74 » pink weddings magazine
be resident for a month to legally request the right to marry,
and then await the authorisation. Within minutes of him
landing he was thrown into an immigration holding cell in
the bowels of terminal 5, while his immigration lawyer’s
advice was called into question. It turned out Google had it
spot on while his lawyer had charged him close to £2,000 for
advice that got him thrown into a cell. While Stephan went
through a harrowing ten hour ordeal, I boosted Costa
Coffee’s share value waiting in ‘arrivals’. eventually, after
being kept apart for a whole day with no access to mobile
phones, so that we couldn’t collaborate over our story, I was
called by the immigration office to be informed that he was
being deported back to the USa on a flight to New York.
My main concern was for his
mental wellbeing. Weddings
can be re-arranged, life
plans can be altered,
but if you’re sat in a cell feeling like you’ve screwed
something up, and you have no way of communicating with
your partner to hear them tell you ‘everything will be oK’…
that must be one of the most desperately helpless feelings in
the world. I had to find a way to ease his pain. So my first
step was to find out who was on the crew of his flight back to
the USa – handy when you work for the airline.
My next step was to ensure he had a comfortable ride. I
went to meet with the in-charge crew member on that
particular flight, and told her the story. She instantly told me
not to worry, she’d look after him, and make sure he flew
home first class. I asked if I could give her a card to pass on
to him and raced down to Wh Smith’s only to discover that
not one of their cards featured the words ‘sorry you’ve been
deported!’ – a clear gap in the market if you ask me. So I
decided to change my course of action, whipped out the
credit card and bought a ticket for his flight. I just had to see
him; that boy needed a hug!
I boarded his flight last and was kindly offered a much
better seat than I’d paid for, next to my man. as I entered the
cabin, I could see him staring at his phone, crying his heart
out, and my phone was beeping with every text he sent. I
leaned through the divider between our seats and in a very
drew Barrymore/adam Sandler moment, tapped him on the
shoulder and asked, ‘were you going to leave without saying
goodbye?’ he pulled me through that divider and off my
feet, squeezing me so tight that I narrowly avoided a
collapsed lung. We cried, the crew cried, the violinist on the
jet bridge cried… oK, so there was no violinist, but it was still
incredibly romantic!
Once he’d had time to dry
his eyes and blow his nose,
he asked, ‘what are we going
to do?’
I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m on my way to New
York – so I reckon, a couple of vodkas and a disco nap
followed by a night on the town!’ We managed to turn a
tragedy on its head and booked in to a boutique hotel for an
impromptu pre-wedding honeymoon. the following morning
we hit the British embassy, put our application for the
correct visa into motion, and began on the right path to
planning a legal wedding in the UK.
the first wedding had to be scrapped as his visa wasn’t
issued in time, but everybody had made plans, booked
hotels, trains, flights, etc to join us for our ‘small affair’. they
refused to ditch those plans, so wedding number one went
ahead without one of the grooms. I fashioned a replica with
a glossy life-size print of his head stuck to a kitchen utensil so
that he could at least be in all the photos, and in true British
style, we got through a difficult day with a lot of alcohol.
the next time around, ‘the legal one’, we decided that we
didn’t want to risk messing people around again. So this time it
would just be the two of us and the minimum legal witnesses –
perhaps a cleaner and a caretaker from the town hall. My next
door neighbour was horrified and insisted that she be one of
the witnesses, and for the other one, we picked the landlord of
the pub where Fonda made her debut. So on Monday morning
Noel aNd StephaN
