The ceremony was at Homestead, a pre-Civil War farmhouse and venue that had just opened in St. Louis. And by “just opened,” it meant that Lola’s wedding would be the first one there.
When Elly walked inside the farmhouse at eight a.m., chaos was already expanding outwards from its wooden walls. The owners of the venue were there, along with probably thirty hired hands, each doing something different to transform the home into a lush floral garden with a nautical theme. Elly began to walk up the aisle.
“No!” barked a producer with a microphone attached to his ear.
Elly stopped. “What?”
“You cannot walk up the aisle. Only Lola can walk up this aisle. It will be the first time anyone walks up the aisle, ever! Get back!”
Elly stepped back, annoyed. “How are we supposed to decorate the aisle without walking up the aisle? It’s not like we just have a few pew clips. I need to lay a carpet of intricate petals here.”
The producer waved her off like she was some sort of annoying insect. “Figure it out.” He leaned into his microphone. “Gemma. We have a crisis on our hands. The bottled water just arrived and it’s not Voss. Yeah, I know. Call in the big dogs.” He walked away, snapping orders.
Elly looked up at the ceiling, which was being draped with a fabric chevron with navy-and-white stripes, interspersed with dangling crystal chandeliers. It would not be her choice to cover a gorgeous farmhouse with fabric to make it look like a chic hotel, but it was Lola’s wedding, not hers. She turned to her workers, who were standing behind her, waiting patiently for directions. “Okay. Go.”
They took off in different directions, Anthony to deck out the entrance to the barn with ivy, ferns, and seven huge urns filled with bright-blue delphinium, seeded eucalyptus, and white dahlias hedged with lavender. Kim went to set down the bouquets in the bathrooms, the dressing rooms, the pre-wedding bar area, and to scatter them in the offices that rested above the barn.
With a bright smile, Elly turned to Snarky Teenager. “We can’t walk down the aisle.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it’s new.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yup. But, it’s the way it is.”
“Fine.” Snarky Teenager began hauling the buckets over the side of the pews and winding her way sideways to the place where the aisle met the wooden pew. Elly followed her and they began assembling the complex aisle pieces. First they hung delicate wreaths made of Queen Anne’s lace and mint. Each wreath connected to a hanging white lantern that just dangled above the wreath. Candles would be inserted into the lanterns just before the ceremony, something that was thankfully the job of the caterer. Elly hated working with fire for obvious reasons: she had a distaste for being burned alive.
After the lanterns and wreaths were connected to every other aisle, totaling forty in all, they began working on the complex petal aisle—the exact concept that had won Elly the bid in the first place. Each taking buckets full of rose petals in a single color, Elly began with white at the start of the aisle, pouring out petals over the pew, then using a rake to spread them in a thin layer, and then repeating. At the same time, Snarky Teenager was pouring out fuchsia rose petals at the end of the aisle near the makeshift altar. As they edged closer and closer to each other, they both began using different hues, assembled in numbered buckets ahead of time. Elly’s petals grew progressively darker, while Snarky Teenager’s grew lighter. Eventually, they met in the middle with two buckets of the same color petal, a medium pink with beautifully crinkled petals. Finally, hauling their buckets away with them, they climbed up the spiral staircase at the back of the farmhouse to look down on the aisle.