The Wedding Backstory

Everything that went down at my Californian desert wedding. The BTS, the tea, the lot!

Pre-ceremony on the cocktails backstage, Lindsey Holland, Anne Marie Clive, Madelynn Hudson

I’m home. What a wild ride the past fortnight has been, I definitely feel I’ve left my stomach and a little of my heart back on the west coast. Today’s piece is written in response several subscriber requests and I’m really keen to pitch it just right as some of the memories are already starting to burnish at the edges. Sadly, it is close to 4am on Sunday morning, I’m jet lagged to hell and I have two children sleeping on different limbs. But hey, I can only do my best, which was really my motto for this whole wedding.

For the official record of the wedding, this wonderful piece in British Vogue covers all bases. In this account, I also absolutely do not want to dwell on any of the challenges. Obviously, things go wrong, it’s the nature of the beast, but sometimes spilling the tea can be a right old downer. More, I wanted to share that there was more to the story than the pictures, again something which could be said of every wedding. So, strap in…this is how it all really went down.

Three days before we were due to fly, we received a phone call letting us know my mother-in-law had been taken unwell to hospital as she’d been making her way to the airport. The following 48 hours were horrendous. Haden immediately rushed out to Norfolk to be with his mum and then when it was confirmed that she’d had a heart attack, there was a potential she might need open heart surgery. Back home, I was looking through all our insurance documents and trying to tot up how much money we would lose if we cancelled at this point (answer: most of it). The weekend was spent in this absolute cloud of uncertainty, trying to keep the kids calm while packing for a wedding that might or might not be happening. Friends were sending pictures boarding their planes and I was sick with the thought of telling them. Thankfully, she was treated swiftly and was unbelievably back home before we took off on our original flight, but it meant that both she and her husband were unable to join us for the celebration.