I should have seen it coming.

Ever since the day I met him, he always wanted change. It started small; the way I dressed, the way I laughed, smiled. But then the adjustments got bigger. More personal. The way I spoke, the way I moved - never preserve, always alter.

We would take a photo. He would edit me beyond recognition before I even got a chance to see it. Even skin tone here, erase a pimple there. It was the way I looked, but that wasn’t how he wanted to remember me. He never wanted me how I was, he wanted me to be his version of perfection. Never preserve, always alter.

When he proposed, he told me I couldn’t have the ring because - after looking at it next to my finger - he decided he had changed his mind and wanted something that was a little more of a ‘statement’. Like a ball and chain. Never preserve, always alter.

We agreed on an understated civil service; limited guests, chilled evening buffet with a little disco and then a weeks’ honeymoon on the coast. So naturally the plans were confirmed as a big white wedding with 150+ guests, a 5 course sit down meal with live music and a 6 month celebration tour around Asia. Never preserve, always alter.

The bridesmaids wanted short baby pink dresses? They ended up in floor length emerald evening gowns. Alter.

I wanted a small bouquet of wildflowers from my parents garden? I got a centrepiece of roses the size of my head. Alter.

I asked my father to walk me down the aisle to Frank Sinatra’s ‘The Way You Look Tonight’? He had already arranged for his grandfather to escort me to Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’, as per his family’s traditions. Alter.

The chicken was beef. The family friend DJ was a 50 piece philharmonic orchestra. The small planned budget was my parents inheritance and leftover mortgage debt combined. Alter.

Alter. Alter. Alter.

So why wasn’t I surprised when that was exactly where he left me? At the altar.