Weddings are a given in what I write. Sooner or later. Sometimes after the story ends, and sometimes before it begins, but weddings. So today I’m looking for you to post me an excerpt about a wedding. It doesn’t have to show the actual wedding of your hero and heroine, though it could. It could be weddings remembered, weddings planned for, weddings attended.
My two come from A Raging Madness. The first is Ella remembering her first wedding, what brought it about, and what her marriage was like.
“I don’t really remember the first time. Just disjointed bits. I was still fogged by the drug the second time, in the morning, when Dadda came. I remember him shouting, and Gervase laughing, and then lots of people. Faces. Eyes. Jeering.”
Like the other night. Alex would kill that bitch Patrice, and Farnham, and the Blaxtons. And then he would go to Cheshire and dig Melville up and bury him again in a pigpen. No. A midden. No, both. Every midden and pigpen in the county, till even Judgement Day couldn’t find all the pieces to put him back together again.
Ella snuggled into him again, putting a comforting hand on the side of his face. “It is alright, Alex. It was a long time ago. Dadda had a bad seizure right there in the tent, and I think the Colonel wanted to make sure I was protected, for he told Gervase he had a choice between wedding me or being shot. And he sent for the chaplain to perform the ceremony there and then.
It was not so bad. Dadda recovered, and he and the Colonel made Gervase look after me.”
Except for the constant sneering, the neglect, the disdain. Physical abuse, too, mostly where it did not show, but Alex had heard Ella explain away more than one bruise as a trip or a bump, darting a cautious glance at Melville all the while. And nightly rapes. And a camp full of men who should have been honoured to protect her and who instead abandoned her to her abuser.
The second is her wedding day to Alex. People have been told that the pair have been married for weeks, but those in the know have organised a celebration for when the couple return from the church.
When they entered the house, the nursery and schoolroom party were waiting to bombard them with ribbons and rice, and streamers cut from paper, and to escort them to the large parlour, where the adults waited under a big decorated sign with somewhat tipsy capitals that read, ‘Lord and Lady Renshaw’. Tea trolleys laden with sandwiches, pastries, cakes, and other tasty treats jaded it a party lunch, and they were the guests of honour.
“I told Anne you had not had a proper wedding celebration, dear Ella,” Susan said, “since you married under such hurried circumstances, so today is a party for you and Alex.”
“You must have wondered at it,” the countess commented, “that I sent you on such an errand when this is your first day in our home, but Susan and I plotted this last night, and it was her part to keep you out of the way till we were ready. We are so happy for you and Alex.”
The women carried Ella off to one side of the room, and the menfolk surrounded Alex and pressed a glass of wine into his hand.
“Your wife will be fine,” Alex’s brother Rick reassured him. “Our women just want to know her. They have heard fine praise from Susan.
“You’ve spoiled our fun a little,” Rede complained, “having the party eight weeks after the wedding. Now would be our chance to tell you everything that might go wrong on the wedding night.”
I love writing about weddings. This was the second wedding scene I ever wrote. I hope there will be others.
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When they arrived at the church, events began to move much, much too quickly for Emily’s taste. Katie made a few final adjustments to the pins in her hair, while Sarah brushed and fiddled at imaginary pieces of dust and nonexistent wrinkles in her skirt. Her father maintained his usual impassive facade, but she thought there was a bit more fidgeting to his movements, a hint of impatience to the way he paced back and forth near the building’s entrance.
And then they were walking again, down the length of the aisle, and Emily knew that she would later have trouble recalling which member of her family had kept their hand at her elbow, so subtly propelling her forward.
He was already there, of course. Mister William Hazlitt, the man she had come to marry. Before she realized it, she was standing beside him, the pressure on her arm gone as her family receded into the background of her thoughts.
“Oh, he is handsome,” she heard Katie remark in a too-loud whisper, and then there was a rustle of movement, and the ceremony was to begin.
Emily waited for Mister Hazlitt to look at her, to acknowledge her presence at his side. But he stood instead with his eyes staring straight ahead, his face empty of any discernable emotion as the words that bound them together dropped from the vicar’s lips.
She wanted to know what had come over him. What had happened to that shy, nervous man who—only three weeks before—had stepped up to her and told her that she did not have to marry him? Or had that man ever truly existed, and this cold, immovable creature who stood beside her was the real William Hazlitt, to whom she was about to give her troth?
Her head began to swim as she listened to the Vicar, his dolorous voice lending a melancholy quality to the proceedings. There was a moment when her father stepped up to give her away, and she thought she might cling to him, that she might turn and beg him to allow her to stay at home with her sisters. But when she glanced up into her father’s eyes, she understood then that her remaining at home, unwed, was no longer a possibility for her.
And then her father stepped back, and Mister Hazlitt took her hand within his own. She looked up into his face for some sort of assurance that all of this wasn’t a terrible mistake, but still he would not look at her, and the touch of his hand gave her no comfort.
She spoke her own vows in a quiet, clear voice. There was no quaver of fear or uncertainty, and she wondered if it had begun to sink in that this was now her future, that there was no reason to be anxious or worried about something that could no longer be changed.
Her hand did not tremble when Mister Hazlitt slipped a ring on her finger, nor did she feel any renewed sense of disquiet when she took up the pen to sign her name in the parish registry.
A few more words then, another prayer, and they were declared to be man and wife.
Emily felt a hand on her arm and looked up to see Mister Hazlitt, now her husband, indicating that they should leave the church. Her father and sisters fell into step behind them, and before she had time to draw another breath, they were outside again, the sun shining down on them for a moment before that fleeting brightness was eclipsed by a batch of heavy, gray clouds.
I just read this one on Wattpad the other day. Lovely scene and wonderful story. Folks, The Bride Price is a great story.
Weddings—before, during, or after—are a given in mine as well. Here’s a bit from The Reluctant Wife, still in progress.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” Clare told Ananya while she wiped wedding cake along with tears from the little one’s face.
“Married people need time alone,” Meghal said sagely putting an arm around her sister. The crown of flowers on her head had shifted sideways and her wedding finery was somewhat the worse for tearing around the Hall with her cousins.
“Who told you that?” Clare laughed.
“Aunt Catherine.”
“When you come back, will we move to our home?” Meghal asked.
“I’m afraid not. The repairs to the roof and upper story will take weeks if not months if winter is early. We’ll stay here with Uncle Charles and Jonny in the meantime.”
The girl nodded but frowned. A home of her own meant everything to Meghal, a feeling Clare shared with her new daughter.
I love Meghal. What a sweetie, and what a challenging future she faces. You do realise what happened last time you wrote a generation of delightful and compelling child characters, right?