Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"Haha haha, he's just like you."
Not a quote, but in fact my wife's chortling comment after reaching the part where Adrian decides to walk home to save a few bucks rather than get a taxi whilst laden down with several boxes of freshly printed 'authentic hand-set type and letter press printed' wedding stationary. In my defence I am from Yorkshire, a county renowned for producing fiscally prudent individuals perhaps second only to Scotland in that particular respect. I'm not exactly sure whether Adrian's home state has the same reputation for parsimony, but I personally applaud his financial sensibilities nonetheless. Weddings are not cheap.
Actually after finishing reading, my wife did remark Adrian actually reminded her of me all the way through the book, and I heartily concur with that cheeky observation. From choosing a venue, to caterers, to music, to attire, to guest lists (particularly guest lists) I found myself nodding in agreement with Adrian, and in memory of my own travails. People who read this work will thus fall into two distinct camps: those who have been through the stress-inducing, blood-pressure-raising, three-ring circus that is otherwise known as getting married, and those who have not yet had that particular pleasure. Consequently whilst the force-ten farrago that ensues in the run up to the said 'big day' will be all too familiar to those of us in the former camp, however at least we've been through it and hopefully won't have to endure it again. Hopefully the rest of you will have to, I mean get to, experience all that it entails at some point...
Indeed literally every single page of this book brought back some teeth gritting memories regarding my own (well, to be precisely accurate my wife's) wedding preparations, and even Mr. and Mrs. Tomine's post-nuptial comments in their hotel room afterwards about not even getting chance to enjoy the delicious looking food served up to their guests rang all too true.
About the only thing we didn't seem to have had in common with our wedding preparations was having a priest of my wife's religion (Catholic) ever so politely point out my religion of choice (Buddhism) was regarded as a cult rather than a bona fide religion by the Catholic Church, and thus we wouldn't be able to have a full Catholic mass on the day in addition to our wedding ceremony. It would also be remiss of me not to point out I was absolutely delighted by that. I also like to think Adrian would have been equally amused / bemused had it happened to him.
And I'm also quite sure that every man who has been through the experience of preparing to get married has made exactly the same jokey comment Adrian makes to his fiancé on the prologue page of "Any chance you'd want to elope?" Sadly, he got met with the same response I did when I too asked that impertinent if somewhat hopeful question right at the beginning of proceedings... a rather stern stare.
