Nobody Wants To Know Him

LV - Love

January 1974
Liverpool, England

Life as someone who was now engaged had, realistically, not changed as drastically as I thought it would've done. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Both John and I would go about our days as usual, except now I could say that he was my fiancé rather than my boyfriend.

The ring he had bought was gorgeous. It was nothing too flashy, but it was strikingly elegant, thin gold with a few diamonds encrusted down the side. John wasn't the type of man who would've known what sort of thing to get, but I wasn't surprised to hear from him how much he had stressed over it. I also heard from him, later, that he had enlisted his friend May to help him pick one out, which was so very like John.

We told my parents a few days after he has proposed when we went to see them for supper one evening, and they were absolutely ecstatic. My mother in particular adored John and was, unsurprisingly, over the moon that we were now engaged. My father had been a bit more subdued in his joy, warmly congratulating the both of us, and Nancy had continually asked questions about stuff we hadn't even thought about planning yet.

Mimi was told after, and John insisted we go and visit her at Mendips for supper to inform her in person. I had thought that I had won over Mimi's heart after the first time I met her, and that was clear by her reaction. Of course, being John's aunt, her reaction had to be memorable. Her surprise was extremely evident, and the comments she made were subtle jabs targeted at me which I didn't take to heart since I had since then learnt of Mimi's nature.

Before we left Mimi's house, she pulled me over to the side out of John's earshot. She, with a soft tone and gentle expression which I had never seen from her before, told me how much she appreciated the way I've made her nephew happy. She made me promise, once again, that I take care of him, and I ensured her, once again, that I would, without a doubt.

As for Charlie, he had come down from university for the Christmas season, and over dinner one foggy day in December, he found out that John and I were to be married. He was, naturally, extremely excited, but did confess that he wasn't all that surprised after we told him we had news.

After a lot of debate, we decided the wedding would be at the end of July. Both John and I got stuck into wedding planning, and for that I was glad, because if he hadn't been as involved as he insisted on being, I wasn't sure I'd be able to plan everything.

The sheer amount of everything we had to plan had surprised me. Honestly, I had never really taken into consideration everything that needed to be sorted out, and when it came down to it, it was all quite overwhelming. However, I still managed to find it enjoyable, and with John we were able to make it work.

We started out by setting out a guest list, which was an easy enough task. John wanted to invite his three closest friends, Paul, George, and Ringo, plus a few of his others, such as the ones from his birthday party - Ivan, Pete, Neil, Harry, and May - and a few others that he knew, and their partners and children, if they had any. He also had cousins he wanted to invite, and thought that it was only right for him to invite his two half-sisters and their families. And we couldn't forget Mimi!

As for me, I had Tim and Suzy to invite, of course, along with their partners, as well as a few close friends from school. Regarding relatives, we had my parents and siblings (and I quite fancied inviting Charlie's new boyfriend since I had grown quite fond of him), plus cousins, aunts and uncles, like Aunt Janet, Uncle Tony, and their little boy Eric.

A budget was something we had discussed, but John being John was rather indifferent about it. In all honesty, I wasn't entirely sure how much many he had made from his writing that, as a result, he was able to practically retire at the age of thirty, but goodness! He practically waved off any idea of a budget, and it didn't completely reassure me, but he did insist that it would be fine.