Well-hard Wedding

You’ve got to feel sorry for Colleen McLaughlin.

Apart from the obvious (waking up to the sight she has to wake up to), it appears she’s having problems with the invitation list to her wedding. She’s worried about Rooney’s dodgy family ruining her day. They are a bunch of rough diamonds apparently. Who’da thunk it?

Most people will think she’s a snotty cow, but I feel for her.

About a month before Meester and I got married, we had to attend a family wedding in Meeester’s parents’ hometown of Motherwell. Those of you who know Motherwell are taking a sharp intake of breath right about now.

Meeester’s folks left Motherwell in the sixties when they got married, but the rest of the family still live there. Motherwell is well hard. In fact it should be called Motherwellhard.

It was 1995 and one of the cousins is getting wed. For some reason, the full extended Martini clan decided to attend this wedding.

It was a colourful day, to say the least.


The Bride

The Bride is tiny, brunette and pretty. We see her for the first time as she comes down the aisle.

Double take…there are five clones behind her in shiny aqua puffball dresses. Her five bridesmaids are clearly her sisters. They are exact copies of her except they range in size.

Her's is your typical East-End Glasgow Catholic family. Quite a few Glasgow Catholics still practice the no-contraception thing. I mean, even the Irish are ditching that one- there’s just South America, Africa and Glasgow making sure not a single spermatozoa is spilled.

Living proof of this practice is these six girls, all with barely nine months between them. The reason they all look exactly the same is because the poor mother’s body didn’t have time to reset and make a new template for the next kid as soon as the last one was out. It still thought it was making the last one.

Mother of the bride is probably only 33 but looks 70, and is probably expecting the next clone.

It gets Stephen King freakier when you see the sisters all lined up at the top table later on. They’re like Russian dolls, ‘cept in polyester, frosted lipstick and sovereign rings. They are named after dead nuns.


The Best Man

Cousin groom's best man is his elder brother. He is a known Motherwell hardman and has seen the inside of chokey on more than a few occasions. Meeester remembers him fondly as a cool older cousin. A cool older cousin who has morphed into a dangerous geezer involved in some dodgy rackets. What a difference a decade makes. His hard mates are around him throughout the day like he is some kind of Weegie Tony Soprano.


The Line Up

Oh! What to do in the line up? What’s that line in Four Weddings and a Funeral?

“I hate line-ups, I never know what to say”

“Just smile and say, ‘You must be very proud’.”

Good advice. Hugh and his posh pals might not have been so worried about social niceties in this line up situation. Their manners would be severely challenged if the best man were to grab their girlfriend bodily and effectively feel her up. On being introduced to the Best Man, my arse was squeezed and fondled and he grunted in my ear,

“C’mere darlin’”. Not that I could come any closer.

I’ve not been violated in a line up before or since.

Apart from the obvious embarrassment, I spent the next half hour worried that this faction of the family may yet accept their invitation to my own nuptials and I will be molested once again in my own line-up in a month's time.


The Wedding Feast

We’re in the Motherwell Miner’s Social Club for the reception; not featuring in Brides Magazine alongside Blenheim Palace any time soon. Staff come round for drinks orders and are immediately flummoxed by Meeester’s request,

Meeester: Which reds do you have?

Waiter: Eh?

Meeester: Red Wine? Is there a House Red?

Waiter: Hang on…(shouts the full length of the hall) Bernadette! Hiv we goat ony wine?”

Barmaid: Em, I dunno, there’s maybe a boattle in the back, Stevie.

Meeester is brought Co-Op Red Lambrusco, with dust on the bottle (must be vintage). I never knew there was such a thing. But there it was in all it’s sachharine sweet, pinky, fizzy 3% alc. £1.99 glory. Oz Clarke would have started a flippin’ riot.

All around us, it’s shorts, nips and pints. You can feel the disapproval of the guests at the uppity ways of the Martinis.

“ Wine? Wine? ….Fuckin’ poof. "


The Top Table

Meeester’s Mum has been asked to sing at the service, and to show their thanks, she is invited to sit at the top table with the Wedding Party.

There are about ten people she barely knows sat beside her. We look over and feel sorry for her.

We feel even sorrier for her when we realise that she is the only person at the top table not smoking. And I’m not talking lighting up after the meal; the full table all have fags on the go throughout the dinner. The Mother of the Bride has one wedged in her fingers as she holds her cutlery, king-ash threatening to sully her steak pie at every turn. Food is eaten in-between draws.



Meeester Gets a Dress Rehearsal

Meeester is the only one of the guests in a kilt.

He feels uneasy at first, since everyone else is in a suit. He feels more self-conscious when, after the dinner tables are cleared, the entire wedding party have gone and got changed into shirts and jeans, boob tubes and minge base skirts, like it was any other Saturday night at the Miner’s Social.

At one point the groom and best man go off with their mates to play pool in the other room!

As a result of this, drunken people at the club think Meeester’s the groom. All night he is being bought drinks by random strangers, and on several occasions he has to refuse money crushed into his hands as a wedding gift.

Red-faced broken veined certain heart attack victim: I didnae hae time to get you anything, but that’s for your honeymoon, son.

Meeester: Oh! I’m not the groom.

Heart attack: (Not hearing, or caring) You look aifter that wee lassie…she’s a fuckin’ diamond….

Heart attack drunkenly sways off…leaving Meeester clutching money.


As the night goes on, the reception turns into a drunken nightmare, with fights outside and sweating dipsomaniac uncles starting family arguments with other sweating dipsomaniac uncles.

Terrifyingly, more and more relatives I’ve never met start to make noises about organising mini buses and such to Aberdeen for our wedding.

Of course, they never came.

And like Colleen, I’m afraid, I was quite glad.