The Marrying Type

by Laura Chapman

  The phone fell silent for a beat. “I apologize for any inconvenience, Ms. Lynch. I’ll be right there.”

  Elliot hung up the phone much more satisfied than she’d been earlier. Marissa let out a breath. Elliot blinked dumbly. Oh no. Had the crew been watching the whole time?

  “Wow. Business Elliot is scary.”

  Smoothing out her jacket, Elliot straightened her posture. Smile in place, she faced Marissa, who stood behind Chase’s shoulder.

  “Usually my sister handles the calls with our vendors. Unfortunately, she won’t be here tonight. But we’ll do anything to ensure our couples have the wedding of their dreams.”

  Before Marissa asked a follow-up question, Claire reappeared at her side.

  “Do you want me to go help the bride now?” she asked.

  Elliot shook her head. “Go meet the florist at the side door. I don’t want the mothers to catch him showing up this late.”

  A flurry of hacking and gagging drew her attention. Marissa was fumbling for a tissue and trying in vain to cover her mouth. Chase frowned as he tried to save the shot.

  Elliot dug into her bag and removed a bottle of water and cough drops. “Here you go.”

  Marissa gratefully accepted both. Her cousin complained about allergies year-round, but a little attention and doting usually healed her up nicely. A lifetime of interrupted choir concerts and family portraits taught Elliot how to handle this latest outbreak with minimal interruption to the wedding.

  Giving Marissa a moment to compose herself, Elliot sipped from the extra bottle of water she always carried. Spring and summer were around the corner, and the only way she’d survive wedding season intact was if she stayed good and hydrated.

  Once she’d managed to overcome the worst of her coughing fit, Marissa was back in producer mode.

  “What’s up with the bride?”

  Elliot wished the camera crew hadn’t noticed the extra tension coming from the bridal suite. Hoping to play it down, she feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”

  “She seems to have lost her breakfast. And she won’t stop crying,” Marissa said. “Not unusual for a woman with a bun in the oven.”

  Great. Marissa had obviously figured out the bride’s secret. The morning sickness made it pretty obvious, but she wished the woman wasn’t this thrilled with the premium gossip. This may be the twenty-first century, but an unexpected pregnancy still mattered to some people. Recalling the guest list she’d scanned that morning, Elliot realized the gossip would matter to most of the people set to arrive any minute.

  Not to mention everyone who caught the reveal whenever this episode aired.

  “Can you please keep that quiet until they’re ready to go public? They have more than enough going on right now without having to worry about their wedding planners blabbing the news to everyone in South Carolina.”

  “I suppose we have enough drama in this wedding without having to reveal the baby.” Marissa scribbled a few comments on her notebook. “We’ll chalk the bride’s behavior up to nerves. Unless the couple confirms the pregnancy. Poor girl. It must be awful to feel this sick on your wedding day. She won’t have much fun.”

  Marissa’s quick sympathy soothed Elliot’s irritation.

  “We’ll make sure she does.” Finishing the water, Elliot screwed on the lid and tossed the empty bottle in her bag. Catching Claire on her return from leading the florist to the bridal party’s dressing room, Elliot pulled her aside.

  “I brought a couple bottles of non-alcoholic champagne in my emergency bag. Can you get them for the bride’s table? She’s . . . still not feeling well, and alcohol will only make it worse.”

  “She threw up in the back of the limo on the way here.” Claire wrinkled her nose.

  “The last thing we need is for the bride to throw up on the minister’s shoes,” Marissa said, slightly out of breath from running to catch up with the two of them. Shrinking under Elliot’s glare, Marissa made a production of pretending to lock her mouth shut.

  Elliot couldn’t help but laugh when Marissa pretended to toss away the key. After twenty-seven years of shared history, Marissa still found new ways to crack Elliot up. And at least in this instance she promised to keep her mouth shut. Who’d have imagined the girl who blabbed to the whole seventh grade the day Elliot had her first period would ever keep a lid on any gossip?

  “Saving the house is worth this,” she whispered to herself.

  The florist arrived, snapping Elliot into action. God willing, the rest of the wedding and reception went off without any more unwanted surprises.

  HOURS LATER, ELLIOT sat in the middle of a different kind of chaos. Books, magazines, poster boards, fake flowers, and tulle littered the floor of her bedroom. Her laptop poked out from under a pile of paint swatches.

  She’d told her father she would put together plans to improve business, and she didn’t take that promise lightly.

  Her plan was highly focused. If they wanted to survive in today’s market, Engagements had to have a better web presence. The central, and seemingly most daunting, task to drive more business to Engagements would be a major upheaval of the company’s website. Engagements had done little to update its site since buying the domain years earlier.

  The site would have to be modernized and innovated. Minimally, it meant photo albums, videos, and a blog. They needed those changes fast.

  In time, they’d expand and make the website and accompanying app more interactive. Potential clients would have more than a reference for their event planning needs. They’d get an experience—one they came back for even after they said “I do.”

  The new, modern presence wouldn’t stop with a web redesign. They had to reconfigure their social media presence. Most of their future clients were young brides and grooms. Engagements had to cater to them.

  The best part about expanding online: most changes were cheap or free. Some money would have to be spent. Elliot had enough experience to update a webpage, but not enough to write the code needed to complete the redesign the way she wanted.

  Chase, Marissa’s husband, did some computer programming in addition to his camera work. She’d hoped he would give them a deal on website development. But after almost blowing her cover with the moms at the wedding, he’d promised to pay Elliot back if she needed help. This would be the perfect opportunity to cash in that favor.

  She spent the next few hours after the wedding cutting out pictures from magazines and gluing them on the poster board under headings carefully written with puff paint. She added ribbons, tulle, flowers, and glitter to draw even more attention.

  Ignoring her sticky fingers, Elliot stepped away from the boards to survey the results of her labor. The presentation looked like something an overzealous high school student would have put together for spirit week. The low-tech presentation was ridiculous in light of its focus on digital media, but it would speak to her father.

  Checking the clock, she realized she only had a few hours left to sleep before the day would begin again. She picked up the mess and changed into a pair of sweatpants and an old baseball T-shirt. She pulled her hair into a messy bun on top of her head and crawled into bed. She willed herself to fall asleep, but she was still too wired from the excitement of her project.

  Instead of sleeping, Elliot remembered the man who gave her the T-shirt. He was the first and only man she’d ever loved, at least in a romantic sense. When they’d broken up, it left a gaping hole in her heart. Years had passed since the last time they’d met, but the memories were still fresh.

  Tonight’s all-nighter reminded her of one they’d pulled together in college. She’d promised to help him write an English paper. An hour into their study date, they’d been more focused on each other than analyzing the cultural significance of Charles Dickens. They’d had to rush the final two pages in the hour before class, and he’d nearly missed his deadline.

  He’d assured her a docked grade would’ve been worth it. The night had been . . . spectacula
r. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.

  From The Marrying Type Transcript

  Filmed: April

  Airing: September

  Announcer: For Charleston wedding planner Elliot Lynch, planning weddings isn’t just a livelihood, it’s a lifelong calling.

  A montage of photographs appear of Elliot at ages three, seven, and twelve shadowing her mother on the job.

  Elliot: My mom started a wedding planning business shortly after she married my father. Everyone told her how beautiful and fabulous her wedding was, and she realized she had a gift. She named it Engagements, and eventually expanded to various special events, including bar and bat mitzvahs, anniversary parties, and more.

  Announcer: But tragedy struck the Lynch family when Kelly, the wedding planning matriarch, was diagnosed with cancer.

  Another photo montage of the Lynch family and friends participating in a walk to raise funds for cancer research.

  Elliot: Mom fought her cancer the way she planned a wedding—with a positive attitude and every bit of her heart. The treatment worked. She went into remission for a while. A few years later, the cancer came back, and . . . we lost her.

  Announcer: Only a senior in high school, Elliot traded nights at football games and pep rallies for helping her father, Walter, and older sister, Libby, keep her mother’s business going.

  Elliot: We had a choice to sell out to competitors or carry on Mom’s legacy. We decided to keep going. Mom worked hard every day to keep our family going strong. Making sure Engagements remained one of the top event planning businesses in South Carolina seemed like the best way to honor her.

  Announcer: After a stint at the University of Virginia, where Elliot earned dual degrees in English literature and business management, she returned to Charleston to work for Engagements full time. With her father slated to retire in the fall, you can expect to see more changes ahead with Elliot at the helm.

  Chapter Four

  “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”

  ~ John Steinbeck

  ELLIOT STRUGGLED NOT to laugh at her father’s reaction to the proposed changes. Walter fidgeted in his chair. His face turned red. When he choked on his coffee, she almost lost her composure. Instead, she took advantage of his preoccupation with mopping up the coffee spots on his starched robin’s egg blue shirt to finish her presentation.

  Clearing his throat, Walter pushed away from his desk to pace the room. Arms crossed behind his back, he gave the air of a stately gentleman rather than her goofball father who’d nearly spit out a muffin while reading the comics in the newspaper that morning.

  “You’ve given me a lot to consider,” he said at last, turning on his heel for another spin around the room. “Engagements has a proud history, my dear. We’ve thrived for more than two decades without resorting to gimmicks.”

  “A fully functional website and social media campaign aren’t flash-in-the-pan trends.” Elliot crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “Our customers expect them.”

  “We already have a website—your mother’s doing—and a Facebook page—which you talked me into a few summers ago. Why do we need more?”

  “The website’s infrastructure is more than a decade old. At this point, it’s more of an embarrassment than a resource. It’s a public relations nightmare waiting to happen.”

  “We’ve gained plenty of business in the past through word of mouth.”

  “Social media is the new word of mouth.” Elliot slid her printed proposal across the desk. “We need to be more strategic with our communication and marketing.”

  Walter picked up the packet and flipped through the pages, pausing every so often to tap a finger to his chin. “I like this little bit.”

  “Which bit?” She followed his gaze to the page highlighting the image carousel on the home page. In addition to highlighting photos from their most notable events, the carousel would feature famous quotes about marriage, weddings, and love.

  “This is good. As for everything else—scale it back.”

  “We can’t scale back,” she insisted. “This is a bare minimum plan to bring us up-to-date. With the TV show airing this fall, we can expect more web traffic. We have to present our best face when that happens.”

  “What about this virtual . . . phone planner business?”

  “The ‘Our Day’ section is a password protected part of the website accessible only to our customers,” she explained. “This portal will allow them to review details about their past, present, and future appointments. We’ll have virtual mood boards, which we can use to build our clients’ special days around what they love best. The other features—the budget tracker, RSVP tracker, and everything else—are added perks to help us help them. The mobile app will connect to the website.”

  “Why do they need it on their phones?”

  “Mobile Internet usage is on the rise and only getting bigger. Look, there’s research on it.” Elliot flipped the booklet to a page with bar graphs and pie charts illustrating the point. “This would be a way for us to stay ahead of the curve instead of always playing catch-up.”

  “I still don’t understand why everything has to change.” Her father faced Rosalyn and Libby, who had remained silent during her presentation and the subsequent exchange. “Do you ladies have any feedback or input? Or am I the only one making decisions?”

  Libby paused in the middle of filing her nails and stole a glance at Elliot’s charts. “It makes sense. My phone and I are inseparable. Unlike my ex-husband, it never disappoints me.”

  Walter’s cheek twitched.

  “I’m not an expert on modern trends,” Rosalyn said, “but we did a responsive website redesign at the store earlier this year, and I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Daddy, this is the twenty-first century.” Elliot crossed the room to pat his back, trying to soothe some of his tension. “Computers and smartphones are the norm. Embrace the modernizations.”

  Sighing, Walter shook his head and handed her the packet. “Do what you have to do. But I’m not going to learn a new system.”

  Elliot exchanged a bright smile with Rosalyn. Not only was her father on board with her proposal, but he’d handed the project over to her. Like with the TV show, she had total ownership of something crucial for the company’s future. Sure, the responsibility came from disinterest on his—and Libby’s—part, but she didn’t care. For the first time in her career at Engagements, she actually had some control.

  APRIL AND THE FIRST weeks of May flew by in a blur. Elliot barely slept, splitting most of her time between developing her proposed virtual changes, meeting with couples, and filming segments for The Marrying Type. As expected, Chase had been more than happy to provide assistance with the website. And when Elliot explained how a better website might benefit the show, Marissa was more than happy to spare him for a couple of hours every day.

  When she found an extra half hour of free time, Elliot snuck in a quick run or Pilates. She told Rosalyn the exercise gave her more energy. In actuality, after catching how she looked on camera in the daily playbacks, Elliot realized the website wasn’t the only thing in need of a makeover. Though she’d successfully monitored her weight during the past five years, she’d recently gained a few back doing some stress eating.

  By the time the newly revamped website went live in mid-May, Elliot had paid off the outstanding balances to the vendors. She’d hired a new accountant deemed trustworthy enough to manage the company’s accounts. The total balance due to the bank shrank lower and lower, and she expected Engagements would make its final payment midsummer. With several weeks of filming behind her, Elliot had grown more comfortable with the camera crew regularly shadowing her.

  Even though her father and sister had all but disappeared from running the business, the series of successes kept her spirits high. She was almost feeling cheerful about the upcoming wedding season.

  During a quiet evening after filming wrappe
d, Marissa and Elliot paged through a pile of bridal magazines. Chase reviewed footage from the scenes they’d filmed at a bakery earlier in the day. Elliot tried not to flinch when Claire knocked over a cupcake display while flirting with another patron at the shop.

  “Is Claire working the Anderson reception with you?” Marissa asked.

  “Probably.” She was the only assistant on the Engagements payroll, and the Anderson nuptials required extra attention. The groom was heir to his father’s successful grocery store chain, and the bride had been first runner-up in the Miss South Carolina Pageant a few years earlier. The wedding was sure to be a hot topic in Charleston society.

  “I realize she drives you nuts, but the natural tension between the two of you makes for a fantastic storyline.” Marissa and Chase exchanged a knowing look. “I can practically hear you counting to ten every time the girl opens her mouth.”

  Elliot wished her tense—but polite—relationship with Claire wasn’t on their radar. Truth was, with their company’s finances in such a precarious state, she’d rather have no assistant than one who drew a salary but frequently failed to show up. Unfortunately, she was Libby’s best friend from college and got a free pass.

  “The Andersons are friends of Chase’s parents,” Marissa continued. She lowered her voice to speak, because her husband didn’t like when she gossiped, especially about family friends. “Rumor has it there’s been a big to-do with the prenup. Both the bride and groom refuse to sign. Their parents are furious. Talk about TV gold.”

  The bride had filled Elliot in on the mess during a panicked conversation late the night before. The situation was bad and on the brink of getting worse. At one point, the bride even threw out the phrase, “Maybe we should just elope.” If this made it on TV . . . Elliot shuddered.

  Without acknowledging her cousin’s attempt to fish for more drama, Elliot flipped open her laptop. She needed to finish writing and scheduling a blog post and respond to new comments left on their pages.