Gypsy Wedding Dreams: Ten dresses. Ten Dreams. All the secrets revealed.

She was just a 17-year-old girl and I was infuriated by how she’d get a rise out of me. At one stage she decided that she would like an extra 29 3D flowers added to her dress. Those flowers use almost an entire bag of crystals each – they are expensive but, more importantly, they are heavy. And she wanted them attached to the most lightweight of the sheer pieces of fabric that she had flowing down the top of the skirts.

Pauline called her and started explaining to her mum that there was no way we could do that for her unless we went seriously over the budget we’d been given and it would also put the delicate fabric at great risk of ripping under their weight. We were sure they’d just rip off – the whole point of that part of the dress was that it looked flyaway, like a fairy’s dress, not for holding bloody great crystal flowers on!

‘We can have them maybe dotted around other areas on the dress,’ she explained, ‘but not on the ends of those petals like that – they’ll just pull off.’

These flowers were the size of a saucer each; they were a serious amount of extra material and work. As I suspected, later that day Mrs Monaghan called about the costs: ‘Oh no, we can’t afford it.’

Away went another entire day of extra work we’d spent on the dress and now we were just met with not getting paid for the cancelled work and yet more of Ashleigh’s shouting from behind her mother. Each time we’d had one of these conversations it took up the best part of a working morning or afternoon. One minute she wanted a belly top with huge skirts. Usually, if a girl’s having a belly top, her skirts are lower on the hip and slim-fitting, creating a bit of a slinky line. And if they’re having big skirts, they tend to have a corset which covers where the skirts are fastened. My skirts are so heavy that they really need to sit up on the waist, with the girl’s hips for the lower skirts to rest on. So a belly top with big skirts really doesn’t work – it’ll either sit on the hips and slide down under their own weight, or look a fright up round her waist. But whichever way we tried to explain this to Ashleigh, she still didn’t understand why large skirts wouldn’t physically hold up on a dress like that; she would not have it.

The next minute there would be another quibble about the underskirts. Then there would be a panic about revised costs. And inevitably there would be more upsets, which often ended with the mother handing the phone over.

‘Here, you speak to Thelma,’ Mrs Monaghan would say to her daughter and then turn back to me: ‘It’s only you she listens to anyway.’

It had reached the point in the factory where it would get to about 11am – the machines would be whirring, we’d have cups of tea on the go, the banter was good – and someone would always look up and say, ‘Has Ash called yet?’

We were all waiting for it, the whole time, because we knew that once she called the mood would change and we’d be running around, trying to sort out the latest drama. It was a horrible tension to be working with by the end.

Sometimes it would be eight or nine o’clock at night and there’d be no one there but me and the phone would still be going. If I didn’t pick up it would ring again – and again, and again. It was merciless.

I couldn’t just sit there and work on a dress or catch up on paperwork. Oh no! She would carry on leaving messages.

‘It’s very important, Thelma …’

‘It’s Ashleigh’s mummy here …’

‘Thelma, we really do need to talk to you before bed …’

Eventually I would relent and it would be something silly, like, ‘Ash is wondering, have you started the flowers yet?’

I liked the woman – she was polite and kind, but a bit of a pushover. One evening when I pointed out that perhaps the fourth query of the day could have waited, she replied, ‘Ooh, you know what they’re like!’

‘Well, I know what yours is like,’ I said, ‘but if mine spoke to me like that she’d get a smack in the gob.’

I knew this woman didn’t have any more money to spend but she so wanted to make her daughter happy and give her a dream day. But Ashleigh wanted constant reassurance; the more she nagged, the more she got.

Girls that call in a lot are not uncommon, and I don’t really have a problem with it. I understand what a big deal these dresses are, for the mother and the bride. But there was only one other time we had a girl who rang as much as Ashleigh and she wasn’t nearly as much pressure. Don’t get me wrong, the constant chatting was not ideal, but this girl was a real sweetheart. She was from Belfast and we did her engagement dress, and then her wedding dress. She kept changing her mind about the engagement dress as every time she saw something she’d want it added: after many, many extra drawings the finished garment had feathers, diamonds, flowing arms and all sorts. In shocking pink too!

She’d call in for what seemed like days on end and sometimes for no real reason. She never had complaints, she didn’t seem too fussed about how the timings were coming along, and the finances were all agreed, but she’d ask for a few details of what we were up to, check on who else was getting dresses done at the time, or anything else she might think of.

At Nico, we’re open on a Saturday and often we’re there working on a dress on a Sunday too, but it took a while before Leanne realised that she was calling all weekend – from Friday night for almost 48 hours non-stop. It was starting to feel so personal.

Lovely though she was, the situation was stopping us from getting any actual work done. And after what was nearly two years, what with the engagement dress and then the wedding dress, I felt enough was enough.

In the end I had to say to her, ‘Love, this is a lot of phone calls – I’m worried that you’re not leaving us with enough time for dressmaking while you’ve been busying yourself with these chats. How can we get on with making this dress if you keep on at us like this?’

‘I just like talking to you, it’s so nice keeping in touch,’ she said.

‘It’s great, but we need to get back to the job in hand …’

‘Oh sorry, Thelma, love,’ she replied. ‘It’s just that I get my free minutes at the weekend so I like to call round whoever I can and you’re on the list.’

When I put the phone down and told the girls why she’d been ringing so much, they couldn’t believe it. We nearly died laughing when we realised we’d been being so polite all because this girl had some free minutes on her mobile contract!

The calls calmed down after that, bless her heart, but she was a very different kettle of fish to Ashleigh.

Ashleigh was her parents’ eldest, and it was beyond me how she managed to secure this much power over her mother. What we didn’t know, until the day she came to collect the dress, was that she had even more power over her dad.

I was pleasantly surprised by how pretty Ashleigh was when she eventually turned up at the factory. She had very dark hair and fine features. When she came in – on time – she had a real sparkle and I thought that finally, everything was going to be OK.

She walked into the room where her dress stood on a mannequin and gasped. There was tension throughout the factory as we all looked at each other, waiting for her reaction. Her hands flew to her mouth and she took a deep breath.

‘I love it!’ she screeched.

We all smiled and let out a heavy sigh of relief.

‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before – oh my God!’

She really was thrilled, and so was I. We left her to it so that she could start getting out of her clothes to try it on, and waited next door. Then, all of a sudden, almighty screams were coming from the room. I ran in, completely panicked by what could have gone wrong.

‘What’s happened?’

‘There should be 29 flowers on here!’ she shrieked.

‘Yes, love, we had this conversation – a few times. They would have ripped this fairy wing fabric,’ I explained, stroking the petals to show what I meant.

She was crying so much that she couldn’t actually get any words out. She literally wasn’t making sense. I had heard this down the telephone before, but I had never witnessed it in the flesh.

‘Ashleigh, love,’ I said. ‘Look at the dress – go through it from top to bottom – then you tell us specifically what is not right and we can fix it. Start at the top and we’ll work down. Make a list. Right? Every point of the dress! Standing there crying is not going to do you any good. Stand there, take this pen, and work your way down.’

But she was still crying and her mum was just standing there, consoling her. ‘Ashleigh, Ashleigh,’ she kept repeating. Her dad had his head in his hands.

‘Do you want a cup of coffee, love?’ I asked the mum, just looking at her.

‘Yes please, Thelma,’ she replied in the world-weary voice that I’d heard so many times before.

So I went into the kitchen, made her a coffee, put it on the table in front of her and closed the door for her.

‘I love the dress so much, Thelma,’ she said, sadly. ‘I’m really pleased. And I know Ash is too – she’s always like this, though.’

We could still hear her sobs in the kitchen. It was as if she had no way of expressing any extreme of emotion other than this. Crying was the only way she knew to get what she wanted. She’d worked herself up into such a state.

The thing is, you have to remember, this was the day Ashleigh had been dreaming of for years. It’s the same for all my young traveller brides, so while it’s hard to deal with at the time, you have to bear in mind what a big day it is. The trying-on day is when all their dreams are realised – it is their princess moment. But poor Ashleigh was out of control.

Pauline was in the other room trying to deal with it, trying to persuade her to at least try the dress on and see what it looked like on her. She got out the book with the sketch in it and showed Ashleigh that we had done exactly as we were asked. We were at a loss as to how or where we had gone wrong.

‘I know, I know! But it hasn’t got this on, or these flowers!’ she belted out. Her hands were flailing about, pointing at vague areas where she knew that we had not really made any mistakes.

‘But your mum’s only got a certain amount of money, love,’ I heard Pauline say, trying to placate her. I felt that I must step in at this point: ‘Apart from it looking ridiculous if we’d added all the extras you wanted, your mum only has a certain amount that she can pay for,’ I told her.