bride is sick, obviously … ”
She takes our coats and shows us upstairs to a waiting area next to numerous racks of dresses. There are big comfy sofas, wedding photographs all over the walls, and piles and piles of wedding magazines stacked up on a large glass coffee table.
“Catriona will be with you shortly,” she says. “Feel free to browse.”
We are about to start rifling through the magazines when Catriona arrives.
She introduces herself, before asking: “Which one’s the bride?”
I quickly push Katie forward, before she gets any ideas that it might be me.
“I am,” Katie says, at the same time as Emma says “not me”. You can tell by her tone that what she really means is “not bloody me!”
“Wonderful,” Catriona says.
I like her. She isn’t nasty and she hasn’t laughed at us. Yet. She’s in her mid forties, I’d say. She’s small, and smartly dressed in a navy trouser suit and white top. She looks like she knows what she’s doing. And she’s smiling too. For now.
“When’s the big day?”
“September eighteenth,” Katie volunteers.
“Oh good. That gives us plenty of time then. That’s twelve, thirteen, fourteen … twenty one months,” she says, flicking through the months in her diary.
“No, September the eighteenth this year,” Katie says.
“SEPTEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH THIS YEAR?!” Catriona gasps. “But that’s nine months away!” she says, verging upon becoming hysterical.
“Yes?” Katie says, panic beginning to sound in her own voice, although she is not entirely sure why.
“Nine months?” Catriona repeats, this time as a question, presumably to check she has heard right.
“I’m not pregnant,” Katie says, defensively.
“I didn’t think for a moment that you were, dear. But nine months is really not very long at all to plan a wedding. A wedding is the best day of a girl’s life, after all.” She looks like she might actually be about to have a nervous breakdown. Anybody would think we’d just told her Katie was getting married tomorrow and needed a dress making from scratch.
“They want to get married on the anniversary of the day they met,” Emma explains, helpfully.
“So what about next year?” Catriona suggests, in a deadly serious tone. “I mean, for starters you won’t be able to have any of these dresses here, because we’d never get them in time,” she says, sweeping her arms dramatically across a rail of dresses. It’s no great pity, frankly – a good ninety per cent of them are hideous meringues and would therefore fall at Katie’s first test – ‘will they make me look remotely like Katie Price when she married Peter Andre?’
“Or here. Or here,” she continues, on a roll.
“What about these?” Emma asks, pointing out what appears to be the only rail that has not yet been waved at dramatically.
“Well, yes, those would be okay,” she says, almost begrudgingly. “But you’d have to order it pretty soon. We wouldn’t have much time to play with. Especially if you needed it altering at all. Which you probably will. What sort of thing are you looking for?” she asks Katie, who has already started rifling through the rail.
“I don’t want a meringue,” she says decisively. “I don’t like fussy things. No lace. No frills. No bows. No fuss. I want something white, but not too white. And I’d prefer it to be strapless.
“But I would happily try straps,” she adds hastily, registering the look on Catriona’s face, who appears to be mentally narrowing down the list of options by the second.
“I can spend whatever I need to,” Katie tells her, silently thanking her dad who is paying for the wedding, “but I’d rather not spend a fortune,” she continues, because she is not the sort to abuse her dad’s generosity.
At the mention of sort-of-unlimited cash Catriona’s mood perks up considerably and she takes over the rifling.
“You go in there and strip off while I get some dresses ready for you to try on,” she tells Katie, who obediently dumps her bag and coat on my lap and disappears behind a white linen curtain into a cubicle.
Moments later Catriona hangs three dresses on a rail outside the cubicle and pokes her head around the curtain.
“Take your bra off too, love,” she instructs Katie, inviting herself into the cubicle and pulling the curtain across behind her. I look at Emma and grin.
“How are you doing?” I call out several minutes later when they still haven’t reappeared.
It’s hard to tell but the loud guffaw from the other side of the curtain may well be a clue.
“Almost there,” Catriona shouts.
Emma and I flick through the magazines while we are waiting.
“Blimey! Guess how much this one is,” I say to Emma, holding up Bride Be Beautiful and pointing to the dress at the top of the page. I quickly cover the price with my finger.
“Dunno. Twenty pence,” she says, glancing up from White White Weddings.
“No, seriously, guess.”
“I want to say about eight hundred quid but judging by your reaction it’s probably more like five grand?”
“Twenty-five grand!” I tell her, bringing the magazine right up to my face. I must have misread it. “That’s ridiculous!” I say, having established there is nothing wrong with my eyesight and that, yes, this wedding dress really does cost almost as much as my annual salary.
“That’s a deposit on a house, for heaven’s sake.”
“If I ever get married, I’ll be doing it on a beach somewhere in my bikini,” Emma says. She would too.
“Why waste all that money on a dress that’s only going to be worn for a few hours – and on a day when all your new husband can think about is getting you out of it?”
Catriona pokes her head outside the curtain – to check we are still here probably – there’s a fabulous cake shop around the corner which I’m sure must be an incredible temptation when you are on the tenth or eleventh dress and the bride still hasn’t found one she likes.
“She’s ready girls,” she announces, before sweeping back the curtain and waiting for Katie to emerge.
“So. What do you think?”
“I don’t like it,” Emma says, screwing her nose up.
“You don’t get a say,” Katie tells her.
“What have you made me come for then?”
“Consider it your punishment.”
Emma says nothing – just rolls her eyes at me.
“What do you think Becky?” Katie asks me, not before giving Emma one more moody glance for good measure.
“Well, it’s okay … But there’s probably something out there that is more you,” I confirm, before she promptly disappears back behind the curtain.
“I am NEVER going to find a dress,” Katie says, despondently shoving a prawn cracker in her mouth.
We’ve come to China Palace for dinner before I head home. And we’ve ordered enough to feed an army, after Katie complained she had ‘not eaten a thing all day’. I did point out that this wasn’t strictly true – that she had in fact wolfed down an extra large helping of chocolate fudge cake as well as an entire king size bag of giant chocolate buttons between 2:12pm and 2:18pm. Single-handedly. The chocolate fudge cake she conceded, but