On our wedding day, back in September 2021, we hired one of those traditional, red, London buses to take our guests between our ceremony in north London down to a pub in the centre of town. Unfortunately, the bus driver underestimated how narrow the roads are in the quaint borough of Hampstead, got himself completely wedged in and crashed into multiple Lamborghinis on the way out.
This, surprisingly, wasn’t the biggest disaster on my wedding day. Something else happened that was much worse and left me bitterly disappointed.
To other people, it probably sounds like nothing, a real champagne problem. But for me, it was something that I couldn’t shake off for weeks on end. Three-and-a-bit years later and it still bugs me, so much so that I’m planning on redoing my wedding.
Music was the thing that my husband Luke and I wanted to get just right. We got together at university, sharing a love of the same bands, going to the same grubby indie clubs. New music remains one of his biggest passions and I work as a DJ for BBC Radio 1. We go to gigs together even if our other friends can’t make it, we’ve booked Glastonbury for this year, just me and him, because music has always been our common love.
Before our wedding, we spent days – no, weeks – trawling through Spotify adding our favourite songs to a playlist, a job tasked to us by the DJ so he’d know what to play for us. We popped some Motown on there, some pop, some disco. Bowie, Blur, Blink-182. We were convinced we’d created The Greatest Wedding Party Playlist Ever, all the DJ would have to do was hit play and the dancefloor would be alive with questionable dance moves.
Lauren and her bridesmaidsSo tell me, why did the DJ start to play a load of music I’d never heard in my life? Why did my friends start asking me to “have a word with him, he’s not playing anything we know”? Why, when I went over to ask him about playing our playlist did he look at me with a blank stare?
You see it turns out, at my wedding, where music meant more to us than the dress, the flowers or even the grandmas, the DJ I’d booked decided to go completely renegade. I was furious.
The average cost of a wedding in the UK is around £20,000, a figure we reached with ease. And when you’re paying that much money for just one day, it stings when things go wrong or don’t live up to expectations.
But people don’t talk about wedding day disappointment. After all, it’s supposed to be the best day of your life and I felt so guilty for feeling this way. It’s a privileged problem, after all.
It’s for this reason my feelings towards The Bad DJ fluctuated over days, weeks and months. “Maybe he did play all the songs I wanted, but I was too drunk and couldn’t remember them? Am I being overdramatic?” After all, everything else was spot-on.
The wisteria-covered ceremony venue followed by a good old London boozer was exactly what we wanted. People still tell us how much they laughed during our ceremony and our speeches, as we shunned romance for humour, as usual. The free bar – oh the free bar! And my favourite memory is ending up in the local karaoke bar with a load of our friends, barefoot in the booth wearing a wedding dress, butchering Shania Twain.
It was one of the best days of my life, but I still can’t shake off the disappointment of hearing some obscure drum-and-bass, when the mums were chomping at the bit for some Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!.
I did get in touch with The Bad DJ to ask him what had happened. He half-apologised, saying he’d had some family troubles recently. I felt bad, I’m a DJ and know how hard it is going to work at social, jubilant events, painting on a smile when you’re having a bad day. But also, perhaps selfishly, I couldn’t help but be mad that his bad day had affected my Big Day. The only one I am supposed to have.
What is the point of huge weddings anymore?
Read MoreBut then I had an idea, inspired by a friend of ours. His first marriage was a beautiful event in the north of England. Everything was perfection – except his bride, who filed for divorce after only a few months. A few years later, he met the real love of his life and had a second wedding, just a beautiful as the first, if not more.
Which got me thinking. If a divorcee can remarry, or a couple that’s been together for 30 years can renew their vows … why can’t I have another bite of the cherry? Why can’t I book another pub, wear another white dress, invite all our family and friends along for another party and this time, book an amazing DJ who plays every song we want?
Obviously I’m not going to spend another £20k doing it. My husband would divorce me. But it’s become obsessively important to me to do something that will rewrite that history, and create a new narrative. Rather than “We got married but the DJ was shit”, our story becomes “We got married, the DJ was shit, so we threw another party!” There’s no rulebook.
Put the date in your diary. September 2026. Wear your biggest hat. The DJ’s going to be great.
Lauren Layfield is a broadcaster, author, and presenter
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