Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? (20 page)

O
n Monday morning at 8:59, Philippa burst into Astrid’s office and announced that the wedding was on.

The entire office clapped.

Philippa’s fake family was pretending to be skipping along a path in Central Park. The models stood in front of the summer-day backdrop, kicking up their feet and throwing back their heads in delight.

“Can you try to cry a few tears of joy, Mom?” Devlin said to the fake Mrs. Wills. “And, Dad, a little more pride in your expression.” Fake Mr. Wills puffed out his chest and gazed at Philippa as though she’d just won the Miss America pageant.

Philippa held up her hands. Devlin put down his camera. “Classic Bride, can you get your hands out of the frame?”

“I can’t do it,” Philippa said.

“You can’t do what, Philippa?” Astrid asked, examining her nails.

“I can’t do this, any of it! I won’t have a fake family!”

“What is she talking about?” Astrid said, throwing up her own hands. “Will someone tell me what she’s talking about?”

“I hired fakes,” Philippa shouted. “They’re not my family. They’re just stand-ins!”

Astrid waved Devlin back over. “Philippa, I don’t care
who’s
in the photos as long as they look remotely like you and have a Classic appeal.”

“Well, I do care who’s in the photos!” Philippa yelped.

The studio door opened and three people came inside, a fiftyish couple and a twenty-something guy who also looked a lot like Philippa.

“Phyl? Are we too late?” asked a woman with a heavy Queens accent.

Philippa whirled around. “Are you here? You’re really here? And what happened to you guys? You all look so…so…”

“Like you?” her brother asked. “We spent a little time with the personal shoppers in Bloomingdale’s.”

“You did all this for me? But I thought you hated me.”

Mrs. Wilschitz’s eyes filled with tears. “Phyllie, we don’t hate you. How could you think such a thing? We love you. So much.”

“But I thought—” Philippa began.

“No,” her father interrupted. “We thought we were so wronged, and then we found out what wronged really meant.”

“Do you remember Gertie and Bill Ross down the hall in 4A?” Mrs. Wilschitz asked. “You used to baby-sit their Annie—the one with all the gorgeous curly hair. Well,
Gertie and Bill just found out that Annie has cancer. Cancer, at nineteen. That’s being
wronged.
”

Mr. Wilschitz nodded. “Phyllie, we love you. We just want you to be happy. And if Philippa Wills is who you are, then that’s who you are.”

“We accept you for who you are or aren’t,” her mother added. “We don’t care what your name is. We’re just glad you’re healthy and happy.”

Philippa broke down in tears amid a chorus of aw’s from the
Wow
ers. There were hugs and kisses all around.

Astrid looked confused, then bored, then snapped and said, “Places, people.”

“Eloise, where is your family or your stand-ins?” Astrid asked, glancing around the studio.

“My family is right there,” I said, pointing to the bagel buffet.

She eyed the group mingling around the cream cheese. Noah, Grams, Dottie and Herbert Benjamin, Emmett, Charla, Jane, Amanda, Natasha, baby Summer and even Beth Benjamin stood splitting open bagels and sipping coffee and orange juice. There was a debate over fresh versus pulpy juice. Whether everything bagels were too much. If fat-free cream cheese tasted like cardboard. If Amanda’s best side was her right or left. If Jane should smile open-or close-mouthed. If Natasha should change her stance and allow Summer to be the child-model-slash-actress Devlin thought she should be.

This was my family. Last night, Noah called his parents and sister; I called my friends and Emmett and Grams, and when I arrived at work this morning, they were all waiting in the reception area with Kevin Costnerly.

Oops. I sent him on his way at a loss of two hundred
fifty bucks. I’d never been so happy to throw away money in my life.

“Eloise,” Astrid said, “I see your bridal party, your in-laws-to-be and your fiancé. I do not see your father or a stand-in. We’re shooting your father-daughter shots today along with the family shots.”

“I don’t have a father,” I told Astrid.

“Everyone has a father,” she replied with her accompanying eyeroll.

I shook my head. “Not me. My father left my mother, brother and me when I was five. We haven’t seen or heard from him since. I don’t have a father.”

Mouths stopped chewing and talking. Everyone’s eyes were on me. For once, I didn’t care.

Astrid smiled tightly. “Well you
have
a father, he’s just not in your life. Dear, I would think you would know that at a magazine, semantics are everything.”

Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her.

“My point is,” I said, “that I don’t have a father and therefore, there won’t be a father in my family-photo shots.”

She handed me a Rolodex card. “Just call Perfect People. Say you’re looking for a Billy Bob Thornton type with a full head of hair.”

“Astrid, I don’t want to pretend I have a father. I don’t
need
to pretend. Especially not for something that involves my future, my wedding.”

She held up a hand, her palm almost in my face. “What am I thinking?” she said, which was rhetorical for I’m-having-a-brainstorm-everyone-shut-up. “What am I thinking?”

We all stared at her.

“The Modern Bride’s father
shouldn’t
walk her down
the aisle—that is so traditional!” She smiled and pointed one of her beige claws at me. “Eloise, call your dad and tell him we won’t be needing him for your family shots unless you absolutely want him in the pictures. I’d prefer that your brother—or better yet, a gay female friend—walk you down the aisle in the ceremony and in the shots we’ll take of a ‘practice walk.’”

My nearest and dearest were all staring at Astrid as though she had four heads.

I smiled at Astrid. “Okay, boss, whatever you say. I’ll call my dad right now and let him know I won’t be needing him after all.”

“Great,” she praised. “Eloise, I must say, you’ve been most cooperative throughout this entire process. I’m very pleased.”

I would get her. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would do to Acid O’Connor, but I would get her somehow. Hide anchovies in her desk? Cancel her home telephone?

No.

I knew exactly what I was going to do. And I needed my partner in crime.

Make that my partners in crime.

The Flirt Night Round Table added three more seats to its weekly meetings. At an Upper West Side coffee lounge, Jane, Amanda, Natasha, baby Summer, Philippa, Charla, Beth Benjamin and I sat around a scarred wooden coffee table full of coffee drinks and goodies. I couldn’t wait to share my master plan for the ultimate annoying of Astrid O’Connor.

“See,” Charla said, sipping her hot mocha. “Isn’t soy milk absolutely delicious in coffee?”

Philippa sipped her latte. “I, for one, love it!”

The moment we arrived, Philippa had taken a notebook out of her tote bag and announced she’d be happy to take minutes. I tried to tell her our get-togethers weren’t that formal, but she wanted to remember her first official hang-out with girlfriends.

Beth Benjamin brought her divorce decree and actually got up on the table and did a little jig before one of the post-teens behind the counter rushed over to tell her she couldn’t do that.

“Sorry,” Beth said to us as she hopped down. “I know you’re all either getting married or are happily married, but I’ve never been so happy to be officially single in my entire life!”

We clapped.

“Eloise,” Beth added, “I’ll wear whatever you want me to wear at your wedding, because you know what?”

“What?”

“It’s not about the stupid dress,” she said. “It’s about the guy. I had the wrong one, that’s all.”

“Amen,” I said.

And we all clinked our coffees.

“But you know what, Beth? You’re not going to wear that rubber dress, after all. None of you are.”

“We’re not?” Jane asked.

“Nope.
Another
lucky bridal party will be modeling the rubber look on leap year. You’ll all be wearing a floaty pink satin number instead. A dress that would do Audrey Hepburn proud.”

Understanding dawned on Philippa’s face. “Yay!” she shouted.

“Yay,” baby Summer repeated, clapping her hands.

“I
have only two and a half minutes,” Astrid said to me and Philippa as we were ushered into her office. “I have a meeting with the caterers at five.” As she gestured at the twin toile-covered guest chairs in front of her huge mahogany desk, I had a vision of Philippa and me jumping up and down and shouting our yeses in response to her offer of the free dream weddings.

“Astrid,” I began, “Philippa and I are both very appreciative of our free dream weddings. However, we’ve come to a rather startling conclusion about ourselves.”

“Very startling,” Philippa added.

Astrid narrowed her eyes at us.

“It turns out that, despite my haircut and weird shoes and arty job,
I’m
the Classic Bride,” I said.

“And I, despite my headband and penny loafers, am the Modern Bride,” Philippa said.

“I don’t have time for this,” Astrid responded with an
eyeroll. She picked up a stack of memos on her desk. “
Wow Weddings
doesn’t have time for this.”

“We’ll be succinct, then,” I said. “We want to switch weddings.”

Astrid let out a dry laugh. “Even if I would allow such a thing, it’s impossible. We’ve shot the entire feature. We have dresses on order. We would have to gather your bridal parties, your fiancés, your families and reshoot the various selections. We’ve already had to reshoot your sibling photos, Philippa. We’d have to resize, re-alter—”

“That sounds right to me,” I said. “Resizing.”

Astrid rolled her eyes. “My dear girls, your passionate youth is endearing. Really, however—”

“Either we switch or we walk,” Philippa said.

Astrid glared at her. “Excuse me?”

“We want to switch weddings,” I said again. I could explain; I could tell her why and what and how and where, but we’d be wasting our breath.

Instead, we let the words hang in the air.

We stared at her. She stared at us.

“We reshoot and resize at your expense,” Astrid finally said. “And instead of a two-week honeymoon, you’ll only get one week. The other week you’ll spend working to help make up lost time and expense.”

“That’ll be just fine,” Philippa said. “A honeymoon is traditionally two weeks, so it’s better that mine will be only one.”

“Especially since you’ll be in Chicago in late February,” I added.

Astrid rolled her eyes and buzzed her assistant.

“Surprise!”

I glanced up from my desk. A diamond ring, a very nice diamond ring, was twinkling over the rim of my cubicle.

“I know that finger!” I said, racing around the cubicle. Though I’d know Charla’s sparkly purple nail polish anywhere, it was the ring I knew.

My grandmother’s marquis diamond with the sapphire baguettes.

Charla, her blond pigtails swinging against her shoulders as she twirled around and wiggled the fingers on her left hand, was beaming. Emmett, aw-shucks expression on his face, stood next to her, his hands stuffed into his pockets.

“You won’t consider it stealing your thunder if we get married first, will you?” Charla asked me.

“Please steal it,” I said, wrapping them in a hug. “Congratulations. And welcome to the family, Charla. I’m so happy for you both.”

“We want to do it tomorrow at City Hall,” Emmett said. “You, Grams and Charla’s mom. She’s flying in from Oregon tonight.”

I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to get married.

Blank page. Blinking cursor.

Why I Said Yes!
by Eloise Manfred,
Wow Weddings
’s Classic Bride.

I said yes because Noah Benjamin feels like home. The end.

I
have attended three weddings in as many weeks. First, Charla and Emmett’s at City Hall (which in Manhattan was really just the city clerk’s office in all its scuffed-linoleum-lack-of-grandeur-and-romance). But Charla and Emmett dressed to the nines; she in a stunning white sleeveless gown with elbow-length gloves (her honey-colored pigtails transformed into an elegant chignon at the nape of her neck), and Emmett, more handsome than I’d ever seen him, in a black tux. Grams, Charla’s mom, and Noah and I stood sniffling as Emmett gently dipped his bride in a whopper of a kiss. Afterward, we went to a popular supper club for dinner and dancing, and tourists took pictures of the bride and groom.

Wedding number two was Philippa’s. Philippa and I split the cost of reordering and reshooting and just about everything else connected to our free dream weddings, but it was worth it. Dottie Benjamin and her husband were
so thrilled that Beth wouldn’t have to wear a Halloween costume to her brother’s wedding that they contributed a thousand dollars to the cause as a wedding gift. Philippa’s and my bridal party and fiancés and families had had to gather together at the last minute for an entire week of reshooting, but everyone had shown up with smiles.

And so on Leap Year Day, February 29, a spectacularly sunny, clear and cold winter evening, Philippa Wills married Parker Gersh in the bizarro room of Fifth Avenue Fantasies. Parker’s preppy sisters looked confused in their rubber dresses. One tried to slip on a pearl necklace, but Astrid put an end to that.

Parker proudly showed everyone his square rust wedding band. And Mrs. Willschitz, who only slipped once with a
Phylli—
but caught herself and changed the emphasis of the syllable at the last second—was a trouper in her dark yellow perforated-leather mother-of-the-Modern-Bride ensemble.

With her friends, family and many strangers surrounding her, Philippa danced the night away in her Big Bird gown, her peace veil flopping, her yellow feathers ruffling. A drunken uncle requested the chicken dance, but no one got the joke.

Today was wedding number three: mine. The first day of spring was a warm and sunny sixty-two degrees. Very early in the morning, Emmett and I met at St. Monica’s Church to light a candle for our mom. As I sat in my usual pew, my brother most unusually sitting next to me, I wasn’t thinking of losses. Only of gains. My mother’s dream for me was to marry, to not let other people dictate my happiness, my future, and today, I was making my mother proud.

In the CB room of Fifth Avenue Fantasy, a few family
members, a few friends, way too many co-workers and countless strangers in witness, Emmett walked me down the aisle, a pink and white carpet strewn with pink and white rose petals. When he lifted my veil, white tulle, not yellow leather, there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m not really giving you
away,
” Emmett said as he led me to Noah.

I hugged him like crazy.

Jane, Amanda, Natasha, Philippa, Beth, baby Summer and Charla, who I insisted be a bridesmaid (Acid had relented after I threatened to wear my tiny green dinosaur earrings for the photo montage that would appear in July’s issue), looked beautiful in their
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Audrey Hepburn dresses. My grandmother, in ivory sequins, sobbed during the entire ceremony.

Noah and I couldn’t wait to run around Walt Disney World, shaking hands with Mickey and riding child-size trains through Daffy Duck tunnels. We could use a little eighty-degree weather, our plain gold wedding bands gleaming in the warm sun, shiny and new like us, like our marriage, like me.