by Meg Cabot
Gasping in horror, I clutched the front of my wedding gown, my eyes filling with tears.
Then both children burst into giggles and shrieked, “April Fool’s!”
I brought my hands down from my heart and asked them to pull the same prank on Benjamin, whose reaction was far more satisfactory to them than mine, since he said a lot of American swear words, to the kids’ endless delight.
An hour and a half later, our wedding procession, consisting of our landlady, the translator, his wife and daughter, our self-appointed photographer, her husband and their son, Ingo and two of his friends from Bonn, Benjamin, myself, and assorted village children and their dogs arrived at the Sala Consiliare of the Comune di Diano San Pietro.
Clearly surprised that we had actually shown up, the mayor quickly stripped off his referee uniform and donned jacket, tie, and mayoral surplice (Non-Fabrication Number Fifteen).
Our marriage took place with much more solemnity and pageantry than either of us was expecting. Ingo, the best man, presented me with a bridal bouquet and my maid of honor with a matching corsage before the ceremony. Then Frau Schumacher and Ingo witnessed our signing of the Diano San Pietro registro degli atti di matrimoni.
According to the translator, Benjamin and I promised, among other things, to live always together and see that our children attended decent schools. No wedding ceremony I have attended since has seemed quite as sweet—and to the point—as our Italian one.
After rings and kisses were exchanged, the mayor announced us husband and wife, and cheers and applause rang out. We were then beseeched by the mayor to pose for photos with him, and by the secretario to make a one-hundred-thousand lire donation to the Comune di Diano San Pietro Children’s Fund. In the registro for the Children’s Fund, my husband wrote, “Isn’t it a good thing we decided not to get married in Las Vegas like normal Americans?”
Then we all went across the street to the postino’s office to send off our telegrams, then to enjoy a wedding brunch at a restaurant that had agreed to open its doors early just for us.
It was at this brunch that we discovered Non-Fabrication Number Sixteen: Our landlady had worked for the SS, and had a son who was in jail for robbing all of the homes neighboring hers. Yes, the Nazi mother of a felon was the maid of honor at my wedding. And she’d been so nice! How was I supposed to have known?
Every Boy’s Got One ends with missives from the bride and groom’s families, expressing their eagerness to throw a party for the young couple whose marriage they’d initially been so vehemently against.
Non-Fabrication Number Seventeen: In real life, our parents’ reaction was not much different. At first puzzled as to whether or not the whole thing had been an April Fool’s joke, they soon came to believe the event had actually taken place, and began planning a wedding celebration on my mother’s back deck in Indiana.
Of course, the morning of the party, a tornado ripped through town, pulling the roof off a nearby church and causing the temperature to plummet and the yard to become strewn with leaves and branches, so that the guests, including myself, were forced to wear sweaters and step over bracken in order to get to the cooler holding the beer.
But then, I’d given up expecting anything to do with my wedding to go right, so I wasn’t the least surprised.
Still, nearly a dozen years later, there’s nothing I’d change about my wedding day—although I think it would have been a blast to be married in Castelfidardo… there’s something hilarious about having a wedding in the accordion-making capital of the world—which made writing about it for Every Boy’s Got One a breeze.
I’m glad that, for this book at least, when people ask me where I got the inspiration, I’ll have a ready answer.
Still, it’s important to note that there’s one thing that’s in the book that did NOT happen in real life:
Fabrication Number Four: Unlike some of my traveling companions, I actually knew better than to order the oysters.
Copyright
EVERY BOY’S GOT ONE. Copyright © 2005 by Meggin Cabot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2004 ISBN: 9780061741784
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cabot, Meg.
Every boy’s got one / by Meg Cabot.—1st. ed.
p. cm.
Author Bio
MEG CABOT was born in Bloomington, Indiana. In addition to her adult contemporary fiction, she is the author of the bestselling young adult fiction The Princess Diaries and The Mediator series. Over 25 million copies of her novels for children and adults have sold worldwide. Meg lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband.
ALSO BY MEG CABOT
The Princess Diaries series
The Mediator series
Heather Wells series
The Boy series
Overbite
Insatiable
Ransom My Heart (with Mia Thermopolis)
Queen of Babble series
She Went All the Way
The 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU series
All-American Girl series
Nicola and the Viscount
Victoria and the Rogue
Jinx
How to Be Popular
Pants on Fire
Avalon High series
The Airhead series
Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series
From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess series
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