No Class

 The central heating at St. Jude-in-the-Fens had been out of commission since the latter days of the Hundred Years' War, which Lord Archibald Cholmondeley-Smyphe felt was a character-building touch.
Archie sat in the front pew, his knees pressed tightly together, rubbing his freezing shins through a pair of tweed trousers that had survived three prime ministers and a terminal moth infestation. Beside him sat Beatrice, his wife, whose posture was rigid enough to impale a charging rhino. Her face was locked in a polite, unyielding grimace that suggested she had just caught the distinct aroma of a damp ferret.
"Archie," Beatrice hissed through teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to shatter. "Your cousin Nigel swore blind he was bringing a tartan travel rug. Why is he currently sitting on his hands?"
"Nigel," Archie muttered, his teeth clicking against one another like castanets, "lost the rug in a fit of unfortunate hazard behind the potting shed. Terrible business. Good circulation builds character, Beatrice. My grandfather lost three toes at Ypres and didn't utter a single peep."
"Yes, well, your grandfather didn't have to listen to Wayne’s aunt loudly discussing the current market value of frozen scampi across the north transept."
At the rear of the draughty church, Sharon Smith was leaning aggressively over a hymnal rack, brandishing a packet of damp wipes at her husband, Gary. Gary was encased in a shiny, plum-coloured Burton suit that he had clearly paired with his best Sunday trainers.
"Gary, for Christ's sake, wipe your neck," Sharon stage-whispered, her fascinator—a chaotic explosion of hot pink feathers and netting that looked like a blue tit meeting an industrial blender—shaking with indignation. "You're gleaming like a gammon joint under a butcher's heatlamp. And put that fag out, you absolute rotter, we're in the house of the Lord!"
"It's an e-cig, Shar, it doesn't count," Gary grumbled, exhaling a dense, sickly cloud that smelled faintly of chemical bubblegum. "Keeps the Almighty sweet, doesn't it? Takes the edge off."
Up at the altar stood Wayne, sweating profusely through his polyester collar. He was attempting to steeple his fingers in a prayerful posture, though the effect was slightly undermined by the bold ink across his knuckles spelling out HATE on the left hand and LOVE on the right.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Wayne leaned toward his best man, Kev. "Kev. Mate. I think I've swallowed a Fisherman's Friend the wrong way. Am I going to snuff it before we get to the sausage rolls?"
Kev, whose clip-on tie was engaged in a heroic struggle against gravity, didn't blink. "Just cough quietly into your palm, mate. If you snuffs it now, Wayne, we forfeit the deposit on the skittle alley at the British Legion. Keep your pecker up."
The heavy, iron-studded oak doors groaned open.
Clara—Archie and Beatrice’s only daughter, who had recently graduated fr?om Goldsmiths and now made a living crafting "sculptural porridge"—floated down the aisle. She was draped in an eco-friendly, unbleached hemp sack that had cost four thousand pounds and smelled faintly of a wet sheep.
Wayne watched her approach with an expression of absolute, unadulterated terror and devotion.
"Fookin' 'ell," Wayne muttered audibly to the entire nave. "She looks like a very expensive garden fence. Cor. I love her."
Beatrice sank another inch into the hard wooden pew. "She looks like she’s about to be composted. I blame the Open University."
Rev. Arthur Puddle shuffled forward from the vestry. At seventy-two, he possessed the hollow-eyed stare of a man who had entirely lost the will to care sometime during the Thatcher administration. He clutched a tattered prayer book that emitted a rich bouquet of cheap sherry and stale digestive biscuits.
"Right," the vicar announced, his voice a flat monotone that bounced dully off the damp flagstones. "Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today in the sight of God to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. Or, failing that, until the council flat comes through. Let’s try to bicker quietly."
"Speak up, man!" Archie barked, booming his voice across the nave. "Some of us are losing all sensation in our left ankles!"
"Wayne," Rev. Puddle continued, entirely unfazed, "do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, through sickness, health, and until the mortgage rate goes up next October?"
"I do, vicar. Proper."
"And Clara. Do you take this bloke, despite his footwear and the fact that his uncle has just lobbed a Quality Street wrapper at the choirboy?"
Clara beamed radiantly through a thick layer of organic oat-based face powder. "I do, Arthur."
"Marvellous. By the power vested in me by the Church of England and a lingering Thursday hangover, I declare you man and wife. Don't drop the ring, Wayne, I'm not crawling under the pews for it."
Wayne lunged forward for the kiss with all the subtlety of a runaway agricultural vehicle. A wet, resounding smack echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling.
At the back, Sharon let out a piercing, triumphant whoop and violently yanked the string of a party popper. A cloud of metallic pink foil confetti erupted into the freezing air, drifting gracefully down to settle in the stiff folds of Archie’s tweed shoulders.
"Get in!" Sharon yelled, waving a half-empty plastic tumbler aloft. "Go on, my son! Free bar at the working men's club, first pint's on your dad, unless the bitter's gone off!"
Beatrice stared rigidly at a stray piece of pink foil stuck squarely to her husband's lapel.
"Archie?" she whispered.
"Yes, darling?"
"Pass me the silver gin flask. And for heaven’s sake, try to look like we didn’t lose the empire."