Mrs Cress

As soon as the ceremony is over the bride holds her arms above her head in mock triumph and we laugh. She's sweet and funny and herself all evening. She wears a knee-length dress, red, red lipstick and on her head is a large jumbled nest of cream tulle which seems to be home to various other bits and bobs. It's high and striking and perfect. There should be more brides like that.

There's a bedouin tent on the side of a mountain, and a bar in the studio where we can all paint on a canvas while waiting for a drink. By the end of the night most people have paint on their faces. There are people from London and Melbourne and Grenfell and Sydney and they're on the dance floor, all of them. There's no room for big moves, certainly not enough for the Madonna squat from the Hung Up clip, but we try it anyway. I start dancing with an older woman and after a while she begs off saying:....I'm, I'm...just going to find...my husband.

At the end of each set waiters bring around trays of cock-sucking cowboys and the mother of the bride laughs. "It's our favourite family drink," she says as she grabs a few and hands them round to her friends.

Later I'm standing behind a man at the buffet queue and without looking he thrusts a plate back at me and says: hold this. He starts furiously carving ham, automatically I move the plate closer and he piles it on. When he stops I push the plate towards him, he looks at me and says: oh, I thought you were my wife.

I'm wearing flat shoes and at the end of the night my friend makes me swap into her heels because her feet are sore from dancing and we have to walk back down the dark path to get the bus home. She falls into a ditch in my flats and sprains her ankle. I tell her to get up and keep walking.