They’d written their own, of course, and they were terribly sweet and terribly sincere and—this probably makes me a horrible human being—I forgot them the moment I heard them. Then again, they weren’t supposed to be meaningful to me; they were supposed to be meaningful to Tom and Bridge. Oliver arrived about halfway through, got stuck in the entrance with the bridal party because of the mega-train and, being a far better person than me, took the whole situation impeccably and even seemed to find the vows genuinely moving. After the vows came the rings, ably presented by Tom’s best-man-slash-brother Mike who, unlike the rest of the male guests, had chosen to rock a rose-gold suit and was kind of putting the rest of us to shame.

“And so,” concluded Judy, “by the power vested in me by absolutely no bugger, I declare you a legally nonbinding man and wife. You may kiss the bride if you want to be disgustingly American about the whole thing.”

To nobody’s surprise they did, in fact, want to be disgustingly American about the whole thing. I glanced sideways and saw Oliver wiping a tear from his eye, which was unfair because he wasn’t as close to Bridge as I was and had never slept with Tom. At least I assumed he hadn’t. And to my shock and happiness, my brain didn’t vanish down a rabbit hole of wondering who Oliver had slept with before we’d started dating, and instead agreed to carry on being genuinely happy for Tom and Bridge in a really straightforward way. It was almost disorienting to have a positive feeling that didn’t dredge up a single insecurity or neurosis, but I suppose all the Tom-vanishing, church-burning, dress-losing chaos had worn that part of my psyche down. Which just left the part that liked Bridge and Tom and was glad they were married now.

The happy couple turned to face their guests and were about to make a joyful procession out of the walled garden when they ran into the train issue. It was taking up the entire aisle, had already made a good attempt at wrapping itself around Bridge’s legs as she turned, and was currently dragging through the crowd in quite an ominous way.

“If everyone could stand back,” I tried, “I think we’re going to have to…gather and swing. Bride’s family, please keep your heads down.”

It wasn’t the most dignified exit in the history of matrimony, especially because a small swarm of overenthusiastic page boys and flower girls insisted on showering us all with confetti while we tried to do the sartorial equivalent of turning an eighteen-wheel van in a residential street.