Kate's Wedding by Chrissie Manby Read Free Book Online

to have to be somewhere special to match up to the ceremony, isn’t it? Cliveden’s too far from the cathedral, which is a shame.’
    ‘Yeah. Pity.’
    ‘Can you believe Dad suggested that gastro-pub that overlooks Osborne House? I told him that if he thinks I’m going to have my wedding reception in a flippin’ pub, he can bloody well think again.’
    ‘It was probably his slut of a second wife’s idea,’ said Susie.
    ‘So anyway, I said if I can’t actually have my reception at Osborne House, then I’m having it at the Queen Victoria.’
    ‘The country club? That place is expensive.’
    ‘Yes, but can you imagine the pictures we’d get on the golf course?’
    ‘Oooh, yeah,’ said Nicole.
    ‘Have you made your mind up about bridesmaids?’ Melanie interrupted. ‘We can dress all shapes and ages.’
    ‘She’s narrowed it down to seven,’ said Susie. ‘I think that’s just about right.’
    ‘So a cathedral train will be no problem,’ said Diana, ‘with seven pairs of hands to handle it.’
    ‘Are you having a veil?’ Melanie asked.
    ‘God, yes! Bring it on.’
    While Melanie went in search of a cathedral-length veil for yet another distinctly un-virginal bride, Diana began her dress hunt in earnest. She snatched two dresses from beneath the nose of the rat-faced girl with the snotty kids. This was going to be fun. Fifteen minutes later, it started to get more frustrating, spotting a possible contender only to find that Rat Face was going for it too. Diana felt the urge to slap away the other girl’s nicotine-stained hands when she saw them reaching out to touch the pristine fabric of the wedding gowns. Ugh. Mostly it was embarrassing to think that someone who looked so trashy could possibly share Diana’s taste.
    ‘You have got the same LV handbag,’ Nicole dared to point out.
    ‘Mine’s real,’ Diana snapped back at her.
    What kind of wedding was Rat Face planning to have, anyway? Where would she wear her cathedral-length train?
    ‘At her Big, Fat Gypsy Wedding,’ Susie whispered in her daughter’s ear after Diana won the face-off for a third time.
    ‘My, that Marilyn strapless is popular,’ said Melanie when she saw that the two younger brides were in competition. ‘And the Meribel and the Ernestine. You ladies will have to take it in turns to try those three dresses. But you don’t need to worry about not being able to have the frock that you want,’ she assured her colleague’s client. ‘These are just our samples. Every dress is ordered in new.’
    Diana knew that, of course, but it still didn’t stop a little bubble of anger from rising in her throat as Rat Face was first to find the fourth dress on Diana’s hit list. At least she did not face the same battle with the other bride. Diana and Rat Face were fighting over the size eight to tens. The geriatric bride would be lucky to squeeze into a twelve. Did Bride on Time even carry size-twelve samples? Diana supposed they must. Very few women were as lucky with their figures as she was. Except that it wasn’t really luck. Diana went to the gym five times a week. Rat Face obviously kept her figure by living on nothing but fags and booze.
    ‘Finished.’
    Diana hung her final plastic ring on a dress by Giovanni Lucciani.
    ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said her mother, admiring the multicoloured ribbons at the back of the bodice. ‘Really classy.’
    Diana turned to Rat Face with a velociraptor smile. ‘Of course, in the end, the way a dress looks is really all about the class of the bride.’

Chapter Ten
    While Rat Face and Diana had their wedding-frock face-off, Kate was already being helped into her first gown. Heidi explained that they would try the least voluminous dress first and gradually build up to the monster frock that Kate had only really chosen to make her mother smile and her sister laugh out loud.
    ‘We have to do it that way, otherwise you’ll be too shocked by the girth,’ Heidi explained.
    Kate was