Weddings have become much more fashionable recently in celebrity circles. It used to be un-hip to tie the knot, but now everyone from Pink to Peaches and Liam Gallagher to Tom Cruise has got married. Even Cheryl Cole is standing by her footballer husband, despite his alleged affairs.
The British wedding market is worth £7.5billion a year and the average bride spends between £21,000 and £25,000 on her big day. Celebrities, of course, spend a lot more.
While there are plenty of fixers around the country who can put together a good bash, once you break the £150,000 barrier, the bride tends to look towards London for advice.
Stand by your man: Cheryl Tweedy and fiancé Ashley Cole just before their marriage in July 2006
There, the air is rarefied and populated by the likes of Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, who organised Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly's wedding, or the legendary Lady Elizabeth Anson, who has been planning the parties of the rich and famous for more than 40 years.
We at Penrose are somewhere in the middle. We've planned weddings costing £30,000 and five-day celebrations for £2million. Our fee is 20 per cent of the total cost. There are four of us in a first-floor office in South Kensington. Bernard is in charge and I am his number two.
Bernard has been a wedding planner for 20 years. There isn't a lion tamer, elephant handler, pyrotechnic practitioner or ice sculptor whose details he doesn't have in his Rolodex.
Today we have our new client, Keeley, the footballer's wife-to-be, coming in. All celebrities, no matter how Kate Winslet bangers-and-mash low-key they say they want their wedding to be, always manage to take over - and go over the top.
They're weather vanes to fashion. Victoria and David had their wedding dinner à deux - with Brooklyn next to them in a matching crib - because that's what Mel B and Jimmy Gulzar did.
There was no top table, just a table for two and a couple of matching thrones. Not conducive to a night of jolly conversation - but when you spend most of your reception posing for photos for a reputed £1million magazine deal, the dinner is not that important.
The caterer we use says celebrity weddings bring him out in hives. Firstly, no one eats because they are anorexic, bulimic or on drugs. Secondly, you never manage to serve dinner properly. At the last celebrity wedding he did, the guests had to wait two-and-a-half hours while the couple were photographed.
Keeley arrives looking like a symphony of honey: honey-coloured hair, honey-coloured skin, honey-coloured Juicy Couture tracksuit. She has a socking great Fox's Glacier Mint on her left hand, which appears to be the same size as the diamonds in each ear.
'It's lovely to have you here at Penrose,' says Bernard. 'First things first. Do you have a magazine deal? Is it one of those exclusives where we have to keep everything a secret and spend most of our time running away from the Press?'
'Well, I'm not sure at the moment,' Keeley says. 'My agent is talking to a few people.'
'Would you like a piece of advice?' Bernard asks. 'Don't.'
'Oh,' she says. This is clearly not what she wants to hear.
Bernard then explains that on the announcement of the engagement, offers come in. Sometimes magazines will call in favours, saying: 'Remember the topless photos of you that we bought to keep off the market? Well, it's payback time.'
In the pink: Jordan and Peter Andre's 'circus horses' at their wedding in 2005
The more famous you are, the more control you have. If you don't command many headlines, then you may as well sell your soul down the river. Not only can magazines tell you what to wear and what the theme will be, but they issue edicts such as: 'No black, no red, no cameras, no mobiles.'
If you are short of famous friends, magazines invite their own guests to make your wedding look more showbiz. Out goes plump cousin Lucy in her mint dress, and in comes Brenda from Emmerdale. Suddenly the likes of Bonnie Langford creep into your family albums.
The strangest bridesmaids turn up at star-studded events - how else did Martine McCutcheon end up at Liza Minnelli's side when she was marrying David Gest at their seven-figure-deal, ten-page-spread wedding?
'So,' says Bernard, 'if you don't have to sell your big day, don't.
'Although the money's not to be sniffed at. In the old days the most you'd get was £400,000, which is what Emma Noble and James Major managed to pocket for their wedding.
'But Posh and Becks broke the barrier. They got a million. Catherine Zeta and Dinosaur Douglas got a million as well. Wayne and Coleen got £2.5million.'
'But their wedding set them back just under £5million,' I say. 'She spent £85,000 on trips to New York for dress fittings.'
'And the dress was £200,000,' adds Bernard. 'And Westlife [the wedding band] were another £400,000.'
'Look, Keith's on more than £90,000 a week, so we really don't need the cash,' says Keeley. 'I just thought it would be nice.'
'Trust me - it will be nicer without,' smiles Bernard. 'So, do you have any ideas that you'd like to share first?'
'We were thinking abroad is nice,' says Keeley. 'Like David and Victoria.'
'So, Luttrellstown Castle, Phoenix Park in Dublin?' says Bernard, jotting it down. 'How many people?'
You would be amazed at how many people invite celebrities to their weddings rather than real friends. Much like everyone who has ever met Elton John asks him to be their child's godfather, so anyone who has even so much as sat next to a celeb invites them to their wedding. Who wants Uncle Jim there if you can have Denise Van Outen instead?
But inviting people you don't know never makes for a good party.
We organised a wedding for a Russian oligarch a few months ago. There were 180 guests and we had an unlimited budget. There was enough vodka to drown a small Greek island and enough caviar to sink the QE2. We'd had the centrepieces made by Aynsley China in Stoke-on-Trent and there was a £60,000 floral bridal arch.
The Cristal champagne flowed, but the conversation was dead. No one knew anyone. They were all the bride's father's business associates. It was a damp squib of a party.
'Food?' Bernard asks Keeley. 'What's your favourite meal?'
'Oh, it's got to be Christmas dinner with all the trimmings,' she replies.
Bernard winces. What is it with WAGs that they all love Christmas dinner so much? Maybe it's the only dinner they allow themselves to eat.
We know the guys who did Posh and Becks' wedding. She wanted roast turkey for 250, which is impossible to do in a marquee without the meat tasting like old slippers.
Eventually they plumped for guinea fowl. They took some persuading on the guinea fowl, as neither of them knew what it was. It wasn't until the tasting when Victoria pronounced it 'just like chicken' that it got the go-ahead.
Keeley is disappointed, but Bernard consoles her by saying Christmas dinner is perhaps not the best supper to be serving at the beginning of July.
'No one wants to dance with a bellyful of food,' he adds. 'I presume you want dancing?'
'And a band,' she says. 'How much do you think for Take That?'
'I'm not sure,' says Bernard. 'Elton and Rod are a million each. Robbie is the same. You can get Girls Aloud for about half of that, but I would guess Take That are up there with Elton and Robbie. Anything else?'
'A white carriage with four white horses with plumes,' she enthuses.
'Plumes are for funerals and circuses,' says Bernard, without looking up. 'You'll be a laughing stock.
'Animals are just another thing that can go wrong. One poor bride I know was two hours late for the church. The horse had bolted and ditched the driver, and she ended up going round in circles on Clapham Common.'
'And if you arrive riding on one horse you end up looking like Lady Godiva,' I say.
'Or worse still, Trudie Styler,' says Bernard, rolling his eyes. 'Who can forget her smug mug on the back of a horse being led around by Sting as if she was on a donkey on Blackpool beach?'
If Keeley wants her wedding to appear in the Press, she needs us to help her get it right, otherwise she'll face endless derision from journalists.
It took five years for the style Press to stop smirking over the Beckhams' wedding. Jordan will be for ever cast in pink and Peter Andre is the man in the white suit.
Doing it well can bring huge rewards. Coleen and Wayne Rooney's wedding was surprisingly well done: she looked fabulous and the venue was beautiful. By the end of the day, a style queen was born.
'You're right,' Keeley says. 'Keith and I will have a chat about it, and I'm due in again on Thursday, right?'
'Correct.' 'Excellent,' she says, getting up and smoothing down her tracksuit over her perfect backside.
She sweetly shakes everyone's hand. As the door closes behind her, Bernard lets out a loud yawn.
'Anyone fancy a drink?' he sighs.
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By
Imogen Edwards-jones and
Anonymous
