“You want to do what?” Stella, my wedding planner, asks, releasing a high-pitched cackle into the phone.
“Make a few changes,” I repeat.
Stella lets out a long breath, and I imagine her tugging on one of her short, bouncy curls, her cheeks flushing a deep red as she considers what I’ve just told her—that I want to rethink how we’ve planned everything: the rehearsal dinner, the wedding ceremony, and the reception. “You’re not just suggesting switching out gerbera daisies for roses, Kate. I’ve just written down”—she pauses and I hear her counting quietly—“at least twenty things you want to do differently.”
After Max gently used the word hoity-toity to describe the event that I’d spent almost a year planning, it had felt like a punch in my gut. Even though I’d asked him to tell me honestly what he’d change, I was surprised when he’d had such specific ideas, wondering why they were so different from my own. In fact, they couldn’t have been more opposite. I hadn’t pushed for his involvement, only because I had assumed we were on the same page. Or maybe I had just chosen to assume that, taking off with the planning like a horse running free from the barn—never looking back. Until it was too late. Almost.
Maybe I had gotten carried away with things that didn’t matter—like the ice sculpture, the chocolate fountain, and the customized dinner menus. The truth was, it wouldn’t kill me if we made things a bit more casual or if we embraced the local culture. At this point, I’d consider letting Thai Elvis marry us at city hall if that’s what Max wanted—if that would make him happy.
“A pig roast, really?” Stella’s question snaps me to attention.
“Yes, a pig roast,” I say more curtly than I mean to, just as Courtney passes in front of my office door, shooting me a questioning look.
Stella continues. “I mean, luaus are very popular here—obviously. And hula dancers and flame throwers and all that Hawaiian tradition you’re now considering is what a lot of people want. But it just doesn’t sound anything like you—”
“Look, I can enjoy a fireball being tossed in the air just like the best of them, okay?” I snap.
“Of course. Of course you can,” Stella says. “Let me get my head around all of this and see what I can figure out. I’ll give you a call back with a plan by tomorrow. Okay?”
“Yes, thank you—and sorry I barked at you,” I say.
“Oh, that was nothing!” Stella chuckles. “On a scale from one to ten of bridezilla moments I’ve dealt with, I’d give yours a negative five! You should’ve seen the bride who screamed at me like a banshee when the door of the dove’s cage got stuck and the birds couldn’t fly into the sky at the end of her ceremony! Or the one who hurled a platter of strawberries across the room because she claimed she’d told me to cover them in dark chocolate, not white.” She laughs again. “The bitchy ’tudes are all part of the job. That’s why I charge so much!
“So how did you calm them down?” I ask, shaking my head as I imagine the scenes she’s just described—realizing my stuck-zipper situation must have severely paled in comparison. “Sounds like you need to raise your rates even more,” I add, laughing. “I mean after my wedding.”
She giggles. “Maybe so. But in the meantime, let’s just say there’s no situation a shot of tequila and a piece of wedding cake can’t solve.”
Mental note: give Max tequila, not champagne, at the rehearsal dinner.
After we hang up, I rest my head against the back of my chair, hoping Stella is able to pull a miracle out of her ass and change my entire wedding with only a little over three weeks to go. I tell myself that I don’t need to intervene, that this is her job and, after hearing her crazed-bride stories, one she can clearly handle. In fact, I’m now starting to think that Stella could probably arrange the ceremony atop an active volcano if she put her mind to it. I pray Max won’t ask for that next.
“Knock-knock!” Courtney says as she hovers by my door. “So last night was fun, huh?” she says unconvincingly.
Yeah, about as fun as a colonoscopy.
I bob my head up and down once because technically I did have fun—but it was only in the back of the limo on the way home from the concert. “What’s up?” I ask, shuffling some papers around on my desk. “I have that meeting with the vodka people in twenty minutes.”
“I was just curious—did I hear you talking about a pig roast?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh, I was just going to ask if that’s for your wedding.”
“Yeah, we’re making a few changes.”
Why am I telling her this?
Courtney smiles as if she’s thinking back on something.