Despite the exhaustion that all of us had felt when we’d returned back home that evening, we ended up going to the local and only nightclub in the town, it was a tradition among the young people here to party these days and after several texts and calls from some of our old friends asking us to join them, we finally gave in.

We ended up getting really drunk, all of us, because we had downed a long row of shots at Em’s place, when we thought we would have to hurry to the club. That way we arrived there at one o’clock, stoned as hell, since our busy schedule hadn’t left us any time to eat any proper dinner.

As far as I remember, we were taking quite a lot of pictures with lots of different people, mostly ones that I didn’t know. I remember dancing around, I remember sweating, I remember smoking cigarettes. And I remember Aida smiling widely up at me, seconds after she’d been throwing up in the bushes outside. Apparently she wasn’t feeling too sick, since the blurry night got to continue until five in the morning.

The first thing I did the next morning was to swallow a dose of Aspirins to lessen the pain in my poor pounding head.


Other than being hungover, my last day in Denmark was spent with my family doing what I loved most: Playing music.
Laura had gotten the lead part in the school musical at her high school, she’d always loved singing and been really good at it, and with her pretty face, blonde curly hair and slim figure, she was an easy choice for stuff like that.
We practiced a few of her songs and also made an acoustic cover of Ellie Goulding’s song, “Burn”. When I told her that I’d met Ellie, she went just as crazy on me as when I’d brought home Niall for the first time, without warning her first.

Niels, who played the bass and the drums, joined in when I asked him to do our version of “Counting Stars” that we’d played together for a long time. I played the guitar on this one and sang along with him.

Both my brother and sister wanted us to shoot a video of our covers and post them on Facebook and Youtube, apparently both of them thought I was now so famous and cool enough to make them more popular. I’m not kidding, that was honestly their argument.
But as the caring and responsible big sister that I was, I gladly let them post those videos.


My mum dropped me off at the train at six o’clock in the evening where I met up with the girls. We didn’t want any of our parent to spend their entire evening on driving us to the airport in Copenhagen and back, especially not now, when we’d borrowed their cars to transport ourselves around to all of our many appointments.

And so we spent two hours on the train, two hour at the airport and one hour on the plane. Because of the time difference, it was only ten when we landed at Heathrow Airport.
It was actually Lou Teasdale who picked us up, since we were all going to be spending the night at her and Tom’s place, since she would be styling all of us tomorrow for Eleanor and Louis’ wedding.

Wow.

Eleanor and Louis were getting married tomorrow. The thought seemed both so crazy and so right at the same time.

Aida hugged Lou tightly, once we’d fought our way out to the parking lot through the many people wanting pictures and asking questions. Apparently the two of them had become really good friends already, I couldn’t blame them though. Lou seemed like the sweetest person ever, I couldn’t till I would get to know her better.

“Perrie and Eleanor have already arrived,” she informed us as we were driving through the streets that were really crowded, despite the fact that it was late in the evening. “All of the stuff is there as well, Elie will arrive with the dresses tomorrow morning.”

“Wow, this is really happening,” I smiled, giggling like an idiot.

“Maja, I’m thinking that I will dye your hair tonight, so that we don’t have to spend so much time on that tomorrow, we will be busy enough then,” she then suggested, immediately silencing my laugh. I had completely forgotten about that. Shit. Damn. Fuck.

“Is that okay?” she asked hesitatingly when I didn’t manage to say anything.

“Oh. Uhm… yes, I guess it is,” I stuttered.

“Great. So we’ll have to stop by the salon tonight. I’m just going to drop you guys off first at home,” she referred to Aida and Em.

“Are you kidding, I’m going to watch this happen,” Em instantly exclaimed.

“Yeah, me too!” Aida agreed. “Let’s go straight to the salon, then I finally get to see it as well.”


Lou’s salon looked absolutely amazing. Just like you would only imagine. I knew about her hair styling brand, Bleach London, and their style was so grungy and cool, the salon looked the exact same way; The chairs were in black leather, they looked really old and worn-out, like the ones that we had stored up in the attic at home. Why hadn’t I used them before?

The mirrors were really just some big old pieces of glass without any frame around them and all the stuff that the hairdressers there used for styling was stored in some big plain square metal boxes. The entire look came off as raw and rocky. Exactly like Lou’s style. I couldn’t wait to see what her and Tom’s apartment looked like, I could only imagine that it would be even cooler than this.

“Wow, this place looks amazing,” Aida gushed the second we stepped inside the room.

With a slightly shy smile on her lips Lou made her way down the hall after asking us to wait while she would get the dye for my hair. On the way she turned on the light that came from what looked like some old factory lamps in the ceiling.

“Come sit here,” she said when she’d returned with a small black bowl full of some kind of completely white mixture.

“That looks rather dangerous,” I frowned at the bowl as I reluctantly sat down in the chair before she quickly wrapped a black thin plastic blanket around my throat. I could hear Em squeal excitedly from behind me and both she and Aida were smiling widely to me in the mirror in front of me.

“Oh my God, this is really happening,” Em spoke with wide eyes.

“You know, that isn’t helping me, I’m going out of my mind,” I scolded at her but smirking at the same time. Some place deep down, I was actually just really excited about this, but for some reason I wasn’t that fond of admitting it.

“Relax, it’s going to suit you beautifully,” Lou told me kindly as she put on a pair of white plastic gloves.

“But what if it turns yellow?” I asked concerned.

“I’m not going to dye your hair yellow, girl,” she assured me one last time before grabbing the brush on the table next to the chair where I was sitting.


“FUUUUUUCK!” I shouted the second the brush in her hand touched my scalp. “FUUUUUUCK!”

She laughed at me, but Aida and Em were just shouting along with me. We really were just a couple of huge idiots, I wouldn’t blame anybody if they suddenly persuaded their extreme desire to hit each of us unconscious one day.

“Is it normal that it itches?” was just one of the hundreds of worried questions that I asked through the time that the dye was sitting in my hair.

“It’s a good thing, means that it’s working,” she tried to calm me down.

“Okay,” I sighed nervously. She’d been dying hair for years, Maja. She knows what she’s doing, I kept telling myself.



“Wow,” I heard Aida exclaim once I had leaned back in to a sink to wash out the dye color half an hour later.

“Is it blond?” I asked curiously. “No wait, I don’t want to know! I want to see it myself!”

I shut my eyes closed to make sure I didn’t take any sneak peak in the mirror. I told Lou to turn my chair away from it when she was about to blow dry it.

“Damn girl,” Em gushed, I could tell that she was smiling excitedly.

“Shut up!” I hissed, still feeling really anxious about all this. But I couldn’t help but smile widely at the thought of me being blonde. It was just too weird.


Which were the exact first words that flew out of my mouth a few minutes later when I got to glance in the mirror. I was… it was… just weird!

“Wow,” I exclaimed shrilly with my eyes wide open as I stepped closer towards my reflection to study my new look properly. “I don’t know what to say. It’s so strange! FUUUUUUCK!”

“It’s so fucking perfect,” Aida squealed while jumping up and down clapping her hands along with Em and their stupid behavior affected me. It actually looked really cool. The platinum blonde hair went really well with my ice blue eyes and the excitement started rushing over me. Within the next couple of seconds I had thrown my arms around Lou’s neck and thanked her about a thousand times and then keep on shouting fuck while doing some kind of victory dance that made her laugh.

“Come, let’s go home, we need to get up early tomorrow morning, remember?” she interrupted my movements and led us back out towards the car in the street, after she’d turned off all the cool lamps and locked the door to the salon.



“Oh my God, Maja!” Eleanor exclaimed the second she saw me. “You look amazing!”

“Thank you,” I blushed heavily as she stood up from the couch in the small living room at Tom and Lou’s place. Perrie and then Tom followed her to say hello and hug all the three of us. Everybody complimented my new look and assured me that it would suit my bridesmaids dress much more. I almost exploded from happiness and relief from all of their kind words.

“Ssh, we need to be quiet, aren’t we waking up Lux?” Em asked when we all sat down in the extremely cool decorated living room with each a cup of tea.

“Oh no, she’s used to be around a lot of noise, she can sleep from practically everything,” Tom assured us and I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of what crazy lifestyle that kid had been born in to. Luckily she had the sweetest and most loving parents ever, it was very certain that they would keep her from anything bad that that little sweet girl would be going to face in the future.

“Of course she is,” Aida smiled.

“So how are you feeling?” Lou then asked Eleanor sitting next to her on the sofa, placing a comforting touch on her thigh.

“Good,” she nodded. “A little nervous that something might go wrong. But other than that, I’m just really looking forward to see Louis.”

“Remember, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow, that’s the rules,” Perrie chuckled, but the tone in her voice still made the command very clear. She was the one who was married already, she was the one who knew how to keep the traditions and she took it very seriously that they were all being followed to perfection.



If I hadn’t so buzzing from excitement and nerves the next morning, I would’ve dropped dead from the fatigue. But luckily that feeling didn’t get a chance to survive longer than those couple of seconds that it took me to drag myself out to the bathroom that early morning, where my new hair color showing in the mirror first shocked me and then made me smile proudly. I was suddenly no longer tired, but instead I half ran the way back to the room where I had slept on a matrass on the floor next to Perrie and Em, among the many different musical instruments that Tom’s music room contained. It was the only spare room in the apartment, apart from Lou’s makeup room a door further down the narrow hall, where Aida and Eleanor had slept.

“Good morning,” I said to Em, since Perrie had already gone to the shower. She didn’t answer, but remained silent with closed eyes, so I decided to jump down on the matrass on top of her. I breathed in to hear ear with a loud groan, which immediately made her body stiffen under me as she tried to move.
You’ll be trying in vain, girl.

“Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur…” I began humming teasingly, which was the words from the song Soft Kitty from the hilarious TV show, Big Bang Theory. She began rubbing her eyes with one hand and let out the funniest little noises while scrunching her nose.

“Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr,” she sleepily ended the song the way we always did, when one would begin singing it. She still had her eyes closed and sounded completely distant and I couldn’t help but burst in to laughter and peck her cheek.

“Hello snowflake,” I said seductively, still laughing.

“I…” she began. “I can’t breathe.”

I finally gave in and rolled over next to her instead, leaving her with a possibility of surviving my spontaneously, and probably also annoyingly, bright morning mood.

“Jesus Christ, why are you suddenly so energetic in the fucking morning?” she complained, pulling the covers over her face.

“Because I’m blonde now,” I honestly said and the immediate laugh coming from her was loud and bright as she stood up from the matrass.

“You discovered my secret…” she mumbled, still chuckling when she walked out of the room. I followed her out in to the small kitchen where Tom was making some breakfast for all of us.

“Good morning,” he smiled as he put a couple of slices of bread in to a toaster. The small table was filled with many other delicious things, such as yoghurt, fruit, boiled eggs, coffee and tea.

“Wow, this looks great,” Em smiled greedily as she sat down.

“Yeah, Lou is busy getting all the boys ready first, so I thought that this was the least I could do. I’m not much help when it comes to hairstyling,” he smiled. At that moment Lux walked in to the kitchen with her hair completely messed up on top of her round head, she looked so awfully cute, it almost made me want to cry.

“Hi Lux,” I said to her when she crawled in to the child’s chair that was a bit taller than the others around the table.

“Hi,” she said shyly with a little voice.


The rest of the many people hidden away everywhere in the apartment joined us in the kitchen, where we all sat very closely spaced together to eat. None of us girls ate that much, I think we were all a bit nervous and personally, I wasn’t going to take any chances with my dress’ ability to stretch, since Elie Saab had told me that he would sew it in a bit.

After that Tom took care of cleaning everything up and commanded the rest of us out to the bathroom and Lou’s makeup room to get going with the many, many things that needed to be done. One of her friends had arrived and was doing all the makeup, her name was Mary.
Luckily we had many hours left before we would have to leave, but there were still an entire schedule of those couple of hours hung up on the wall in that styling room. I couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of it, it seemed a bit ridiculous to have an exact time on when I was going to sit in which chair. But when I thought about all the people that actually needed to be ready, it suddenly seemed extremely necessary.

While Lou was still with the boys and getting them ready, Em was getting her makeup done as the first one. I was second, then Perrie, then Aida, and at last Eleanor, whose look was the most important one of the entire day.



“You look like a princess, Lux,” I exaggerated my voice as the little girl walked towards me at the door. I was waiting for the others, so that we could leave for the church, we were already ten minutes late, so I had decided to take the little girl with me out in the hall way, in the hope of helping them as best as possible.

I corrected the tall ponytail on top of her head that held her blonde hair in place with a dark blue hairband with glitter, before helping her put her little feet with white lace socks in to a black pair of sandals.

“You look pretty,” she replied to my comment. “I like your hair.”

“Oh thank you,” I smiled blushing a bit. “That’s your mum who did that.” I pointed at the braid going around on top of my blonde head of hair. My bangs were parted in the middle and tugged behind my ears before gathered in the braid as well.

“She did mine as well,” she said proudly and waved her ponytail around.

“She’s good at that,” I praised her.

“We’re coming now!” Em shouted as she hurried out in the hallway to Lux and I. “Where’s Tom?”

“He’s here,” Tom answered coming out of the bathroom in a black blazer, a black button up shirt and some black skinny jeans with holes at the knees. Even though this was a formal wedding, he had never been one to dress up any more than his incredible and cool sense of style allowed. “Come Lux, we will meet the girls at the church. You look so beautiful,” he sat kneeling in front of his daughter. Lou joined them at the door, checking my hair one last time before heading out with the two of them.

Mary suddenly hurried out to Em and I.

“Look down, sweetie,” she told me before she let the brush in her hand touch my eyelid with the black color. “Such beautiful long lashes…”

I smiled at her comment, knowing that according to the thick layer of mascara on them, they probably made me look like Bambi. My makeup consisted of a pair of black and dark golden brown smokey eyes and the rest completely neutral in order not to make me look to scary. A heavy eye makeup like this already made my blue eyes stand out a lot, but it matched my black dress perfectly. The lace pattern on it, the belt in the waist, the long sleeves and the black strappy sandals on my feet stood in contrast to my innocent hairstyle.

Aida and Perrie then joined Em, completing the beautiful row of bridesmaids that we were; Em with her scraped straight ponytail in the neck and flawless makeup. Mary had put a golden powder on her marked cheekbones, a matte golden eye shadow on the eyelids, along with some very natural looking fake eyelashes and lots of mascara. The golden look matched the light grey color on her tight, long dress with long sleeves and the huge golden bracelets on each of her wrists.

Aida stood next to her in the beautiful crème colored dress with bare shoulders and a balloon shape around her waist. She had added a pair of pointy strappy stilettos in the same color as her dress, making her already long legs seem fucking endless. Lou had slicked her long bangs behind her ear, which added to the classic look of her outfit. Her eyes wore not much else but a thick black eyeliner on the lid and false eyelashes. The one thing that made her stand out completely from the rest of us, was the dark purple lipstick on her full lips. She was one fierce mother fucker.

“Eleanor, we’re ready for you now,” Perrie called towards the door to the living room, where Elie Saab had been putting the dress on her for the past fifteen minutes. I looked at her profile for a bit, taking in the beautiful hairstyle of hers. Lou had pulled it back in to a big tall and tight bun on her head, and along with the simple makeup that was just some eyeliner and a deep red lipstick that went perfectly with the dark grey color on her dress, she looked breathtaking.
I was honestly proud of being a part of this sexy ass group of bridesmaids.

Elie’s thick accent became louder as it seemed like he and Eleanor were about to enter the small hallway, where we were all waiting. I lifted my head to see how the bride was looking, I hadn’t seen her all morning, because everything had been rather hectic with all the makeup, hairstyling and dress fittings.

The door to the living room opened with a squeak and what seemed like an ocean of white lace fabric moved out towards us. I literally almost fell over, as I was in the middle of closing the strap on my high heeled black sandals.

“Oh my God,” I breathed at the sight of her and I could see out of my canthus that Em had put her hands in front of her mouth.

“Oh Eleanor…” Aida sighed dropping her hands down at her sides.

“Is it…” she stuttered insecurely. “Is it okay?”

The sound of a small sob from Em gave her the exact answer that the rest of us couldn’t get across our lips. She was completely flawless. Perfect. Amazing. Beautiful.
A single tear trailed down her cheek and she quickly dried it off with the back of her hand.

“I seriously need to stop crying, like now, or else I will look like a completely mess,” she said trying to compose her breathing, while Mary quickly checked to see if there was the tiniest bit of imperfection caused to her flawless makeup. “It’s just this damn dress!” she complained to Elie, who smiled as proudly at her as the rest of us.

The draping in the lace fabric over her chest and neck was perfect, the white silk ribbon in her slim waist was perfect, the way the fabric fell down the rest of her tall body, scattering it with the beautifully made roses was fucking perfect.

Her makeup was simple; a bit of blush to emphasize her cute apple cheeks, thick eyeliner and a neutral colored lipstick was all she needed to make everybody stop and stare. Her warm brown hair was curled in big waves and pinned up high at the back of her head in some kind of casual and loose, messy bun. It looked so romantic and feminine. Just like Eleanor.

“Come on, we don’t want your future husband to wait too long,” Perrie kindly said to her with a smile before I forced my eyes away from the bride to head out of the door to the apartment as the first one and down to the limousine that was going to take all of us to the church.

Notes