The great wedding cover-up

Cover-up. A term that has so many meanings - all of them intriguing or glamorous. For instance, it could refer to a beautiful beaded shawl, worn by a woman to stop her delicate shoulders getting cold. Or, it could refer to a Roswell Area 51-style mystery, which Mulder and Scully will gradually unravel over the course of 45 minutes. So, what is the case of the great wedding cover-up?

Well, unfortunately it refers to these:

Chair covers.

Now, if you were after an informative read, offering useful advice on what chair covers are available, where to find them and how much they cost, you have come to the wrong place (although you may find this post by my good friend over at Diary Of A Bride To Be useful). If, on the other hand, you would like to learn more about why chair covers are evil, read on.

These items were a pet hate of mine long before I got engaged and are fast becoming the bane of my life. Yet there was a time when weddings were a land free of chair covers. When you could walk into a reception venue and not be greeted by 100 grounded Casper the Friendly Ghosts wearing organza ribbons around their necks. I attended weddings in the 80s and 90s and don't remember once having to balance for dear life on a chair while worrying that the slippery case hanging on it would slide off, taking me with it.

Yet according to the wedding rules for the new millennium, you simply are not allowed to have a wedding that does not feature chair covers in some capacity (or so they would have you believe). It's as though the rhyme should go:

Something old,

Something new,

Something borrowed,

Something blue, and

Something to cover your chairs, lest they get covered in goo

However, the risk of dropping goo on the chairs is not the reason we are all advised to cover them up. In fact, the reason these covers exist appears to be so guests' sensitive eyes are protected from the monstrous sight of the chairs themselves.

Wander around a wedding fayre and you'll see countless stands flogging these strange items, complete with bows available in every colour under the sun. You also have a choice of materials - slippery silk, powdery polyester, crumpled cotton or shiny Lycra - the latter of which will make all your chairs look like something out of a Mr Motivator Bums, Legs and Tums exercise video.

Then there's the task of fitting them. You can get up at the crack of dawn on your wedding day and, together with some unenthusiastic helpers, wrestle the covers on to the chairs yourself (and risk the room looking like the aftermath of a massacre at Dreams) or you can hire someone to do it for you. Either way - and whether you choose to rent or buy them - you're going to pay hundreds of pounds for the privilege of having each of your seats uniformly disguised so they don't look quite so obviously like chairs.

Why must we cover our chairs, though? In my opinion, unless the only chairs available are an absolute eyesore that belong nowhere other than a classroom or bonfire, they probably look better uncovered.

So, what's my problem? If I don't like them, I just shouldn't have them, right? Yes, except that for some reason the whole world EXPECTS couples to have chair covers at their wedding. And slowly, you can start to become brainwashed into thinking they're a vital component of your big day. Particularly if you learn that the chairs in the room you're having your wedding ceremony in are black, cushioned, faux-leather - great for relaxing with a cocktail and listening to some smooth jazz, perhaps not so great on the solemn occasion of a marriage. "Don't worry though," everyone tells me: "You can hire some chair covers."

And so, that is why I am using this blog to directly appeal to wedding venue owners across the land. Buy some decent chairs. Just some plain wooden chairs painted white. They don't have to cost a fortune; they just have to blend into the background and perform the function they were designed for - to be sat on. If every venue seeing a good trade in wedding hire was to replace their plastic school chairs/folding metal seats/faux-leather furniture with a set of bland and inoffensive chairs, we could end the chair cover madness forever.

On behalf of shawl wearers and conspiracy theorists everywhere, I say it is time we reclaim the term cover-up once and for all. Because the only thing that needs covering up in the world of weddings is its shameful obsession with chair covers.