A Visit To The Registry Office

This morning saw lovely fiance and myself taking ourselves and the baby to our last meeting with the Registrar before the Actual Day. This is basically a planning meeting where we hand in and discuss our (completed) form of choices for the ceremony wording, then fork over a cheque for four hundred quid for marriage fees.

The two older kids have now left for a two week holiday in Spain with their father, but this doesn't mean calm is upon us. All it really means is I grouch around the house and constantly check my phone for texts because I miss them. Oh, and the house is abnormally tidy. Otherwise all is the same. We still have the constant demands of the most energetic toddler in the universe to cope with, and trips out are actually harder work without elder daughter, who never gets tired of amusing her. Therefore I made sure I packed a couple of biscuits with which to occupy her at the Registry Office whilst lovely fiance and I concentrate on the legal details of our wedding.

On arrival we were shown into the office and the lovely female Registrar gamely lugged in a plastic box of toys to amuse the small one. Clearly toddlers running amok and dismantling the office is a common occurrence down at the Registry. Within minutes our daughter had tired of the coloured plastic and was investigating the photocopier buttons (unfortunately within reach), and I resignedly unwrapped the digestives and passed them to lovely fiance as a bribe with which to keep her under control.

The meeting went quickly with few of our arrangements worthy of being questioned by the super-experienced Registrar. Notably these were our lack of readings/pieces of music, and also the order in which I would be entering the room with my entourage at the beginning. I will take these issues one at a time.

There are three points in the ceremony at which you can choose to have a reading or a piece of music, basically it is a way of personalising the proceedings a bit - because to be honest unless you write your own vows the ceremony wording is pretty predictable. (Lovely fiance visibly paled when I mentioned writing our own at the outset of our planning, so we have chosen to stick to the prescribed vows). I dutifully asked lovely fiance for any choices of readings he might like and following his blatant lack of interest came up with a poem that I myself like and that is suitably romantic. It's that Shakespeare Sonnet, you know the one, 'Let not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments blah blah..' I then rang up best friend and thought she would be delighted and honoured by my request that she stand up and recite the thing in front of a group of fifty people, most of whom she has never met before. I must admit I was a bit crestfallen when she said she would need to 'think about it', but when she came back to me and gave reasons for declining I have to say I could see her point. She is the mum of four children under seven (again I say, how does she do it?) and felt that her two-year-old might need physical restraints and gag in order to stop her disrupting the proceedings were she to stand up at the front and start speaking.

Lovely fiance informed me that his sister 'would probably do it if we are desperate', but I rather felt that missed the point. I wanted people to be enchanted at my request and rush to the front of the room in order to entertain our wedding party, but I now see that in reality most people do not enjoy public speaking and do not wish to be asked to do so by someone to whom they will then feel obliged to say yes. So I therefore let them all off and cut any readings out of the ceremony. Though the Registrar questioned me on this, she didn't press the point too hard.

She did, however raise an eyebrow and venture advice on the question of the bridal procession. The form asked who will accompany the bride into the room, and I duly wrote son, aged eleven. My father, bless him, died two years ago and therefore son has stepped unwillingly into the breach, but that's another story which I will no doubt visit later. She pointedly wrote his age on the form, and then asked about bridesmaids. The toddler by this time had finished both biscuits and was lobbing fabric covered squashy bricks around the room. I indicated that she would be entering the room before me along with her nine-year-old sister and her two cousins aged eight and one. The Registrar took a deep breath and spent the next five minutes convincing me (it didn't take much to be honest) that to have them enter the room first would be a mistake of such magnitude that the success of the ceremony hinged upon it!

I see her point. I will just mention at this moment that initially I only wanted to have my two daughters as bridesmaids, seeing our wedding as a small and intimate occasion not needing the presence of a bridal entourage to equal that of a royal wedding. However lovely fiance really wanted to include his two nieces, and they are both lovely kids. It would have been unfair of me not to agree, but I did (and still do) feel a degree of trepidation as to how this will pan out. It also adds a heavy burden on the day, as getting all of them dressed, ready and poised to enter the room looking simultaneously perfect is no mean feat (and one, I might add, that lovely fiance will have no part in achieving.) But I digress.

My plan was to have the girls enter the room before me, and precede me down the aisle. The Registrar lost no time in pointing out the holes in this plan. In her experience small children when the doors in front of them are flung open to reveal a roomful of scary people getting to their feet, accompanied by loud music, generally choose to either run in the opposite direction, refuse to move forward, or burst into tears. Family and friends, she says, then add to the chaos by shouting encouragement to the small ones to 'come on, come to Daddy, Granny, Grandad etc etc' resulting in bedlam. I must have looked horror-struck at this prospect because she wasted no time in outlining a solution. She suggested that unless the older two girls were prepared to manhandle the toddlers down the aisle should they need it, then the bridesmaids should follow me in, as she has found that small children are generally quite happy to follow, but not to lead. And there we have it. She suggested I might like to think it over before changing my planned entrance, but I could see out of the corner of my eye the small one now sitting in the toybox, having distributed the contents around the room, and I lost no time in agreeing the changes.

Driving home lovely fiance mentioned how he feels the unpredictability and charm of children will add to the relaxed nature of the day. I didn't answer him as I was too busy wondering how I could maintain my Audrey-Hepburn poise if the toddlers at the ceremony decide they'd rather run round the room than walk down the aisle. I'm sure it will all be fine...