by Rachel Astor
The ladies got to work getting the first dress off me before I even knew what was going on. Honestly, I was so mesmerized by another dress that was so beautiful.
It was that moment that I realized this was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
How was a person supposed to pick just one?
I got another amazing reaction from Mattie as I waltzed through the door, and from myself, for that matter. I could hardly believe it was me walking into that room of mirrors. The whole place was magical with dress after dress, each as gorgeous as the last: a super cute short baby doll with the lightest of pink crinoline showing beneath; a tight sheath with material that looked curiously like crinkled crepe paper, which, weirdly, totally worked; and a somewhat traditional A-line, though paired with the black sash and black full-length gloves that Mattie picked, it looked slinky and sophisticated.
Every one of them was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And apparently Mattie felt the same way.
This was not going to be hard like I’d first thought.
This was going to be impossible.
The rest of the appointments were much the same thing. Unbelievable unique dress after unbelievable unique dress.
“So, what did you think?” Mattie asked.
“I think you’re the meanest man on the face of the planet.”
He beamed.
Only Mattie could read the true meaning behind a statement like that. “Seriously though Mattie, what am I going to do?”
He shrugged. “It’ll come to you,” he said. “Whichever one is still stuck in your head in a few days will be the one.”
I nodded. “Maybe.” My hands dropped to my sides. “I think I need a drink.”
“To the Martini Bar,” Mattie cried, as if we were going into war.
Frankly, I kind of felt like I’d just come from the battlefield.
I was tempted to order one of everything on the menu, I was so stressed out, but after the champagne at the dress places, I figured one was more than enough. Especially since my mother insisted on making a date with me tomorrow and refused to tell me where we were going or what she had planned.
There was a holiday Apple Cinnamon Martini, so we each ordered one. I closed my eyes and sipped slowly, taking deep breaths and letting the heat of the cinnamon and booze settle into me. “What a day.”
“It was a bit long,” Mattie said. “Although while you were taking forever to change, I had plenty of time to finalize appointments for cake tastings, flowers designers, music auditions…”
I put my head in my hands. It was like the party that would never be, there were too many details to finalize.
I wished my martini would just hurry up and kick in already.
CHAPTER 8
“So you’re going with Mattie?” Jen asked, after I explained how beautiful the dresses were.
I sighed. “I think so. I can’t imagine my mother coming up with anything more perfect than those dresses. I mean, every one of them felt like it was made just for me.”
“Holy crap, your mother’s going to have a conniption.”
I cringed. “I know. I’m trying not to think about it.”
“How are you going to tell her?”
“God, I don’t know. She’s taking me for lunch or something tomorrow, I’ll just have to wait ‘til the time is right and just spit it out.”
Jen snorted. “I’m not sure there is any right time to fire someone from being your wedding planner. Especially someone who is family. And especially someone who is your mother.”
I leaned my head back on the couch. She sure wasn’t making it easy for me to bliss back into the memory of those dresses. But now that I saw what Mattie really could do, it was a no-brainer.
“Man, I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that. I’d love to see your mother’s head blow up into a million explody pieces.”
I gave her a look that said I was so not in the mood for her visuals… even if they were slightly hilarious.
“Are you sure you even want to go through with the whole big wedding thing? If you would just elope you wouldn’t have to worry about either one of them being pissed off.”
“Really? You really think they won’t be pissed if I just go ahead and change my plans to not even include them at all?”
She looked like she was mulling it over. Like seriously concentrating. “I see your point,” she conceded. “Hey,” she brightened, a master at changing the subject, which I, of all people, could certainly appreciate. “Have you seen the polls lately?”
“Polls?”
“Yeah, you know, the wedding polls. People from all over the world are voting on the wedding.”
I sighed. “Not the tabloids again.”
“I know. I know. But these ones are actually kind of fun.” She pulled her computer onto her lap. “There’s one at Snoop.com where designers have put their hat into the ring for people to vote on their favorite dress. If I were a betting woman—and judging by how many times I’ve voted on the Vera Wang, I am—I’m guessing you won’t even have to pay for your dress. I bet it’ll be one of those things, like at the Oscars, where the designer just gives the dress to you for publicity.”
“Oh great, so now the general public is picking my dress?”
She scoffed at me, slapping me lightly on the arm. “Come on, it’s just for fun.” She turned the computer so I could see the screen.
Sure enough, six pictures of runway models wearing the latest couture wedding gowns stared back at me. I mean, it was hard to tell on the tiny netbook screen, but I had to admit, the gowns were nothing if not stunning. “Wow.”
Jen nodded. “See? How fun is that?”
“Is there a shoe one?” I asked, sitting up a bit straighter and leaning in.
“I think that one’s over at GossipCentral.org.” She quickly typed in the address.
“Oh my God, I so want to vote on those diamond encrusted ones,” I said, noting the irony of voting on my own wedding shoes.
“So vote,” she said, plopping the computer onto my lap.
“Are you serious? I can’t vote on a gossip magazine poll about myself.”
“Why not?” she asked, like it was nothing.
I couldn’t even think of one reason. I mean, it was just for fun after all, right?
I actually giggled as I hit the submit button and the screen thanked me for my vote. Then I squealed when I saw that 48% of all voters picked the same shoes as I did. We were in the lead!
Oh good Lord, what had gotten into me?
But after the thrill of voting, I wasn’t about to stop there. Jen showed me all the polls, the cake, the flowers, even the location.
I only wish we’d stopped before we clicked on the site that showed us 88% of readers thought our marriage would end before our first anniversary.
Even worse, another 16% didn’t think we’d even make it to the altar at all.
~ ~ ~
I tossed and turned all night wondering why everyone thought Jake and I would go down in flames. I mean, I know celebrity couples don’t have the greatest track record or anything, but still, weren’t Jake and I the perfect match? Well, Jake was perfect, that was for sure, and me… well, I’d soundly proven to the world that I was definitely not perfect.
So that was it. They thought he was too good for me.
God, he probably was too good for me.
I was completely and utterly ordinary.
And Jake was a movie star for Pete’s sake.
There was definitely no need to check in on the Disaster Diary to make me feel like crap. And on top of it all, tomorrow was a day with my mother.
After a sleepless night.
“Hooray,” I said sarcastically to myself as I headed out the door, still trying to figure out how the hell to break the bad news that she would not be planning my wedding.
My mind spun with a million scenarios of how things might go.
And my brain couldn’t even invent one good outcome, no matter how h
ard I tried.
“Miss?” a voice said from somewhere in the distance. “Miss? The meter’s running.”
Oh, the cabbie. I shook my head, focusing back on the present. “Sorry,” I said, handing him the fare. I had no idea how long we’d been sitting there in front of the coffee shop before he finally jolted me back to reality.
Once out of the cab, I stood, still in a bit of a trance slash panic, almost as if I was glued in place.
“What are you doing standing out here?” my mother asked, storming out of the shop with two cups in her hands. “What were you thinking about? You looked a million miles away.” She handed me a cup. “Here. It’s a Dulce Latte. I presume you still like those?”
I looked at my hand as if the cup had appeared from nowhere. My mother started walking away briskly.
God, why did everyone in my life have to walk so fast? I took a long hit off the latte and scurried to catch up. I hated to admit it, but my mother did know exactly what I needed on a chilly day.
“Mother slow down! Where are you going so fast?”
“We have an appointment to keep,” she said, checking her watch and walking even faster, if that was possible.
“An appointment?”
“Yes. You’ll see.”
The scary thing was, I was starting to see. This had to be something wedding related. God, I’d so badly hoped she’d forgotten about the whole thing.
I felt like I was six years old, running to keep up with my mother, both hands holding onto my cup, trying my hardest not to make it spill, somehow wondering how she could move so fast and not even seem to worry about her drink at all, until finally she stopped and I nearly ran right into her, almost coating her with latte.
I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of the thick, brown liquid oozing down the back of her pristine, off-white coat.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked, finally turning to look at me.
But I was too busy noticing how very familiar the street looked. I felt like I’d been in a place just like this…
…oh my God. Just yesterday.
We were standing in front of the very same giant dress store where Mattie had first taken me yesterday.
And I so did not have it in me to try on any more dresses.
Not to mention what the hell the people working there were going to think. They’d be so ticked at me for wasting their time.
I started pacing across the sidewalk.
“Josie? Josie, what is going on with you? We have to get inside. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get an appointment with these people? The only way I could do it in the first place was to drop Jake’s name. You would not believe how helpful people become when a movie star is involved in a wedding.” She clucked her tongue. “You’d think he was the queen or something.”
I laughed nervously.
“You know, I don’t really have the right shoes for trying dresses on,” I said, scrambling for excuses, Mattie’s words echoing through my head.
My mother looked to the heavens. “Of course I thought of that Josie. Do you really think this is my first time shopping for a dress? I’ve got four different pairs right here.” She patted what I now saw was a gigantic bag slung over her shoulder.
I don’t know how, but she’d managed to make even a huge sack look elegant and inconspicuous.
I hung back even longer, sipping my coffee as slowly as possible while my brain wheeled at warp speed through non-believable excuse after non-believable excuse. Eventually, my mother tugged on my arm hard enough, forcing me into the building. I dawdled as much as I could, but her impatience was growing by the second. We reached the sparkling door and I cringed as it opened.
“Welcome,” the same lady from yesterday said.
If she was surprised to see me she didn’t let on, her face as calm and serene as ever. Maybe she didn’t really get a good look at me or didn’t remember me. I mean, it would be strange not to notice two appointments under the same name so close together… perhaps they really were femme-bots and had no powers of recollection.
This might not be so bad. Yesterday was pretty fun, after all.
And I could guarantee my mother would not pick out the same dresses as Mattie. I’d definitely break the bad news today, but… what would it hurt just to try a couple more on?
We were led to the staging area just like yesterday, my mother gawking at her surroundings, much like I’m sure I did my first time through.
The first dressing room housed the largest wedding dress I had ever seen. Its jeweled bodice led down to a large skirt with huge folds of fabric layered in the back, draping out for what seemed like miles behind it. I couldn’t figure out how on Earth a person could move around in something like that, let alone dance or you know, God forbid, go to the bathroom.
But it was nothing if not spectacular and my insides practically quivered to try it on, at least as an experiment… if only to test the maneuverability.
And once I got it on and the millions of crystals down the front caught the light, I suddenly understood how Cinderella must have felt. In the dress, I stood up straighter than usual, pulled my shoulders back more, and I swear, may have grown an inch or two. Something about it just made you want to carry yourself a little better, just to live up to the extravagance of it.
I felt like I’d traveled back in time, born into royalty as I walked the hall back to my mother.
I expected a positive reaction, but I certainly hadn’t expected tears. Sure, mothers often cried when they first saw their daughters in wedding gowns, but my mother was not like other mothers. She didn’t cry at weddings. Cripes, she didn’t cry at funerals. In fact, now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t come up with one time that I remembered seeing her cry at all.
Until that moment.
Okay, it’s not like she was out and out bawling or anything, but her eyes were seriously glistening, so much so that she turned away for a moment and wiped a tear, I suppose thinking she was fooling me.
I nearly broke down right then and there and if I hadn’t been wearing a dress that I was terrified of messing up, I probably would have.
My mother sniffed across the room and tried to compose herself. “That is beautiful,” she finally said.
“Thanks.”
I stood there, not sure what to do so I took a bit of a walk around the room so she could see the magnificence of the train. The fabric was heavy, but not unbearable and I began to picture myself walking down the aisle to gasps and ladies wiping their eyes.
I may have been getting a bit over my head with the thoughts of people fawning and crying over me, so when I snuck back into the next change room, I realized I needed a quick peek into the Disaster Diary to help bring me back down to scale. Sheesh, I was probably already a day late checking in considering the expansion of my head since Mattie’s dresses.
Dear Disaster Diary,
I absolutely love going to the airport. People completely excited about going to someplace exotic, or someplace warm when it’s winter. And then as people return, even though they’ve likely had a lovely trip, they are always happy to be back home, hugging loved ones or meeting up with friends they haven’t seen in a while.
There is just so much promise and possibility at a place like that, which is why I always volunteer to pick up and drop off pretty much everyone I know. In all the excitement, I admit, I tend to get a little excited myself, which is why I may not always have my head on as straight at the airport as I normally would, you know, even for me.
When I was about seventeen, my sister Rosie, my father and I went to pick up Mom from the airport. She’d just gone to visit her sister in Oklahoma. I was so busy watching all the happy faces around me that I may not have noticed all the things around me, including the exact spot where we were standing.
Of course, with excitement, trips to the washroom tend to follow, and that day was no exception. I snuck off, hurrying so I wouldn’t miss my mother’s face when she came through the gate.
Now everybody knows there’s an art to picking the correct bathroom stall. Many choices are obvious, you want to get the cleanest one possible, though at public places like airports, clean is often a stretch. I’d heard somewhere that people tend to gravitate toward the end stalls, so I’d gotten in the habit of choosing the middles, just to be on the safe side.
That day was almost a miracle, the middle stall was empty and it actually looked decently clean. I quickly did my business and turned to flush. Then sighed. The stinkin’ thing wouldn’t flush.
I pressed the button over and over again, really getting close to get some leverage as I pushed as hard as I could. Which was when, of course, it finally flushed with a whoosh so powerful it could have cleared a pool in six point five seconds.
As I was starting to stand back up, the bowl began to refill just as violently as it had emptied and splashes of water sprayed up, tiny droplets of public toilet water sprinkling my face.
I screamed, wiping at my face, as if that would do any good.
I lunged for the door, pulling the slide lock as quickly as I could, desperate to get to the sinks and some soap. Makeup be damned, I was going to get my face clean.
And that’s when things went from bad to worse.
The lock wouldn’t budge. Like seriously wouldn’t give even the slightest bit.
I began to panic.
Okay… I began to panic more.
I tugged and pulled and banged on that lock, already feeling the toilet bacteria practically growing on my face. I wanted to cry but there were other people in the washroom, so I just kept tugging, pulling from the top of the stall door, trying everything possible to un-jam it.
Thoughts of having to crawl under the door swirled through my head.
