Real Grooms: Alex Miller

This week’s groom Alex gives the one piece of advice we always hope to hear from our Real Grooms: get involved. It’s pretty much why we do what we do, so it’s always great to see a grooms taking an active role in his own wedding.

Along the way he’ll be guiding us through the pros and cons of wearing highland ladieswear vs ’70s short shorts in various weather conditions and the art of racing penguins. Really.

With photography by Michael James.

Name: Alex Miller

Age: 26

Bride’s Name: Chloe

Best Men: Michael Townsend and James Smith

Ushers: Alex Edmonds and Matthew Flatt

Where was your stag-do – any scars?

We travelled down to London for the weekend leaving about 5 on the Friday night. The best men had a number of costumes planned for me, with the first being produced before the train had left the station. Due to my (very tenuous) Scottish heritage I had a tartan mini skirt, padded bra, blouse, fishnet stockings and bonnet to travel down to London in. Upon arrival into the station, all the guys left me stood in the middle of London Liverpool Street, surrounded by commuters and very confused tourists. I had to use my best GCSE French to try and explain to one group who took particular interest!

Back in normal clothes after a rather chilly walk through the street of the capital, it was out for some food and drinks then to the Empire Casino.

Saturday morning begun with the presentation of another costume. This time it was some incredibly small running shorts and a tiny yellow vest. At this point I regretted a very drunken argument we had some months before where I had insisted that any average man could run the 100M in under 15 seconds. All the other guys had full body lycra ‘morph suits’, and were much warmer than me! We headed down to the London eye where we boarded the ‘London Rib’. This is basically a large inflatable dinghy with a massive outboard motor. We donned our lifejackets and with banging hangovers we rocked our way to the middle of the Thames. At this point the ‘captain’ did what ever the boat equivalent is of ‘flooring it’ and away we went. As we banked right and then left, with the wind smacking into our faces our hangovers very quickly disappeared and were replaced by, in my case, fear, and the words ‘I DON’T LIKE RIDES’.

After we ‘cheated death’ (as I like to put it when telling the story) it was a quick change into my own morph suit and to the pub. The afternoon was lost in a pub with football, beer and sambuca until it was time to head to the ice bar. After getting slightly lost along the way, we donned our thermal ponchos and entered the bar – It quickly became apparent that although we had our fur lined ponchos on, we still only had a thin layer of lycra on the bottom. A few cocktails later and this didn’t matter, but we headed back to the hotel for a quick change into some more ‘socially acceptable’ clothing. Along the way back we managed to anger a number of street performers, worry a few security guards and make a small child cry. Lycra does odd things to a man. The weekend was finished with trips to several bars and clubs.

Where did you get married?

St Edmunds, Taverham, Norwich.

What did the men wear on the day?

Dark grey tails from Slaters.

What three pieces of advice would you give to blokes going through the whole wedding thing now?

1. Get involved! I know that your missus has been planning this day in her head for as long as she can remember, and the prospect of going to wedding fayres makes most men shudder with dread, but having a bit of an input really makes a difference and to be honest, you can pretty much Google most of it! (*cough* Staggered *cough* – Ed)
Imagine turning up on the day and looking around thinking what else you could have added – well, you had the chance! Go and help choose the cake (you get to eat cake), go and check out the cars (you get to look at nice cars) and just get involved – it will be worth it on the day!

2. Check out the church a few times beforehand. Now, sitting in a cold church on a Sunday morning for an hour and a half with a banging hangover is not my idea of fun, but it was worth the effort. The day is very daunting and there is so much to make you nervous but being in a familiar place really helps. Pop down a couple of times, it’ll really help the nerves!

3. Have wind up penguins as favors… or something else amusing. We stuffed wind up penguins and a couple of chocolates in our favor boxes and they went down very well. A few days after the wedding videos and pictures were posted on facebook of racing and unfortunately, drowning penguins. Big hit.

A word for the lady; come on, say something emotional about your bride…

She’s pretty awesome; I couldn’t imagine anyone else as perfect.  It will probably sound odd, but there is no other way I would rather spend my Friday night than cooking ‘Friday night pasta’, drinking lots of wine and flicking through music channels whilst debating the best Michael Jackson song.  I just know we will always be together.

Staggered says…

Not wanting to run this point into the ground, but again, it’s great to hear a groom encourage his fellows to get involved, on whatever level.

We also think interactive wedding favours is a brilliant idea – it reminds us of how that feeling of despair you get at Christmas as several crackers are popped to reveal useless, cheap, plastic little combs can suddenly be lifted by the arrival of three or four cheap, plastic frogs you get to race across the dinner table.

May you enjoy many Friday nights of music, laughter, pasta and clockwork penguins.

Congratulations!

Related Posts:

• Real Grooms: Dave Billsborough
• Real Grooms: Alex Sutton III
• Real Groom James Brown
• Real Groom Hal Sinden Part 2
• Real Groom Devon Clarke