Confessions of a Wedding Musician Mom

by Jennifer McCoy Blaske

  I headed back upstairs and sat down at the kitchen table. I had my phone and the list of phone numbers I’d made earlier.

  The websites that came up during my Google search for local wedding pianists were more than a little intimidating. There were photos of male pianists wearing tuxedos and female pianists wearing evening gowns with long, flowing hair cascading down past their shoulders. The bios described masters degrees in piano performance, years of studying music in Europe, and even performances for former presidents. Everybody looked impeccably polished. And they all had an air of importance about them.

  Not one of them looked like they’d spent their morning as I had—cleaning various Goldfish crackers, Lego pieces, a total of twenty-seven cents in coins, a plastic fork, and six Froot Loops out from under the couch cushions. Then, of course, I worked on creative ways to get two blobs of jelly out of the living room carpet.

  I briefly considered just sending emails, but I knew I couldn’t be a coward. I had to suck it up and actually make the calls. I needed to learn something about how to handle a phone inquiry. I tried to convince myself that it was really no big deal. I would just ask for a quote, say thank you, and move on to the next person on my list. They would have no reason to suspect anything strange. Maybe I would even get lucky and get their voice mail.

  As I was about to call Bob McMillan, the first person on my list, it struck me that speaking to another female seemed a little less intimating to start. So I skipped to the second name, Kathie Goldsby. I dialed her number and tried to keep my hands and voice steady.

  “Hello,” I said when she answered. “I’d like to know how much you charge to play for a wedding.”

  “Congratulations!” said a smooth voice on the other end of the line. “Are you the bride, or a friend or relative calling on her behalf?”

  I hadn’t expected that. “Uh … yes, I’m the bride.” I cleared my throat. “Yup. That’s me. In love and getting married.”

  “That’s wonderful, congratulations again,” said Kathie. “Are you wanting live piano music for the ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, or all three?”

  Oh crap. I didn’t realize there would be questions. “All three,” I said and quickly added, “but I’d like to have them all priced separately. So we can … um, decide which options we can afford.”

  “Of course.” She tapped her fingers on computer keys. “Now, where will your wedding be located?”

  “Yeah, uh … that.” I coughed. Clearly, I hadn’t thought this through either. “Yes. Um …” I was frantically trying to think. Where should I tell her the wedding is? I don’t even know the names of many wedding venues in town yet. I know! What was the name of the place where Emily said she was getting married when she called me? Um … something like … “Twin Pines Country Club!” I blurted out.

  “Twin Pines Country Club?” Kathie paused. “I’m not familiar with that. Is it in town?”

  “Uh … yes?” I squeaked.

  “Hmm, Twin Pines … oh! Do you mean Twin Lakes Country Club?”

  “Yes!” I laughed nervously. “Sorry about that. How silly of me. I can’t even remember where my own wedding is!” I laughed again. “There’s just too much information to keep track of, you know, planning a wedding and all.” I cleared my throat. Would this phone call ever be over?

  “Oh, I understand,” she said. “It can be pretty overwhelming. Now, will the cocktail hour and reception both be held at Twin Lakes?”

  “Yup, all at the same place.” I exhaled in relief. Okay, the hard part was over.

  “And what is the date of your wedding?”

  AARRRGH!!! “May,” I said quickly. “May … fifteenth.” That sounded nice and wedding-like.

  “This coming May?” she asked.

  “Uh … sure.”

  I heard the clicking of computer keys, then a pause.

  “You’re getting married on a Thursday?” Kathie asked.

  Uh-oh. Was I? Did people even do that? Did I just give myself away? Was the jig up? “Um … uh … did I say May fifteenth?” I forced a laugh that sounded more like a whimper. “My goodness, all the stress of being a bride is getting me all mixed up. I meant the thirteenth … uh … no, I mean, uh … seventeenth … or … well, whatever that Saturday is.”

  “May seventeenth?”

  “Yes! Saturday, May seventeenth. Yes. That’s the day I’m getting married. Me. The bride. Getting married at Twin, uh … Lakes Country Club.” I hesitated. “It is Twin Lakes, right?”

  “Yes, Twin Lakes.” Kathie sounded a little puzzled. “Okay, then. I’m available that day and would love to play for your wedding.”

  “Great! So how much do you charge?”

  “Well, first let me tell you a little more about what I offer,” she said. “The ceremony package includes thirty minutes of prelude music while your guests are arriving, and …”

  As she described her packages, I hurriedly began taking notes.

  “Now, how many guests are you expecting?” she asked.

  I slapped my palm against my forehead. What was with this woman? Did she not know what she charged? Couldn’t she just answer the stupid question? And how was the number of guests going to make any difference anyway? What, did she charge per person?

  “Um, uh … a hundred guests,” I said.

  “All right.” She was tapping away on her keyboard again. “And are you planning on having any other instrumentalists, or a soloist?”

  “Nope. Just piano. Nothing else.”

  Why couldn’t she just tell me a price! Just name a number! Was that so difficult?

  “And what type of musical selections are you and your fiancé considering? Are you picturing traditional style music, or did you have something more modern in mind?”

  “Both,” I said. “Either. Whatever. Anything!” AARRRGH!!!

  “And did you have any special songs that you wanted to request? For example, any songs that have significant meaning for the two of you?”

  “Nope. No special songs,” I snapped. “Uh … I mean … what I mean is … any song would have meaning. Anything at all. Because … it’s our special day. To get married at Twin Pines, I mean, Lakes. No, wait … yes. Twin Lakes! On Saturday, May sixteenth.”

  There was a pause. “You mean Saturday, May seventeenth?”

  “Right. Whatever. So how much would it be? Because we need to know right away if it fits into our budget.”

  “Of course. I offer a special package for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception which is a better deal than if you decide to go with one or two of those. The package deal is only …”

  I scribbled down all the numbers. “Great! Well, thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Wait! I never got your name.”

  “Uh … my name?” I repeated. “My name is … Mary. Mary …” I desperately glanced around the room. “Doorknob.” I winced as soon as I said it. What the heck kind of name was that?

  “Mary Doorknob?”

  “Yup. That’s me. Thank you!” I hung up and took a deep breath. Who knew this would be so painful?

  Before I had a chance to chicken out, I immediately dialed the second number on my list. Hopefully this next pianist would just give me a quote without asking so many questions.

  “Hello, I’d like to know how much you charge to play for a wedding,” I said.

  Silence.

  “Didn’t you just call me?” said a smooth female voice.

  My eyes darted down to the list of phone numbers. I remembered that I’d skipped the first number and started with the second number. I froze. Oh crap.

  “So soll-ee,” I said in a high-pitched voice. “I zeenk I have zee wrong number.”

  I hung up and ferociously scribbled out the phone number I’d just called. Then I tossed my pencil and pad of paper across the table and headed to the freezer.

  I needed to calm my nerves with a bowl of mocha almond fudge ice cream. Then I would try again.

  Chapter Four

  “
Hey, come on in!” said my friend Stephanie Porter as she opened her front door. “We were just mummifying a chicken.”

  “Doing what to a chicken?” I asked.

  Danny and Angela ran past me. They headed to the Porter’s playroom with Trevor and Ashley, Stephanie’s kids. I followed Stephanie through her living room—books were strewn all over the couches, floor, and coffee table—and into her kitchen.

  “Mummifying a chicken.” Stephanie brushed the debris off the kitchen counter into the trash and washed her hands. “We’ve been studying the ancient Egyptians. Of course, the chicken won’t actually be mummified for a few weeks. Today we just scooped out the innards and coated everything in salt and cinnamon. See?” She smiled as she held up a pan containing a raw chicken smothered with salt inside a Ziploc bag. There were three baby food jars around the edge of the pan.

  “What’s in the jars?”

  “The innards. The ancient Egyptians mummified the intestines and other organs in Canopic jars, so we figured we’d do that too.”

  “Lovely.” I did my usual routine at Stephanie’s house which was grabbing a diet soda out of the fridge, hopping up on one of the stools at her kitchen island, and gently pushing aside whatever happened to be on the counter. Today it was a bin of markers, a half-completed math worksheet, and three containers of Play-Doh—two of them without a lid.

  Stephanie and I met through a play group, back in the days when Danny and Stephanie’s son Trevor were both learning to walk. Between the facts that Stephanie was homeschooling her kids and she used to be an elementary art teacher … well, let’s just say that I was used to quite interesting things often going on at her house.

  “So,” Stephanie said, taking a big bag out of her refrigerator crisper drawer and carrying it over to the counter, “how’s the wedding piano business going?”

  Not surprisingly, after Steve, Stephanie was the first person I’d told about my new venture. Without the slightest hesitation, she’d said she thought it was a fantastic idea and that it was about time I got over the whole incident in college. I guess nothing sounds ridiculous when your days are filled with scooping out raw chicken innards and putting them into baby food jars for fun.

  “Well, I’m working on it,” I said. “So far, I’ve got my listing with Wedding Wild, I found a freelancer who helped me get a simple website up, and I practice the piano for about an hour every day while the kids are in school.”

  Stephanie put a cabbage on the cutting board and started hacking at it with a butcher knife.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “We’re boiling red cabbage for tomorrow’s science experiment.” Stephanie continued whacking away. “You use the cabbage juice as a pH indicator.”

  “Oh, right.” I wasn’t sure I even knew what a pH indicator was.

  “We’ll use the juice to test different items around the house, to see if they’re an acid or base.” Stephanie put down the butcher knife. “What you need is a good marketing strategy. Something unique, something that would reach a lot of people. Hmm …” She picked the knife up with a dramatic flair and went back to furiously hacking up the cabbage, as if the intensity would cause a brilliant idea to form in her mind. After about twenty whacks, she whirled around toward me. “I know. This is perfect!”

  I flinched at the edge of her butcher knife which was pointing at me.

  “Oh, sorry.” Stephanie looked at her hand and set the knife down on the cutting board. “Okay!” She clasped her hands. “Are you ready?”

  I nodded.

  She pulled up the stool across from me, sat down, and leaned forward. “Okay, get this. You bring your whole family to a baseball game, or a football game, or whatever, and every time the crowd jumps up and cheers, or does a wave or something, all four of you jump up and throw a bunch of your business cards in the air like confetti!” She leaped off the stool and tossed up her hands, lowered them, and grinned at me. “Isn’t that great? You’ll get your business card everywhere in one afternoon, and it’ll be fun too.” She clutched my arm. “Hey, can we come too? That’ll give you five more people to throw cards! We’ll throw them in one direction and you guys can throw them in the other direction.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure the kids would love that,” I muttered. “But how, exactly, will that get me any business?”

  “Hundreds of people in town will catch a copy of your business card,” Stephanie said excitedly. “They’ll say, hey, wow, this person plays the piano for weddings! And they’ll know how to contact you.”

  I thought for a minute. “Or …” I said slowly, “most of the cards will end up between the bleachers and the only person who will even see them is whoever sweeps the floor at the end of the night … after the cards are soggy with sloshed beer and have been stepped on twenty-five times. And anyway, isn’t that littering?”

  “Oh yeah.” Stephanie sounded disappointed. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She put the knife in the sink and turned back to me. “You know what would be a better idea? Meet some wedding planners, make a good impression. When a bride wants a wedding pianist, who do you think is going to help her find one?”

  Of course. That was a great idea. “How would I find them?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. There must be some place where wedding planners all hang out. Check it out online. There’s gotta be some local meetings or something for people in the wedding business.”

  It didn’t sound like such a great idea anymore. “You mean I should go to a meeting? Just show up at a roomful of strangers. I don’t know …”

  Stephanie shrugged again. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” A line of petri dishes near the sink caught her attention. “Oh, look! The germs are finally growing.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the science project we started last week.” She pointed at the little dishes. “We’re growing germs.”

  “Germs? What kind of germs?”

  “See, look, they’re all labeled.” Stephanie brought them over to the counter and set them in front of me. “We scraped the samples and put them in these petri dishes on Monday. After seven days we’ll see which germs grew the fastest, and then we’ll make a bar graph.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “And you do all this in the kitchen?”

  She didn’t hear me.

  “Oh, look! The sample we scraped from between Katie’s toes is winning.” Stephanie grinned at me. “That’s surprising, isn’t it? You’d think the sample from inside the toilet rim would have the most germs, but …” She studied the dishes again. “No, wait. The sample from between her toes and the one from inside her cheek are winning! Who would have thought?”

  “Not me,” I mumbled.

  She saw the look on my face. “Oh, don’t worry. The germs are sealed inside the petri dishes.”

  I nodded. Somehow, that didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about the experiment.

  I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Angela and Katie came running into the kitchen.

  “Miss Heather,” said Katie, “Angela has a bug in her hair!”

  “A bug in her hair?” I said. “What do you mean? Were you guys playing outside?”

  “Look, Katie.” Stephanie beckoned her over to the petri dishes. “Your germs are growing!”

  “Really?” Katie rushed over to the counter. “Oh wow, the toe germs are winning!”

  “And the germs from your mouth,” Stephanie said proudly. “I think it’s a tie.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What about the bug in Angela’s hair?” I stood up and brushed my fingers through the ends of Angela’s curly hair. “What bug?”

  “Katie said she saw a bug when she was braiding my hair,” said Angela. “Do you see it Mommy?”

  “No.” I lifted her hair up at different angles. “What, was it like a bumblebee or something? Do you think it flew away?”

  “No, not on the ends of her hair.” Katie walked over to us. “It was more on her head.”

  “Her head?”
I said, getting nervous. “You mean her scalp?”

  “Yeah.” Katie started rooting through the top of Angela’s hair. “I was braiding her hair, and … oh, here it is.” She pointed. “See?”

  I looked closely. There was a tiny reddish-brown bug in Angela’s hair. “Oh no!” I shrieked. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Wait. What is it?” Angela asked.

  Stephanie came over and inspected the top of Angela’s head. “Ooh, I think that might be lice. Katie, run and get the laptop for me. Oh, and tell the boys to come up.”

  Katie hurried out of the room.

  “What’s lice?” Angela asked, scratching her head.

  “Lice,” I said grimly, “are bugs that lay eggs in people’s hair.”

  “Eww!” she yelled.

  Danny and Trevor came running into the kitchen. Katie followed them and handed her mother a laptop.

  “What’s up?” Trevor asked.

  “We’re going to learn about lice,” Stephanie announced. She placed the laptop on the counter, opened it, and began typing. “There! Here’s a photo of one.” She started reading aloud. “Head lice are tiny, wingless, parasitic insects that live and feed on blood from the scalp. One louse can lay as many as a hundred eggs. A louse can live up to thirty days on a human scalp, and up to two days without food or nutrition. The nits, eggs, can live up to two weeks without nutrition but are susceptible to temperature.”

  “Eww!” Angela yelled again. “That’s what’s on my head?” She frantically rubbed her head with her fingertips.

  Danny’s eyes lit up. “That mutant bug is in Angela’s hair? Where?” He ran over to her and started digging through her hair.

  “Get off me!” Angela screamed, giving him a shove.

  “It’s not that big, Danny,” said Stephanie. “The picture is magnified.” She typed some more and then read from the screen. “A female head louse, that’s the singular form of lice, produces about four to six eggs per day. Since there is sometimes no visible sign of infestation initially, there can be hundreds of head lice on one person’s head, depending on how long they have been infected. Oh, and here’s a true or false question for everybody.” Stephanie turned toward the kids. “Lice is caused by not washing your hair often enough. True or false?”