A week or so ago, I flew over to the Netherlands to spend a few celebratory days with my family. It was my mother’s birthday and my sister has recently engaged herself to be married to a 6 ft 5 tall PE teacher with a penchant for DJ-ing, which he does at weekends under the pseudonym DJ Willy. This only adds to his likeability and the enviable ease with which he moves around social circles, picking up friends for life, great experiences and maintaining his generally lovely attitude seemingly without effort.

The wedding is to be next year, and my mother, sister and I discuss the whole event while we wait for my father and DJ Willy to join us at a restaurant that has worked very hard to be quaint and homely (quirky wallpaper, comfy chairs, a plant) while at the same time being posh enough to have a waiter whose sole responsibility it is to keep your wine glass full. This is a first for me, frequenter of pubs, and I empty two glasses before we’re ready for our starter just for the novelty of it. It is usually about halfway through the second glass that I forget the limitations of my reserved personality* and tonight is no different.

‘So how many people are you going to invite?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You need to know how many so you know whether there will be enough space in the church. Who’s going to seat people when they get there?’
‘Surely they can just come in and seat themselves?’
‘God, no. What if feuding parts of the family end up sitting near each other? You haven’t introduced your in-laws to the majority of our family yet, what if it kicks off between his father and our aunt who thinks she’s a reincarnated native American? Or if people who are only friends of friends just take a seat at the front?’

At this point my mother chimes in stating that, if anyone has the audacity to steal the space she has already reserved for herself and her hat with her nose pressed up against the altar, she will avenge herself and happily do time for it. As she sips her wine with vigour, the starter is served accompanied by a lengthy explanation on the origin, age and cooking process of each ingredient, like a dating show for vegetables. I get the distinct impression the waiter is rushing through it after hearing about my mother’s gung ho attitude to a prison sentence. I empty my glass and, while the increasingly attractive wine waiter fills it up, I begin to get cocky.

‘You’ll need music. Do you want a string quartet or the church organ? What song? And the colour scheme. What flowers do you want and is dad going to give you away? That’s not very feminist, but do you want your wedding to be about you or making a statement for the sisterhood?’

I admit now that it wasn’t very funny, but throughout the starter and most of the main course I feel that I, the person who is free to go back abroad as soon as the seeds of terror had been planted in my sister’s mind, am winning. Yet by my fifth glass of wine I have somehow agreed to do the flowers and sing as my sister walks down the aisle.

As my mother announces that this was all she ever wanted, my father looks up from his plate to express his disappointment with the arrangement. He has apparently been practising a range of adapted lovesongs to sing at both our weddings since enough of our childhood had lapsed to confidently ascertain that neither of us were asexual. He performs a quick line or two to illustrate this, when he is stopped by the waiter serving our last course. As we are introduced to our trio of desserts and I eye contestant no. 3 hungrily, my father cuts the waiter short and says ‘anyway, what are you going to sing? You don’t even sing in front of us unless there’s a door in between.’

This is a point. The thought of potentially ruining my sister’s walk down the aisle is a sobering one, and as we have run out of courses the waiter has stopped filling my glass, serving us coffee instead. Considering she is my only sibling, and the rather better turned-out one at that, I fear becoming the bride’s special sister, you know, the one no one ever sees, who also wanted to contribute something, bless her. I decide I have two options. One, get over myself, practice like hell and hope for the best. Or two, and this is probably the most likely one, I begin drinking at 9 AM on the day of the wedding, deliver a performance that will make me feel like Etta James but sound like a recently dumped 40-year old after happy hour at the karaoke bar. Until then,  all I can do is hope for one, practice for two, and however it turns out, finish with a joyful ‘happy wedding day, sis’.


*on a sidenote, my mother once proclaimed in tears that I was so reserved it made her uncomfortable, and she did not know how to talk to me. Being reserved, I didn’t know either and made her a cup of coffee instead. I don’t know if it solved the issue, but she hasn’t brought it up since. Coffee does wonders, I always say.