I was still feeling remarkably cool and without nerves even at this late stage of proceedings. There were plenty of heavy indications that I was about to get married: arrival of overseas relatives, transporting dresses and cakes, staying in a hotel and having a stag night, but it still wasn't really sinking in that this was a real thing. If this was just an enormous game of chicken then I was not going to be the one to blink.
The stag night started at 2, which caused my family to express concern that I was not going to turn up at the registry office in the best state tomorrow (if at all - I might still be tied to a lamp post after all), but I was fairly confident that my middle-aged friends would not be capable of painting the town any colour at all. Even with our combined strength I didn't think we'd be capable of prising the lid off the paint tin. And even if we did we'd find we'd accidentally bought grey paint.
Both me and my bride were staying in the hotel we'd have our reception in tomorrow, though obviously in different rooms (no cohabiting until we were wed) and once the evening came we were going to have to be careful not to bump into each other, as both of us are deeply superstitious and any chance meeting would bring bad fortune on our union. I had said goodbye to her at our flat, as she was driving in with her family and I was getting the train, but I did see her again at the hotel when we went to check out the room we were having the reception in. Whilst I was getting drunk and getting lap dances off of strippers (as I was almost certain would be secretly happening even though I had explicitly asked for it not to), she and her mum and her maid of honour were going to be afixing Ferrero Rocher chocolates (that they had already unwrapped and then covered in edible gold leaf) on to our wedding cake. This was another benefit of having the stag night the day before - I got to avoid last minute preparations.
I hadn't expected to see her, though it was still too early for it to be bad luck - fate is a stickler for only working the hours he has been put down for that day and if he wasn't on the clock we weren't going to be cursed) and she was a bit surprised too. She was eating a Starbucks tuna melt. I kissed her goodbye, our last kiss of our unmarried lives. She had a mouthful of tuna. It wasn't the greatest kiss of our life, but I wondered if she'd worked it this way so that the first kiss of our married life would, by comparison, be amazing. "Wow, she doesn't even taste of fish." But poignant to realise that we'd never kiss again as unmarried people. Because if she didn't turn up tomorrow then I don't think I'd be kissing her any time soon. And then at least I could console myself with the fact that as far as I recalled she tasted of fish anyway.
Let's draw a veil over most of the stag night: there are some things that you just don't need to know about and that must be kept secret from my bride. Mainly, if I am honest, because they are just embarrassingly dull. I did think in the first half an hour that things might get a bit out of control. There were 13 of us in all (an apt number given it was Good Friday and my previous attempts to compare myself to Jesus) and we started by going to a wine bar and a few bottles were bought and my glass surreptitiously refilled a few times, but I managed to limit consumption of alcohol and keep on the straight and narrow. We got a boat to Woolwich Arsenal and went to an artillery museum. I have never expressed an interest in weaponry so don't know why they took me here, but think the big erect guns might have been intended as a symbol of something: probably of my diminishing virility, those guns mocking me in their permanent rigidity. But no one else was in the museum - they had kindly stayed open for us as we were a little late and it was fun to be with my best friends from school and University and Paul Putner (seemingly the only new friend I have made in the last 25 years).
We then went for a curry, where I was so full after our mixed grill starter that I got the meat sweats and then on to a casino where we all lost money (my favoured number of 17 didn't come up all night and according to the electronic board on our table was the coldest number having not appeared for well over 100 spins even when we started). I had a vodka martini, but left it at that. I had survived the night unscathed and headed back to my hotel room with my best man for one last night cap and to construct our own Ferrero Rocher pyramid for my groom's speech. There were no strippers and no shennanighans. I don't think I even spoke to a woman on the whole night, which is very poor behaviour for the last day of bachelorhood. But exactly what I wanted.
None of it seemed real and I fell asleep fairly easily, still unable to process what was about to become of me.
