Tomorrow, at 4pm on Twitter, I’ll be answering any question from anyone about anything romance-related, whether it’s your own real life romance, or maybe one you’ve written. Are cash-based gift lists tacky? Can I wear white to a wedding? Is it wrong to put bridesmaids on a diet? Who gets the cat when you split up? Do I need an agent? Anything at all… Just ask!

Tweet your questions to @TheBookBar – my wonderful publishers Quercus’ online – with the #loveQT so they catch them, and watch out for your question tomorrow. Everyone who joins in is in with a chance of winning a free copy of The Honeymoon Hotel, out on the 11th!

The post #LoveQT on Twitter TOMORROW!! appeared first on Hester Browne.

The post The Honeymoon Hotel appeared first on Hester Browne.

you need to click here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/104503-honeymoon-hotel

May the Reading Gods smile down upon you! Everyone else, it’s out September 16th, in the US, and September 11th in the UK, so not long to wait…

The post Win an early copy of Honeymoon Hotel here!! appeared first on Hester Browne.

Shave.

Give the rings to the best man.

Say something really nice about your mother and her mother in your speech.

Arrange for flowers to be delivered the first day she’s back at work after the honeymoon.

Turn up to the church in good time.

That’s it.

Good luck.

The post How to be the Perfect Groom appeared first on Hester Browne.

Everyone loves a bride. Not everyone loves a Bridezilla. But like BO and really sleazy boyfriends, no one tells you until it’s, well, too late. Here are a few hints, garnered from extensive wedding attendance and a year of lurking on wedding forums…

Tell people what shoes they’ll need

I love a formal, morning suit wedding. I also love a relaxed lounge suits and cocktail dress wedding. I particularly loved the fancy dress wedding I was at last weekend because it allowed me to indulge my not so covert longing to dress up as Joan Holloway from Mad Men. But I wasn’t so keen on the wedding that turned out to involve a two-mile hike through a park to reach the reception, or the one that took place in a field only recently vacated by a herd of cows because I’d brought shoes for the church service and the reception. I had no idea about the middle bit. Like so much in life, it all comes down to shoes. If your guests are confident they have the right shoes, everything else will be fine.

But don’t go mad, telling people what to wear

No one wants to feel they’ve been summoned to appear as an extra in someone’s lavishly produced promotional wedding video. ’50s theme fancy dress!’ or ‘black tie’ dress codes are fun, and allow guests to go as far as they feel comfortable with the theme. ‘Everyone has to wear the exact shade of the Pantone paintcard attached’ or ‘Come as characters from Starlight Express, inc rollerskates as we are recreating the finale for the group photo, ‘ is not fun. Especially if your guests have to travel on public transport to get there.

If you want money for a wedding gift, please don’t write a poem asking for it.

Somehow, it just makes it much, much, much worse. The English are only just coming round to the idea of the wedding list, let alone badly-scanning requests to ‘a few pounds into our wishing well please pop’. If you absolutely have to ask for cash for your kitchen extension – and it’s risky, considering this will immediately make the guest think of how much they‘d like a new fridge and how the cost of that stacks up against two nights in the only hotel left in town in mid-July – then just say so. Offer to put commemorative plaques on each individual unit, or have the wedding list at Howdens so guests can pledge a pull-out vegetable drawer or some easy-close components. So what if you have to roll fourteen pan drawers into one basic kitchen carcass kit (lovely) – at least Auntie Barbara can fondly imagine you enjoying the handy fan extractor she ‘bought’ you.

 Apply booze and time Maths to wedding dead zones

I would really love some mathematically-inclined wedding planner to come up with a sliding scale for booze + time / photographs. That period after the ceremony but before food is a dangerous one for wedding atmos. If you don’t circulate enough champagne/beer while you’re having every possible permutation of group photo taken, then your guests mill around gradually losing their joie de vivre and hitting the red on their chit-chat reserves. Circulate too much champagne on empty stomachs (because there’s never time for lunch before a wedding), and you come back from your ‘bride + ushers + dad, no bridesmaids’ shot to find an entirely different party is going on from the one you left ninety minutes earlier. Don’t let your photographer faff about, or else give your guests something to do. A photo booth, or an ice cream van, or a spontaneous tug-o’-war challenge or something. There’s honestly only so much conversation guests can make with your second cousin, especially if they’re regretting their choice of shoe. One of my favourite ever weddings solved this problem by loading the guests into vintage Routemaster buses, with mini bottles of champagne on the seats, and drove them around central London until the bride was all done. Best. Wedding. Ever.

Please do a seating plan for dinner, even though it’s a headache

One of the major charms of a wedding – as Hugh Grant will testify – is the chance for singles to mingle. And also for marrieds to observe their partners in flattering formal garments, on their best behaviour, looking personable. Even if you argued all the way up about whether the M6 toll road is good value or not, it’s hard not to fancy your husband in morning suit, being nice to someone’s aged aunt. This happy state of affairs is best achieved by a seating plan which breaks up couples – forcing them to talk to people they don’t know about something other than whose turn it is to clean the fish tank – and subtly lets singletons know from the off who is actively unpartnered, and who is just hoping their wife isn’t looking.

Casual ‘sit where you like’ free-for-alls require guests to take the initiative and talk to people they don’t know. In my experience, this is a risky strategy and usually results in clumpage which even the most intrepid mingler will struggle to infiltrate.

Be aware that while throwing a wedding is expensive, attending one is also not a cheap do.

Weddings are the pinnacle of parties – and when they’re thrown by your friends, you’d walk over broken flutes to be there. However, it’s no longer a case of putting on your Sunday frock and walking down to the local church, then on to the village hall for trifle and misguided snogging of an usher. Most weddings I’ve been to lately have cost me the best part of a European minibreak, once you’d factored in travel, two nights in hotels, a gift, taxis, etc. Don’t even start me on hen nights. One modern convention that boggled my mind while researching Honeymoon Hotel was the way some brides expect the gift to ‘cover the guest’s plate’, ie, your gift should cost about the same as what they’ve spent on you. What? Apart from the £300 you’ve spent to get there in the first place?! One of my friends, during a summer of intense marital activity amongst his social circle, got so exasperated by all the summons to remote locations, mid-week, with exorbitant present lists to match, that he sent the B&G a generous cheque for £250 and stayed in to watch the cricket, on the basis that that made everyone happy. Weddings should be about sharing a moment of celebration, and metamorphosis, and faith in human nature, with the people you love most in the world (and your relations) – it’s not merely an excuse to upgrade your toaster.

Throw the bouquet.

But arrange beforehand who’s going to get it. Have you seen international rugby line-outs? Like that. Bit of teamwork from your bridesmaids and you can easily punt it into the hands of your lovely friend who’s just been dumped. I’m sure she’ll let you have it back after. In the interests of equality, maybe the groom could throw something designed to indicate imminent betrothal too? It would certainly make things easier for the bouquet winner.

Have you got any suggestions? I would so love to hear them….!

The post How to be the Perfect Bride appeared first on Hester Browne.

My younger brother is staying in my flat while he does work experience in London this summer. I understand now why my mum was so excited to get him out of her house for a few weeks: my flat’s gone from pristine (ish) to pigsty in a matter of days. He leaves trails of discarded clothes wherever he goes, abandons cereal bowls and half-drunk tea everywhere, spends the entire evening online, and worse of all, doesn’t always flush the loo. I’ve tried reminding politely, nagging, passive aggressive texts… nothing seems to get through to him.

How can I make him understand that if I have to pick up one more wet towel he’ll be camping at work? I feel if I can crack this now, I might be doing a future girlfriend a very big favour.

Yours

Sister of No Mercy

The post chore wars appeared first on Hester Browne.

In honour of the soon-to-be-published new book, Honeymoon Hotel, (out Sept!!) I thought I’d offer some hints and tips gleaned from a whole year spent immersed in wedding magazines, other people’s weddings, wedding websites and some anecdotes offered by friends which, as usual, were far too juicy and outrageous to put into the actual book.

First up, guests.

1. It’s not about you. 

Don’t wear white. Or head-to-toe black. Or too many sequins. Or matching pants that you show to everyone (unless you’re under 4). Or a man’s suit. Or fancy dress, if it’s not a fancy dress wedding. In other words, don’t wear anything which would make someone look at you, rather than the bride. There is a reason why there is no such thing as a flattering bridesmaid’s dress.

Also, as a sub-set, do arrive a good half hour before; don’t sing crazy descants to the hymns; don’t wolf-whistle and get the congregation to clap as if the couple have won a speedboat when they’re pronounced man and wife (shudder); don’t go on and on and on about your own wedding; do talk to people you don’t know in the pews. This may prevent Foot In Mouth Syndrome later on. Also, older relatives often have the zingiest gossip.

2. It’s not about you, Junior Version

so the stupid selfish attention-junkie sister bride didn’t want Scheherzerade and Malaga as her bridesmaids. You know this is because their radiant child-like beauty would have overshadowed her on her supposed ‘big day’. And there was some other nonsense about their special ‘recorder voluntary’ music being inappropriate in the college library setting. But, listen, that is her misguided choice. This is not a cue to find out what the bridal party are wearing, kit Scheherzerade and Malaga out in matching colours and then shove them onto the end of the bridal procession as the bride and her dad pass your pew in the hope no one will notice. They will. Especially if you don’t take the recorders off them first.

 3. Emotion is good… up to a point.

Even British wedding guests are prone to misty eyes at the sight of a proud grey-haired father coming down the aisle with his beautiful little girl on his arm. Indeed, along with brass band competitions and flypasts by the Red Arrows, weddings are one of the few places the English stiff upper lip gets a good wobbling. Bring out a family dog bearing the rings on a little bag round his neck and the entire congregation will be in floods. Don’t even start me on the bride arriving on her own horse. However…

Moist eyes at the beauty of the bride and the loveliness of the readings = touching.

Out and out sobbing, wafting of large hankies, audible shuddering gasps = bad form.

4. Always look pleased for the bride and groom.

So you know that as recently as three weeks ago, they were on non-speakers, and she told you some stomach-turning things about his dental hygiene on her hen night. But, if he’s at the front and she’s heading down the aisle you are now duty bound to look pleased for them. Only the very brave, the very Mediterranean or the very attention-seeking (eg, if you are being followed by a camera crew for a reality show) would attempt to do anything other than smile rigidly when the celebrant asks if anyone has any just cause, etc.

If you are with a man who thinks it’d be funny to cough at this point, feel free to leave him outside with the dogs and the crying babies. For what it’s worth, if it’d been my wedding, I’d have done a lot more than Duckface did, had someone spoken out like that at the end of Four Weddings. A lot more. Another funeral’s worth, at least.

note: This goes double if you’re single, by the way. Annoying as it is, singletons have to up their cheery delight at weddings, in order to head off any unwanted comments about it being ‘your turn next’. Just smile when well-meaning aunts say that. Don’t cackle sardonically, and retort, ‘What? To be shackled to a man who thinks Berlin is in Russia and can’t use chopsticks? I don’t think so. Ha ha! Jesus, no…’

5. Keep an eye on the videographer as well as the photographer

Now weddings are multimedia events, you have to be even more alert to the risks of Showing Yourself Up. It’s easily done. For instance, my own moment of shame – which I’m attempting to dissipate by telling everyone in the world, Ancient Mariner style – was at the wedding of a lovely old friend. Who had once been, cough, a bit more than a friend. My college mates and I were all outside the church, post-ceremony, chatting amongst ourselves while the bride and groom posed for photographs with every possible permutation of their enormous families. By this stage, most of our light chit-chat (“How are you? Where are you working? Are you still living with Joe? Oh dear, when is Joe getting out of prison?” etc) had been used up, and we’d moved onto light-hearted speculation about when the happy couple would decide to become three, as it were. I’d been adhering to rule 4 cheesily throughout the day and so when I said, ‘Oh, I give them two years!’ I meant, to crack on with the heir and spare. It was very unfortunate that the videographer chose that moment to hover behind us, and even more unfortunate that his arrival meant everyone suddenly stopped talking. Apart from me, obviously.

Now of course, four of the sods would have tweeted that to the world, complete with a Vine of me looking bemused, then horrified, then mortified. Urgh.

6. Have fun, and be seen having fun

Weddings are supposed to be happy occasions, and the bride has driven herself into a state of cross-eyed indecision about chairs for weeks to make this day as perfect as she possibly can for everyone there. She now has better things to think about. Help her out by enjoying yourself, talking to guests you don’t know, introducing people you think would get on, leaping onto the dance floor, and generally upping the joie de vivre in the room.

7. … again, up to a point

And that point is the arrival of a team of paramedics.

Coming soon… how to be a perfect bride!

The post How to Be a Good Wedding Guest appeared first on Hester Browne.

Well, you need to click here – http://extracts.quercusbooks.co.uk/vintage-girl/

It’s out in the shops from February 13th, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Competitions to follow, so watch out on Twitter and Facebook for announcements!

Isn’t the cover gorgeous, by the way? I am completely in love with Quercus’s delicious cover treatments. They’ve given me a sudden passion for vintage print wallpapers – and since I’ve just painted all my walls, I’m lining the inside of my wardrobes instead.

The post Do you want to read the first chapter of The Vintage Girl? appeared first on Hester Browne.

I feel as if I should declare a Hester New Year, a bit like the Chinese New Year, since I’ve only just wrestled 2013 under control and stuffed it into a box, had a brief nap, and am now rolling my sleeves up for 2014. January 1st seems too soon to start a whole new year, so soon after Christmas…

I have been working, though! I delivered the rather overdue (again, sorry sorry sorry) first draft of The Honeymoon Hotel to my editors last week – that’s patient and understanding Karen in New York, and patient and understanding Kathryn in London. It took a long time because for most of 2013, I was working with ear defenders on because teams of builders were knocking down my house, and then putting it back together. They were lovely builders, but it’s kind of hard to conjure up romantic wedding scenes while someone is drilling the wall down behind you, and someone else is reversing a truck full of lime plaster past the window, and someone else is eating a ham sandwich that your dog is desperate to steal.

So that was summer, then autumn (when it started raining, as it has done every day since, to the point where the dogs walking up my lane are slowly evolving flippers) and my desk was piled high with so many wedding magazines that the builders were regarding me with gently concerned expressions, as if I’d turned into one of those delusional women who’s convinced herself she’s getting married to Prince Harry next March. By Christmas, the house was almost back to normal but by now deadline insanity had reached to the point where my blood/Nespresso ratio was about 1:1, and I was hallucinating George Clooney in the kitchen, operating the Aeroccino. Oh, the witty banter George and I had as he wondered anxiously if maybe I’d had one too many around 3am last Wednesday morning! (No, George, I needed it.)  And then there was a dark three-day spell when I ran out of milk and had to go with pure espresso, but I think it gave the final big wedding scene a certain, um, urgency, and I finally finished just after new year. Hurray!

I celebrated handing in my homework by going to London for a few days, to have tea with editor Kathryn and, for #hestercocktailhour purposes only, you understand, a celebratory cocktail with Chris Manby at Bar Boulud in the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. In all honesty, I can’t recommend the Victoria Rose. To my very untutored, and let’s face it, coffee-ravaged palate, it felt like drinking plum-flavoured  loo cleaner mixed with rosehip syrup. Sorry, lovely barman who spent quite a long time making it with flamboyant precision. I will post a picture, just as soon as my phone wakes up. I should have known as I was taking the photo that it wasn’t going to end well; I couldn’t seem to make the liquid in the glass look… unsludgy. Chris’s Basil Fizz was much nicer, though. One of the ingredients is fresh basil, which the barman clapped over the glass. Literally clapped it. I recommend you try it with salad or something, clapping the coriander. Your guests will think you’ve had some very specialist culinary training, or possibly that you’re doing a cunning magic trick and the coriander is going to turn into croutons or something. (OK, so I was totally waiting for the basil to be clapped into tiny basil confetti. I haven’t been out much this year.)

And so here we are, nearly in February. Exciting things are afoot in February! But I’m going to post this now, to get my New Year off to a good start, and tackle February after tea. Here, meanwhile, are my New Year’s Resolutions. I would LOVE to know yours.

1. Break love/hate Sidebar of Shame habit

2. Drink less coffee.

3. if 2. not possible, drink more water at the same time as drinking coffee

4. Learn Welsh (da iawn!)

5. Send postcards for no reason to good friends because it’s always nice to get postcards.

6. Stop thinking the dogs can understand a word I say to them that does not relate directly to cheese.

7. Get up earlier.

8. Perfect new house cocktail for finished house

(I actually did this one at New Year – pics to follow!)

9. Start running again, although to be fair to me here, the paths I was running along this summer are now so muddy even Kitchener would have cordoned them off at the Front as being ‘a bit treacherous’, so until then I will have to promise to keep up my nightly date with Jillian Michaels and her abs of fear.

10. Read more.

The post Happy New Hester Year! appeared first on Hester Browne.

Now, if that’s not a brilliant reason to name your son George, I don’t know what is. One of my very first crushes, right there. I mean, look at the fellow! A fine upstanding member of the Royal Family, a young man with magnificent calves, an unparalleled collection of socks, and a butler with more metaphors at his ever-clenching fingertips than Matty McMetaphor the All-Mercia Metaphor Mangler. And a Trinity Tiddler to boot. Ahoy there, George! And if, like me, you sometimes find it hard to tell all those Hanoverian Georges apart, I can heartily recommend the Four Georges song from Horrible Histories. Once heard, never forgotten. Literally. You will never, ever stop singing it.

Anyway, this week’s #hestercocktailhour was in honour of the new George (sort of) and was the very delicious Stork Club cocktail. It wasn’t, of course, named after the giant ceremonial stork that the Queen sends to collect the royal heir from the Clarence House gooseberry bush, but after the Prohibition Era nightclub in New York. Apparently the orange juice was used to cover up the rough nature of the bathtub gin – you might want to add more or less juice depending on how rough your own hooch is.

(Yes, there is an actual cocktail called The Prince of Wales, invented by known bon viveur and prince-with-a-lot-of-time-on-his-hands, Edward VII. If I tell you the ingredients include champagne, bourbon, ‘a small piece of pineapple’, Maraschino liqueur, cognac, etc, you will understand that it’s probably best attempted by those with a full bar, those with staff, or those who’ve inherited a strange sticky bottle of 60s liqueur marked Maraschino from their parents and have always wondered what to do with it.)

Stork Club

• 1.5oz London gin (I used the very delicious Berry Bros one)
• 1.5oz orange juice
• 1 dash (a barspoon’s worth) Cointreau
• 1 dash lime juice
• 1 dash bitters
• ice

Put the ice into a cocktail shaker (do bother with the shaker this week, this is a royal baby we’re toasting here, chop chop), add the gin, orange, Cointreau, bitters and lime, and give it a good shake to chill down the drink. Strain into a martini glass – and if you can chill that first too, it’s even more refreshing. Toast – in Welsh would be nice, iechyd da – and sip. Mmm. Rather lovely, this one.

Actually, is there any left in that cocktail shaker?

The post Welcome to London, Prince George! appeared first on Hester Browne.