A Woman’s Right to Shoes

I have been reading a fabulous blog called I hate planning my wedding. In fact I have been reading it compulsively over the last few days. It is fantastically, wickedly funny and I know I should not laugh at her misery but I can’t help it, she writes her pain so damn well. Go read now!

Anyway it is a blog about trying to plan a wedding with the involvement of lots of family and the different pressures that will bring. In fact wedding stories like this were the one of the major reasons I never wanted a big wedding, my plan was always to elope or at push do it on a holiday. But The Talented Mr. Rigby dreamed of the big wedding and I went with it. While Engaged and Enraged battles daily with mother and mother in laws and upset bridesmaids I realise I am getting it pretty easy.

One major reason for that is that I wanted to pay for it all ourselves, in fact we will not be paying for it all ourselves but we are paying for almost all of it. Anyway I felt that any money given should be a gift. A gift. In fact so much did I insist on this that I am making my Mum give me her gift on the wedding day. Mean, yes but a well thought out strategy.

Since we picked a date my mother has called me nearly every day, usually at work to discuss some vital/trivial detail of the wedding. She loves to throw a party and is very opinionated but totally not organised and I really didn’t want her planning everything. I haven’t let her choose anything but have kept her informed of decisions made, in general she has been fabulous about it all. Because she isn’t paying she has managed to keep most of her opinions under her fascinator.

I didn’t want a bouquet, she took a deep breath and accepted it, I didn’t want a proper wedding dress, she was not amused but was pleased with my final choice, declaring it exactly the dress she had imagined! I didn’t want a cake, she accepted that, I didn’t want morning dress, she accepted that Mr. Rigby would look like the artful dodger. But I did want black shoes.

Black shoes, yes, a black and white wedding, I am wearing white but with a black shrug thing and I thought black shoes would look very nice. Meltdown. She went into complete meltdown, tears and all. Apparently black shoes would  just be my way of embarrassing her, it would look ridiculous and she would not be the only one thinking it. She was way way over the top in fact she was so insane that it had the effect of making me very calm. She did apologise the next day in a round about way that I recognise as they way I apologise, but the seed was sewn. So at the weekend I went off to buy my shoes, not black, just sparkly. I didn’t want my mother to hate something so violently that I had picked and I certainly didn’t want to upset her so I thought fine no black, it is the least I can do for her.

On Monday I told my mother about the shoes I was hoping for a simple how lovely what she actually said was  “I knew you would realise black was ridiculous in the end”

Bloody typical the one thing I did specifically for her. Luckily I love my shoes or I may have cried.

 

 

 

 

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