The Less Than Perfect Wedding (11 page)

This was hell.

Dress after dress flew on and off my figure, blending together into a never-ending stream of tight seams, sticky zippers, strained buttons, and miles upon miles of frilly, frustrating, bothersome lace. I was spending most of my time alone in that hot little dressing booth, struggling to cram my body into a variety of different little prisons. Sequins cut at my skin, pearls left red indents, and one especially frustrating zipper showed its vendetta against me by taking a small bite out of one buttock. The more dresses I tried on, the more convinced I became that my body was a one-off, weirdly shaped and awkward in every single regard.

When I emerged from the dressing room with each new garment somehow fastened around me enough to cover up most of my embarrassing body, I would get a smattering of comments, all of which seemed to be blending together. Susan would grunt out something unintelligible that was obscured further by the booze she was gulping down, Claire and Judy would be nothing but compliments and encouragement, and my mother would make another cryptic remark about how the dress didn't look quite right on me. These comments would flit about my head, ducking in and out of my ears without leaving any impression on my brain, and would be completely forgotten by the time I'd managed to squeeze into the next dress.

Finally, after yet another dress had received the usual bag of mixed reviews, I stopped and threw up my hands. "This is going nowhere!" I shouted, startling Shuckle as she came bustling up with yet another handful of white. "Look, none of this is helping me make a decision! I don't even know what I'm looking for any more!"

Both Claire and Judy opened their mouths to respond, but surprisingly, Shuckle beat them both to it. "The dress chooses the woman," she snapped in her acerbic tones. "When you find the right dress, you will feel that it suits you."

I turned to stare at her. "That was how I felt with the first one!" I complained. "So why can't I just get that and not have to try on a million more?"

"The first one has felt the best, compared to the rest of these?" Claire asked, repeating what I'd just said back to me.

I nodded. "Yeah. It was the right shape, the right size, and it fit great. And when I was wearing it, I totally thought about walking down the aisle in it, and that would be completely all right with me."

My mother held up a finger. "Are you sure that you don't want to try just a few-"

"No!" Claire cut her off - probably the only person in the room willing to do so and risk her wrath. "The bride has final say, and if she likes the first dress, then we can get out of here before Susan pukes on it!"

At those words, we all turned and looked at my younger sister. After bringing in a couple bottles of wine, she had resolutely decided that it was her duty to finish them so nothing would have to be carried out. She had made it nearly all of the way through the first bottle before being stalled, mainly by the fact that her fingers couldn't seem to close around the bottle any more. I was thankful that my mother had driven her to the shop.

Doing our best to work around the dead weight of my younger sister, we found the original dress that I had felt suited me so nicely. As soon as it was out, my mother spoke up, badgering Shuckle about pricing. The saleswoman was doing her best to answer the questions, but the full frontal assault of my mother was slowly but surely battering down her hastily erected defenses.

"I want to make sure my daughter gets every extravagance!" my mother insisted. "Price is no issue!"

"Price most certainly is an issue!" I broke in. "Mom, you promised you'd stop trying to spend all of Dad's money! And we're not going to just throw money away because you're upset!"

"I'm doing this for you!" my mother retorted, but my interjection gave Shuckle enough time to scuttle away with the dress. Hauling my sister bodily up out of the couch where she was on the verge of passing out, we began trooping back up to the front of the store to provide payment information.

At the cash register, my mother waved the rest of us away, and I eventually gave in and decided to not fight this particular issue any longer. Shuckle and my mother began doing some sort of arcane dance with credit cards, while Claire helped me load the dress into my car. Susan was deposited into a chair in the front of the shop, where she immediately slumped over and began snoring faintly. Judy followed me out, holding the door and nearly bursting with excitement as she bobbed up and down.

"Ooh, I'm so happy for you!" she burbled. "Now that you've got the dress, you're another step closer to walking down that aisle! Don't you feel so happy?"

I wasn't quite sure what I felt. Ordinarily, I would feel happy, but the weight of dealing with all of my family, all the hassle and complications of this wedding, were starting to wear me down. I still couldn't wait for the wedding - but now I was looking forward more to it being over than to the actual day itself. I was anticipating not saying "I do," but getting to leave the chapel afterward.

Of course, I couldn't say any of this to Judy. "I do feel happy," I told her. I wish it hadn't been a lie.

The Bachelor(ette) Parties, Part I

*

It was barely a week before the date of the wedding, and I felt like I was being stretched in twenty different directions at once. I would go to work each morning with my bag stuffed full of last-minute details to review - making sure that the seating charts were correct, drafts of Father Hemsley's sermons, all typed with horrible punctuation and spelling into a single paragraph in an email that he would send to me, and the horrendous mish-mash of a first draft of my wedding vows that I was procrastinating on writing. Between calls and documents at work, I would pore frantically over these documents, all of them spread out across my desk and occasionally sloughing off into loose puddles of paper on the floor. Inevitably, I'd be forced at the end of the day to cram them all back into my bag to haul home, no more progress made than if I had simply forgotten them that morning.

Even at home, my life was being consumed by this wedding. As an event planner for Habitat, I should have been able to handle this challenge. I had thrown larger galas than this before! But somehow, even with Sally acting as my assistant and taking care of much of the coordination between the various vendors, I still felt as though this wedding would win out over me. I would eat whatever dinner Alex prepared, he would pop a movie into our television to watch, and then I would be on the floor poring over my charts before the second-act twist had even resolved itself.

About half the time, I wouldn't even make it to bed; I have sleepy recollections of Alex reaching down, shaking my shoulders, half-supporting me as he managed to rouse me to the minimum level of wakefulness to get me off the rug in the living room of our apartment and down, around the hall, into bed. As soon as we reached the bed, I would flop forward into the soft comforter, leaving it to my long-suffering fiance to haul me up and roll me far enough onto the furniture so that I wouldn't fall off onto the floor halfway through the night. I would often wake up the next morning still half-clothed, tucked into the covers as my fiance slumbered beside me.

By the time that we were this close to the wedding, Alex had even started calling in to check on me, making sure that I hadn't lost track of time and wasn't stuck at my desk at work at 9:00 PM at night, still poring over drafts of speeches and completely forgetting about the fact that I had to drive home. Our phone conversations would be short, but I still welcomed them - they showed that my husband-to-be was still thinking of me, was still worried about my well-being and health.

Today was no different; I was sitting at my desk at work, still, just starting to consider that it was probably time for me to start packing up and heading home, now that I was the last person left in the office, when the phone rang. I reached down into my bag, my fingers fumbling past the papers still stuffed inside on top of the phone, before I finally found its familiar outline and pulled it up to my ear.

"Hi, honey," I said after I answered, tucking it between my ear and my shoulder so that I could use both hands to try and pull my papers into some semblance of a stack. "Don't worry, I'm packing up right now to head back home."

"Good!" Alex said at the other end, sounding pleased that I wasn't totally out of it. "I've got dinner on the stove, and I was thinking that tonight we could - hold on, there's someone at the door." I could hear the bell to our apartment buzzing faintly in the background as he talked.

"Hello?" I heard Alex say a moment later, his voice sounding slightly muffled as he held the receiver away from his face. Instead of hearing a reply, however, my ear was filled with muffled scraping sounds - it almost sounded as though a couple of people were scuffling at the other end of the line.

"Alex? Are you there?" I asked, confused.

No reply was immediately forthcoming. I heard a few more muffled noises, and then Alex's voice, faint, saying "What do you think you're - wait a minute, are those handcuffs?"

"Alex!" I shouted, feeling my heart racing. What in the world was going on at my apartment?

After another long minute of silence, I heard the scrape of someone picking up the phone, followed by the sound of heavy breathing into the receiver. "Your fiance has been kidnapped," a deep, raspy voice said at the other end of the phone. "He may be returned to you in a day or two, but I can promise you, he will never be the same."

"What? Hey, what's going on!" I shouted into the phone, my voice high and desperate. Could this really be happening?

There was no immediate answer forthcoming except the sound of the person's heavy breathing, but then I heard another voice in the background. "Jesus Christ, man, knock it off," the other voice said, the tone of disgust apparent even with the poor reception. "Here, give me that."

A moment later, there was the scrape of the phone changing hands, and a new voice spoke into the receiver. "Look, we're kidnapping Alex for his bachelor party," the voice said in a calmer tone. "We'll probably have him out all night, but he should be back by tomorrow - it's a Saturday, so he won't miss any work or anything. Don't freak out and call the police or anything." In a fainter tone, I heard the person now holding Alex's cell phone turn away. "God, Danny, you don't need to scare the poor woman, I'm sure that-" the voice cut off as whomever was on the other end hung up.

I lowered my cell phone from my ear, staring at it. Alex and I had discussed the idea of bachelor parties months ago, and we had both agreed that we felt they really weren't necessary, and that we wouldn't bother with one. So why was Alex being kidnapped for such a party right now? The only explanation that came to mind was that this had been planned without his knowledge. Still, while I was glad that he wasn't being kidnapped, this didn't make me feel much more confident about how his night was going to go.

On the other hand, I considered, this meant that I would have the house to myself. I could get home, flop down on the couch, maybe have a glass or two of wine, and finally unwind. Sure, I still had more papers to read over, but it would be nice to be by myself, and not have to have Alex see me no longer working on our wedding and ask me, innocently enough I'm sure, whether I had managed to get everything done and sorted out.

I stuffed my papers into my bag and headed home, visions of my couch and a big glass of red wine filling my head. By the time I got up to my apartment, I could almost taste the wine. The front door to our apartment was closed, fortunately - at least the muggers who had kidnapped my fiance had been kind enough to make sure that we wouldn't be robbed just before our wedding.

I slid my key into the door and unlocked it. When I stepped inside, however, I was greeted by a totally unexpected sight.

*

I had expected my apartment to be empty, now that Alex had been kidnapped. However, I saw as the door opened, this was not the case.

My apartment was full of people! My mother was sitting at one end of the couch, and Judy was at the other. Sally was sitting straight up in one of the chairs from the dining room table. Claire was lounging against one of the walls, grinning at me like a fox.

"What's going on?" I asked, taking a couple steps into the apartment and dropping my bag of work and papers down on the little bench beside the front door. "What are you all doing here?"

"Why, we're here for your bachelorette party, of course!" Claire told me, her grin stretching ear to ear. "We heard that Alex had been kidnapped for his party, and so we figured that since he got one, it would only be fair that you also get one last night to see what the single life is like!"