The (Anti) Wedding Party

It doesn’t matter anymore; what matters is that Hannah loves me enough to want to marry me, and how could I say no to that?

Weddings are stupid, but chicken nuggets are not. Maybe I’ll have some chicken nuggets too, but weddings, never again.’

‘Typical,’ I mutter under my breath as the British clouds decide to let loose and rain on my parade, quite literally if you count a wedding as a parade, which I’m going to say I do. I’m full of wedding puns today, apparently. Goosebumps prickle my skin and I’m beginning to lose all feelings in my pinkie toes, what with the draft in this over-the-top, dramatic and ancient room, and with the lack of circulation getting to them thanks to these too-tight and too-expensive heels, because according to my soon-to-be mother-in-law, I was under no circumstances allowed to walk down the aisle barefoot.
Nor was I able to buy a dress from a charity shop, have my best friend, Alex, as a photographer, or have McDonald’s cater the wedding. Who knew there were so many wedding rules? I wasn’t the kind of girl who swallowed the wedding handbook growing up or watched rom-coms. Romance was not a word commonly uttered in my house, with my own parents having only gotten married because my mum got pregnant with me three months into their relationship, which I’m sad to say, didn’t last long. They managed a rough three years before my dad walked out, never to be heard from again.
I grew up with a ferociously independent mother who enforced that trait onto me, her only daughter. Marriage was not on my to-do list, not when it was consistently as long as my five-foot-five frame. No, marriage was not something I dreamt about nor had time for, but then as the saying goes, ‘when you know, you know.’
‘Ignore the weather; it’s just a shower. How are you feeling? Are you all set?’ Alex asks. I’m not quite sure which question to tackle first. ‘Why are your lips blue?’ She adds another question to the mix when she draws closer to me, stepping an inch away from my nose, her slim figure looking all rose-like in her blood-red bridesmaid dress.
I glance in the slightly smeared glass of the archaic mirror with