You are cordially invited… To Bob’s wedding.

Weddings. I am no fan of such things unless all I have to do is turn up, watch everyone else drink themselves stupid and then go home. This time would be different, this time I was involved. This time there would be a speech and duties. Bob had mistakenly chosen me as his best man.

Initially I thought: The fool! – I shall make him regret every second of our friendship with my best man speech! Then I forgot all about it, until last week- a week before the wedding. Its ok I figured, I will sit down for a couple of hours and bang out a three page lecture on Bob’s failings. There are so many that I figured it would be a doddle. Except it wasn’t.

If you happen to have written a best man speech you may know of the problem I refer to – namely that you have to think of enough content to not be droning on and be funny to everyone in the room. Not just to the one or two tables of mates who will get all the ‘in’ jokes. Also it wouldn’t do to insult her family, or the older members of his family who still think I am an angel.

Then he made it worse for me, not only is the new Mrs Wills already an MOD (That’s Ministry of Defence to you colonials and savages) Police officer – a lot of her friends are too. Some of them are proper police officers as well, the kinds that probably don’t take kindly to any activities on the fringe of legality. The lead bridesmaid was not only black, not only a copper but also from London…

AND Mrs Wills is a dog handler, AND trained in firearms use - a sniper no less.

This was suddenly less fun than I had expected. Come to think of it, embarrassing Bob had never been harder. Lucky for me he is so good at embarrassing himself.

The wedding day itself: - As I was the Best Man I would be heavily involved in the day’s proceedings. This required me to wear what can only be described as a penguin Suit, and one of those silly flower thingies that kept going in my mouth every time I turned left. This I can assure you is bothersome, but not nearly as bothersome as when you push it out of your mouth only to find your hand impaled on the pin holding it inches from your face.

The wedding started in the early afternoon, giving us plenty of time to get the car decorated, have a decent breakfast and get sufficiently suited and booted. Bob had stayed the night at ours, it’s supposed to be bad luck if the groom sees the bride you know and with Bobs face they would need all the luck they could get.

He had started the day commendably calm, and had stayed that way right up until the suit went on… Then he started to look worse for wear. He started to get fidgety, and insisted we be even earlier than we had planned. He also made the mistake of asking if I was nervous, I told him it’s his funeral not mine – all I had to do was not lose the ring and stand around looking happy for the day. This - it seems - did not make him any calmer. Neither did taking the wrong turn on the way to the venue, which was only a couple of miles away from my home.

Predictably we arrived very early, not quite as early as the small gaggle of friends of the bride who Bob did not know however. There proceeded to be a half hour or so of awkward milling around – Bob didn't know these friends and I was too busy pretending they did not exist.

Mostly because we were very early Bob had much more time to get more worked up, we had beaten the Registrar to the venue and her absence was causing a massive amount of concern for Bob. I said she had probably got lost, and couldn’t call because neither of us had our mobiles on us. I found it pretty funny, Bob not so much so. None the less, a fortunate distraction was provided for me in the form of other guests arriving – ones I did know.

On to the ceremony itself, there we were – all stood in our Sunday best waiting for the bride to walk up the aisle. Bob started blubbering almost immediately, I started to giggle. I had the forethought to get a couple of packets of tissues; Bob was half way through the first before they started the ‘I Do’ speech.

I had to hold my hand over my face and pretend to cry, got lots of sympathetic looks from the Bride’s family and bridesmaids though.  Thinking back I cannot actually remember what I found so funny, but by the time I had to give them the rings I was shaking with laughter.

Thankfully I managed to stay quiet throughout the whole thing, I don’t think anyone noticed.

After the ceremony there were lots of photos taken by the professional photographers, and it was now I realised that stood next to each other there was a small height difference between me and… everyone. Between me and Bob there must have been at least a foot of difference, Bob’s family are all tall and so is hers. I have already seen some of the photos and I do not look quite as I had hoped. Plus one or two of them seem to have been altered in Photoshop, and I suddenly have several chins.

For the meal a starter of Butternut squash was available, followed by Salmon and new potatoes and Raspberry cake of some kind to follow. Bob had assured me he was well aware of how l did not like anything but the pudding on the menu, and he had already sorted it out. I watched the table in front of me get served chicken nuggets and chips for a child and thought, well done Bob - that is obviously what I will get. It was about then that I realised the waitress in front of me had been trying to get my attention for a little while. “Are you the vegetarian Sir?” She asked, (Bear in mind the only vegetable I eat is potato) “Err, no” I said, gesturing to my rotund figure. There was a moment of hesitation where she repeated the question, before I could reply and ask for chicken nuggets Bob cut in and said the vegetarian dish is for me – it was my specially ordered dish. I was still sat wondering what vegetarian could be code word for when a vegetable pasty turned up in front of me. It had a Chilli dip, and a lot of vegetables. I was not impressed.

Following the food were the speeches, one from the Bride’s father, one from Bob and one from me. The Bride’s father had forgotten his speech, and had to read it from a mobile phone, Bob literally cried his way through his but the recurring theme in both of them was that they were both longer than two paragraphs.

I managed to make some stuff up on the trot, and stretch my measly speech out to almost 60 seconds – I thought I did rather well on the whole. No swearing, no racism, some laughter and even one mildly touchy feely bit that made me heave a little.

Has anyone tried those silly Chinese lanterns before? I hadn’t but Bob had some to release for the wedding, 50 in all.

I can think of no use for these other than random flying incendiary bombs with no targeting system. I am fairly certain a couple of miles from here the fires started by these things are still burning.

There was a disco afterwards, and much more importantly I was not the only one to have suffered at dinner. A runner was dispatched (By car, we didn’t want cold food) to McDonalds under cover of the disco. An hour later we were eating McDonalds out the back of the building like desperate crack fiends.

All in all it was a very nice day, but far, far too much trouble for me to be going through this mess myself one day. Something tells me I won’t find it nearly so funny if I were the one being imprisoned.