Today the papers are full of memorials for 9-11 but we were celebrating. Celebrating love and good things - the union of my lovely friend Beth and her Sabino. They married in a garden just outside Madrid and the celebration of their union was conducted in the restaurant adjacent to the garden. The whole day was special.

We started the day to peer up between the buildings around our hotel, just fifteen paces from the Gran Via, Madrid’s main thoroughfare and see the blue sky and puffy white clouds predicting a lovely day. My world was shattered a moment later by DM pronouncing a migraine and all of a sudden, the possibility of me still ending up photographing this mammoth wedding alone loomed again.

This was a theme that DM and I had contemplated many times during the three weeks since we realised we would no longer be a stone’s throw from Heathrow when the wedding occurred. We agonised for ages as to whether I could do this ‘gig’ alone but I begged David to come and help me because of the size of the wedding and the complexity that at least half of the guests speaking a different language to me brought to the proceedings.

When we overheard fellow breakfasters at the hotel discussing leaving for the wedding at 12:15pm in Aussie accents, I took a brave decision to throw us on their mercy and beg for painkillers so David would recover in time for the photography. Thankfully, while I was photographing the blushing bride’s preparations, he was sleeping with two Solpadeine inside him. They worked! (Hurrah, Linda cried with gusto and not a small amount of relief.)

After my shots in the bride’s boudoir, we high-tailed it to the wedding venue and set ourselves up for the main event. Both of us went into ‘work-mode’ at this point and shot like crazy until we had no more capacity on our memory cards. Phew, then we could relax a bit and enjoy the rest of the day.

What an event. The whole thing was superb. A lovely, non-secular wedding, followed by canapés on the lawn, a wedding breakfast of gargantuan proportions and dancing to put Ricky Martin and his fake Latino style to shame. There were swords, gyrating pelvises and so much vibrancy that it’d be difficult to imagine a happier party.

We made our excuses at 9pm and headed back to our hotel where we were tucked up in bed at 10pm, numb from exhaustion. What a day.

A year ago, I was taking pics of hips and two years ago, I was bemoaning the use of razor wire to protect things no-one wants.