They say true love knows no limits. Well, I’ll be the first to say it damn well should. And I should know, being a panicked bride-to-be from the other side of the world (London is far, OK?), clumsily negotiating cross-continental plans, demands and expectations in Cape Town as D-Day (sorry, I mean the big day) approaches at dizzying speed.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m head over heels for my native Capetonian hubby-to-be, Etienne. He’s sweet and nerdy (in a totally cute kind of way), with a decent job (my father breathes a sigh of relief) and borderline ginger hair (my mother readies the DIY dye kit in case of flame-haired children). But cross-continental love – not to mention a cross-continental wedding – is a serious pain.
First up, there’s the whole, obvious long-distance thing. During our courtship phase (when we still believed the other could do absolutely no wrong, and he still remembered my birthday), we managed two and a half years of barely audible, constantly breaking-up Skype calls before we cracked and I packed up my 437 pairs of shoes – pretty much all I brought with me – and moved to Cape Town. Now imagine planning a wedding, with your mother, over Skype. Hello, immersion therapy – without any of the actual therapy but all of the immersion.
Showing my mother the colour of the table cloths over Skype – and let me tell you, when it comes to your mother, never underestimate the importance of getting this colour exactly right – or the reception hall, or the wedding stationery, is a little less than easy. Images blur or pixelate, colours distort and what I assure my mother is a very light aqua instead looks to her like mint green (the horror!).
Then there are all the other ‘emotional’ things – like the fact that my mother and sister can’t be that involved in planning my bachelorette since they have as much idea of where to celebrate in Cape Town as the Pope would know where the best strip joints are in Amsterdam. And the fact that they can’t join for cupcake sampling, ribbon hunting, glitter scouting, flower searching – all the utterly bizarre tasks you end up doing in the name of ‘wedding planning’.
At least the one thing I did get right was wedding dress shopping. The actual experience itself was horrendous (a story for another day), but I did manage to tag it on to a trip home to the UK, so my mother and sister could join for the excursion. I can only imagine the cross-continental horror it could have been: my mom squinting up at me from my laptop screen as Skype intermittently transmitted her shrieks of “You look like death in white!” and “Time to cut down on the dairy, darling!” while I drowned beneath layers and layers of tulle and chiffon in some godforsaken bridal store, wishing the lighting was less harsh and that I hadn’t worn my holey, Bridget Jones panties. At that point, my love for all things wedding (and my mother) would most certainly have discovered its limit – and I’d be wearing pyjamas on the big day D-Day.
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