Thirty-eight people in a barn in FebruaryThirty-eight people in a barn in February

Thirty-eight was not a compromise. It was the number of people they could name who had been to their flat.

February was partly budget — a barn in Norfolk costs about a third in February what it costs in July — and partly that they both hate being hot.

Their total was under twenty-five thousand, which for a hundred and twenty guests is tight and for thirty-eight is genuinely comfortable.

It bought a whole hogget from a farm four miles away, cooked over fire for nine hours by a chef who does about twelve weddings a year. It bought proper glassware rather than the hire-company standard. It bought a photographer they actually wanted rather than one they could afford.

A Norfolk barn in February is four degrees at nine in the morning. We had six indirect heaters running from seven, which brought it to seventeen by the time anyone arrived, and kept them running all day.

It gets dark at half four. That is not a problem, it’s a gift — the entire evening happens by candlelight and you never have to fight a room full of daylight and a band.

Thirty-eight people fit on one table, which means one conversation, one toast, and no seating plan negotiated over three drafts.

There were no speeches in the formal sense. Tom’s brother stood up between courses, then Ada’s mother did, then two other people who hadn’t planned to. It ran about forty minutes and nobody looked at a phone.