It was the best day ever.

No. It was the BEST day ever.

Not even the fight between a drunken uncle and a hat stand, or the drunkle who sat down where there wasn’t a chair and squashed a mysterious gift could spoil things.

It was, quite simply, perfect.

He was calmness from waking, right up until about twenty minutes before the ceremony. It was being stood in front of a room of eighty people that did it, stood up front with no escape. It wasn’t as if he could dash to the toilets to relieve this feeling of terror nausea that had risen within because if the groom dashes from the room ten minutes before the wedding, people talk.

Two minutes she was due to arrive and the nausea was gone. In its place was a great trembling build up of moisture behind the eyes – at any moment she would be walking down the aisle, and it would be the two of them together, husband and wife. What if he messed it up? What if he tried to sign his own name and couldn’t? What if an old lover crashed through the French doors on the end of a rope?

Her beauty drove all these thoughts from his head. He was glad she took his hand because he needed the feel of her hand inside his to remind him that he wasn’t dreaming. He was glad the registrar made the two of them face each other because he got to look into eyes gazing back at him with love.

And of course, he messed up his own name. It turns out that if you are stood for twenty minutes under the gaze of eighty pairs of eyes your whole throat turns to sandpaper and all you can do is croak. This was the moment when the soppy souls in the audience began to blub. Once upon a time he would have rolled his eyes at hearing that, but after today?

His one regret was that he could not rewind time and then slow it down. He blinked and they were outside in the hard November chill having confetti thrown in their faces. Blink, blink, blink, and each time that he opened his eyes they had moved on to the next stage of the photo farce, swapping from one room to the next, look left, look right, look at each other, look at the camera, look, look, look! Oh, and smile. Gurn. Put your arms around each other, arms at your side, hands in your pocket, hand on her side.

Another blink and he was croaking his way through his speech of thanks. Blink, he was a loon on the dance floor. Blink, fireworks were soaring, blink, the dance floor was mostly empty and it was almost pumpkin time. Blink, her dress was coming down.

Blink, and time did slow and now they were together for a lifetime.