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Kate’s mother and sister to help make the choices and advised that it really was a good idea to go ‘a bit crazy’ when picking out the first five. So many brides came in with a fixed idea of what they wanted and were horrified at the thought of trying on anything else, but with Heidi’s ‘five-in-a-day’ plan, they were forced to consider the alternatives and quite often they went home with something they would have turned their nose up at had they seen it in a bridal magazine. Heidi said she saw it all the time.
    ‘Fact is,’ she told Kate, ‘very few people have a proper idea of what they really look like. They come in here wanting a column dress when they would look so much better in a fuller skirt. Most women look better in a fuller skirt. Hides a multitude of sins, a big skirt does.’
    Kate was sure that Heidi glanced at her thighs as she said that.
    ‘You a twelve to fourteen?’ Heidi asked.
    ‘Ten to twelve,’ Kate protested.
    ‘You sure? I think you’re on the larger side myself. Choose from the dresses in this section.’
    Twelve to fourteen.
    Kate decided she hated Heidi already.
    ‘Off you go.’
    Tess, who had been sitting on a velvet chaise longue while the instructions were issued, leaped into action. She was delighted to have been given a mandate to pick out something for her sister to try on. Elaine, too, seemed excited.
    ‘I don’t want strapless,’ Kate reminded them both, remembering how she and Tess had only recently roared with laughter at the bridal supplement of the local paper. Every bride in strapless, no matter whether they had arms like sticks or biceps like hams. Strapless was to the 2000s what the puffball sleeve had been to the 1980s, even if arguably it wasn’t quite so flattering.
    ‘We’ll find you something lovely,’ Tess promised.
    Tess and Elaine circled the room like two lionesses scouting out prey ahead of the pack. Kate took just one ring and advanced towards a rack of dresses as though she were approaching a rabid hyena. The other brides and their entourages were circling too. When the two other brides landed on the same dress at once, there was venom in their ‘After you’s. It happened several times. Each time, the bride who capitulated shot evil looks at the back of her competitor as the winner triumphantly placed her ring on the hanger. Kate supposed she could be thankful that shopping among the ‘larger’ rails meant she didn’t have to compete.
    Prior to entering Bride on Time, Kate’s criteria for a wedding dress had been simple. It just had to be simple. In the brief time since their engagement, she and Ian had selected Marylebone Register Office as the venue for the ceremony and booked a slot for early March, the earliest Saturday available. As the register office of choice for London’s glitterati ever since Mick and Bianca Jagger made it famous, it was hardly the place to turn up looking like a crocheted loo-roll cover. In fact, Kate hadn’t intended to shop for her wedding dress at a wedding specialist at all. She had, in her rare wedding daydreams, imagined a knee-length white dress by Azzedine Alaïa, with matching coat, nipped in at the waist. She wanted to look chic for the wedding and have half a chance of wearing the outfit again afterwards. Looking for a Cinderella frock in a size twelve to fourteen was a complete waste of time.
    But Kate was in Bride on Time because her mum needed cheering up, and what cheers the average woman up more quickly than the spectacle of thousands of Barbie-style frocks in one place? There was no harm in trying them on if it made her mum happy. It might even be a laugh. In that spirit, Kate finally placed her single blue plastic ring round the hanger of a dress so enormous a bear could have hidden beneath its skirts. The bodice was covered with big fabric flowers. The back was laced up with three different coloured ribbons. All in all it looked like something that even Katie Price might have declared a bit