Any Other Photo {Laura and Bedford}

Readers, I promise, today it's worth getting out of bed.  Today, you're about to be spoilt rotten.  We have an Any Other Photo exclusive for you here...regular reader and loved member of our community Laura of Parliament Of Owls, doing what she does best, writing.  The honesty comes from the heart, the funny comes from the head, and the rest is directly from the gut.

Laura's written for us before about the books that made her her, and you loved it.  This is even better.  Happy, from-the-gut Friday, readers.  Over to Laura:   

Prior to the wedding, I was nervous*, man. Anyone who says they're not is made of frickin' marble. And when we'd had our ceremony rehearsal a couple of nights before in the very church depicted in this shot below, I'd left as a gibbering wreck. I ended up outside with Bedford and my sister muttering obscenities (on hallowed ground, no less) and trying to ignore the awful quaking of my knees.  

Rigmarole! Ritual! Misogynist tradition! Ostentatious spectacle!

Rising panic. Sweaty palms. A tummy full of bats, never mind butterflies.

Why was I even doing this? Why was I betraying myself and my 'I'd rather die than be considered a show-off'/wholly self-deprecating principles? I'd been fooled. I'd been lulled into a false sense of wanky, princess-y 'It's my wedding day! Guess what? ME!' arrogance and now I was regretting it. You know when you really, really don't want to do something (incidents that come to mind: practical driving test, a piano exam, go to work on a day you know will be particularly shitty) and you start imagining a whole plethora of possible ways around it - throwing yourself down the stairs, attempting deliberate food-poisoning? No? Just me, then. I started doing that.

If someone had offered me a Get-Out-Of-Wedding-Stress-Hell-Free card (a ticket to Gretna Green and a promise that it would aaaaall be OK, sssh-there-there-darling) I'd have snapped it out of their hand.

But then the morning dawned and, an ever-so-slightly churning stomach in the hairdressers aside I started to feel OK. Then better than OK. Tranquil. Serene. It was like someone had shot me with a tranquiliser dart, although less painful and intrusive (err, I'd imagine).

By the time my dad and I arrived at the church and met Clare, my sister, and Alex, my oldest, dearest friend, outside, I was starting to enjoy myself. Not in a showy-off way. Just in a this is a really amazing, joyful day kind of way.

I walked down the aisle. I don't really remember the walk. I wasn't fixating on the back of Bedford's head like a lot of people do. Bizzarely, I don't really remember seeing him until I got right up there. But then I got up there and, boy, did I grin at my oh-so-nearly husband. And Phil the photographer clicked his shutter button.  

Photo captured by the very talented Phil Smith Photography 

This is not the most flattering photo of all time. As Tyra once said on America's Next Top Model, "your neck is important, girlfrrrriend!", and I know my hunched shoulders are doing me no favours on this shot. But I love it anyway. Unusually for me, I don't look at all self-conscious. My grin is saying, "Hiyaaaa Bedford!" and his more restrained smile is saying, 'Thank God you're here.' And 'I like your shoes.'**

I love its clarity; how I can make out all manner of faces in that Great Sea of Anticipation behind us. Near the back in an aisle seat is an elderly gentleman in his 90s who used to live across the road from us when we were growing up: Alvin. He came with his daughter just for the ceremony because he didn't feel he could manage the whole day, but wanted to come to the church and wish us 'all the luck in the world'. Johnson, a school friend, towers over everyone on the right-hand side and has a brilliant smirk on his face. My beautiful blonde cousin Jennifer looks like a model - but a really, really happy non-pouty one. My soon-to-be brother-in-law Krish is smiling ever-so-nervously in the front row - probably acutely aware of the fact that his own wedding to my lovely sister is only five weeks away. Walker, the best man, looks every inch the dapper gent and is grinning like a loon. I'm on familiar ground and we're surrounded by familiar faces, down to the stone angels above us that I used to stare at during Friday morning mass more than twenty years ago. Here we are - cool, calm, collected, and about to be married - and all is well with the world.

* Understatement of my LIFE.

**Maybe this second sentence gives him too much credit.