I got married recently. Not for the first time, and at twice the age of your average, perfect, twenty-one year old bride, I got married, and it was a fairytale wedding. The long searched-for man with whom I will spend the rest of my life, the blissfully assured happy ever after, the castle ruins as backdrop, the sunshine and even the rain, completed the day that changed my life, and changed me.
The run-up had all the usual stresses the dress that wouldn't fit, the squabbling prospective guests, the looming financial ruination - but on the day all this faded into before-we-were-married obscurity as we promised our promises, ringed our fingers, and stepped smiling into our united new life, surrounded by those who love us and cheered us on. This was magical but it didn't change me. We packed, went to paradise and lived in bliss for two weeks and swore we would change the way we live forever, but we didn't. I was happy, secure, loved and married in the best possible way, and my life was changed by that, but me - I was still me.
We came home with fast-fading tans, opened mountains of presents, had films developed and sighed over wedding photographs. We returned to work, secure in the knowledge that the excitement was safely behind us and our lives and my name were now officially changed, but still I wasn't.
Then a friend came to look at the pictures and brought the video he had taken on the day. Thrilled, we stuck it in the video and relived the ceremony, clutching each other with tears streaming down our faces. Watching as we left the marriage room as newlyweds, I noted in a detached sort of way how nice the bride looked, and how that dress actually looked nothing like I had feared it would look on me, and didn't she look happy, and almost sort of charming when she did that funny little wave as they left? From where I was watching though, I was still me.
It was a delightful little film, all our nearest and dearest laughing and smiling and drinking champagne in small bubbly clusters, and at the centre of all this stood my glowing husband and the polished, laughing creature in my dress. I watched as photos were taken, bubbles blown and confetti thrown. I watched as we took our places at the top table amongst tumultuous applause and ear-ringing cheers.
Then came the speeches. Before the day I had vowed I wouldn't say anything, public speaking being my deepest, darkest dread, but in the warmth and sparkle of the event, I thawed and ventured to thank those people to whom I felt overwhelmingly grateful. This too was recorded for posterity. Sitting watching as the woman in my dress stood up to speak, I gripped my husband's hand and held my breath. I concentrated hard on what she was saying, but found myself distracted by her mannerisms, some of which were so familiar that they could have been mine, although I realised later that I had actually been reminded of Princess Diana. I watched, fascinated by this amateur performance by someone I had never before seen speak, every mannerism an education, every peculiarity a revelation. I was spellbound.
After that, I started watching the tape whenever I could find the time. I would watch the ceremony, always with a tear or two and my heart aching with the memory, and then follow the lady in my dress as she wandered through her wedding day. I found time to inspect the dress from every available angle and criticize small points of detail that I thought she should have done differently. I agonised over the few seconds when she arranged herself in a bad light, or carelessly laughed out loud without thinking to set her features to their best advantage. What must people have thought? Always I watched the speech, the idiosyncrasies of her manner becoming more and more familiar. I knew every laugh, every look, every move. At times she looked gorgeous, at others she just looked a bit like me. I wished I could change the way she said some of the words.
In normal life, I began to notice that I sometimes exhibited some of the same mannerisms as her. Laughing with colleagues at work I would stop dead, thinking “I felt just like her then”. A certain way I move my head when I talk became eerily reminiscent of the woman in my dress when she spoke on the tape. Firing a sharp response to a piece of office banter, I felt my expression and my sideways glance at my target morph into the way she had laughed while delivering what she hoped was a well-aimed aside during her speech. I became hyper-conscious of these similarities and monitored myself carefully for any newly acquired “her”-isms. I wondered if I were unintentionally beginning to affect some of her ways so began to double-check my actions for telltale signs of plagiarism. I went to the library and started to read the autobiographies of stalkers. I noticed that when I picked a book from the shelves, I held it at exactly the same angle that she had held her speech notes.
One night, looking at our wedding photographs with the video playing in the background, I turned to my husband and asked him if he ever wished he had married the woman in the video instead of me. He looked slightly bemused but, used to my oddities, said that he had the only wife he ever wanted, whoever she was. I considered this and then asked him if he thought that being married had changed me.
“Oh yes”, he said, and smiled at his wife, his beautiful bride who once wore a dress that she thought wouldn't fit, and for one day looked like the sort of woman I might want to be.
