Love and Marriage

Love and Marriage
Go together like a Horse and Carriage

... so the song goes.

I was in Portsmouth, researching for my alternative Regency set novel, when I came across a bridal party by the Square Tower. The bride had arrived by a sweet little coach and was having her picture taken. Among the onlookers was a family from Saudi. I got talking, as you do when horses and small children are involved, and the father asked whether the carriage was an English tradition.

That made me think.

It's certainly seen as something romantic - perhaps something the Disneyfied  bride might hanker after.

And there is the sense of the fairytale, the Princess-for-a-day idea.

But our desire for something old-fashioned, something traditional,  might be just a commercially-driven image. It might be a phantom, part of a great big dressing-up game that hides a rotten secret at its heart, unlikely to end well.

It might be - in the world of the Wedding Ghost.