‘My wedding day was a disaster’
When Meghan Markle stepped into St George's Chapel in May, I keenly recalled the run-up to my big day three years ago, when a litany of mishaps threatened to overshadow my own walk down the aisle.
Our wedding, overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean near Tel Aviv, should have been the most picturesque moment of my life. It was small, a select group of friends and family flying to Israel to be with us on what I hoped would be a perfect day.
The first fissures to appear were literal, if not life-threatening. Two days before the wedding, my fake tan began to crack, leaving white patches on my arms and chest. My fiancé and I ended up spending the night scrubbing my body with lemons and baking soda to get it off.
The next day, I woke to a call from my brother saying that his flight – which was also carrying close friends and family – had been turned around in mid-air because of technical difficulties. The next available flight would mean they might not make it in time for the ceremony.
I spent 24 hours on tenterhooks. If they hadn't made it, I'd have been devastated, and it was only when he called saying they'd landed that I could breathe a sigh of relief.
The morning of our wedding finally arrived. I'd planned to spend those precious, emotional hours with family and friends, but instead I found myself racing around the hotel in my wedding dress battling one mini-crisis after another. First, I discovered that a close family member's name was misspelt at the top of the beautifully hand-written seating chart. Sitting in my Vera Wang dress, I cobbled together a correct version on a laptop and hastily printed it out at the front desk.
The hotel then casually told me that there wouldn't be enough seats for everyone during the ceremony – a problem that proved unfixable. To cap it all, my bouquet went missing (although in the chaos, I didn't notice until I was halfway down the aisle).
Those quiet hours I'd hoped for shrank to a few minutes, which I spent trying to relax in the honeymoon suite. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. When I answered, I expected to see my father arriving to escort me downstairs. Instead, it was a hotel manager telling me to evacuate as there was a gas leak. By some small miracle the suite was in a different part of the resort to the ceremony, so that could go ahead as planned.
It was far from the perfect day I had dreamt of, but as I stood beside my fiancé, I was giddy with excitement. The setting was gorgeous; it couldn't have provided a more perfect backdrop for our first moments together as husband and wife.
It was only after I took my place beneath the silk-draped canopy that I noticed the intensity of the midday sun. For a moment, standing there in my corseted gown, I worried I might faint, but a light breeze came up and provided a welcome respite. The weather, I remember thinking, was the only thing that had gone right.
But then the wind picked up, just enough to begin rocking the canopy back and forth. Suddenly it swayed a fraction too far and collapsed on to our wedding guests. I thought for one awful moment that it might have knocked people out – or worse – but thankfully, the worst injuries anyone suffered were cuts and bruises.
Only my now-husband's hand clasping mine prevented me from running off and finding a corner in which to sob. Instead, we raced through the rest of the ceremony, and quickly moved on to the reception.
At the time, I was devastated. But my husband and I can now see the funny side. After all, the point of a wedding isn't to create that perfect Instagram moment but to mark the beginning of your journey together as a married couple. Still, it'll be a few years yet before we'll be brave enough to renew our vows.
This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale August 12.