As I walked down the aisle, what was that sinking feeling?

Sometime in 1982, maybe September, my mother finally told me she was dying. I’d known she wasn’t well – coughing, grey, more irritated than usual with the daughter who had become neither a doctor nor a lawyer.

She told each of us separately. My older sister, my younger brother, me, all sworn not to say anything to the others until she was done. Me, I’m a chronic over-sharer, a trait that annoys my family. Mum was the opposite. No need to let people into your personal chaos unless it was an emergency. But dying, in this case, turned out to be the catalyst. She had one summer left. We had one summer left together.

The barefoot bride: Jenna Price and her husband, John, with the shoes.

More of an emergency than usual because I was still unmarried. Yes: 25, unmarried. Time was running out; not for me, but for her.

It wasn’t that I was single. I’d been living with the same bloke for years, I’d proposed on more than a handful of occasions, including on the Opera House stairs. She liked him.

When he finally proposed, she already knew her time was short. The wedding would have to be over summer. We had not a thing organised. No venue. No dress. No food. No guest list. No invitations. No shoes (the footwear I favoured would not be permitted). No hair. No make-up. No flowers.

Weddings are meant to be joyful. They are also wildly stressful.

I knew I could easily handle the joy. I seize on celebrations and parties and success and love. Call perfect strangers to congratulate them. Kiss and coo at babies on trains. But I wasn’t too sure I could handle the stress. At least, not by myself.

My boyfriend, ah, fiance, was attempting to be chill, and in those days weddings were meant to be organised by the bride and her mother. Mum was keen to be involved, no matter how tiny the tasks. All through my life she’d had so much zip and zest, but here she was, barely 60; utterly unzipped. We talked every day, many times a day.

I realised I was embarking on big girl’s business pretty much by myself. Would she even make it through summer?

Together, we made lists and crossed off items. She told me I was crazy to handwrite wedding invitations on crinkly handmade paper and then imprint them with stamps of Luna Park. She argued with me about the dress, my hair and, above all, my shoes. And my lovely, lovely partner listened as I worried, backed me when I needed it, kept telling me it would all be all right.

We chose a Sunday – January 30, 1983, the middle of a long weekend. Everything was planned for outside: the wedding, the drinks, the photos. But a week out and it kept raining. Drizzling. Raining. Thunderstorms were forecast. They arrived.

The dress, rose-coloured silk, was finished a day or two beforehand. Three days beforehand, Mum had a meltdown about shoes.

I’d sneakily tried to get away with wearing nana sandals. Instead, I found myself in Centrepoint buying grey snake-skin sandals with stiletto heels. Mum said I needed to be taller for the photos. For context, my husband was 30 centimetres taller than me. He is still 30 centimetres taller than me.

The rain kept coming. Every day for days, rain came. Storms. There were early fog patches on the morning of January 30.

For some reason, we’d settled on a late-afternoon wedding, not a good time for a woman with no patience. I’d put my dress on again and taken it off again, on again, off again. I kept fiddling with my flowers, fiddling with my hair and my make-up.

And then the sun came out. The air sat on my skin. I could see Mum perched in the front row of guests, sitting, waiting. Perfect.

I walked across the park in those grey snake-skin heels I’d avoided even trying on. Everything was done, ready. But what was this sinking feeling?

Those glamorous sandals were not designed for life in the great outdoors, not even in a perfectly groomed beachside park. There was nothing for it. I recalled ballet classes from 20 years before and tiptoed through the whole thing.

Why did that summer change everything for me? That was the last time in my life I tiptoed around anything.

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