The Less Than Perfect Wedding (22 page)

"Sally, how long will it take the caterers at the reception to get the food set up and ready for people to eat?" I finally asked.

The question seemed to momentarily shake the woman out of her panicked fugue. "If I call them right now, they should have most of it out pretty fast," she replied. "But why?"

I waved one hand around at the surrounding ensemble. "We've got no bride and no groom," I pointed out. I turned next to Father Hemsley, who was still staring at me with an expression probably reserved for the Antichrist himself. "Father, I hate to do this to you, but I think that it's time to throw in the towel," I said. "Wedding's off. Sally, I'll make the announcement to everyone here, and then we'll just have them head right over to the reception. No reason these people can't at least get a decent meal."

Both Sally and Father Hemsley wore identical expressions of dismay, but neither of them had a better idea, and they both hurried off to their respective jobs, Sally to call the caterers and Father Hemsley to open the back doors of the church, and presumably to apologize to God for not having anyone to present to Him for eternal bonding after all. I watched them both scurry away, and then climbed the steps so that I was standing at the front of the altar. I raised my hands to catch everyone's attention, trying not to grind my teeth.

"Hello! Listen up! I'm afraid that this wedding isn't going to happen today!" I called out once the friends and relatives had quieted down and given me their attention. "Now, you'll all still get fed, but we are going to leave the church in an orderly fashion right now and go straight to the reception. Thank you, and I'm sure that both Danielle and Alex are incredibly sorry that you came here for nothing!"

I stepped down from my spot in the front of the altar after making this announcement, but I could already see relatives from both sides of the wedding party pushing their way towards me through the crowd of people now beginning to slowly shuffle towards the doors, angry expressions on their faces. Janice and Rick were both attempting to reach me, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught Susan pulling Danny out of a side door by one arm. In the precious few seconds before the relatives reached me, I yanked out my phone, punching Danielle's contact so angrily that I nearly broke a nail on the screen.

Maybe Danielle and Alex had made the right decision by deciding to give up on their families cooperating. But knowingly or not, they had stuck me with cleaning up their damn mess, and I was going to make sure that I gave both of them a very loud, very angry piece of my mind.

The Aftermath, Part II

*

"And I hope my voicemails managed to convey some level of the anger that I was feeling," Claire ended, finishing up her tale of how my wedding had fallen apart.

I let out a long sigh, releasing the breath that I hadn't realized I had been holding in. "How was the reception and the rest of the wedding?" I asked.

Claire shrugged one shoulder. "Surprisingly calm, actually," she said. "A lot of speculation about what had happened to you and Alex, of course, and there were some awkward moments when Sally forgot that you two weren't there and tried to quiet people down for toasts, or call everybody together to cut the wedding cake. But aside from that, the food was still delicious, the band still performed, and everyone ended up having a pretty decent time even without the pair of you."

My best friend then raised her finger to point at me, and I saw that an angry glint had re-entered her eyes. "Now, I want you to tell me what the hell the two of you did!" she ordered.

Over our honeymoon, Alex and I had discussed what we would tell our friends and family when we returned. We had briefly entertained the idea of telling them that we had been kidnapped, or that Alex secretly worked for the CIA and had been called away on an international spy mission of top importance, and he had chosen to take me with him on a glamorous globe-trotting adventure. Despite the allure of these fantasies, however, we eventually, reluctantly, settled on telling the truth.

Now, I quickly sketched out what had happened, telling Claire about my escape down the drainpipe, my discovery of Alex attempting to start his uncle's car in the parking lot, how we had read each other's wedding vows and realized that we truly didn't need our families' acceptance as long as we had each other, and how we had decided that, instead of using our honeymoon tickets to run away from each other, we would use them to get away from our stressful issues and to reconnect with each other.

"And all of this somehow managed to work out?" Claire asked when I finished my tale.

I nodded emphatically. "Alex!" I called, raising my voice so that it carried into our bedroom. He emerged a moment later, coming over and popping down next to me on the couch, his hand sliding around my shoulder as he settled in. I smiled and scooted closer so that I was pressed up against him, and we both beamed at a bemused Claire.

For a moment, I thought that our combined happiness would overwhelm my normally cynical best friend; I caught the edges of her lips struggling not to quirk up into a smile. "So what are you two going to do, now that you're back?" she asked, trying to stave off any outward display of happiness. "Are you going to try and go through with getting married again?"

Alex and I briefly exchanged glances. This had, of course, been another topic of conversation on our honeymoon. "We are going to get married, yes," I said slowly. "But I think that this time, it's going to be a much smaller ceremony. No big wedding, no fancy reception, no extravagant dresses, and definitely no big family gathering."

"So who'd be invited?" Claire questioned suspiciously. I knew what she was really asking, however.

"Don't worry!" I calmed her, reaching out and patting her arm. "You're the one who kept our last disaster of a wedding under control, so I think you may be the only guest at our next attempt!"

"I don't know, maybe we should also ask your sister," Alex cut in. "It sounded like she also did a pretty good job of trying to protect our wedding." He must have been listening around the corner, I realized, to know what Claire had been saying about how the wedding had crashed and burned in our absence.

Claire looked uncomfortable. "That might actually be a little weird," she spoke up. We both stopped and looked at her, wordlessly waiting for her to expand on this statement. "Since you two have been gone, she's kind of attached herself at the hip to Danny. Or maybe at another part..."

As it turned out, there were a few more parts to our wedding that Claire hadn't shared with us in her highlight reel. One of these facts was that Danny and Susan had taken a car to the reception together, and had arrived twenty minutes late and both sweaty and stinking. They had made it through the appetizer course and halfway through the main entree before they had both hopped up from the center table, excused themselves, and made a beeline for the coat closet at the front of the banquet building. They had been discovered by a rather unfortunate bellhop, but this apparently still wasn't enough to shame them into emerging for another ten minutes.

"And since then, as I understand, they have been all over each other," Claire finished. "It would be kind of sweet, I suppose, if they had come together for more of a reason than that your younger brother's horny and your younger sister will do anything to keep attention on herself."

"I'll tell you what," I said, reaching out and patting Claire on the hand. "We'll see about having a big family gathering - after the ceremony is over and completed. That way, there won't be anything else for them to ruin."

Beside me, Alex nodded at this new idea. "We really should have just planned on that from the beginning," he laughed. "I didn't ever need the big wedding in the first place, but I ended up feeling that I had no choice but to go along with it."

I spun around, turning to face him. "Wait a minute. You didn't want the big wedding? Because I didn't want the big wedding!"

We stared at each other. Claire finally voiced the question that we were all thinking. "So who wanted the whole nine yards in the first place?" she asked.

I slowly traced back the steps in planning the wedding. I had based the number of orders for the catering company off of the guest list, which had been based off of the combined numbers of family members and friends that I had thought up, combined with Alex's list. And the approximate sizes had been based on the capacity of the church. Now, who had suggested that church to me in the first place...

"Of course," I sighed, finally connecting all the dots. "It always comes back to my mother." For just a moment I felt that familiar ache of long-seated resentment rising up in me, just like it had during the wedding plans. I closed my eyes and tightened my hands into fists, trying to ignore the pervasive feeling.

This time, however, Alex quickly put his arm back around me, his hand massaging my shoulder. As I leaned against him, I felt the resentment flow away, leaving as though it had never existed in the first place. I could feel the cool, comforting weight of my engagement ring, tugging ever so slightly at my ring finger. After removing it every time I wanted to go swimming in the ocean on our honeymoon, I was once again feeling aware of its weight.

A similar glint came from Alex's hand as it hung down from my shoulder. We might not have gone through with the wedding, but he had still decided that it was time for him to start wearing his wedding band that he had picked out. He had lifted it from Danny before making his escape attempt. I told him that he didn't have to wear it until things were official, but he hadn't taken the gold band off.

"I'm going to be wearing this thing for the rest of my life," Alex had responded when, lying together in our bed, I had raised the question. "I might as well get used to it now."

A moment later, his eyes took on a wicked glint. "Besides, some of those other women by the pool keep on checking me out," he commented with a cheeky grin. "I figure that it's best to make things clear before they make any more advances!"

I had responded by tackling him off the bed, laughing even as I bore him down onto the ground in a wash of pillows and blankets. Despite the joke, however, he hadn't taken the ring off, and it was comforting to see it on his finger every day.

Back to Susan's Wedding..
.

*

So, I suppose that's everything, and we're pretty much caught up to today. It should now be clear and obvious why I'm standing here at my sister's wedding, gazing across the altar from my spot in the row of bridesmaids at my husband, watching him rock nervously back and forth on the heels of his dress shoes.

What's that?

It's still confusing?

Here, it should make a little more sense in just a minute.

With a bang, the side door of the church, next to the altar, opened up. Danny came hurrying in, his hair mussed and the tie hanging out of the vest of his tuxedo. His eyes widened further as he realized that everyone else was already seated, in position, and staring at him. Even Susan had paused, halfway up the aisle, and I was pretty sure that I could see her eyes narrowing to angry slivers beneath her veil.

"Dude!" I heard Alex hiss, his quiet voice nonetheless carrying in the silence. "Where the hell have you been, man?"

Instead of answering, Danny just waved a hand at his older brother to brush away the question. He quickly bounded up the steps to the altar to stand next to his brother.

I moved in closer, straightening the young man's tie and doing my best to smooth down his hair a little with my hands. Danny rolled his eyes at me, but I ignored the flippant expression and concentrated on trying to get him looking somewhat decent before my sister made her appearance.