The book

About me

I’ve had a busy old life so far: packing quiches in a refrigerated factory, painting theatres at the Edinburgh Festival, photocopying tenancy agreements for Charlie Brooks (Janine from Eastenders), selling books to customers who insist 1984 was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and, for the last seven years, working in publishing.

Then I got a three-book deal because in the publishing world I KNOW WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED and it was the only way to keep me quiet.

I hope you enjoy them. (The books, not the bodies.)

Good places

It's Nice That

Rock My Wedding

The Bloggess

100 Layer Cake

Offbeat Bride

The Flick

Martha Stewart Weddings

The Vagenda

Weddings on Pinterest

Brides up North

I don’t know if it’s just where I live, but every engagement ring I seem to see is pretty much the same: Tiffany platinum or white gold, with a molto huge-o diamond and maybe a few more scattered around it for good luck. They’re nice enough, sure, but they are a bit… samey. (And if you think I’m just a sourpuss because I didn’t get a light turquoise box of my own, let’s not forget that the company’s ring-picking-app is advertised as “The App for People in Love”. Thumbs up, marketing department! Take the rest of the day off! I already want to spend my money encouraging you to produce more of those iconoclastic cultural truth-bombs.)

So here are four super-delicious rings from designer Ruth Tomlinson I just discovered thanks to Emerald Street, to jolt your memory into maybe remembering that your own taste counts for something too, in these things. Many more rings will follow on this site, you mark my words (she said, in a strangely threatening manner). 

Clockwise from top left: 

Turquoise band, five faceted diamond cluster ring, encrusted garnet ring and diamond eternity band with green diamonds. Absolutely some of the most gorgeous jewellery I’ve seen in years. 

(For the record, I’ve got a square amethyst on mine. And I in NO WAY only wear that one on its own and not my wedding ring because I lost the latter during a pregnancy. No, sir. Not me. No way.) 

Ooooh! A strapless wedding dress! Something new and different for us!

I have been saying for years - YEARS - that I don’t really dig strapless wedding dresses. They’re so rarely flattering and so unlike any of the clothes you normally wear in which you actually look good, plus they seem one of the most obvious examples of zombie-wedding-planning (I AM MARRYING THEREFORE MUST WEAR A STRAPLESS DRESS). So imagine my delight when someone sent me this Jezebel piece (based on this Slate piece by Katherine Goldstein) on exactly that topic, covering all my points and making some even better ones. Dammit. Plus, they reveal what I’ve always suspected: that designers just push that shit because it’s easier for them.

Mean. 

Government says honorific is an ‘unjustified and unnecessary reference to the marital status of women’ and should be removed.

—Sure, this might be old news, but it still makes me happy whenever I think about it. France disposes of the Madame and Mademoiselle distinctions. Nice. 

Wedding shoes of the day

God, these shoes just make me ache. They are so beautiful in every way, and while perfect for any guest, could also totally be pulled off by a dashing bride in the right frock. A slim-fitting white suit? A short, floaty slip dress? Either way, friends I know with Grenson shoes talk for hours about their quality, comfort and care. If ever you were going to buy something special for a wedding day, you wouldn’t go far wrong with these beauts.

One legacy of my obsession with All About Eve and His Girl Friday* (among others) is a lust for perfectly designed, semi-sculptural hats. And hats, like nail polish, anyone can make work. In one of my favourite children’s books, Howl’s Moving Castle, the heroine Sophie finds herself working in a hat shop, charming each one as she describes its personality (cheeky mushroom-coloured silk, etc.) and conjuring up exactly who would suit each hat.

Every one of Bundle Maclaren’s beauties would suit and be a Bette Davis, a Rosalind Russell, or a Katherine Hepburn. They are utterly wonderful and pretty affordable too, definitely something to have in your hatbox (because we ALL HAVE HATBOXES, right?) for a special occasion. By which I mean, eating cereal in front of Million Pound Drop just to make it feel more of an event. We’ve all done it. And if you haven’t seen His Girl Friday, do yourself a favour and watch it. So what if it’s the one day of summer we’ll have until December? Watch it.

*Oh, the outfits Rosalind Russell sports (and Cary Grant too, but I think he pulls a suit off better than I could) as they fire barbs at one another.

Your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest of your life but society appears to be determined to ensure that it’s also the most stressful. The proliferation of wedding blogs, wedding websites and wedding trend-setters have encouraged us to turn an event that’s supposed to be a celebration of love into something part Japanese tea ceremony, part Domino rally.

—Fantastic article by Christina McDermott over at The Flick, on how how weddings are, in many ways, ABSURD. If you like that argument, then boy is my book for you.

Obsessed with these first two nail polishes from Models Own, in Gold Finger and Pink Fizz. Cheap as chips, last for ages, and perfect for wedding day campness. I would also love to go to a wedding with a bride sporting the third, Golden Green, on short nails with a smart hat. Got to have a dream. 

Unforgettable wedding moments - part 1

We all make mistakes. Let’s put our hands up and admit it, then we can all be that little bit better and move on with our lives.

For some utterly unfathomable reason, I chose to wear a pair of shu uemura’s “statement” false eyelashes to my engagement dinner. Naturally, everyone was far too kind to comment, but I could see guest after guest rush to greet me, their eyes suddenly clouding over in bafflement as to why I was sporting massive rectangular bristles on each eye. No photos survive.

Some photos, however, survive of the guests we made camp at our wedding. In tents. In the rain. While loads of us stayed indoors in giant French beds. Unlucky, suckaaas. Unbelievably, those same friends still talk to us.

OH GOD I’VE JUST REMEMBERED THIS. At the house we’d rented for the wedding, there was a fully stocked kitchen - every pot, pan, ladle and rabbit-shaped jelly mold we could possibly need. After one night’s huge batch of spaghetti bolognese had been cooked, my sister and my friend poured the leftover fat into this mold, refrigerated it, then served it to the blushing bride and groom as a “wedding speciality”. I knew those two too well to put it anywhere near my mouth, but my husband got a whole mouthful in. My poor mother-in-law was nearly sick.

Other unforgettable wedding moments, at other people’s weddings: the couple unable to speak because they were giggling so much at ‘I give you my ring’; the couple rowing during their first dance; the time I made one of my sisters late for her own wedding, so the vicar refused to do a sermon (yeay!) (sorry, though, S); the register office wedding where the couple before us had everyone in costume; the wedding where the best man started listing all the friends the bride had got off with.

So, what are your unforgettable wedding moments? You can send them to me through the Ask page, or tweet them with the hashtag #weddingdiaries. I’ll post the best ones here.

Welcome, gang.

Hello! And welcome to my website.

It’s easy to be cynical and just say, ‘Sure, her editor made her do it, because the media is all talk nowadays about writers having to be all “Writers 2.0”, so this is just a massive marketing exercise and frankly, I can get my massive marketing fixes by watching the Olympics.” Well, zing.

But the fact is, that the idea of being given a public platform to talk about a subject I cared so much about that I didn’t just write a book about it, I bloody did it, makes me delighted.

So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be talking mostly weddings here, but maybe a little bit of peripheral life stuff too: books, fashion, beauty, food, travel, films, and whatever else I like and you ask for.

I don’t know about you, but I am so excited.