It was time to do some quick damage control. First, there was the issue of the mystery groomsman. I thought about it while I showered the morning after the party and decided it truly was best to not know which groomsman I had slept with. Curiosity killing the cat and all. And that cat probably actually died of shame from having to repeatedly face the guy she hooked up with while blind drunk. No thanks. If I didn’t know who it was, I couldn’t be awkward about it, nor could I develop a posthookup rebound crush on the guy in order to justify having slept with him. Having been down that road before, I felt qualified to postulate that those relationships have an expiration date on par with that of a container of yogurt, which is far less time than a typical engagement takes, and I had zero desire to walk down the aisle at Megan’s wedding with someone whom I had not only slept with, but also horrifically dated and broken up with. The only solution? Tell Megan I didn’t want to know who it was and move on. I could ask after the wedding if I was still curious.
With that settled, there was the issue of keeping the details of five weddings straight. I, to put it mildly, lack major organizational skills. Caryn’s and Megan’s weddings would be a piece of cake on that front at least. Caryn was the most organized and highest functioning person I knew, and Megan had been planning her dream wedding for so many years that she would need almost nothing from me. Sharon’s would be harder, as her disdain for all things wedding meant she would need a little hand-holding. But, I rationalized, her mother would take over the planning, and with Sharon not wanting a wedding at all, she would be pretty laid-back about the whole process. Then again, Mrs. Meyer was the opposite of laid-back, and she would be running the show. But she also probably wouldn’t allow any feedback from me, so there wouldn’t be much I would be expected to do anyway.
Jake’s and Amy’s weddings were going to cause the biggest headaches. I was definitely off on the wrong foot with Madison after the engagement phone call, and I needed to fix that. She and Jake lived in Chicago, so taking her to lunch wasn’t an option, but a gift with an apology note was. And Amy—well—she was twenty-four. I figured that the odds of her and Tyler actually reaching the aisle in June were only slightly higher than the odds of me getting married to the random groomsman I had slept with. It was possible, but pretty freaking unlikely. My baby sister didn’t exactly have a reputation for following through with things, and Tyler was her longest relationship, at just over a year—a year that she had spent still living with my parents. In grown-up relationship time, that took it down to maybe three months. I decided if I took her out of the equation entirely, everything else seemed far more manageable.
I can do this, I thought as I stepped out of the shower. Just one step at a time.
I had a missed call and voicemail from Megan by the time Becca and I finished breakfast. I deleted the voicemail without listening, then called her back.
“Before you say a single word,” I said, cutting her greeting off, “I don’t want to know who it was!”
Megan hesitated, processing. “Explain.”
“Promise you won’t tell me first.”
“I promise nothing.”
“MEGAN!”
“Ugh, fine, I won’t tell you. But I want to know what happened.”
I sighed. “Amy is getting married.”
“Amy who?”
“My sister.”
“Your sister is twelve. She’s not getting married.”
“Twenty-four,” I said. “I agree, she probably isn’t actually getting married, but she’s engaged nonetheless.”
“Gross. When did that happen?”
“Last night.”
“Ahhh. That explains why you started mainlining chardonnay at the party.”
“And that explains my hangover,” I groaned. “Really? Chardonnay?”
“You drank more of it than my cousin Gina. And then you were flirting pretty hard with—”
“LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU PROMISED!”
“Geez,” Megan chuckled. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“No. Did I do anything horrifying?”
“Not at the party. But I hear you have a shirt that needs to be returned.”
I scrunched up my face. “He told you to get his shirt back?”
“No, he walked out of the hotel without it this morning and Tim got the story for me. I love that you made him do a walk of shame, too, though.”
“I think it’s a walk of pride when a guy does it, not shame.” I paused. “Why didn’t he have another shirt?”
“Because he was planning to drive home after the party before you became a factor.”
I rubbed my temples. A vague recollection of holding a male arm while a disembodied voice asked a concierge if there were rooms available danced at the outskirts of my memory. “Can I give you the shirt next week and have you never speak of this again?”
Megan agreed warily. “But don’t you think it’ll come up? You’re going to see him at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.”
“That’s ten months away. It’ll be old news by then.”
“If you say so. Probably for the best anyway. This way you won’t decide you hate him and make me rearrange the entire wedding.”
Even though that was well deserved, I cringed. “See?” I said, faking a cheerful tone. “Totally responsible decision on my part.”
I could practically hear Megan rolling her eyes through the phone. “You’re insane. I swear, you should write a book about your life.”
“Right,” I said. “Lifestyles of the drunk and too old to be single. It’d be so popular.”
“It would, actually.”
“Yeah, and I totally want that out there for the world to see.”
“Whatever.” I could hear the shrug in Megan’s voice. “Use a pen name. People would read it. And it’d be more interesting than what you write for work. You’d have fun.”
I told Megan I would think about it, with absolutely no intention of doing so. Besides, even with a pen name, I would have to put a Sylvia Plath clause into a contract if I wrote a book about my current exploits. There was no way I could publish a book in which I didn’t know whom I had slept with unless my mother was good and dead. But, with Megan’s agreement to never again discuss my drunken amnesiac escapades, I could consider the subject closed for now.
CHAPTER FOUR
The rash of engagements all happened in the summer and early fall. There’s something about warmer weather that apparently makes people want to commit themselves to a life of fidelity. That or engagements are contagious. Like the flu. If you don’t wash your hands a lot, you might wind up sneezing and wearing a diamond. I don’t pretend to understand it.
There’s also apparently an unspoken rule of engagements that they’re supposed to last just longer than a pregnancy would (coincidence?) and the ensuing wedding, if at all possible, is required to take place in June, or failing that, May or July.
I assume these rules are given out to all couples by the wedding deities as soon as a ring is purchased. Or they’re the result of a biological urge that is activated by diamonds. Either way, having never been engaged, I didn’t know either rule.
When Caryn got engaged, with eleven months to plan, I figured everything would be a piece of cake. I would have nearly a year before I actually needed to do anything for any of the weddings, and time to save money for dresses.
But once I had five weddings to plan for, I needed to buckle down and calculate how I was going to do all of this.
I estimated that each bridesmaid dress would probably cost around two hundred dollars. For five dresses, that felt ridiculous, because no one ever wears a bridesmaid dress again, no matter what the bride tells you. But over the course of nine months, I could budget a thousand dollars for dresses. Just saving a hundred and eleven dollars a month wouldn’t be so bad.
Of course, there would be gifts too. So an extra hundred dollars each for that? Adding that to my current total and rounding up a little, that was one-seventy a month. And showers and bachelorette parties. The bridesmaids had to pay for those too. And bridal shower presents, which apparently didn’t count as wedding presents. That was another two hundred per bride. Suddenly I was at nearly three hundred a month.
Where was I going to find three hundred extra dollars a month?
Okay, I told myself. It’s only one-fifty per paycheck. If I start bringing my lunch to work a few days a week, I can save pretty close to that.
To make my life easier, I opened an online savings account and scheduled automatic payments to begin with my next paycheck. I could do this.