My name is Jane Young. I am thirty-three years old, and I am an event planner, though my business mainly consists of weddings. I was raised in South Florida, but I now reside in Allison Springs, Maine, which is about twenty-five minutes from Portland and which is a popular summer spot for destination weddings. It is less popular in the fall and still less popular in the winter, but I manage. What else can I tell you? I like my work, but no, I did not see myself doing this when I was a kid. The thing I went to college to do, I didn’t end up doing for a variety of reasons, and I found I had a knack for the combination of discipline, communication, psychology, politics, stagecraft, and creativity that planning a wedding requires. Oh, I have a precocious eight-year-old daughter, Ruby, whose father is not in the picture. Ruby is truly clever, though she has probably been around brides more than is healthy. Last week, Ruby told me, “I never want to be a bride. They’re all miserable.”
“Come on,” I said. “Some of them seem happy.”
“No,” she said with certainty. “Some of them seem less unhappy.”
“Unhappy brides are each unhappy in their own way,” I said.
“Sure, I guess,” Ruby said. Her brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I explained that I was riffing on that old Tolstoy saw, and Ruby rolled her eyes. “Be serious,” she said.
“So you’ll never marry?” I said. “That’s not much of an advertisement for my business.”
“I didn’t say that,” Ruby said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever marry. I’m eight. But I do know I don’t ever want to be a bride.” Ruby is at a perfect age. She is old enough to talk to and not yet a teen or a tween. She is nerdy and slightly round, but it is delicious. I want to eat her. I want to bite her solid arms. By the way, I never mention her weight because I don’t want her to end up with a complex. I was overweight when I was her age, and my mother discussed it exhaustively. And yes, as a result, I would say I am the proud owner of several complexes. But who isn’t? When you think about it, isn’t a person just a structure built in reaction to the landscape and the weather?
THREE
My storefront is located between a stationers and a chocolatier, in the main part of town. It was November, and things were slow. After catching up with some of my spring and summer couples, I spent the morning shopping online for things I didn’t need. How many black shift dresses could one woman have? A lot, if you’re me. Seventeen, at last count. A wedding planner dresses for a wedding as if it is a funeral. I was thinking of what Ruby had said about every bride being miserable when Franny and Wes walked through my door. They didn’t have an appointment, but this time of year, they didn’t need one.
Franny was Frances Lincoln. She was twenty-six years old, unformed. She was pretty enough but somehow like dough that had not been allowed to rise. She was a kindergarten teacher—of course she was! no one had ever looked more like a kindergarten teacher than she—but she said she was on leave. Wes was Wesley West—based on his name, I suspected his parents would be awful and I looked forward to meeting these monsters. Wes was a Realtor, and he informed me that his office was around the corner from mine though I had never noticed him before. He also told me that he had political aspirations. “I just thought you should know,” he said in a conspiratorial tone that suggested I should not plan the wedding for the future whatever of Allison Springs and be caught unaware. He was twenty-seven, and his handshake was too firm—what are you trying to prove, bro? As far as my clientele went, these two were not exceptional in any way. Weddings had a sneaky way of turning people into old-fashioned stereotypes of husband and wife.
“We were thinking about hiring someone from the city,” Wes said. “The city” referred to Portland, and this was meant as a dig.
“I’m from a city,” I said with a smile.
“But I thought, why not try someone local? I mean, I pass your office every day. Nice place. I like how clean everything looks, how white everything is. Also, I’m hoping to run for city council, so I like getting to know the local businesses. My constituency, you know. Must be pretty slow for you this time of year.”
I asked them if they had set a date.
He looked at her, and she looked at him. “We’d like to get married a year from now, next December,” she said. “Is that enough time?”
I nodded. “Plenty.”
“She thinks winter weddings are romantic,” he said. “But what I like about it is the value. We’ll have our pick of venues, and for half the price of summer, am I right?”
“Not half, but definitely less,” I said.
“Winter weddings are romantic, don’t you think?” she said.
“I do,” I said. The bride and the bridesmaids would freeze and, if it snowed, half the out-of-town guests might not show up. I suppose there was a romance to that. Winter pictures always turned out great, though, and I’m not sure that people don’t remember the pictures more than the actual event anyway. In any case, these were grown-ups, and I was not going to talk my way out of winter business.
FOUR
Some weeks later—perhaps after they’d visited one or more of those big city wedding planners—they arranged to come in for the second time so that they could give me their signed contract and a deposit for my services. Only Franny showed, which was not unusual, although she was embarrassed by his absence. “Is it weird?” she asked. “Does it seem like a bad sign? I mean, he should be here, right?”
“It isn’t at all weird,” I said as she handed me the check. “I often end up working more with one member of the couple than the other. People can’t be everywhere at once.”
She nodded. “He’s showing a house,” she said. “And he can’t always control when that happens.”
“Perfectly understandable,” I said. “How did he propose? I don’t think I asked.” I put her contract into my filing cabinet.
“Oh, it was romantic,” she said. Romantic was a big word with her. “Well, I think it was romantic. As I’m about to say it, it might seem weird to you.” Weird was another of her words.