A Groom With a View by Sophie Ranald Page A

capacity as Best Woman and stop me having a rush of blood to the head and saying I want blue and white stripes on everything to match the QPR strip, or something?
    No bother if you can’t make it, but I’ll be pathetically grateful if you can!
    Nick x
    “But there must be a particular style you had in mind,” Katharine said, sipping her latte. I hoped she wasn’t regretting her kind offer to take an afternoon off work to come wedding dress-shopping – so far she had managed to elicit very little meaningful information from me.
    “I don’t know!” I squirmed in my chair. “It’s so difficult. All the dresses I’ve seen in magazines and on Pinterest are so. . . I don’t know. Bridal .”
    “But Pippa, you’re going to be a bride! What kind of dress do you expect to wear? Business casual? Sexy zombie?”
    I laughed. “I know, I’m being stupid. I suppose I never imagined needing to buy a wedding dress. Until recently I thought that if I ever got married – which we weren’t going to, remember – I’d be in my jeans down the pub or maybe in a bikini on a beach somewhere. But I don’t think that would go down so well at Brocklebury Manor. Maybe when I see The One, I’ll know.”
    “If only you had a bit more time, we could have gone for something bespoke,” Katharine sighed. “But it is what it is. You’ll find something gorgeous, just you wait and see. And they’re very good on trend-led stuff at Bliss Bridal, they won’t put you in a meringue. Now, we’d better get going, our appointment is in twenty minutes.”
    Call me naive, but I genuinely hadn’t realised that you had to make an appointment to try on wedding dresses, as if you were viewing a house or something. I’d assumed you just turned up at a shop, tried stuff on, and if you saw something you liked, you bought it. Like, you know, buying a dress. But Katharine soon set me straight when I called her to request moral support. She’d also given me a stern talking-to about how I must make sure to wear a strapless bra and nude-coloured pants, do my makeup and put my hair up, and then she’d secured us an appointment to view. . . sorry, try on dresses at Bliss Bridal.
    “They’ve got a really good range of off-the-peg styles and they do super-fast alterations,” Katharine went on, as we hurried down South Molton Street. “My friend Linda got her dress from there and she’s five foot eleven and a size six so she really struggles to find clothes that fit. You’re a much easier shape.”
    I found it hard to summon up any sympathy for Linda, because frankly hers was a first-world problem if ever there was one. All my life I’ve struggled with jeans that make my arse look the size of Belgium, tops that look fine on the hanger but reveal an indecent amount of cleavage on me, and skirts that are supposed to be elegantly on-the-knee but hit me unflatteringly at the widest part of my calves. Which is why my fashion purchases are sparse at best and tend to centre around nail polish and shoes.
    “Here we are.” Katharine pushed open the heavy glass door, which had an ornamental gold handle shaped like a B. It was like walking into a posh hotel – there was a vast, glittering chandelier, acres of marble tiles and gold brocade chaise-longues dotted about. And wedding dresses, of course. Loads of them, in heavy plastic covers on rails and on an assortment of uniformly tall, thin mannequins.
    Katharine accosted a tall, thin woman in a tailored black dress. “Hello, we’ve got an appointment for Pippa Martin.”
    “Let me see.” She swiped her tablet to life and tapped the screen. “Yes, we’re expecting you. Welcome to Bliss Bridal! Chelsea is your consultant today. If you’d like to come over here and have a seat, I’ll get you a glass of sparkling wine and let her know you’re here.”
    We sat for a bit and watched as girls, accompanied by the sales assistants – sorry, consultants – and their mums or their friends, approached the