IT HAS been a while since I’ve been to a wedding. I don’t really have the kind of friends who get married. Don’t worry, they’re not a bunch of politicians with two heads.
They come in pairs, like much of the population, with all the attendant mortgages, holiday snaps, joint gas and electricity accounts, silly names for each other and secret behaviours (one couple insist on watching Home Alone 2 together every Christmas) you would expect from two people who’ve decided to go forth through this funny business we call life together. They also, increasingly, have children, which is infinitely more expensive, stressful and wonderful than any wedding.
But things change. Priorities shift. Pieces of paper become important. Civil partnerships possible. And people soften like butter. Sometimes they decide to get married.
And so it came to pass one Friday morning in September. Two old friends from my Glasgow university days, K and N, saying “I do” to each other in a registry office on George IV Bridge. We’ve been through all sorts over the last 15 years. We’ve held each other’s hair back in dodgy pub toilets and met for a hair of the dog the next day. We’ve shared exam halls, danced in clubs, ascended hills, cooked Sunday roasts, counted in the new year and put each other up when ceilings have caved in. I’ve done crosswords with K and N and flown a kite with them. But I’ve never seen them get married.
The ceremony was short, sweet and unfussy. Very K and N. Afterwards we teetered on cobbles for photos, gulped whisky from hip flasks and walked with hats and kilts clamped to heads and thighs in an autumnal battle against the wind. The day ended with a ceilidh so raucous C took a punch to the face during Strip the Willow. All in all, a very Edinburgh affair.
Except for me. I spent most of the day in floods of tears. Whenever K’s dad so much as blinked, it got me going. As soon as K walked up the aisle, I felt a chin-wobble coming on. By the time the ceremony was in mid-flow, so was I: a mess of heaving sobs. Afterwards, watching N well up as he leaned over for a cuddle from his gran in her wheelchair, I was inconsolable. By the end of the night, even a croaky rendition of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles made me glisten over.
So there you have it. I have gone soft. It wasn’t always so. Love is lovely and everything but, you know, it’s like health. Best not to talk about it or it might go away. I used to be like the next buttoned-up person, the one for whom emotion is engulfed by embarrassment. The world is split into those who find weddings excruciating, with all the speeches and smoked salmon, and those who are moved to tears by the time the taxi pulls up. I appear to have crossed over from one to the other.
There have been warning signs, but I was too busy blubbing to notice them. Where once I was the tough-hearted type who lived for the big musical song and dance numbers, I’m now starting to secretly enjoy a moonlit ballad. The mere sight of an elderly couple holding hands in the park is enough to make me seek out a bench for a sniffle. And you know what? I think I know my problem. It’s called ageing, fellow life-livers, and it happens to the best of us.
chitra.ramaswamy@scotlandonsunday.com