WEDDING GOSSIP Girl In A White Dress 9 8603 views

Control yourself!

Our resident bride-to-be, Cheryl, shares the highs and lows of wedding planning in the run-up to her big day. This week she learns that it's OK to trust the professionals...

When it comes to my wedding, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a control freak.

Actually that’s not strictly true. I’m a full-blown Class A weapons-grade control freak. In fact, I’d win the Olympic Games of control freaks if there was one. Which of course there isn’t (although that would make good telly – they could have Crystal Maze-style contests where teams of bossy people had to navigate tricky obstacles while ordering everyone about in a dictatory headmistress kind of way – just like on The Apprentice).

Not that I do that – I just like things done my way. Particularly when those things are wedding related.

Like most other nearly-brides, I have a number of lovely willing family and friend volunteers kindly offering their services and free time to help lighten the wedding planning load. And they’ve all done an excellent job of whatever task they were assigned to. But it’s the non-family and friend collaborators that I have trouble with.

I know I’m being irrational when I lie in bed at night worrying that on the day the florist will fall inexplicably ill and my mum and I will have to nip round to Tescos and clear out their flower department – or that the photographer will forget to bring a tripod so all our photos come out in blurred wobble-cam – or that the cake maker will confuse the cherry blossom pink food colouring for the pondwater green one. I know these things are unlikely to happen. But I can’t helping thinking that if they just entrusted me with the camera, flower arranging and cake making, I could make sure everything went smoothly.

But clearly I have to give up the control sometimes. My beloved is constantly reassuring me in his calm rational way that everything will be fine; the florist will have a replacement if she’s ill, the photographer will have a spare tripod in his car, and the cake maker isn’t colour blind and makes thousands of non-green cakes every day. Which is reassuring.

Now if someone could just tell me how I can learn to make a wedding cake in less than two months, I can sleep easy again…

Next week: Cheryl learns how to avoid getting a red card from your footie-mad fiancé while ensuring full attendance at your match-day wedding...

read more advice on wedding planning...

Photos © Cris Watk / Craig Jewell