Donna & Mossy's Wedding or, How I Managed to Make an Idiot of Myself While in a Lovely Dress

Donna looks on nervously as Lucy annunciates "lovers" for the fiftieth time in a one minute speech

I think, I think, I need to explain stuff here. About, hell, eight months ago, at one of our very frequent bridal party conferences (read: nights spent drinking excessively), Donna hiccoughed in between vodka shots: "Weeeell, I don't like this shit about all the men standing up and speaking at weddings. I'm not having that at my wedding. I'm going to make a short speech. And I'd really really like it if one of ye did too."

Being the hardlined feminazi that I am, I stood up and thumped the table, punched a wall and bellowed: HELLS YEAH! Only to realise immediately that I was the only one behaving thusly and the other two bridesmaids were blinking rapidly and feigning intense interest in their beermats. Fueled by intense female pride and agreement with this position on weddings and possibly also by the amount of wine I had consumed that evening, I said "Yes, Donna. I will do a speech. It will be amazing. It will be like Cameron Diaz in that movie where she is the worst sister ever and reads a poem at her sister's wedding at the end except less crappy. I may cry."

I'll save you the long story and give you the dets: on the day, I tanked. Seriously. As soon as Ronan, Mossy's brother and best man, introduced me, the whole wedding responded in a series of cheers and catcalls and whoops that could only be faithfully answered by a striptease and/or a vitriolic political diatribe, neither of which I was prepared to give, nor, I suspect, would have been welcome in the circumstances. This was due in no small part to my reputation amongst the wedding party as a seasoned idiot. Instead, I bumbled through the first three lines of my prepared "speech" (not prepared enough, watchers noted) until my garbled brain happened upon one of my "money lines"*, one of the "burn points"** essentially:

Donna and Mossy were friends first, friends always and now friends,
partners and lovers forever.

Okay. So, it wasn't hot shit. It was thrown together five hours previously inbetween my hair and makeup being done. Anyway, it has slight rhetorical resonance and I wasn't hugely ashamed of it. Until Donna's lovely husband, Mossy, piped up just after I said "partners-" with the word "LOVERS! BHAHAHAHAHA!"

The whole place wet itself. Now was not the time to explain that actually, yes, that's what I was about to say. So I did what any reasonably shy person does when finds themselves in a joke they didn't get in on at the top: I recognised the money-maker and I rode it like the donkey that it was.

I'm not proud of this. I said about five more sentences with the word 'lovers' in, purposefully, and even paused for a beat and waited for the audience to say it with me on one line. The place was in fits of ridiculous giggles and I was a dirty, dirty bridesmaid who can't speak for longer than fifteen seconds without drawing attention away from the bride and groom towards herself. I sat down, amid applause and shame and didn't look Donna in the eye for two hours, when I felt she was sufficently tipsy to not punch me.

So, yeah. Public speaking = not for me. Ditto bridesmaiding.

* & ** These are the euphemisms I employ to make me feel my writing has effect. I am frequently seen to be squealing "Yeah, fucking money line right there Luce!" when in fact I am writing shite. Now you know the truth.