MY brother's wedding was planned with the kind of military precision that should have left nothing to chance.

The frontline troops of best man, bridesmaids, ushers and groomsman knew exactly where they had to be, what they had to do and when.

And woe betide any straggling guests who attempted to sneak in once things had got underway.

It was all arranged to run like clockwork.

So, if you had asked me last week where I would be at 1.45pm on Saturday, with just 15 minutes to go, I would have answered quite unequivocally: "Swan-necking it in the back of a limousine with the bride's mother and four other lilac-clad attendants, approximately a mile along the Haslingden bypass, close to Carrs Industrial Estate."

But regular readers of this column will know that where the Wright family are concerned, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and true to form, it did.

For not five minutes after sliding on to that soft, leather seat and giggling excitedly as we waved regally to people we passed in the street, than we'd ground to a halt at the side of the road - or the carriageway of the bypass to be precise.

We'd only run out of petrol, hadn't we? Can you believe that?

We couldn't, as the driver, strangely undisturbed by the whole event, turned to us and shouted through the dividing glass: "Has anyone got a mobile 'phone?"

Oh yes mate, I quietly fumed, I've got one woven into my teardrop Lily bouquet and the chief bridesmaid here has one tucked down her knickers. But I decided it really wasn't the time or the place for an full on barny and just gave him a look of death instead. In fact, we all did.

Then the panic set in and the bride's mother practically garrotted me twice as she rotated her head 180 degrees in a wide-brimmed hat.

The reality was we were 10 miles from the hotel, 15 minutes away from the ceremony and just five minutes in front of the bride, who was hopefully following behind in a Rolls-Royce with a full tank of four star, and with no obvious solution in sight.

The driver was really starting to bug me as well as he sat there completely unperturbed by the fact we were stranded in the left-hand lane.

He even raised a chuckle when we suggested he walk five minutes to the petrol station - he didn't have a canister in the back, you see. Well, laugh? I nearly burst my satin-covered buttons.

Then our salvation arrived in the form of Scottish John, a mate of my brother's who just happened to have borrowed a Land Rover Discovery and was following behind.

"How many of you is there?" he chirped, doing a quick tiara-ed head count. "Five? Och, c'mon, we can get you all in the back."

I dread to think what we must have looked like as we bundled out of the limo as elegantly as our floor-length, highly impractical dresses would allow, hoicked them up past our knees and hoofed it down the grass verge to avoid the convoy of traffic doing 100mph a yard to our right. And if you spotted us I don't want to know.

We must have looked like the Clampetts as we clambered out at the hotel. The groomsman didn't know which door to open first as bridesmaids fell out of every door including the boot.

By this time my brother had already had all the 'she's not coming' jokes he could take and nearly collapsed at the altar when someone told him the car had broken down.

But apart from the slight delay and the fact the reception was dominated by ever exaggerated tales of how the bridesmaids had to run 10 miles down the M65 because the car blew up, the rest of the day went without a hitch.

Unless you count Lee and Petra getting hitched of course.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.