‘I guess,’ he said after a while. His eyes focused out on the ocean, but his mind seemed to be somewhere completely different. Part of me wanted to ask him about it but something stopped me. I’d have liked to have said it was my professionalism – don’t get involved, don’t get personal – but sometimes you had to get personal. Marriage was a personal thing, it was full of emotions and sometimes those spilled out and it was up to me to try and contain them in a way that kept things on track. I’d worked for a corporate planning company before setting up on my own and I’d always felt as though there was something missing. One day, an hour before the ceremony, with a bride sobbing on my shoulder that she couldn’t do this because her mum wasn’t there to see her or hold her hand, I threw out the company rule book and the sensible, scripted responses I’d been taught and just talked to her, telling her that her mum would always be with her in her heart. That I understood it wasn’t the same, not even close, to having her here to see how beautiful her daughter looked, how proud she would have been to see this bright, funny, wonderful woman preparing to make a commitment to a man who supported her and believed in her as much as she had. And that, whether she chose to believe it or not, I believed that her mum was with her today. We’d both mopped up our tears, called in the make-up artist for emergency repairs and I’d watched as the woman walked up that aisle, still missing her mum, but with a sense of reassurance she hadn’t had before and that, if I’d stuck to the rule book, she still wouldn’t have. Sometimes rules had to be broken.

I’d handed in my resignation a week later, and set about building up my own company where I made my own decisions and my own rules. Every bride, every groom was different and therefore I tailored my approach individually, and my skills in the way I felt was best for each couple.