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MEL YEXLEY HAD CLOCKED UP TWO DIVORCES BY THE AGE OF 30, BUT HER OWN HEARTBREAK HASN’T STOPPED HER ARRANGING HAPPEY-EVER-AFTERS FOR OTHER WOMEN

By Christine Windsor

You could have heard a pin drop in the packed church as the bride turned to her groom and began her vows.

Friends and family smiled, the bride’s mother cried, and the tiny bridesmaids listened, spellbound.

But at the back of the church, one woman turned away. Discreetly wiping her eyes, she busily looked through her notes.

 “I used to love watching couples take their vows but now I find it difficult,” admits Mel Yexley.

This is a surprising admission, since Mel spends her working life ensuring other people’s wedding days are full of fairy-tale romance.

She’s a wedding planner and has organised more than 150 ceremonies, coordinating the smallest details from the wording on the menus to the length of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

Mel understands the importance because, at just 31, she’s already been through it twice herself.

Two perfect ceremonies – but sadly two doomed marriages.

“Of course it’s ironic that I’m helping couples embark on a lifelong commitment when I don’t believe in it for myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to work for them.”

Mel met her first husband, Richard*, when she was 15 and he was 21.

They married when she was 18.

“I was in love with the idea of getting married,” she admits now.

“I really enjoyed organising the wedding.

"We only had £2,000 to spend, but I saw that as a challenge.

“It wasn’t perfect, but it was still my dream,” says Mel.

Sadly, the dream quickly turned sour.

“We didn’t live together before we got married, and within two weeks of getting our own place, I realised I’d made a mistake.

"I found him untidy and always borrowing money, but I’d been brought up to believe you should work at marriage, so I did.”

Despite her unhappiness, something good came out of it.

“Because I’d enjoyed organising my own wedding, I started helping my friends when they got married,” says Mel.

“Then friends of friends started asking too.

"It was a great distraction from my problems.”

Her marriage limped on for three years.

“For the last six months we had separate bedrooms.

"It was a relief when we split up.”

Mel’s friend John*, now 35, offered her his spare room and a shoulder to cry on – and within weeks they were lovers.

“I proposed to him six months after I’d left Richard, "says Mel.

“My second wedding was totally different from my first.

"It cost £17,000 and was magnificent.

"We married in July 2000 in front of 200 guests and had the reception in a manor house.

“I believed John was my soulmate, and my first marriage had been a practice run.”

Four months later, Mel resigned from her job in IT and threw herself into the wedding business full-time.

Her own marriage seemed to be happy – until one day in July 2006.

“I came home from a weekend with friends and John had been crying.

"He handed me a letter admitting he’d been having an affair for seven months.

"He said he didn’t know why he’d done it, he still loved me and begged me to stay.

“But that was it – the marriage was over. The trust had gone and it left me devastated. I left him that night.”

Two years on, Mel is still single – and determined to stay that way.

“I realise now I was so frightened of being alone,” she says.

“I rushed into my second marriage after my first had failed, still wanting my happily-ever-after.

"I did make the wrong decisions and I’m not ashamed of telling people I had two failed marriages before turning 30.

"I’ll never get married again.

"I don’t want children, and the pain of two marriages and divorces is too much.”

 

Have you been unlucky in love? Have you been married more than once? How was it different the second or third time around? Is marriage becoming a thing of the past or do you still think it plays an important part in society? Do you think there’s as much pressure on people to marry these days?

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Photography: Ella Webber Hair and make-up: Sadie Hewlett at Time Agency * names have been changed