“Mrs. Harrigan and, of course, our lovely bride, Molly! Welcome to The Plaza. May we get you something to drink? Espresso, Perrier, champagne?”
Mom and I giggle like schoolgirls and decide that some champagne would be lovely. Without so much as a word, Marion’s assistant, Ashley (who we are introduced to when she returns with the beverages and a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries), jumps up from her desk and disappears. Ashley is a younger, slightly hipper version of Marion. I can instinctively tell that Martha would approve of these gals.
Marion invites us to sit at her desk and go over dates before we begin the tour of the ballrooms.
“Now,” she begins, “Mrs. Harrigan, you had mentioned over the phone that Molly hoped to be married on June 30 of next year. That is less than ten months away, however, and we normally are booked almost two years in advance,” she says and my heart sinks. “Fortunately for you, the bride who was holding the Grand Ballroom for the past eighteen months recently broke her engagement and released the room this morning. It’s your lucky day!”
Oh my gosh—it really is my lucky day! My heart soars once more.
“Fantastic!” my mother agrees
“Now,” Marion continues (I soon come to find out that Marion says “now” a lot), “this ballroom holds up to 400 guests, but obviously can be adjusted for a smaller wedding. The cost is approximately $250 per person, depending, of course, on the entrees selected and other details like that. Have you started working on your list to figure out your numbers yet?”
I nearly choke on the $250 per person. Not that I know that many people or plan to have a huge wedding, but that means it would be $1250 just for my nuclear family to attend. . . not to mention Bryan, my grandparents, or Justin! I am furiously trying to do quick math in my head to figure out how much of my wedding fund would have to be used to cover the hotel when I hear my mother say something that makes me choke even harder.
“That sounds just fine. Molly’s father and I were playing around with a preliminary list and think it will probably end up around 200.”
That sounds just fine?!? It will probably end up around 200?!? I cannot breathe.
“Mom?” I choke toward her.
She smiles at me kindly, “We’ll work more on the list, sweetie. Of course, however many guests you and Justin want will be fine.”
I feel like I’ve been whacked on the head with a stick or something. My mother, who clips coupons and reuses Ziploc bags isn’t even batting an eye at the prospect of $50,000 just for the location, food, and drinks. I can’t help but wonder how she would be if I didn’t have Nana’s money to pay for this wedding.
“Now,” Marion stands up, “shall we look at the ballroom?”
“Absolutely,” my mother agrees as she gets to her feet and pulls me with her.
We follow Marion, who is closely followed by Ashley with a clipboard (a fancy one, though), through the hotel as she points out details and throws in historical facts about the hotel. I must admit to you now, my love of The Plaza actually comes from my favorite childhood book, Eloise, about a spoiled little girl who lives here with her nanny.
At last we arrive at the Grand Ballroom. Marion informs us that we can only take a quick glance today because it is in the process of being set up for a wedding reception that will take place in a few hours, but that we are lucky to be seeing it in wedding formal. Once again, it is our lucky day. She majestically opens the room’s double doors at once and the sight before me reminds me of the religious experience at Tiffany.
The room is stunning. No, it’s beyond stunning. There isn’t even a word to describe it. Marion is explaining to my mother that this evening’s wedding is for 275 guests, that the bride had selected filet mignon for everyone as very few people are vegetarians anymore, and that the gleaming white dance floor set up in the middle of the room is standard at The Plaza, but not at other hotels. I only hear parts of what they are saying because I am in a trance of awe at the room.
“It really is amazing, isn’t it?” Ashley whispers to me—the first and only words she’s spoken since saying hello.
I nod in agreement and look over at her. Upon closer inspection, Ashley is roughly my age with a conspicuously empty finger. I can only imagine how hard it must be to see Marion’s Mount Everest ring every day, and I can see that she looks at the room with the same awe and longing that I am now every time she looks at it.
“So, what do you think?” my mother asks, breaking my trance.
“I love it,” I whisper, not wanting Marion or Ashley to know just how much.
“Me, too,” she agrees, then turns to Marion. “What do we have to do to secure this room for Molly?”
I turn in time to see Marion’s shining grin as she takes the clipboard from Ashley.
“Let’s sign a hold contract!” she sings.
We follow her back to her office as she rattles off the details within a hold contract. Basically, we pay a certain, nonrefundable amount and they hold the room for us.
At this point, my excitement comes to a screeching halt. I have the money in my Nana-wedding-fund account to cover the hotel—it will be a sizable chunk of the account’s balance, but it is there. My personal checking account, however, is a different story. Paying Justin’s salary has left my account contents a bit sparser than normal and I don’t have enough to cover the deposit on the room.
“Um, do we have to pay today?” I ask, feeling humiliated in front of Marion. “I might need to transfer some funds,” I say, getting more miserable by the minute.
Then my mother continues her new habit of shocking the pants off me ... she joyfully signs her name to the hold contract, writes The Plaza hotel a check, and schedules our next appointment with the lovely Marion.
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure all the money stuff out,” she reassures me quietly while Marion is discussing her schedule with Ashley.
Marion instructs that we should have a completed guest list by the time we meet with her again. It’s like she’s the wedding teacher giving us homework. She also insists that we call her immediately should any questions or concerns come up. We all shake hands once again and Mom and I set back across the hotel lobby and don’t say a word to each other until we are back out front on the sidewalk.
Once we are safely away from the properness of the hotel we start squealing, and crying, and hugging, and even jumping up and down a little bit. Finally Mom pulls back and looks me in the eye.
“We love you so much, Molly. You deserve all this.”
I feel a twinge of guilt, but it passes quickly because she embraces me again and we dance around the Manhattan sidewalk a little more.
Eyes on the prize, I tell myself. You’re going to have a wedding at The Plaza!
28
Molly Makes a List
I kiss my mother good-bye as she gets into a cab on Fifth Avenue and promise that Justin and I will begin work on our list immediately. I decided to walk home through Central Park since it is still pretty warm and won’t be dark for a couple more hours. On my walk, I start thinking about the list and who will be on it.
Obviously all the usual suspects: my college friends, the few high-school friends I keep in touch with, and the even fewer grade-school friends I still talk to. Plus all my family and the people I work with. Needless to say, I would like to invite everyone I’ve ever met to share in the joy of it finally being my day, but since a small but persistent voice in the back of my head likes to remind me that this marriage isn’t real, I try to keep my list in check.
Then I start thinking about Justin and his side of the ceremony. Who is going to sit there? Obviously he isn’t going to invite his friends and family ... they would know right away it was a sham. That is an enormous problem I hadn’t given any thought to yet. I walk and I think, and I walk and I think, and before I know it, I am standing outside my building and I still don’t have an idea.
When I walk in the door I smell something amazing. It smells how I imagine something cookin
g in my kitchen would smell, but since I don’t cook, I’m not positive. I peek around the corner and see Justin and Logan, squished together in my tiny kitchen, cooking dinner.
“Hey, Molly!” Logan greets me with a happiness in his voice I haven’t heard in a while.
“Hey, Loge, whatcha cookin?”
“Haha ... it’s a surprise.”
“Hey there, sweetie,” Justin adds, leaning across the kitchen to kiss the top of my head (yes, that’s how small the kitchen is—a person can simply lean and reach all the way across it). “How was The Plaza?”
“Amazing. Mom put a deposit on it!”
They both cheer that this enormous detail is set. Justin pours me a glass of wine from a bottle that looks like he and Logan have already had several drinks out of, and I sit on a stool at the edge of the kitchen telling them about Marion, and Ashley, and the Grand Ballroom. It’s all starting to feel so real and so exciting.
All through dinner (a delicious feast of amazing homemade paella) we keep the wine flowing and talk about who should be on the list and I ask the boys about the problem of Justin’s empty list.
“I could sit on his side,” Logan offers with a slight slur.
“You can’t! Besides, you’re in the wedding,” I remind him.
We have definitely had too much wine to be discussing something this serious, but we forge ahead amid a lot of giggles and a few hiccups. The decision we finally come to is that Justin can fill his side to a certain extent by inviting people to a Tony and Tina’s Wedding-style play. Tony and Tina’s Wedding was a mid-nineties phenomenon that was an audience-interactive play. So the “actors” stayed in character the entire time and the “audience” stayed in character as guests. It might be the wine talking, but it actually seems like a brilliant solution by 1:15 A.M.
29
She Checks It Twice
The next day, Justin and I head to Starbucks, which is a little embarrassing now because we are kind of celebrities there and they always applaud when we come in and give me a free pumpkin scone, which, don’t get me wrong, is awesome and it’s my favorite ... but once in a while I like something different. We sit down at our favorite table with my laptop between us and type out our “official” list.
Martha suggests that along with the date and the venue that the guest list be one of the first things completed. Since Marion seems to concur, we figure we’d better get started. I have my old-fashioned Filofax phone book with me and Justin has his spiffy, high-tech Palm Pilot.
I start with all my friends. I include everyone who has invited me to their wedding, which pretty much is all my friends since they’re all married already. I pause briefly at Brad’s name, not because he wouldn’t be invited, regardless of how things are now—he’s a special friend and an honorary member of the family—but because I’m hoping there is a way to invite him without Claire. Justin insists there is not, so I give up and add two more. After my friends, I add family members. I’m sure my mom’s list will be a more complete list of the Harrigans and Nelsons (her side of the family), so there will be plenty of cross-referencing to make sure we have everyone, but this is a start. Finally I decide on the people from work who should be included: the principal of my school, my fellow third-grade teachers, and a couple other staffers. That’s it for me. I count them all up and it comes to eighty-four. Not bad.
Then Justin flicks on his little device and starts going over the names of his friends (and family?) who would go to this “play.” He starts with his friends from work, since he explains that is a more gay/straight mixed group than his college friends. Next he adds a select group of college friends who would be good at playing along with the play and not make jokes about “the gay groom” the whole night. Finally, he thinks about his family. Definitely his brother and sister-in-law would come ... he thinks. His parents are another issue. Since they aren’t completely comfortable with his sexuality to begin with, he’s not sure how they would handle watching him “play straight.” Also, would they come all the way from Kansas anyway to see a play? I’m nervous about putting them on the list, and I’m nervous about not putting them on the list, because it would be awkward to explain to my family why Justin’s family isn’t invited. We decide to leave their name on the list and make the decision about whether or not to actually mail the invitation to them when the time is closer. His list is 32, bringing our total to a whopping 116.
While 116 guests means $29,000 at The Plaza, which makes me nauseous, it doesn’t make me nearly as nauseous as the 200-person total my mother was predicting. This will be a sizable chunk of Nana’s money, but it does leave enough to cover other essentials, like my dress. We look over our list once more, confirming that all of the important people are included as we finish our fourth and fifth lattes, and then we leave the Starbucks, surprised that we have been inside for almost four hours.
Justin needs to get back to his apartment and get changed for work, so we say our good-byes on the sidewalk out front. I open my purse and hand him money for today’s “date,” but he puts his hand up.
“No, not today,” he says.
“But—”
“No, I don’t charge my friends and we’re friends now.”
“You’re a really good friend,” I tell him as I give him a big hug.
30
Wedding Central
On Monday morning, as instructed by my mother, I get to school early to use the fax machine in the administration office to fax her the list. I have everything organized neatly and orderly and I must admit, I’m pretty proud of my list. I’ve checked over it twice more since Justin and I left Starbucks yesterday afternoon, and I had Logan look over it to make sure there wasn’t anybody painfully obvious that we missed.
At lunchtime, I call my mom at home since she has cut down to a part-time teaching schedule this year.
“Wedding Central!” she answers.
“Mom! Is that really how you are answering the phone?” I giggle.
“Absolutely. I got your list. But, actually, Mol, it would be easier if you could e-mail it to me so that I could merge it into my list and get it a little more organized.”
Huh? E-mail? Merge? More organized? Who is this woman and why didn’t she think my perfectly organized list was organized enough?!?
“Um, sure,” I reply lamely.
“It looks great, though,” she encourages. “You did a good job with your friends and co-workers. I’m just going to delete your family list since mine is more complete. Now, is that Justin’s complete list or will he be getting more names to me?”
Did my mother just say, “now?” Is she turning into Marion?
“Um, that’s all his names. Most of his family is in Kansas and he doesn’t really keep in close contact with them.”
“Uh-huh, well, why don’t you give me his mother’s phone number so that I can give her a call and arrange to get her list?”
“No!” I yell a little too fast and a little too loud.
“What?”
“Oh, no, sorry, not you, Mom. One of the kids was about to eat sand on the playground. Um, about Justin’s mom: she’s just not that into the wedding stuff and they aren’t really that close. The list he wrote is his final list. Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, okay,” Mom says, sounding slightly confused and disappointed. “I just thought she might want to be involved.”
“I know, that’s so sweet of you. She’s just not like that.”
Ugh ... more lies. It’s like Shakespeare says, Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we—something—to deceive. I can’t remember the exact quote, but I totally get the sentiment.
Mom and I agree (well, Mom says and I say OK) that she will finish the list this week and meet the following weekend in the city to shop for invitations and dresses. This all feels like it’s happening so fast, but Mom insists there is no point to waiting, so I go along.
After we hang up, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed, and I know Jamie is also on lunch break, so I cal
l her cell.
“Have you called Mom recently?” I ask after we say our hellos.
Jamie laughs, “Is she back on the ‘wedding central’ thing?”
“Yes! Did she do that when you were getting married?”
“I can’t believe you don’t remember. She alternated between ‘wedding central’ and ‘mother of the bride speaking. ’”
We laugh at our mother. We both realize how lucky we are to have her and how wonderful it is that she is excited and involved ... but we also both share the sentiment of wanting to beat her with something sharp.
“We’re going dress shopping this weekend. Wanna come?”
“I would love to, but Bryan’s sister is going to be in town.”
“Oh,” I say, disappointed not to have a Mom filter, but trying to hide it so Jamie doesn’t feel guilty. “Amanda or Marisa?”
“Marisa ... and her boyfriend du jour.”
“Well, it’ll be good to see her. Give her my best. So,” I continue, in need of a change of topic, “how’s Bumper?”
“We have our doctor’s appointment this afternoon to find out if it’s a boy Bumper or a girl Bumper!”
“Oh my God! That’s so exciting.”
“I know, it’s moving so fast ... it’s getting so big. It’s cra—”
I hear a loud whistle in the background. Lunch must be over at Jamie’s school. I check the clock—I’ve got five more minutes. We say our good-byes and she promises to call me as soon as she knows if I’m getting a niece or a nephew.
Then the bell rings outside my class and the kids come piling back in. They are rambunctious from the time outside, and I take a deep breath and prepare for a trying afternoon.
31
Molly’s Mom Goes Crazy
Later in the week, I arrive home to find Logan hidden behind a huge stack of what looks like extremely thick magazines.
“Logan?” I call out to him.
“I’m back here, Molly. Mom sent over these wedding magazines for you.”
Not Quite A Bride Page 14