Mystified Bride

The First Time

2007-03-13T09:14:00.000Z

The first time ever was somewhat of an anticlimax. Of course, it is for most people...the first shy fumblings in the dark can never match up to the illicit thrill we got from the real life confessions and frankly unmanageable tips in more! magazine. But my first time really was an anticlimax, because I had deprived myself of the one thing that makes all girls' first times worthwhile. I couldn't speak to my friends about it.

This was not because my friends were devout catholics, or worrying 'True Love Waits' teenagers. It wasn't because I was ashamed, or embarrassed, or I thought I'd done it wrong. It was simply because I had been telling them for over a year that I'd already done it. A family friend, I told them, helpfully living far enough away that they would never meet, but close enought that my family could conceivably go and visit his parents all the time.

What a lover he was, this 'family friend' who actually lived nowhere but in my imagination. For months I wowed my friends with stories, always tailored to my audience...the bed covered in rose petals for the romantics, the stolen bottles of champagne for the party girls, and, worst of all, the stories that make me cringe to this day - for the more curious of my friends, the intimate sexual details, all of course gleaned from the only source I had. Yes, more! magazine again.

Whoever heard of a fourteen year old boy with a ten inch penis? But they lapped up my stories, and for the first time in my school career I stopped feeling like the awkward geek in the corner, and started to blossom as a cool, experienced leader.

So when it finally happened, in a cold, dark bedroom at a particularly boring party, with a slightly chubby boy from the year below me in school, I immediately thought 'Thank God that's over with'. Swiftly followed by 'Who on earth can I talk to about this?'.

I can't even remember the event itself, perhaps because these things are only cemented in your mind with the retelling and the reliving. I remember sitting on his bed, having just been introduced to him by a mutual friend. He seemed as desperate to get it over with as I was. And in a sharp, slightly uncomfortable instant, it was.

I remember gathering up my things and going back to the party, carrying on as if nothing of any importance had happened. That was it. my monumental step from childhood into adulthood. Less than five minutes in a grubby teenage boy's bedroom.

I had never felt cooler. Or wanted to cry more.

The Best Laid Plans...

2007-03-09T17:42:00.000Z

Please don't think that this is going to be a depressing blog-from-hell. It's not. Well, sometimes it might be, but the point is its going to be real. It's going to be honest. And sometimes - you never know - it might even be funny.

It's not going to be all about the wedding either. You will get to share the planning with me (you lucky, lucky thing!), but planning has so far been conspicuous by its absence. I have far more serious things to worry about in the short term. Like the fact that I seem to have almost every debt agency in the UK chasing after me for one thing or another, while Prince, in complete oblivion, is discussing whether we should get a mortgage now or next year. Er...I got rejected for a mobile phone contract recently as a result of my credit rating. Mortgage? Eek.

Basically, this is a chronicle of the year in my life when I'm going to put everything right. Do you think that's too ambitious? By the time I get married next May, I want to have cleared up my credit rating, bought a house, got a decent job, exorcised my demons from the past and lost the three stone that I've gained from the excesses of the last three years.

Piece of (wedding) cake.

The Beginning

2007-03-09T16:10:00.000Z

At the age of fifteen, I was running away from home and hiding at my twenty-five year old boyfriend's house.

At eighteen, I was engaged to a man I didn't love, and sleeping with a man I thought I did.

At twenty, I had an ex boyfriend arrested.

By twenty three, I had had three abortions.

Until you know me better, please don't judge me. I'll tell you more about all that later. For now, this blog is about new beginnings.

In May next year I will be marrying the love of my life. A kind, intelligent, caring man - my Prince.

He doesn't know everything about me, but he knows a lot more than anyone else. And he loves me regardless.

From now on, I am going to do him justice.