Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.

It had been a bit of a rush job, probably wouldn’t have been any faster if I’d ‘knocked-up’ a Sicilian Don’s daughter. Anyway, neither Francesca nor I had been big supporters of the institution of marriage. I had always subscribed to the idiom; if its not broken, don’t fix it! And Francesca had bore witness to her parents’ messy divorce when she was a child, and that would taint anyone. However, the circumstances that we were now caught up in made us see the sacrament from a completely different perspective. By getting married I was protecting Francesca and the childrens’ police pension rights, giving them extra security. And besides, it seemed like the right thing to do. The woman had borne me two lovely daughters, and had stuck with me through ‘thick and thin’.
The invites were easy, simply log on to a vacant terminal at the closest police station and send out a blanket invite to my Borough’s Crime Squad and their spouses. The rest of the places would go to officers in other Boroughs and departments that I had grown close to, blood relatives (err… that would just be my Auntie Ann then!) and friends that weren’t in the Met. I was going to fill that church. Best man would be my oldest and most steadfast friend, J.T.L. (What do the initials stand for? I’m sorry, you’ll have to ask him that yourself. It’s not for me to say!).
The church? None other than St. Elizabeth’s, the venue of my oldest daughter’s baptism, and mother’s funeral. Only seems fitting, as the expression goes, ‘births, deaths and marriages’.
The reception venue was found quite by accident. Walking home from the church after a meeting with our priest, Father Mathias, we stumbled across a familiar, but hitherto overlooked venue, the Thai Elephant, Richmond. Simultaneously we exclaimed, “Hey, that would be large enough!” It didn’t take long for us to give the restaurateur the number of guests and requirements, and in record time a deal was struck.
To give the whole proceedings a topical crime scene theme, I insisted that the wedding photographer be a Scenes of Crime Officer (CSI). Well, they are professional photographers, and it’ll raise a smile in years to come when the guests think back. An urban legend in the making perhaps?
Little did I know that my friends on Borough had arranged with the Commissioner to use his staff car, which he kindly donated, as the wedding car. I was also to discover on the day that the Superintendent of Operations, Mr Chalk, had offered his services as chauffer, and Detective Chief Inspector De Meyer would be usher come umbrella man. As the ‘icing on the cake’, traffic police would kindly supply a uniformed motorcycle outrider.

After shopping for clothes and accoutrements, such as an engagement ring, we were all set for the big day. Not bad considering the whole thing took less than three weeks to put together. That would be the Royal Logistical Corps background then!