Since November 2009Author Article: Julia Williams
Posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 by Chloe
I have been lucky enough to read an ARC of Julia Williams’ new book The Bridesmaid Pact and it is an absolutely brilliant read. Julia offered to write us an article about weddings to post this week as it’s the release of her book, and it’s a great read too. I really hope you all enjoy the book, it’s a lovely one to sit back with in the sun and immerse yourself in, but until you can read that, enjoy Julia’s fantastic article, and our thanks go to Julia for taking the time write this for us!
“The Bridesmaid Pact is the story of four friends who make a promise to be each other’s bridesmaids when they grow up, only for things not to turn out quite according to plan…
When I was asked by my editor to write a book about weddings, it seemed a little bit of a tall order. I’ve been married for over twenty years now, and so have most of my friends. Long gone are the days when every weekend seemed to be being spent trogging up and down the country to various sets of nuptials. The years in between have been busy domestic ones, could I even summon up the memory of how it felt to be a bride on her special day?
To help me in my endeavours, I did start thinking back to my own wedding - while realising that some things have moved on since 1989 ), some things inevitably remain the same. There will, undoubtedly be stress. There will at some point be tears. There will be even in the most functional of families moments of strife and disunity. But generally speaking things come together on the big day, and everyone (particularly the bride and groom) has a blast…
So my first point of call was tapping back into the things that went both wrong and right on my own wedding day. My first major crisis came two months before the big day, when the woman running the hotel we’d booked for the reception ran off with the cook, and had to sell up a week before the wedding. Oh the trauma of that discovery, and the subsequent frantic phone calls to my mother (I was inconveniently based in London, while getting married in Shropshire. Long distance weddings. Don’t do it, girls!)
Then there was the wedding rings cock up. My husband and I, not being in the habit of buying rings on a regular basis, naively thought we could get the rings we’d ordered a fortnight before the wedding, sized in our local jewellers. Wrong. Of course they had to be sent off to the manufacturers.
“We can have them back in a fortnight,” said the cheery girl behind the counter.
“Oh,” we said weakly, “we’re getting married in a fortnight.”
Luckily, they had an emergency service, so we were promised them within a week.
A week before the wedding, I promptly turned up to pick up the rings. They weren’t there.
“They’ll be in on Monday,” I was assured.
Monday came and went, no rings. By Wednesday they still hadn’t arrived, and my husband and I were becoming frantic.
“Why not try the jeweller in the High Street?” suggested my mum.
The jeweller in the High Street wasn’t able to sell us any rings, but promised we could borrow some if we got stuck. “We can’t have you going up the aisle, naked, m’dear,” were his parting words.
So that’s in the end, what we did.
Some, but not all of these details have slipped into The Bridesmaid Pact, as well as some of the good stuff too. Mrs Trim, who sorts out Doris’ flowers is inspired by the lovely old lady who lived halfway up a hill in Shropshire and made me the most gorgeous bouquet of gold roses. And I hope I have managed to capture some of the dizzying joy I experienced on my own wedding day.
The thing about getting married, it seems to me is that you are not only embarking on your (you hope) lifelong journey with your partner, but the lead up to the marriage can be a journey in itself. So The Bridesmaid Pact is very much the story of the individual journey each of the characters’ takes, both towards their wedding day and beyond. For all of them, the wedding itself isn’t the end it’s the beginning, and for some of them it’s a long path to the happiness they deserve.
In the end I was surprised at how much of my own experience of getting married and going to weddings, flowed out of me, once I got going. But like I say, while 21st weddings have moved on, some things never change.
Boy meets girl, Boy gets married to girl. All sorts of things can happen…
And that’s a gift to a writer.”
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Laura Elliot’s debut novel A Prodigal Sister was released last year and I managed to pick it up at the book swop some months ago. I have yet to read it but it does sound fab so I will get around to it eventually. Laura’s next book called Stolen Child will be published on 22nd July 2010. It sounds like a fantastic read - one fans of Jodi Picoult, Diane Chamberlain and Giselle Green will adore and I must say I’m really looking forward to it. Here’s the synopsis:
Author Sarah Pekkanen has signed a new 2 book deal with her publishers. Apparently, the books are going to be follow ups to Sarah’s popular book The Opposite of Me so we can look forward to those!
