The next day Charlie and I went to the Manor with Mark and the wedding planner, who started showing us how it could work if we did the wedding on the grounds. Mark told me, “Think about this carefully. She wants it at the Manor. Think about how much you’re going to get on other things if you give in on this. She won’t cheap out at a party held at her own house.” It might have occurred to me that Mark was feeding my mother the same line he fed me: I can convince Tori to do anything. Nonetheless, Charlie and I consented. We knew we could do worse than to get married on the manicured grounds of the biggest house in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, as suspected, most of the people who had to change their tickets were on Charlie’s side. He called my mother’s travel agent to deal with his sisters’ tickets. But the travel agent said, “There’s a problem. I’m afraid I won’t be able to make this change.” It turned out that the new tickets were going to cost an extra thousand dollars each. The travel agent said that my mother had only authorized her to pay a maximum difference of fifty dollars per ticket.
This was exactly the situation my mother had promised she would smooth over. Charlie called her and said, “There must be some misunderstanding. I thought you said that you would pay for the difference.” My mother said, “I don’t understand why it’s a thousand dollars. I talked to people, and they said it never costs more than fifty dollars to change a ticket.” Charlie was flabbergasted. Did she think he or his sisters were trying to cheat her? He tried to clear things up. “Mrs. Spelling, I want to assure you I love your daughter, I want to make her happy, I would never take advantage of you.” She said, “I don’t know you, Charlie. I don’t know your family.” End of conversation. Charlie gave up. He was done. Charlie and I ended up paying for the many people who had to change stuff. She got her way.
Now that we’d “agreed” on the time and place, it was time to do the invitations. We didn’t have much time. According to our wedding planner, they were supposed to go out two months before the wedding. We quickly ordered them up. Then my mother told us that she wanted us to sign a prenup. She offered to pay for Charlie’s lawyer. I talked to Charlie about it. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea. He thought prenups put a bad spin on things, a lack of faith in our love. But he said, “I love you. I don’t believe in prenups, but if it makes your mother happy, I’ll do it.” That was part of what I loved about Charlie. He believed in us. He wanted me to be happy. His heart was in the right place.
We started the process. The lawyers were going back and forth. One or the other of them was always on vacation. It started to take a while. Meanwhile, the invitations were all printed and ready to go out. But my mother said, “Well, I’m not sending out the invitations until the prenup is signed.” Er, okay, but if we’d known that, we would have started working on the prenup as soon as we got engaged. Two months to the wedding. Invitations sealed, stamped, and imprisoned on my mother’s desk. The countdown was on.
That’s about when it all started falling apart. Everything became a problem. My mother told me to reduce the guest list by fifty people—we were exceeding our budget. I’d never asked for anything in terms of catering or booze. But now she wanted me to call people who’d gotten “save the date” cards and tell friends they couldn’t bring dates and wives they couldn’t bring their husbands. It wasn’t until a few days before the wedding that I finally laid eyes on her own guest list. It was a Who’s Who of celebrities I didn’t even know my parents had met, people like Jay Leno (who didn’t come) and Anjelica Huston (who did). She said that they were “frequently at parties together,” but we were at a party three weeks before the wedding, and I remember seeing Anjelica Huston walk right past us without stopping. But she and her husband came to the wedding. Less than two months to the wedding. Fifty of my people uninvited.
The tension between me and my mother was too much for Charlie, so my friend Mehran stepped in to play husband at the cake tasting, the food tasting, the wine tasting, and the florist’s. He’s pretty much my gay husband anyway, and he was a good middleman. My mother was nicer to him than she was to me. She was completely over me, no matter how hard I tried to appease her. If I said I loved gardenias, she suddenly hated gardenias. The smell gave her a headache.
The third (yes, the third) flower meeting was supposed to be at two thirty. With a day’s notice I called the wedding planner to tell her I had an audition. The wedding planner agreed to change the appointment to three o’clock and promised she’d let my mother know. When I arrived at three, my mother was there and she was fuming. She let me have it, shouting, “This is the last time you’re doing this. You’re late to everything. I won’t take it anymore.” I said, “I wasn’t even late.” She stormed out of the room. I wasn’t even late. The wedding planner (brave woman) called her and admitted her mistake, but my mother said it didn’t matter. She was angry at how I had spoken to her.
Time passed. Nothing was going right. The prenup still hadn’t been finalized. The invitations still hadn’t gone out. Three weeks before the wedding, a Thursday evening, I turned on my computer to find a businesslike e-mail from my mother. It read: Tori: If the prenup is not signed by the end of business day tomorrow I will have no choice but to cancel the wedding. Period. Then the wedding planner called me in a panic. My mother had told her to put everything on hold. The wedding might not happen. At least this panic virus seemed to wake the sleeping lawyers from their endless vacations and comma changes. We finally got a prenup and signed it. Great. Now the invitations could go out.
Ah, the invitations. The invitations that said to please respond by a certain date, a date that had long since passed. These now very late invitations finally got mailed. Then word started to filter back to us that people thought they were on the B-list of invitees because they’d received the invitations so late. What an achievement! We’d managed to alienate all our closest friends and family right before they came to bear witness to the biggest moment of our lives. I couldn’t let them go on thinking they were second tier, so I sent out an e-mail saying that this was a problem that had to do with my family. At least that shifted the blame back in the right general direction.
Cut to a week before the wedding. Charlie’s parents were hosting the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and my parents were hosting the wedding and the Sunday brunch, as the etiquette book dictated. Brunch was at the Hotel Bel-Air, a legendarily luxurious five-star hotel which happens to be the closest hotel to my parents’ house. Even though it was just going to be July 4 hot dogs and hamburgers, and I’d paid for and made centerpieces with flags and sand and seashells myself, it was going to cost nine thousand dollars for about seventy people. That’s the Bel-Air for you.
Then, one week before the wedding, my mother’s chauffeur hand-delivered a letter to me. In it my mother said that she’d had so much stress planning the wedding that she couldn’t deal with the brunch as well. I didn’t know what to make of it. The brunch was already planned. The only “planning” that remained was paying the bill on the day of the brunch. Ah, that’s what my mother must have meant. She didn’t want to pay for the brunch. But why? Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is we didn’t have nine thousand dollars to spend.
It’s not like I’d insisted on the Bel-Air! Far from it. As my maid of honor, Jenny, pointed out, she would have been happy for me to have a post-wedding barbecue in her backyard. But how could I change everything now? The Bel-Air was also where I was to get ready for the wedding, and where Charlie and I were to spend our wedding night. Plus, our guests had already RSVP’d. Charlie’s mother cried when we told her what was going on. She was so upset for us that she generously volunteered to pay for it, but she was already paying for the rehearsal dinner. Nine thousand dollars was nothing to my parents, but it would certainly have been a real expense for her, as it was for us. We agreed to split it.
My beloved dogs had long-planned roles in the wedding. Mimi La Rue was our flower girl, and my other dog, Ferris, would be the ring bearer. Mimi had a special dress desi
gned for the occasion to match the bridesmaids’ dresses, and she was to be transported in a floral, rose-decorated wagon. Ferris had a custom-made tux with a matching bow tie. But the day before the wedding rehearsal Charlie got a call from Uncle Mark. The message from my mother and father was that dogs would not be allowed at the wedding. When Charlie spoke to my father, he said, “Well, this is just silly. She’s not an eighteen-year-old girl. She’s an adult. All our friends are going to be there. It’s going to be embarrassing.” We compromised: The dogs were allowed up the aisle, but then someone had to take them home right away. They were not permitted to remain anywhere on the property, not even in the guards’ room with all my parents’ dogs.
The rehearsal for the wedding was at the Manor. Charlie and I showed up fully dressed for the rehearsal dinner. Like the wedding, it had a twenties theme—well, maybe “theme” is too strong and cheesy a word—it was a twenties “feel.” I was wearing a dusty rose Yves Saint Laurent dress with long loopy fake diamonds by the yard. (I had asked my mother if she had any such diamonds in her collection that I could borrow, but she said, “No, I have nothing like that,” so I bought them at XIV Karats in Beverly Hills, where they had crystal costume ones.) My mother came to the rehearsal in a jogging suit. She’d have plenty of time to get dressed before the dinner.
The rehearsal dinner was at a Mediterranean restaurant called Byblos in Westwood. When my mother came in, I was shocked to see what she was wearing. She had on a dusty rose top—the exact color I was wearing. She knew I planned to wear that dress—it was the same color as my bridesmaids’ dresses. And she’d just seen me in it at the rehearsal. Interesting choice. But to top it off, she was wearing diamonds by the yard. The real ones. The ones she’d definitively said did not exist.
No matter. There were belly dancers, music, dancing, food, and toasts to refocus my attention on more important things. I had given Charlie a watch, but that night he gave me a much more personal present. He had two best friends who were songwriters, and he worked with them to write a song for me called “I Love You, Crazy” about how he loved me in spite of the many fears and compulsions I had. With his friends accompanying on the piano, he sang it to me that night. My friends thought it was cheesy and showy, but I thought it was cute and it made me cry.
After I’d had a bit to drink and been softened by all the warm toasts and spirit of the night, I decided to mend bridges with my mother. I hugged her and told her I loved her. She said she loved me too, and we both cried. These moments happen in our relationship. We have periods of stress and tension, then we go out, have a few drinks, and end up hugging and teary-eyed, promising to make an effort. I knew this wasn’t “happily ever after,” but after all the planning stress, the wedding was finally happening. We’d made it. It had to be smooth sailing from here, right? Right?
CHAPTER TEN
Last-Minute Changes
The morning of the wedding I woke up with a migraine. In a full panic Jenny called the hotel desk for help. Ah, the Bel-Air. They sent over a guy with a massage chair to rub my shoulders. Amazingly, it worked. (Note to self: Always have a guy with a massage chair handy.) My bridesmaids and I ordered eggs Benedict and mimosas and watched Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. In the early afternoon we all had hair and makeup done. Meanwhile, it had been organized that trays of food were sent over to my apartment, where Charlie and the guys were getting ready.
We arrived at the Manor early, so we could have our photos taken before the guests arrived. I found out later that before I appeared with my party, Charlie and his groomsmen were led to a room and instructed to stay there. Security was posted outside the door. They literally weren’t allowed to leave the room! Maybe my parents were afraid they’d steal something. I was wearing a Badgley Mischka dress that I’d designed. My hair was down, parted on the side with soft, old-fashioned curls. I wore an antique diamond headband, earrings, and bracelets, all of which were borrowed from Neil Lane. Attached to the headband was a veil that matched my dress and didn’t cover my face. My makeup was light and glowing. I turned to my mother and said, “Mom, you look so beautiful.” She thanked me but said nothing in return. I was standing there in my wedding dress. I’d had my nose done fifteen years earlier, but I still didn’t get to feel pretty in her eyes. With Mark, I was more direct. He was bustling around, in organizational mode as always: checking on security, making sure no guests entered the forbidden zone that happened to be the entire house. Again, no reaction to me as bride. I said, “Well? Do I look okay?” He said something canned like, “Oh, yeah, you look beautiful,” and then went back to directing the caterers.
My “bridesmaids” were Jenny, Jennifer, Amy, Sara, and Kate, and two guys: Mehran and Pete. Charlie’s two nieces were my junior bridesmaids. Charlie had five groomsmen, I think, including my brother, and three women in his wedding party. One of his friends, Mary, went up to my mother to introduce herself and say thank you. She reached out to shake hands. My mother said, “Mary, can’t you see I’m holding my bouquet?”
I wanted the wedding to look like the movie The Great Gatsby, with old-school twenties glamour. Not like a costume ball—nothing gaudy, just a tone. After the guests left their cars with the valet (July 3!—discount rates!), they entered the service parking entrance and garage for a prewedding cocktail hour. That’s right, cocktails in the parking lot, but you never would have known. They put down carpet, lattices, and flowers. Twenties music was playing. Waiters in white dinner jackets with black bow ties and black pants served mint juleps and hors d’oeuvres. Or so I’m told. Charlie and I weren’t there—we were still having pictures taken.
The wedding took place in the big front courtyard of the Manor—the grand entrance that I never used when visiting my parents. There was a huge circular driveway with a fountain in the middle of it. For the wedding the fountain had been covered with a platform. Now, on top of the covered fountain, below a chuppah of white roses and flowers, a rabbi, a minister, and Charlie stood waiting for me to arrive. The wedding party was below, surrounding the fountain, and the guests were spread out on what was ordinarily the vast driveway. Although we had the rabbi, I didn’t want to offer yarmulkes to the guests. My mother thought we had to give guests the option, but I disagreed. On the wedding video, as Charlie waits for me to approach, you see a sea of white disks on the male guests’ heads and you can hear him say, “Oh, God, Tori’s going to be furious. There’s yarmulkes.” The wedding planner later told him that my mother insisted. (And, apparently, instructed that it be kept secret from me.)
There was one moment in the entire wedding that really moved me. I was standing inside. I had picked a song to accompany my wedding party as they walked down the aisle. It was the theme song from Ice Castles—surely you remember? “Through the Eyes of Love”? I know it’s beyond cheesy, but the song had such a huge effect on my life. I loved the movie. I wanted to be an ice skater because of that movie. When I took piano lessons, “Ice Castles” was the first song I learned to play. When I took singing lessons, “Ice Castles” was the first song I wanted to sing. When I lost my virginity, “Ice Castles” was…not on the stereo. Geez, give me a little credit. Anyway, it was always a big song for me. A string quartet played the processional and somehow managed to make it sound exactly right. Watching my old, beloved friends walk down the aisle toward the fountain, I cried so hard that my nose was running when my turn came.
My father walked me down the aisle. Because my father was older, I always had a fear that he’d die before I got married. That walk down the aisle was something that I desperately wanted to share with him. It wasn’t the moment itself so much as knowing that no matter how young I was when he died, I’d always have that memory. No matter what happened, it wouldn’t be something I’d missed. That was worth the whole wedding right there. He was eighty-one and pretty frail. It took everything he had to walk with me.
Maybe every bride feels a little removed from the wedding itself, but as I walked, I felt like I was
onstage. I was trying to have the exact right amount of emotion and grace, trying to make sure my face showed what a bride should feel. I found out later that my friends weren’t staring overwhelmed at my perfect balance of modest beauty. No, they were too busy trying not to laugh at Charlie. According to Jenny, when he saw me appear, he gasped and clutched his heart with passion. Jenny said, “I almost pissed in my pants.”
Wait. Let’s leave me walking down the aisle for a bit. What about my friends? What did they think of this whole wedding train that was barreling toward marital collapse? (Oops—did I give away the unhappy ending? Nah, didn’t think so.)
Suzanne, one of Charlie’s best friends (and now mine—I won her in the divorce), had an inkling this wasn’t a perfect match. Suzanne helped me register since she knew what china and what crystal and what silver I should like and (in spite of the fact that I would later discover that my mother has an entire room devoted to silver) I knew nothing. After going to Gearys in Beverly Hills to choose a china pattern, we went out for cocktails. Suzanne, in her Southern accent, said, “You sure about this? Because you know he’s very Christian and doesn’t believe in divorce.” Imitating her accent, I joked, “But momma does.” Though I believed in marriage, some part of me knew that divorce was an escape hatch if I needed it.
Mehran, to his credit, kept asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to marry him?” Mehran often told me Charlie wasn’t right for me. He’d say, “I just feel like he only knows ten percent of you. How can you be with someone like that?” I didn’t want to hear any of it. I’d say, “I’ve already planned the wedding! Why are you doing this to me?” Even as I brushed him off, Mehran’s concerns stayed with me. He was right. Charlie only wanted the sweet, perfect-wife part of me. I haven’t done all the math on my various personalities, but I’m pretty sure Mehran was right: sweet, perfect wife is only about 10 percent of the whole package
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