Hanging on the telephone

Any regular readers of my blog (and you're most likely a mythical being as rare as Bigfoot) may have come to the conclusion I have become obsessed with flowers, ribbons, feathers and all other frivolous frippery associated with the world of weddings. And you'd be right. Indeed, when I first started this blog, my own fingers typed the words:

We all know the curse of the Bridezilla, but what about the Bridezmoaner? Who knows a bride who hasn't moaned about something? Even a teensy bit? Perhaps it's that the flowers aren't what they asked for, or they can't find the perfect dress (more of that in a later post). Somehow, the moans squeeze in, leaving everyone else wanting to scream "you're getting married! Cheer up, what's wrong with you?" And well they should. 

I know - I feel ashamed. I have become everything I hate and I will punish myself severely later.

So, I thought I should take a breather from banging on about bouquets and bunting and instead focus on some other (clearly less important) issues. Such as what you need to do to actually get married in the first place.

To begin with, you have to decide what type of wedding you want. Given as D is a non-believer and I haven't set foot inside a church for years, we opted for a civil ceremony. In my own experience, and on the world stage, religion seems to have a habit of making things very complicated so I was hoping that by not inviting it to our wedding, arranging everything would be easier.

However, by not choosing a religious ceremony, you are then left with the default option of putting your big day in the hands of the council. I can think of few better examples of incurring God's wrath than this.

First, you have to find out which local authority you fall under (pretty simple - it's the same one you pay your hard-earned cash to every month and hope your bins will be collected on time. But I won't go there - late-collection-of-wheelie-bin moaning is something best left to readers of the Daily Mail and listeners of the Jeremy Vine show).

Then, you have to find out what council jurisdiction your venue is under. In my case, this was way more confusing than it should have been, as the venue has a Cheshire address yet is under Trafford council, despite the Trafford venues I looked at coming under Sale council. And so on and so forth.

Once you have established who to contact, you have to wait until exactly one year before your planned wedding date to call the venue's local authority, book a registrar and then enter a one-month race against time to call your actual council and schedule an appointment to declare your intention to marry (no, a Facebook change of relationship status will not suffice here) before the deadline passes.

All fine and dandy, except it involves ringing one or, in most cases, two councils, who are not known for rushing to the phone. In fact, one of the local authorities I had to deal with would put me through the usual seventh circle of doom that is the never-ending menu of options, only to then say - when you had finally made it to the holy grail of starting to ring a living human being - "All our operators are busy" and then HANG UP, so I had to call back and start the whole process again.

Once the appointment is made, you get to skip off and declare your intention to marry. This is less romantic than it sounds and involves paying a large amount of cash to flash your passport, before undergoing individual interviews. I (as this blog's title should attest to) have a habit of feeling guilty under questioning, even when there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about, which resulted in me having a total mind block, forgetting where I live and pausing a beat too long when asked if I had an alias.

Anyway, myself and D have now completed the formalities and can legally wed! And while it's been complicated and involved me listening to a lot of tinkley telephone muzak, it is also done and dusted inside of three months. If only picking table centrepieces was as easy.