Wedding Feast

It is a crowd of strangers who mill about on the lawn outside the pub. Bob’s work colleagues mostly, a few university chums, even fewer family. 

Izzy had lost touch with her few school friends and she didn’t have any family. 

She’d never been easy with strangers and her skin prickles with the nearness of them. She concentrates hard on maintaining what she hopes is a bridal smile. This is meant to be her day. She should be empowered, imbued with the beauty of angels. She stands awkwardly, marooned on the pub's small lawn, feeling frumpy rather than angelic. She balances the double edged sword of her needs: she wants to be the centre of attention but she would rather no one was looking at her. She does not feel good in her skin and the dress does nothing to hide the fat that has grown to camouflage her insecurity, her shame.

Izzy hears Bob’s laughter bouncing off the walls of the beer garden. She should go to him. She feels stronger in his shadow. The crowd is broken into groups, an archipelago of well-wishers. She should take a deep breath and approach an island, moor up for a while but how can she choose which one will offer a safe harbour? She’s never been very good at reading people. What’s the worst that can happen she asks herself gamely,  only she knows the answer to that.

Why doesn’t Bob come and rescue her? He should be showing her off shouldn’t he? Insecurity twists like a knife: he doesn’t want to. Tall thin Bob and his dumpy wife. Still, she feels safer with his slim solid comfort by her side. Jack Sprat. Her other half. Without him, her nerves are her enemy causing her to tremble and hesitate.

The answer of course is written at the fringe of the longest shadow: the hospitality tent. Food galore presented on beautiful silver salvers. A hundred different morsels, each conveniently sized to pop into your mouth with no need for a plate. Maybe she could taste  just a few, for dutch courage, to make her feel braver, quash the butterflies turning summersaults in her belly. Food always appreciates her company. It's mutual. But that's cowardly she argues, besides, she can already hear the judging voices: look at the bride scoffing her face: she’s so fat. There’s no secret what she loves most. 

But this internal dialogue is familiar. She has her tried and tested counter-arguments at the ready: If I go to the buffet table I might be able to introduce myself to someone, follow them back to their group. I'll be alright once I'm there. She knew how to spin things to her own tune.

But greed is a blindfold. Once she is in front of the long buffet table, a choice of delicacies too great to narrow down, drown out any option but appetite. The question becomes one of logistics: is there room to do this food justice inside her ridiculous bodice? 

The lady at the bridal showroom had assured her it wouldn’t matter that the dress had become a little tight.

“Nobody ever eats at their own wedding,” she’d said. “Nerves will slim you down a bit in the week before the big day.” 

Bollocks to that Izzy thought. That skinny bitch obviously knew nothing. 

Quickly she snaffled a mini pork pie and two mini roast-beef and horseradish cream Yorkshire puddings. Oh, but there they go again the alarm bells of shame and judgement.  Time to crush them beneath a profiterole or ten.