Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

Thirty-something
Melissa Senate
lives in Maine with her husband and young son. A former book editor (women’s fiction and young adult), Melissa is now a full-time writer. Her debut novel, the international bestseller
See Jane Date,
has been translated into over ten languages, is the answer to a question in the 20th Anniversary Edition of Trivial Pursuit and was made into a television movie for ABC Family.
The Solomon Sisters Wise Up,
her second novel, is also an international bestseller translated into several languages.
Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?,
a spin-off novel of
See Jane Date,
is her third book. Visit Melissa’s Web site at www.melissasenate.com.

To Karen Hirsch and Lucia Macro,
two very cool women.

I
f there were a Top Ten list for Most Embarrassing Bridesmaid Dress, say on
Late Show with David Letterman,
the two hanging in the back of my closet would take spots. It wasn’t that my two closest friends (one engaged, one married) had bad taste. It was that they had handed over control of their weddings to bossy relatives.

For example, let’s say that your best friend Jane’s aunt Ina was paying for her July Fourth wedding and insisted on an Independence Day theme (yet failed to see the irony in that). You might find yourself spending two hundred and sixty bucks on a red, white and blue striped dress with stars on the straps. The bridesmaid dress equivalent of the American flag.

“I could either live a good life, a
sane
life for the next six months,” Jane had said in self-defense, “or I could spend the next six months arguing with Aunt Ina, who
reminds me every day that
she’s
paying for my wedding. I choose my sanity.”

And so Jane spent her weekend afternoons pricing tri-dyed (guess which colors?) peau de soie shoes with a two-inch kitten heel.

Embarrassing dress number two was an iridescent purple taffeta, the stiffest ever made. It was your standard-issue hideous bridesmaid dress, with tiny polka-dot bows along the neckline and a huge polka-dot bow on the butt. Amanda’s very intimidating mother-in-law had paid for her huge Southern wedding—enough said there.

Despite the flag dress and the polka-dot bows, Jane and Amanda were now staring at the bridesmaid dress they would wear at
my
wedding as though it were worse.

Okay, it was.

Much, much worse.

My bridal party, a co-worker’s bridal party and half the staff of
Wow Weddings
magazine were squeezed inside It’s Your Day bridal salon, staring at a mannequin wearing…
was
that a dress, actually?

“This dress would be perfect for your bridesmaids, Eloise!” raved Astrid O’Connor, editor in chief of
Wow Weddings.
She stood next to the mannequin she had moments ago unveiled with the flourish and megawatt smile of a game-show hostess.

Uh, isn’t there a door number two?

“This is payback, right?” Jane and Amanda whispered to me in unison.

“No payback,” I whispered back. “That’s the point.”

No paying at all. Not one penny. This shopping trip at It’s Your Day was my first foray into the “free dream wedding” I’d been promised in exchange for being featured as Today’s Modern Bride in
Wow Weddings.
I, Eloise Man
fred, was going to plan my wedding, every single iota of it, in the pages of
Wow Weddings.
I’d be photographed choosing my wedding gown, the shoes, the flowers, the caterer, the reception site, the invitations—the everything. Tens of thousands of
Wow
readers would see me checking out the posh Hudson Hotel and the Waldorf-Astoria for reception sites. I’d be photographed at Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, snootily rejecting ten-thousand-dollar wedding bands that just weren’t The One.

All expenses paid! All
I
had to do was point at what I wanted and smile for the camera for my picture spread in America’s least favorite bridal magazine.
Wow
was no
Modern Bride.
The not-so-famous Astrid O’Connor had been promoted or demoted, depending on how you looked at it, from the much better performing
Wow Woman
magazine, to turn
Wow Weddings
’s numbers around (circulation was at an all-time low). One of her brilliant ideas to increase advertising revenue was to feature two real-life engaged women as Today’s Modern Bride and Today’s Classic Bride, who would wear, eat and register for whatever the advertisers wanted to feature and sell millions of. That little nugget of information would be kept from the readers, of course.

Look, readers—our Modern Bride, Eloise Manfred, has “chosen” Overpriced-and-Not-Worth-It Brand’s Wedding Gown, Same As Any Other Photographer and Super Rubber Chicken Caterers for her dream wedding—and so should you, brides-to-be-of-America!

According to Astrid, I would become a major trendsetter, like Sarah Jessica Parker and the Hilton sisters.

But if the bridesmaid dress that Astrid had chosen for me was an indication of what was in store for modern brides of America, I could pretty much count on mak
ing Blackwell’s Worst-Dressed List. I could forget about Tiffany’s too.

Talk about handing over control. I was beginning to have the sneaking suspicion that I’d sold my soul to the wedding devil.

Four days ago, the free dream wedding had seemed like an unturndownable offer. Astrid had overheard me and Philippa Wills, recently engaged departmental editorial assistant, oohing and aahing over my diamond ring in
Wow
’s tiny kitchenette. Astrid (who I’d dubbed Acid after my last performance review) ordered us both inside her office. I’d expected to get the
Eloise, as you’re still quite green at magazines, you should spend your spare moments learning the business instead of chatting
routine. I’d been working at
Wow
for almost two years, but was still considered “quite green” because the bulk of my work experience had been designing book covers for a publishing house and not glossy magazine layouts.

As Philippa quaked next to me, I waited for the “Here At
Wow
” speech, but instead, Astrid ordered the intern to bring in coffee for three, then explained to Philippa and me that our engagement rings had given her a major brainstorm. The sight of Philippa and me standing next to each other (a rare occurrence) had apparently stopped her in her tracks. There was Philippa, with her sleek white-blond hair, pale green shirtwaist dress (Ralph Lauren, of course) and Ferragamo penny loafers. And there was I, with the “
crazily
cut auburn hair” (I wouldn’t say crazily), weird shoes and Le Chateau ensemble. According to Astrid, Philippa and I represented two opposite ends of the bridal spectrum: the Classic Bride and her traditional taste (Philippa) versus the Modern Bride and her edgy taste (that would be me).

If we would allow
Wow Weddings
to feature us as real-life bride-to-be models in the June issue as we made our wedding plans and “chose” our gowns and caterers and invitations and kept cute wedding-plans diaries detailing our every hot pick,
Wow
and its advertisers would pay for our weddings, which she estimated at a hundred thousand dollars apiece—“to do it right, of course.”

“Of course,” Philippa and I had repeated in shocked unison.

“You do understand that we’ll have to hustle,” Astrid said. “We’re almost ready to put the May issue to bed. That means we’ll only have about six weeks to plan your entire weddings.”

Fine with us! We shouted our yeses like shampooees in a Clairol Herbal Essences commercial. Two hours later, we signed long contracts that we didn’t bother reading. Hey, we had whirlwind weddings to plan!

When I told Noah about the deal I’d made with Astrid, he kissed me on the lips and said, “Whatever makes you happy is fine with me.” Then he added, “But you do know there’s no such thing as a free wedding, right?”

“Eloise, shall the fashion editor document this dress as your selection for bridesmaid dress?” asked Astrid with a snap of impatience.

Amanda leaned close and whispered, “You’re not really going to make us wear that, are you? It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Amanda wasn’t prone to exaggeration. I hadn’t seen every woman’s collection of embarrassing bridesmaid dresses, but I could safely say that number one on the Letterman Top Ten list would go to the metallic, coffee-col
ored, asymmetrical rubber oddity complete with collar that Astrid was pushing on me.

“The hue! The fabrication! The lines!” Astrid gushed.

The absolute hideousness
was more like it.

Everyone was staring at me. My bridal party—which consisted of Jane Gregg, Amanda Frank Jorgensen, Natasha Nutley (yes,
that
Natasha Nutley), Beth Benjamin (my fiancé’s sister) and Philippa Wills—were all surreptitiously shaking their heads. (Please note that I didn’t have a maid of honor as Astrid had deemed that role too traditional.) Philippa’s bridal party (three white-blond, preppy, head-banded women who looked remarkably like Philippa and yet were her fiancé’s sisters) were staring from me to the dress. And the staff of
Wow Weddings
was waiting with half dread, half glee for me to dare tell Astrid O’Connor no. That I most certainly would not force my bridesmaids, my dearest friends (well, three of them anyway), to wear that so-called dress.

“Eloise,” Astrid said, beaming at the bridesmaid dress from outer space, “it’s my experienced opinion that this particular dress’s edgy aura is the manifestation of modern and reflects the tastes of today’s Modern Bride.”

“More like Star Trek bride,” Natasha whispered in my ear.

“Star Trek
Next
Generation,” I whispered back.

“Eloise, we’re waiting,” Astrid droned. “Your choice, please. If you prefer a dress other than the one I feel is best suited to your party, you may choose from this rack or that rack only.” Her beige talons pointed at two racks with my name on them. Across the aisle were two racks with Philippa’s name. Everything else in the store was off limits.

There is no such thing as a free wedding….

Astrid O’Connor’s vision of modern was quite differ
ent from mine. From most anyone’s on earth, I imagined. A problem, given that next week we were choosing wedding gowns, and my dream dress, on display in It’s Your Day’s window, was as far from edgy as you could get. Simple white satin and very feminine, the gown was timeless, elegant. My plan was to use Astrid’s own fashion doublespeak to convince her that the gown’s very unedginess made it edgy.

“Eloise,
shall
we go with this atmosphere-colored dress for your bridesmaids?” Astrid asked, her trademark dark red lips forming into a tight smile.

Atmosphere? Try
unflushed toilet bowl.
“Astrid, it’s very interesting from a fashion-forward standpoint, but I really have my heart set on
that
dress for my bridesmaids.” I pointed at a floaty pink satin dress in the “forbidden” area, its only aura Audrey Hepburn.

Until I saw the
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
dress on a rack off limits to me, I didn’t even know I cared about bridesmaids’ dresses. Or headpieces, veils or dyed-to-match peau de soie shoes.

I didn’t even know—for absolute certain—that I wanted to marry Noah Benjamin.

I take that back. I take that back. I take that back.

Cold feet. It was just a case of cold feet.

You are engaged to be married. You said yes. You love Noah. You’ve loved Noah for the past two years. From the moment you met him. You’ve been waiting for him to propose since your third date.

You’re getting married in the pages of a national magazine, for God’s sake.

“You’re not
one hundred
percent sure you want to marry Noah and you’ve signed on the dotted line to appear as a real-life bride in a wedding magazine?” asked Amanda,
ever the practical paralegal, when I’d piped up with my ambivalence a few days ago. “What if you break the engagement—you could get fired!”

“I think that’s why Eloise agreed to be featured,” Jane had put in. “So she
couldn’t
weasel out of the engagement.”

I had weaseled out of an engagement once before. The wrong engagement. Everyone in my life agreed with me on that. This one, this five-day-old engagement to Noah Benjamin, very good-looking, very sweet, very smart, immensely lovable Noah Benjamin, was the right engagement.

Astrid was staring at me. “Eloise, you may choose only from
this
rack or
that
rack.”

This rack or that rack
were filled with one outer-space dress after another. I slid monstrosity after monstrosity along the racks, praying that one would be tolerable. I settled for not-asymmetrical.

“I’ll go with this,” I said, holding up a shiny dark purple minidress that felt like one of those thin, rubbery Halloween masks of a monster or ex-president.

Price tag: $2,300.

I glanced at my bridesmaids. Jane, Amanda and Natasha (all of whom I
asked
to be my bridesmaids, and Beth and Philippa (both of whom
told
me they were going to be my bridesmaids) had variations of relief and “But that one isn’t much better!” on their faces.

Astrid was disappointed. “Eloise, it’s my experienced opinion that this one—” she held up the toilet-bowl dress “—would suit your bridal party better.”

Yeah, because rubber felt great against the skin. And because the color of dog poop—metallic dog poop, at that—looked fabulous with every skin tone. And who didn’t love a collar on a formal dress!

All heads whipped to me.

“But, Astrid, you did say this rack or that rack,” I responded. “And I did find this on
that
rack.”

She peered at me over the top of her silly square eyeglasses, then swiveled on her high heels. Her pristine white cashmere wrap almost hit me in the face. “Ellen, document Eloise’s selection,” she instructed the fashion editor.

Ah, victory. Pyrrhic, but it still felt good.

Astrid turned to the articles editor, Maura, whom everyone secretly called “Mini-Astrid.” With her copycat Louise Brooks bob, tiny eyeglasses and fake pashmina wrap, Maura looked exactly like Astrid, except that Astrid was five-ten and Maura five-two. “Maura, for the bridesmaid-dress sidebar, highlight the many Post-Mod brand dresses at It’s Your Day and how Eloise loved them all so much that she spent the night on a lovely lace-covered cot in a large private dressing room in the tony bridal salon ‘to sleep’ on her selection. She awoke from a dream about the raven-eggplant dress sans neck accompaniment and knew it was the one for her bridal party. Note that she called her bridesmaids, who rushed over at the crack of dawn to see her selection. Discuss in detail the colors, fabrics and price points, which celebrities the dresses would suit, such as the Hilton sisters, Sarah Jessica, Britney, Christina and Pink, and add that Natalie Portman and Hilary Duff were rumored to have been spotted trying on Post-Mod brand dresses. Find out if we can get at least a B-list actress who recently married to agree to ‘look’ at the dress.”