I’ve been thinking about marriage a lot lately. I recently celebrated my thirtieth wedding anniversary. My eldest child and his amazing fiancée are getting married soon. And in my next Elena Collins novel, out in October, two sets of characters get married.

My own wedding was pretty mediocre, to tell the truth. I wanted to go to St Kitt’s and jump the broomstick. I’d have been happier to stand in a field and join hands. But no, I ended up in a registry office in an ordinary South West town. It wasn’t the best day – but I can’t complain. Big G is a rock and a soul mate and that’s what counts. However, the advice I’d give to others now is to do your wedding exactly how you want.

In my novel The Daughter of the Fens, the main protagonist Hanna comes back to her home in Little Rymer in East Anglia to work out what she wants to do with her life. Her mother, a divorcee, is marrying a farmer, Paddy Palmer, and Hanna has a new family to embrace.

In 61CE, Brea is an Iceni slave working in a Roman household in Camulodunum. The master’s handsome widowed son, Marcellus, is marrying a woman from Rome whom he’s never met, and Brea finds herself as Aurelia’s personal slave. The problem is that Aurelia and Marcellus do not love each other. They don’t expect to. Marriage in those times was an arranged duty, more about the creation of children than a relationship.

As I wrote The Daughter of the Fens, I was fascinated by similar traditions and those that are strikingly different. Hanna’s mother Stephanie is sixty years old; Paddy the farmer is a little older. They are traditional in their views and their marriage is conventional. They both have hen and stag parties, of sorts, although Steph is a little awkward about being a bride to be before her daughter Hanna. Steph wants a honeymoon; Paddy needs to arrange it around his work on the farm. They organise a reception at a local hotel: there are speeches, feasting, a disco, cutting of the cake. The bride wears a traditional white/ ivory dress. Hanna and Paddy’s son Ollie are witnesses.

In Roman times, there are many similarities. Aurelia wears a traditional gold dress; her sister-in-law to be is the pronuba, a bridesmaid, of sorts. The bride is given away. There are rituals, expectations. The bride’s hair is worn in a certain way to promote fertility. The vows are traditional, the wife promising to follow the groom’s lead. ‘Ibi tu Marcellus, ergo ibi.’ ‘Wherever you go, Marcellus, I go too.’ The marriage register is signed.

Both weddings are traditional; no expense is spared. Steph wants to be carried over the threshold; rituals are important to her. Before the ceremony, she and Paddy spend the night in different locations. Steph says, ‘Do you think we’re being silly, not seeing each other until we get to the registry office?’

Hanna replies, ‘Tradition is important to you, Mum. Every wedding is different and you like these rituals. You can have just what you want – it’s your day.’

Marcellus respects Roman tradition – he has no choice. Although he is a powerful soldier from a rich family, when it comes to the marriage, he must obey Roman law and do as his father bids. As he leads his new wife to their wedding chamber, he says ‘Aurelia, I have no desire to bend to tradition, to pretend to kidnap the bride while you feign being unwilling and coy. I respect you too much for that.’

I was struck by how little has changed as I wrote The Daughter of the Fens. So much is similar in both the Roman and the modern wedding: the wearing of specific clothing, ritual, feasting, celebration. Tradition and appearance are so important. After all, marriage is a rite of passage. It’s expected that both couples will be together until death parts them.

The huge difference is that Steph and Paddy love each other. She adores his foibles; he asks whether he can go manure spreading in the morning before their afternoon ceremony. Aurelia and Marcellus don’t love each other; they don’t know each other. The marriage is arranged by their fathers. They’ve communicated only by letter and once Aurelia arrives, she has little interest in spending time with him. She tells her new sister-in-law to be ‘I am to run the house efficiently, please my husband in every way, bear sons. I will support him in his every decision and make him as comfortable as I can. I will dress modestly, I will appear chaste and obedient at all times —’

Of course, Julia, Marcellus’s sister, has a completely different view of marriage. Her husband Caius is an old man, a friend of her father’s, so Julia occupies herself lusting after young men and enjoying watching gladiators pit themselves against each other in the arena. As she says, ‘Caius Fabius has no idea what I do when I’m not playing the compliant wife.’

And as for poor Marcellus, who is simply a soldier, he doesn’t expect happiness in marriage. But his heart is not his wife’s…

In my novel, the role of a woman as the bride is fascinating. Aurelia has no rights. She simply becomes a wife in order to create children. Marcellus’s first wife Claudia died in her childbed. However, Iceni slave Brea has a completely different view of marriage. The Britons believed that women were men’s equals. They chose their partner for love. Men and women lived and worked and fought side by side.

Brea says, ‘There’s no big ceremony, no ritual to be followed as the Romans do. My father and mother loved each other and wanted to be together, so they told each other so and they were wed. It is a simple contract of love. Our women choose who and when to marry. They are not the properties of their husbands and fathers, as Roman women are.’

Tradition is often at the heart of weddings, whatever one’s culture and belief. The important thing is that the bride and groom have a day they will remember and that their family and friends support them to celebrate an important rite of passage.

The Daughter of the Fens is published on October 2^nd. It’s about marriage and love, about the past embracing the present, about a spirit that cannot rest and how Hanna’s disturbing dreams inform her about Brea’s life. It’s about the Romans in Britannia, about Boudicca’s rebellion, and about and what happened to the Iceni in their final battle two millennia ago.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.