When An Accident Prone No One Marries A Celebrity There Will Be Chaos...

Chapter 22

Ahh, hen nights, the night every bride gets to enjoy before tying the knot. Well, the jury is still out over whether hen nights are enjoyed or endured. I suppose it all depends on how cruel, or wild for that matter, your bridesmaids are. Usually these nights are filled with pranks, jokes and insanity. A popular pass time is handcuffing a poor bride-to-be to a lamppost and then leaving her there until someone takes pity on them. Aside from that there is forcing ridiculous costumes on the bride and piling her with extraneous amounts of alcohol until she can hardly stand up straight. With Emmie as my maid of honour I would say that I am in no great danger. Having said that Mandy falls firmly within the wild category so if she has had a big input in tonight then there is no telling what is in store for me.

Ollie looks fairly out of place as he makes polite conversation with a group of my work friends. I am not surprised he feels a bit out of place as for the past hour he has been sat in a room which has slowly been filling with more and more of my friends until now he is currently surrounded by twenty-two women cackling in hysterical laughter. He looked extremely out of his depth when Kate enlisted him to aid her with her hair earlier. Ollie, rather bewildered, supplied hair clips, held up strands of hair and was sent on a hunt around our room for the hair curlers. I told him he could leave ages ago but he said that would be rude and he was perfectly happy to show people in and fetch drinks. He has subsequently been dragged into conversation after conversation and task after task and the poor thing is still here. He refuses to leave too. He maintains that it would be rude. It really is lovely of him to do this its just that… well… he is out of his mind if he thinks I am going to sit, nursing a hang over, surrounded by boisterous men and cleaning up their empty beer cans when he has his stag do tomorrow night.

Another person who looks spectacularly out of their depth is my Mum. Thankfully she didn’t fancy joining us on the actual night out but she still wanted to pop around for the before party while we wait for everyone to arrive and the transport to pick us up. I could hardly deny her that? At first she was in her element while it was just her, Ollie, my four bridesmaids and I. She busied herself with getting glasses ready, chopping strawberries to put in the champagne and for some inexplicable reason preparing buffet food which she brought along with her. I told her the second she barged her way down the hallway burdened with several Tesco bags on each arm, that my friends are unlikely to want cocktail sausages before a night out and we probably wouldn’t have time to eat the mountain of food she brought with her. She said I was speaking nonsense and set about preparing every scrap of food she brought along with her. Ollie didn’t looked to pleased when I told him breakfast, lunch and dinner will be comprised of left over buffet food for the next week or so.  

Mum looks a bit helpless stood by her enormous spread of food delicately prepared on her table. Her food has hardly been touched and right now she is attempting to feed Kate yet another sausage roll despite the fact she has already eaten five out of politeness. Kate accepts another sausage roll off my Mum and puts on a brave face as she munches on the pastry much to my Mum’s delight. Mum is just about to do another trip around the room with her trays of food when Georgie notices the impending circuit of the room and swiftly dives over to stop her. They exchange a few words and then with a nod of understanding Mum places down the trays and allows herself to be led away from the food table where she has stood guard for most of the evening. Across the room Kate looks visibly relieved as she realises she is free from the influx of sausage rolls she had previously been subjected to.  But as Mum settles herself on the couch on the other side of the room she looks miserable and forlorn. I immediately set down my drink and go to see how she’s doing but Ollie places a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll take care of your Mum, you go have fun,” he insists. I give him a peck on the cheek and thank him before turning back to my conversation and pick my glass back up.