Authors: Sheila Horgan
I nodded, “All the time in the world.”
“Do you have to get back to work, Teagan?”
“Don’t worry about work.
They love me.
I rarely make anyone there cry.”
At that moment, Jovana came out the door and rushed to give hugs all around.
Jovana stood at arms length and admired Morgan, “My God child, you will make the most beautiful bride this place has ever had the pleasure of sheltering.”
“Thank you.
I can’t believe you’re even considering this.
I’d love to see the space, but I have to tell you, our budget is pretty slim.
I don’t think that we are going to be able to afford this place, but I’d love to see it.”
“Don’t you worry about that.
Come.
Follow me.”
I thought we would walk into the bar, but instead, Jovana led us to a separate entrance at the other end of the building.
“Now, if y’all decide this is where you want to have your celebration, we would use this entrance.
We can put a sandwich board out on the street, to get your guests attention, but sometimes that backfires and people come in off the street that are not supposed to be a part of your party.
Sugar, how many people are you thinkin’ will attend?”
“About 100.”
Teagan’s eyes got wide.
“Really?
Have you made a list, cause our family is going to take up most of 100.”
Jovana smiled and said, “Sugar, we can do 100 standing on our heads.
We’ve done huge and we’ve done intimate.
Just depends on what y’all want.”
We followed Jovana into a wide hallway, “We can go up the stairs, or there is a nice sized elevator to the back.
I gotta tell y’all, the stairs are just gorgeous for wedding pictures.
You can stand on the landing and take pictures from above or below and they will all turn out beautiful.
You can also put an attendant on each stair and it looks just as beautiful.
Are you having many attendants?”
“My son Jordan is my best man, and Liam hasn’t asked anyone yet.
I think we’ll probably just stick to the two.”
“I love the idea of your son being your best man.”
“He’s excited.
Liam and I made a pretty big scene fighting over which one of us will get the privilege of him standing up for us.
I wish I’d had a camera going.
Liam is so good to Jordan.
They’re like soul mates.
I couldn’t ask for a better father for my son.”
Teagan smiled, “Yeah, well, we have a slight competition to see who can be the best aunt.
The kids in the family will never want for attention.
Or cookies.”
We meandered up the wide staircase and ended up in a huge entryway, with several outrageously beautiful wooden doors, oversized and doublewide.
Jovana pulled open the first set, and smiled with pride.
“I still get a little tickle when I walk into this room.”
I could see why.
It was absolutely beautiful.
The floors were some kind of stone, the walls were painted a beautiful vanilla, there were thick wood moldings everywhere, and the widows were one full wall, half the ceiling, and nothing like anything I’d ever seen before.
Jovana was watching Morgan carefully, “Before you say anything, let me just tell you.
I know it’s bright in here, and if you have a daytime wedding, it might seem a little overwhelming, but I know about light, I’m a photographer, and I have a few tricks to tone it down a bit.
Besides, with your lovely dark skin, you need the light for the pictures, Sugar, you’ll just shimmer.”
Morgan just stared.
“And I know it looks huge, since you’re having an intimate celebration, but we have a few tricks for that too.
If you want the wedding and the reception here, we can make it two very distinct areas.
If you’re getting married in a church, we can still make the room feel smaller and fill it up with a few things.”
Teagan was the first to get her feet under her, “This is the most beautiful room I have ever seen.
I had no idea this was here.
I’ve lived here all my life and I had no idea.
How did I miss this place?”
“It hasn’t been like this all that long.
When we bought the building, this was just a storage space, like an overgrown attic.
Some of my son’s high school friends decided it would be a good place to get together, so one weekend they came up here and they cleared out all the stuff, cleaned it all up, and they put a big TV and a bunch of LoveSacs all over the place.
There was a fridge for drinks, and a bookcase they shoved all their snacks in.
They could hang out and watch TV, or throw a football around, and nobody cared.
They could stay here late, cause we were always here at the bar, and it was something cool to tell the kids at school, they were all hanging out at the bar all night.
Then the girlfriends started showing up to hang out with the guys.
The guys decided real quick they needed to upgrade.”
“This is quite an upgrade.”
Jovana laughed.
“Well, it was a process.
First they just started using a garbage can instead of leaving their stuff thrown around.
Then they actually started to sweep up.
Then it was a new bookcase.”
She smiled at the memory.
“Not long after they graduated from college, one of the guys asked his girl to marry him, right here in this room.
She said yes and they decided that they wanted to get married, right here, where they’d fallen in love.”
Jovana just shook her head in wonder, even after all this time, “The parents decided that their kids were not going to get married in a college dorm environment, no matter what the size.
Turns out his parents have quite a bit of money.
Her parents have more money than sense.
They asked if they could spruce the place up, and in return for the inconvenience of us putting up with their crew, we would have a nice space.
To be honest, we thought they were going to do a little something, clean the windows, do some cosmetic changes, a couple of weeks, tops.
Wouldn’t be that big of a deal, the bar was only open at night then, and the crew was only going to work during the day.
There’s a separate entrance, as you know, the crew would get all the permits and such, all we had to do was say yes.
It took a whole lot longer than we expected.
I really don’t know how much it cost to do this, I really don’t want to know, but I know our insurance rates took a hit and don’t even mention the tax thing in front of my husband.”
“They certainly did a beautiful job.”
“Let me show you something else.”
Jovana led us back to the far end of the room.
There was a smaller room, the size of a large bedroom, with full makeup table, a small round platform to one side, the windows, just like the ballroom, and a huge ornate old-fashioned standing mirror.
“Now picture this, Sugar.
It’s your wedding day, you come on up here, we can play some music for you, serve you a drink, your makeup artist can do your makeup right here, and look, look at this.”
She pulled Morgan over to the mirror, positioned her at an angle.
“Sugar, we take your picture right here.
Then we can Photoshop it any way you want.
We can have you looking in the mirror as a beautiful bride, and have a picture of you as a child looking back.
I did one last year of the bride looking back wearing her first communion outfit, it was stunning.
But you know what I think I would do with you Sugar, I’d take a picture of you in your wedding dress, standing next to your best man, and if you have a picture of the two of you together when he was just a pup, I’d superimpose that picture looking back at you.”
“That sounds lovely Jovana, it really does, but I’m on a budget.
There won’t be any makeup artist, no photographer.
I was hoping that the family could get some casual pictures, and that AJ might be willing to take a couple of formal ones.”
“Oh, Sugar, we can do better than that!
Honey, AJ will take some pictures, cause that is what we photographers do, but I was hoping you would allow me to be your photographer.”
Morgan looked slightly trapped.
I could see that she was adding the price of a ballroom, together with the price of a first rate photographer, and the number was much bigger than she could deal with.
“Sugar, get that look out of your eye.
It doesn’t cost nothin’ for me to take a picture, and I’m not gonna charge you a dime.
It’s all digital.
I’ll take the pictures, I’ll put them on a disk for you, and you can choose which ones you want to print out.
AJ can help you figure all that out.”
“I could never impose on you like that.”
“Sugar, I wanted daughters all my life.
It just didn’t work that way for me.
I’m never going to get the chance to be the mother of the bride and my son married a lovely girl with a lovely mother, so I didn’t even get to abscond with the mother of the bride duties for her.
If I can do a little bit here and there, for a few young ladies, it brings me joy.
It isn’t an imposition Sugar, it’s an honor.”
That got all three of us.
We teared up, but I’m proud to say, we kept it together.
Mostly.
“So, Sugar, do you like what you see?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Would you like to get married here?”
“I’d love to, but I’m not sure we can swing it.”
“Well, let’s get down to brass tacks.
This is what it will cost you.
You need to take out an insurance policy for the day.
My insurance guy does it all the time; the charge is reasonable, since we’ve never had a problem.
You need a couple of security people.
I know your group won’t be a problem, but because we’re in Old Town, it’s best to have someone at the door, making sure that your guests are the only ones coming into the place.
If you have your own people, that’s fine, but I have got a few guys that are willing to do security, they’re bouncers at the bar, they charge $50 each, and food, whatever you are serving is fine.”
Jovana lowered her voice, “They mostly do it to meet your young female guests.”
“Let’s see, what else?
Oh, if you want to serve your guests food, we have a full kitchen available, we can do the cooking, we charge the price of the food, plus the hourly salary of the staff preparing it.
You can always have friends or family do the food, but Sugar, we can get the food cheaper than you can, we can do it more efficiently than you can, and you don’t want that problem on your wedding day.
For a wedding celebration the size of yours, as long as you decide buffet, I think three staff will be adequate, and if you don’t mind a bad joke or two, I know my husband would love to be one of those three.
He charges a dance with the bride.”
Morgan didn’t know how to respond.
“I don’t know what to say.
I never imagined all of this.
I didn’t even know it was possible.
I can’t ask you to do all of this.
This is the first time we’ve met.
This is too much.
I really appreciate the offer, but I just can’t let you do this.”
She started to tear up again.
“Sugar, if you don’t want to have your wedding here, I understand.
If the reason you don’t want to have your wedding here is a case of budget, or me, or some silly sense of propriety, you just need to stop, besides, I’m not done with you yet.
Listen to it all, then make your decision.”
Jovana walked back out to the ballroom and shared her vision.
She outlined every cost, every option, and every alternative.
When she was done, Teagan, who had been taking notes, handed Morgan the results.
“Oh Dear Lord.
For less money than we were going to spend to have our wedding at a little tiny church and our reception in a broken down meeting hall, we could have it here.
This just doesn’t make sense.
This can’t be right.”
“Well, there is one more thing Sugar.”
“What?”
“AJ tells me that you are a website designer.
A graphic artist.
The numbers I called out are my cost on everything and the reason it’s such a great deal is that I didn’t add in any profit at all.
Instead of charging you for the regular profit I make, I’d like to propose that you help us with our website, and you design 12 flyers for us to use in the bar over the next 12 months.
I’ll supply you with whatever you need, but you do the work.”