Dust off your fascinators, Ladies, here comes the Wedding Season! Those church bells have been pealing madly for a while, but now we’re into June the skies are practically raining heart-shaped confetti. Brides everywhere are frantically preparing for their Big Day…and we bridesmaids are secretly rather pleased that it’s not our own!

Hopeless romantics that we are, here at Mills & Boon, no one can resist the magic of a summer wedding – but sometimes it’s more fun being the bridesmaid! Unlike the bride, who’s fastidiously stuck to a liquid green diet for over a year beforehand (having bought the wedding dress in an optimistic two sizes too small), we’re free to gorge ourselves on all things deliciously bad for us. In fact, apart from avoiding any minor hair disasters for the wedding pictures, we don’t even mind if it rains! And by the time the bride has delicately sipped her single glass of champagne at breakfast, terrified of slurring her vows, we’re onto our third…

Looking down the aisle, it might not be the groom waiting for us but we’re just waiting for a groomsman to catch our eye. Swept up in the overwhelming emotions of the day, a fling between the bridesmaid and the groomsman is just one of a wedding’s unwritten traditions (although perhaps it’s best not to tell the bride!).

Of course, one career that kicks into full bridezilla throttle over the summer months is that of a wedding planner – they really have seen it all. In Aimee Carson’s latest romance, Don’t Tell the Wedding Planner (Modern Tempted, June 2014), Callie Labeau plans bespoke days for her brides…and she has a reputation for embracing the crazy! The weirder the concept, the wilder the party, right? And Callie’s love of all things OTT is about to be tested – because the wedding Matt Passmore has asked her to organise for his brother sounds insane. Yet with the city engulfed in a heat wave, the chemistry between Matt and Callie is getting more scorching by the day…and it’s proving to be one seriously big distraction!

For any wedding guest, the day might not be our very own happily-ever-after, but it’s a pretty good starting point. And when it comes to the bouquet throwing – no one is left in doubt as to the bridesmaids’ belief in true love…for that chequered dance floor quickly turns into a bloodthirsty battleground!

So tell us, will you be doing some bouquet catching of your own this summer – or will you be the one in the beautiful white dress, throwing it…?

By The Mills & Boon team