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WITH THE ROYAL WEDDING APPROACHING AND THE MARRIAGESEASON WELL UNDER WAY, BEL TREW OFFERS A WHO’S WHO TO HELP YOU GET THROUGH…

The Wedding DJ‘ARE YOU READ-DAY TO PARTAAY?’ roars Rodney to the emptydance floor whilst slamming Abba into the CD machine. ‘This is DJRod in da house,’ he says practically eating the microphone, ‘andLay-days I’m with you till midnight’. Spinning on his winkle-pickers,Rod points at a granny, who chokes on her cheese puff. Oh yeah.

50-year-old Rodney is in his best waistcoat, a musical number thattwinkles under UV lights. The bachelor uncle of the bride volunteeredhimself as soon as he heard about the engagement and sent a mixtape entitled ‘Rod’s Disco Balls’. How could the bride refuse? It hadBaywatch and Ghostbusters, Right Said Fred and the Village Peoplemashed up with Busted and the Macarena.

One of the drunker members ofthe congregation has entered thedance floor: a recently divorcedsecond cousin called Bridget,who has been drinking sinceyesterday and just came onto the

vicar. ‘It’s murder on the dance floorand I LIKE it!’ pants Rod, as joins inwith ‘I’m too sexy for Milan, too sexy forMilllann, New York and Japan’ whilsttouching his nipples and spanking hisbum. ‘Play ‘Single Ladies’!’ Bridgetshrieks, joyously gyrating against the

potted palm tree but Rod has neverheard of Beyoncé.

The bride interveneswhen he starts toplay ‘Who Let TheDogs Out?’ everytime the groom’smother walks pastand as a peaceoffering promises todo a first dance, whichRod narrates. Shecalls a halt to theproceedings when hesuddenly changes thetrack to ‘Like a Virgin’.

‘Touched for the veryfirst time!’ he falsettosat Bridget, whosuddenly decides he’sthe handsomest manshe has ever clappedeyes on. Sensing themood change Rod switchesto Marvin Gaye ‘Sexual Healing’. Rod winks at Bridget, his baldhead a shining beacon in the disco lights and crones Elvis-style: ‘This one’s for youuuu’.

Bel’sGuestsOfHorror

The Bridesmaid - ZillaSasha (or Saz as she’s known to a selectchosen few) has been up since five fightingthe wedding planner. ‘It was clipboards at dawn!’ she shrieks with a terrifying

cheerfulness at the bridesmaids who cower in the corner. They’ve just

been handed the daily spreadsheet,colour coded and broken down into

fifteen minutes slots. ‘It’s Saz’s big day,’whispers the bride apologetically.

Since graciously awarding herself the accolade of Maid of Honour, Sasha has been on herBlackberry non-stop.

There was the engagement party, the pre-hendinner, the hen do, the rehearsals and the

wedding weekend to plan and execute. Each onedemanded a battle plan so fierce and complex, one of

the bridesmaids quit (in breathless sobs from HR at work where shewas having a lie-down) and another one’s Outlook collapsed underthe avalanche of emails.

Sasha is in good spirits, she’s finally recovered from the disastroushen do in Tallinn. She’d chosen the Baltic city, as it was the European Capital of Culture and Chic! mag said it was‘undiscovered’. She put together a multimedia pack of when and what the Hens were allowed to do including an order of ‘fun’ and a daily dress code.

But the city flooded, the ‘cabaret’ was a lesbian show called ‘Sleeping Booty’ and in a drunken getaway, two of the ‘hens’ ran off with a stag do.

After weeks of grovelling, the bride managed to coax Sasha back. ‘How can the wedding happen without me?’ Sasha reassuresherself, as she re-pencils in her eyebrows. Besides, Steph agreed to credit her on all the service sheets.

After two hours of face-work and a few screaming fits, she knows she looks perfect. It doesn’t matter that the Hair and Make-upguy only has twenty minutes to do the bride. Poor Stephie justdoesn’t have the bone structure to carry it off anyway.

The Teenage WaiterAJ is totally hammered and it’s brilliant! The caterer, arm deep in vol-au-vents, doesn’t notice Alexander has drunk more than he’s dishedout or that he’s propping up the bar Facebooking his schoolmatesabout the fit waitress, Flo.

‘Omg shes totoly in2 me.lol!!!!!11!!1’ he posts, whilst doing the fringe-flick from Skins. Despite being lectured on the virtue of neatness, AJuntucks his shirt to impress Florence, who’s being strategicallynonchalant around the Best Men. Fortified by WKD and the wall postcamaraderie, AJ pulls his school trousers downhis bum and swaggerspast Flo with the disinterested grace of a one-legged rapper whoneeds the loo. I’m so in there, he thinks rearranging his bored face.

The problem is AJ’s ‘Emo’ hair keeps getting in the way, as does his enormous trainers he doesn’t do up. His Mum, Jill, only let himhave the haircut as she mistakenly believed that the greasy bouffantwas a cover for his spots. ‘Poor thing!’ The Clapham mums cooed at their book club. His skin resembles a pizza massacre.

AJ speaks in lisping monosyllables through across-stitch of braces, his voice aquivering trill of squeaks anddrawls (‘He sounds like adonkey,’ Jill confessed to hertherapist, dissolving intotears at the thought thatshe produced such anoffspring).

Meanwhile Florence is gettingnowhere with the Best Men whoare now mounting an inflatable, soreturns to the bar. This is AJ’s bigmoment. ‘Wait for it lads!’ Singshis status update. He downsthe rest of his drink, leansacross the bar…. and vomitsin the ice bucket.

Whatevs.

The Monster-In-LawLady Huntington-Smythe is on the warpath. The idiot girl her darling boy is marrying missedout her first name on the seating plan. Grantedshe married into the baronetcy and technically asPeregrine, 7th Earl of Effington and president of the Horticultural Society pointed out, shecouldn’t call herself Lady Cecilia as she didn’tinherit the title (anyway she’d then be aDame)… but who the hell would knowthat at this orgy of plebs and LiberalDemocrats?

Cecilia is on her third husband, the long-sufferingWilliam, whom she insists on calling Willy. SirWilliam Huntington-Smythe accidently married herafter being convinced that he’d asked and for abrief moment foolishly thought decades ofcomfortable bachelor-hood would be

significantly more depressing than marriage. Cecilia had beendesperate to be dragged out of the middle classes from the momentshe demanded Debrett’s Peerage as her eighth birthday present. She had married her way to a baronet and only bemoaned the factthat she’d had Wynyard (James, as he prefers to be known) beforeshe’d got there.

Now Wynyard, or James, or whatever he calls himself was marryingsome local girl that had already got herself pregnant and forcedthe entire menagerie of her family upon Cecilia’s weak nerves.They had to be from bad stock, why else would Coco, herbeloved Cairn terrier, be peeing on all the guests? Poor Cococould always smell cheap fabric.

Willy was drunk and pinching the bridesmaid’s bottomsand Cecilia had already had two showdowns withthe Maid of Honour. It was too much. How couldshe ever show her face at Annabel’s? To hell withWynyard, Coco and ‘Her’, I’m leaving! ‘Trollop!’she said in an audible stage-whisper, as sheswept out in a flurry of feathers into the night.

The Male Wedding PlannerFabio has already tried to quit three times this

morning. First he was woken up by the harpy of achief bridesmaid, then they served cappuccinos in

the afternoon (Fabio is French-Italian) and finally thelocal ‘caterer’ had the audacity to suggest ‘mini pizzas’and ‘cheese puffs’ were canapés. ‘Cheeeeze pouffs?Wat iz a cheeze pouff?’ he says, whisking it out of thehands of the bride as she tries to eat for the first time thatday. ‘No no no. Ze bride must not, wat you say, spoil herlook before photos. You eat this you will look like acheeze pouff! Quelle horreur!’

Fabio was hired by the groom’s mother to, in her words,‘save the wedding’ and quite frankly, he was horrified. ‘Atouche of Pink?’ he spat, ‘Pink?! Zis is not a theme, zisis not a couleur’ before storming off in a semaphore ofarm flailing.

Once he had calmed down, he explained weddings must be simple,graceful, chic and organised. This meant Ikebana arrangements oforchids, Tiang Seri interiors (Feng Shui was so ‘done’ he said) andPeggy Porschen monochrome cake sculptures. Organisation was thewatchword: he had spreadsheets of spreadsheets and a Google docfile big enough to scare even the most thorough of managementconsultants.

Fabio carried a clipboard, walkie-talkie, earpiece and iPad around with him wherever he went. When he stood legs wide apart, headbowed and his hands together in an almost prayer-like stance, this was his sacred ‘thinking’ time. ‘Never,’ he said shaking with rage, ‘disturb my zinking time.’

Now he watches in horror as the wedding progresses. The bridesecretly sewed diamante onto her dress (‘Wat iz this sparkly sheeet?’) the potato-headed DJ claims Céline Dion was French and then some drunk wench called ‘Bridgeeet’ asks why he was still single at 40! ‘Madame, I am Zirty-seven!’ he says, tearing off his headpiece and heading for his room. ‘Ça suffit! Je n'ai jamais été aussi insulté de ma vie. Vous êtes tous animaux! TOUS ANIMAUX!’

1 inMAGAZINE Words by Bel Trew. Illustrations by Jo Hills - E. appledumplings@hotmail.co.uk