Good luck to Wills and Kate as they embark on a new chapter in their lives and head towards the hysteria, pomp and ceremony that will no doubt mark their wedding day.
If you have ever been through the process of planning a wedding you may well have been tearing your hair out whilst trying to navigate the minefield of mother of the bride/mother-in-law competitive dressing, where to seat the bitterly divorcing relatives and how to keep your sleezy drunken uncle away from your bridesmaids all whilst ignoring the acerbic comments from a permanently wasp mouthed great-aunt. Imagine the minefield that the lovely Kate is going to have to navigate when she also factors in Heads of State and Church, the inbred aristocrats and courtiers on his side and the nouveau riche and gauche middle class on hers. Rather her than me, although I'm sure she will get a great dress out of it.
Anyone who has been through a wedding has also woken up the day after the main event realising that all that planning was just a way of avoiding the actual reality that you have voluntarily and legally bound yourself to the same person for the rest of your life (or at least for the next twelve months based on current UK divorce law).
I will have been married for five years this December and find marriage to be both as warm and cosy as a favourite pair of tartan flannel pyjamas in front of a log burning fire and at other times as frustrating and isolating as a 10 mile tailback on the M6 on a rainy February friday night.
However we have chosen to navigate life following a common path and despite the havoc that two small children are wreaking, we still seem to be crawling in the same direction. I love my man but this is not to say that hazards don't crop up on a regular basis.
Currently, for example, we are having a passive aggressive mouldy pan stand off.
He says that because I cooked the food - once baked beans but now some new variety of penicillin by the looks - then I should also wash the pan. Au contraire, say I. If I go to the trouble of cooking (or technically opening a tin and warming the contents) then I should not have to wash up as well. This is an argument which has frequently raised its head in our house without resolution, but marriage is a marathon not a sprint. I'm in it for the long haul and I am not washing that pan of horror as to be honest it's starting to frighten me a little.....
