She, along with my youngest daughter, live in Australia. She phoned me a couple of weeks ago to say "Hooray, we are coming home on Boxing Day."
Fantastic. I was really excited. Then last weekend she phoned me again. "I've been thinking, Mum, that maybe we might get married when we come home. What do you think?"
Me: "That's a lovely idea darling. When were you thinking and where?"
"Well, New Year's Eve ... and I don't know where. You and [her sister] will have to organise it all. It will only be small, just family and a few friends."
So began the phone calls and emails. Luckily for me, my eldest daughter is great at organising things - she organises me sometimes.
The first thing to do was find a venue.
Oh, did I mention that we are on a tight budget here?
It's costing them a lot of money just to get here at that time of year.
So we sent a few emails, made a few phone calls.
New Year's Eve is a Wednesday and loads of people are going away.
The phone calls kept coming and the bride-to-be was getting impatient for news. "I feel like nothing is happening."
It wasn't. With work and a variety of other commitments I hadn't had a chance to do much and the people my daughter had emailed hadn't got back to her.
Another phone call. "Mum, we have been talking [she and her partner] and we can't get the guest list down much more now."
Guest list? "How many people on your guest list, darling?" "About 80."
That is not a small wedding. Some of their Australian friends are coming as well, which is lovely for them but crikey, I need to get cracking.
So on Friday, my day off, I hit the phone and looked at a couple of venues.
I spoke to my son's partner, who has an eye for design, and she put her hand up to look after the table settings and the venue decorations.
Hooray, we are making progress.
At work I'm organised - I have to be - but at home it's more like organised chaos.
On the weekends I tend to flit from one thing to the next. I'll be doing the dishes and something will distract me at the other end of the house, then I walk back into the kitchen and think "oh yeah, that's what I was doing".
So planning a wedding without the bride on hand is a big challenge.
There will be six flower girls - can you image that? The eldest will be 13 by the time of the wedding and will no doubt tell me she's too old to be called a flower girl.
Then there will be a 4-year-old, two 3-year-olds (five days between them), a not-quite 3-year-old and a not-quite 2-year-old. Then throw in three boys, 7, 5 and 2 years, who all run at top speed.
There will be tears and tantrums and I just can't wait.
