27
Molly at The Plaza
I
arrive five minutes before I'm supposed to meet my mom because I am positive that, unlike all my friends and me, when she says a time she means that time or before. I am only waiting about thirty seconds when she hops out of a cab in front of the hotel.
“You took the train?”
“We're down to one car, remember?”
Oh yes ... I forgot. Logan still hasn't gone back to Connecticut, and therefore neither has the green Explorer. I do feel bad that my mother had to deal with the train and getting a cab at Grand Central and all that hassle.
“Was it okay?” I ask.
“Of course! I'm not an old ladyâI enjoy riding the train once in a while.”
Ah, my mother: the queen of making lemonade out of lemons (and P.S.: only an old lady would “enjoy” riding the train).
“Are you excited?” she asks me.
“Beyond.”
“Me, too,” she admits, and takes my hand as we climb up the front steps of the grand-looking hotel.
With the friendly guidance of The Plaza's extremely attentive staff, we quickly find the office of the hotel's wedding coordinator, Marion Lantz. Marion is exactly how you would picture The Plaza's wedding coordinator to be. She is lovely and classy and perfectly put together. Her St. John suit is the perfect pink to feel bridal and yet professional at the same time, and her hair looks as if she's just stepped out of the hairdresser's chair. She also has a rock on her left finger the size of Gibraltar and equally impressive eternity bands on either side of it. Marion greets us warmly, by name, before we even introduce ourselves.
“Mrs. Harrigan and, of course, our lovely bride, Molly! Welcome to The Plaza. May we get you something to drink? Espresso, Perrier, champagne?”
Mom and I giggle like schoolgirls and decide that some champagne would be lovely. Without so much as a word, Marion's assistant, Ashley (who we are introduced to when she returns with the beverages and a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries), jumps up from her desk and disappears. Ashley is a younger, slightly hipper version of Marion. I can instinctively tell that Martha would approve of these gals.
Marion invites us to sit at her desk and go over dates before we begin the tour of the ballrooms.
“Now,” she begins, “Mrs. Harrigan, you had mentioned over the phone that Molly hoped to be married on June 30 of next year. That is less than ten months away, however, and we normally are booked almost two years in advance,” she says and my heart sinks. “Fortunately for you, the bride who was holding the Grand Ballroom for the past eighteen months recently broke her engagement and released the room this morning. It's your lucky day!”
Oh my goshâit really is my lucky day! My heart soars once more.
“Fantastic!” my mother agrees
“Now,” Marion continues (I soon come to find out that Marion says “now” a lot), “this ballroom holds up to 400 guests, but obviously can be adjusted for a smaller wedding. The cost is approximately $250 per person, depending, of course, on the entrees selected and other details like that. Have you started working on your list to figure out your numbers yet?”
I nearly choke on the $250 per person. Not that I know that many people or plan to have a huge wedding, but that means it would be $1250 just for my nuclear family to attend. . . not to mention Bryan, my grandparents, or Justin! I am furiously trying to do quick math in my head to figure out how much of my wedding fund would have to be used to cover the hotel when I hear my mother say something that makes me choke even harder.
“That sounds just fine. Molly's father and I were playing around with a preliminary list and think it will probably end up around 200.”
That sounds just fine?!? It will probably end up around 200?!? I cannot breathe.
“Mom?” I choke toward her.
She smiles at me kindly, “We'll work more on the list, sweetie. Of course, however many guests you and Justin want will be fine.”
I feel like I've been whacked on the head with a stick or something. My mother, who clips coupons and reuses Ziploc bags isn't even batting an eye at the prospect of $50,000 just for the location, food, and drinks. I can't help but wonder how she would be if I didn't have Nana's money to pay for this wedding.
“Now,” Marion stands up, “shall we look at the ballroom?”
“Absolutely,” my mother agrees as she gets to her feet and pulls me with her.
We follow Marion, who is closely followed by Ashley with a clipboard (a fancy one, though), through the hotel as she points out details and throws in historical facts about the hotel. I must admit to you now, my love of The Plaza actually comes from my favorite childhood book,
Eloise
, about a spoiled little girl who lives here with her nanny.
At last we arrive at the Grand Ballroom. Marion informs us that we can only take a quick glance today because it is in the process of being set up for a wedding reception that will take place in a few hours, but that we are lucky to be seeing it in wedding formal. Once again, it is our lucky day. She majestically opens the room's double doors at once and the sight before me reminds me of the religious experience at Tiffany.
The room is stunning. No, it's beyond stunning. There isn't even a word to describe it. Marion is explaining to my mother that this evening's wedding is for 275 guests, that the bride had selected filet mignon for everyone as very few people are vegetarians anymore, and that the gleaming white dance floor set up in the middle of the room is standard at The Plaza, but not at other hotels. I only hear parts of what they are saying because I am in a trance of awe at the room.
“It really is amazing, isn't it?” Ashley whispers to meâthe first and only words she's spoken since saying hello.
I nod in agreement and look over at her. Upon closer inspection, Ashley is roughly my age with a conspicuously empty finger. I can only imagine how hard it must be to see Marion's Mount Everest ring every day, and I can see that she looks at the room with the same awe and longing that I am now every time she looks at it.
“So, what do you think?” my mother asks, breaking my trance.
“I love it,” I whisper, not wanting Marion or Ashley to know just how much.
“Me, too,” she agrees, then turns to Marion. “What do we have to do to secure this room for Molly?”
I turn in time to see Marion's shining grin as she takes the clipboard from Ashley.
“Let's sign a hold contract!” she sings.
We follow her back to her office as she rattles off the details within a hold contract. Basically, we pay a certain, nonrefundable amount and they hold the room for us.
At this point, my excitement comes to a screeching halt. I have the money in my Nana-wedding-fund account to cover the hotelâit will be a sizable chunk of the account's balance, but it is there. My personal checking account, however, is a different story. Paying Justin's salary has left my account contents a bit sparser than normal and I don't have enough to cover the deposit on the room.
“Um, do we have to pay today?” I ask, feeling humiliated in front of Marion. “I might need to transfer some funds,” I say, getting more miserable by the minute.
Then my mother continues her new habit of shocking the pants off me ... she joyfully signs her name to the hold contract, writes The Plaza hotel a check, and schedules our next appointment with the lovely Marion.
“Don't worry, we'll figure all the money stuff out,” she reassures me quietly while Marion is discussing her schedule with Ashley.
Marion instructs that we should have a completed guest list by the time we meet with her again. It's like she's the wedding teacher giving us homework. She also insists that we call her immediately should any questions or concerns come up. We all shake hands once again and Mom and I set back across the hotel lobby and don't say a word to each other until we are back out front on the sidewalk.
Once we are safely away from the properness of the hotel we start squealing, and crying, and hugging, and even jumping up and down a little bit. Finally Mom pulls back and looks me in the eye.
“We love you so much, Molly. You deserve all this.”
I feel a twinge of guilt, but it passes quickly because she embraces me again and we dance around the Manhattan sidewalk a little more.
Eyes on the prize,
I tell myself.
You're going to have a wedding at The Plaza!
28
Molly Makes a List
I
kiss my mother good-bye as she gets into a cab on Fifth Avenue and promise that Justin and I will begin work on our list immediately. I decided to walk home through Central Park since it is still pretty warm and won't be dark for a couple more hours. On my walk, I start thinking about the list and who will be on it.
Obviously all the usual suspects: my college friends, the few high-school friends I keep in touch with, and the even fewer grade-school friends I still talk to. Plus all my family and the people I work with. Needless to say, I would like to invite everyone I've ever met to share in the joy of it finally being my day, but since a small but persistent voice in the back of my head likes to remind me that this marriage isn't real, I try to keep my list in check.
Then I start thinking about Justin and his side of the ceremony. Who is going to sit there? Obviously he isn't going to invite his friends and family ... they would know right away it was a sham. That is an enormous problem I hadn't given any thought to yet. I walk and I think, and I walk and I think, and before I know it, I am standing outside my building and I still don't have an idea.
When I walk in the door I smell something amazing. It smells how I imagine something cooking in my kitchen would smell, but since I don't cook, I'm not positive. I peek around the corner and see Justin and Logan, squished together in my tiny kitchen, cooking dinner.
“Hey, Molly!” Logan greets me with a happiness in his voice I haven't heard in a while.
“Hey, Loge, whatcha cookin?”
“Haha ... it's a surprise.”
“Hey there, sweetie,” Justin adds, leaning across the kitchen to kiss the top of my head (yes, that's how small the kitchen isâa person can simply lean and reach all the way across it). “How was The Plaza?”
“Amazing. Mom put a deposit on it!”
They both cheer that this enormous detail is set. Justin pours me a glass of wine from a bottle that looks like he and Logan have already had several drinks out of, and I sit on a stool at the edge of the kitchen telling them about Marion, and Ashley, and the Grand Ballroom. It's all starting to feel so real and so exciting.
All through dinner (a delicious feast of amazing homemade paella) we keep the wine flowing and talk about who should be on the list and I ask the boys about the problem of Justin's empty list.
“I could sit on his side,” Logan offers with a slight slur.
“You can't! Besides, you're in the wedding,” I remind him.
We have definitely had too much wine to be discussing something this serious, but we forge ahead amid a lot of giggles and a few hiccups. The decision we finally come to is that Justin can fill his side to a certain extent by inviting people to a
Tony and Tina's Wedding-
style play.
Tony and Tina's Wedding
was a mid-nineties phenomenon that was an audience-interactive play. So the “actors” stayed in character the entire time and the “audience” stayed in character as guests. It might be the wine talking, but it actually seems like a brilliant solution by 1:15 A.M.