To put it MILDLY

Sonia couldn't believe her ears - is that what a stranger really thought of her?

- Gabrielle Mullarkey

My older sister Andi has always been prone to exaggeration and general overemphasis. There are only 18 months between us, so she often employed this technique to get her way. For example, she once assured me 'one million per cent' that I looked great in a yellow swimming costume because the only other one in the shop was blue, and she wanted it for herself!

There's a flip side to her dramatic declarations, though. When she met her future fiancé, Dean, she once cancelled a date with him because of the tiniest spot on her skin, peering in a mirror and wailing, 'You can see it from space!'

'You so cannot!' I scoffed, pretty certain that Dean wouldn't notice if she had an extra head - not because he was unobservant, but because he was a nice bloke who was madly in love with her.

We were both in our 20s by then, sharing a flat together. If Andi's overexcitement could be annoying, she got fed up that I tended to understate things.

Like the time I rang her at work (she's a nurse) to report that I'd come home from my own job (as a lab technician) to find a 'bit of water coming through the ceiling'.

'Oh no, in that case it must be a tsunami!' she'd gasped.

I'd looked at the bucket placed under the increasingly heavy drip and conceded that it might be a tad on the serious side.

When she announced her engagement to Dean, I braced myself for a breathless round of superlatives about cakes, flowers and marquees.

She persuaded me and Mum to tour possible wedding venues with her, Andi carrying a rose-embossed ring binder that was soon full of seating plans, swatches and business cards.

And the lists don't get me started on the lists! Each time we toured a venue with its wedding coordinator, Andi would hand me and Mum a worksheet with 'pros and cons' at the top to fill in discreetly as we went around.

Whenever we got a chance, Mum and I would huddle in a gazebo to compare notes.