Fake Flowers In My Hair

Speaking of marriage, it's January 1987 and my mother's getting married for the second time. What a bad year to get married. All the things that were wrong about the 80s had been gurgling away and seemed to reach their gaudy peak on that day. They got married in a garden. Someone's backyard. With geraniums and those horrid spiky flax plants and acres of close-shaved lawn. There was tragic garden furniture. White. Cast iron. There was a marriage celebrant with Dynasty hair and a turquoise frock. There was lasagna and West Coast Coolers at the reception.

The night before the wedding mum picked up her dress and my almost-step-dad saw it and said it was bloody awful and there's no way he'd marry her in that thing. The morning of the wedding we're in Grace Brothers riffling through the racks. "Can I help you? Something for a wedding? Today? Goodness. Who's wedding? Your wedding?". We chose a suit, black and white and tailored and inoffensive. Maybe we'll laugh about this ten years from now, someone said.

After the hairdressers we went home. It was summer, so we had to make sure the dogs had water before we left for the wedding. 35 degrees with a bucket full of water, weeds scratching at my legs, fake flowers in my hair, telling the dogs how strange and wrong the day felt.

Despite my mother telling me from birth that redheads shouldn't wear pink, there I was in a shade of marshmellow. Puffed sleeves. White sandals. White wicker basket full of fake flowers stabbed into oasis. Everything wrong about the 80s. In the photos, I'm yawning. My sister is looking up at the sky, squinting absently. As they signed the wedding certifcates someone hit Play on a big black casette player and awful soft rock rattled out of it. If by Bread. I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner. Babe by Styx. What kind of basis for a happy marriage is Styx?!!?