a distant clatter of feet and the sound of laughing men. Next thing I know, a whole load of very familiar wedding suits are bursting in, headed by Taylor and Travis, with Rory coming at the end. I could have done without my stomach lurching at the sight of him in a tux. When I finally wrench my eyes away from him and look past them into the crowded room beyond, it’s as if most of the guest list has followed them in from the car park. As I envisage bodies on all the seats, all needing to be captured in pixels, suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the air.
As Rory comes forward, he sweeps me into a squeeze that’s as unexpected as it is unwelcome. ‘Hey, Holly Berry, just the woman we’re looking for. The guys want you to grab a few of their bromance poses out on the jetty. Please don’t let them fall in the water. While you do that, I’ll go and find the girls’ mum, ready for the zipping-up shots.’ I should tell him that hugs are off the table, and that anything other than that particular body spray would make life way easier for me. But before I get the chance, he’s gone again.
That’s the thing I’m getting to know about weddings. There are total mad times, where you get carried along by the whirl of events almost as if you’re in a time slip. And then everything stops, and you’re suddenly jerked back into real time again. The next time I drop to earth, we’ve done the brides getting dressed and caught some lovely shots coming down the Cinderella staircase, and we’re outside on the drive. Everyone’s ready, the guests are all waiting in the Winter Garden. I’ve taken what feels like a thousand shots of the girls and their dad getting into the very same cart I careered around town on two weeks ago. Only this time it’s covered in flowers with the fairy lights. It looks fabulous being driven through a snow whitened landscape by Ken and Gary in their groomsmen suits and sharp overcoats, against the backdrop of the lake and the black and white hills above. Pulled by Nuttie, with bells on his harness, it’s completely magical. With their flowing blonde hair and snowy dresses, snuggled in their fur wraps, the brides and their jacketed coachmen couldn’t be any more picturesque.
We’re within fifty yards of the ceremony when Sophie puts up one lace-gloved hand and makes Gary stop – no easy thing, as I know. Then she jumps down from the cart, with a shout of ‘fag break!’ Once I’ve got over the surprise, I hurry across to grab a few ‘making it real’ shots with Sophie, elbow against the cart in her own personal smoke cloud, while her dad stamps his feet beside her, his breath steaming in the air. Despite the freezing day, I’m making the most of this unscheduled breather, leaning against a tree at the back of the cart, panning round with my viewfinder, when I catch sight of Saffy tiptoeing towards me. As she goes right on past me, I call out to her in a low voice.
‘Watch out for the mud, it’s wet under the snow over there, Saffy.’ It’s the first thing I can think of to get her attention. Luckily it stops her.
As she teeters to a halt and stares over her shoulder, there’s a glint of desperation in her eyes. ‘What?’
‘It’d be a shame to get dirt on those lovely Louboutins.’ She was pale on the stairs, but now she’s ghostly. ‘Are you okay, Saffy?’ I already know she isn’t.
As she stops and turns, her face is haggard. ‘Sophie hasn’t smoked since she was eighteen, andshe’sthe brave one. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t do this. I think I’m going to slip away while I can.’
Exactly what I thought. ‘Before you go …’ My heart sinks as I rack my brain for what to say. If I had to choose between a bride with cold feet or a dictator, I’d take the bridezilla every time. ‘Just come here and talk to me.’ If it takes a runner to recognise a runner, this one’s already well on her way. ‘So run it past me, remind me why you’re making a mistake?’
She’s hugging her arms around herself as she hops from foot to foot. ‘When I woke up this morning I wasn’t sure I could do it. Now I know I can’t.’
I’m sure she probably knows this already. ‘I once ran away from a wedding related moment, so I might understand.’ I’m thinking of all the questions that have flooded through my mind since I ran away from Luc’s proposal. ‘If you’re scared of committing to one person for your whole life, it’s completely understandable. It’s a huge thing …’ At least it was for me. I might as well bring it out in the open.
She gives a sniff. ‘No, it’s not that.’
When she doesn’t say any more, I prompt her. ‘So maybe you don’t love Travis? Or you think he doesn’t love you enough?’ Another crucial one.
Saffy pushes a strand of fair hair off her forehead. ‘No, I love him even more now than I ever have, if that’s possible. We make a great team. And he’d doanythingfor me.’ She gives a sigh. ‘I’m just not sure I can do all … this …’ As she stares down at herself, I completely get where she’s coming from. If you’re not seeing wedding gear every day, it comes as a complete shock when it’s all on at the same time.
‘From where I’m standing, so far it’s all sounding good.’ Maybe this is a problem we can get over. I push her a bit more. ‘So it doesn’t scare you to think of waking up next to Travis every day for the rest of your life?’ Another from my personal checklist.
A slightly dreamy look crosses her face. ‘Not at all.’
I blow out my own mental sigh of relief and go in for the big one. ‘And how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and you realised you and Travis were actually married?’
She purses her lips as she thinks. ‘Also okay. Actually, I’d be bloody relieved because it was all over.’
Now we’re making progress. ‘So it’s just the wedding part you’re having doubts about, not the marriage itself, or the groom?’
She nods quietly. ‘The whole big double wedding was Sophie and Taylor’s dream, not mine and Travis’s. They’re the boss twins. We’re here because obviously they couldn’t do it without us. I thought it would be fine, but now it’s happening, it’s just so scary and such a big deal when I’m not that kind of person. All I want to do is run as fast as I can in the opposite direction.’ I have a feeling I might have been exactly the same if Freya and I had ever got to do a double wedding ourselves.
I’m not sure how well she’ll run in what have to be seven-inch heels. ‘So the bit you’re dreading isn’t the rest of your life, then? It’s the day ahead.’ To judge by the smoke plumes billowing up from the other side of the cart, whatever Saffy thinks she’s not completely alone with the eleventh hour jittering here.
She pushes a slipping diamond clip back into her hair. ‘Actually … it’s the next half hour I can’t bear to think about.’
‘Well done for that, Saffy.’ I’m so happy on her behalf, I could almost cry. ‘Half an hour is the smallest time to go through to get to the rest of your life on the other side. And I have a feeling you’re going to make Travis so happy if you can get through it. Don’t think of it all together. Half-minute-size bites are so much easier.’
She’s frowning. ‘So you’re saying to take it a little bit at a time?’
