How I Planned Your Wedding by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page B

their exposed brick and lush, green window boxes. Fifteen-foot-tall live potted trees were interspersed around the room, each of them on wheels so they could be relocated to make space for different event layouts.
    Oh, and did I mention that it cost only seven hundred bucks to rent?
    It was perfect.
    More perfect than my hometown.
    That was a hard conversation to have with my folks, and in the end we never really did reach an agreement—a few weeks before the wedding, my mom was still saying things like, “Well, if you’d had the wedding at our house, this wouldn’t be an issue…”
    But that’s one of the things you learn as you plan your wedding: you can’t please everyone, not even the most important people involved. You have to learn to disagree without having the whole process come to a standstill. The Native American Hopi tribe requires a bride to grind cornmeal for three days in her mother-in-law’s kitchen while the groom’s aunts attack her with mud. I knew my refusal to have the wedding in my hometown was a bit of a slap in the face to my mom (at least, that’s what she thought), so I worked to make sure she had a chance to feel at home during the wedding weekend. The cool thing about awedding is that it gives rise to ancillary celebrations, like brunches, barbecues and happy hours. They’re entirely optional but a good way to extend the joy beyond the Hi-Bye crush of the wedding reception—and you can use them to throw your mom a hometown bone.
    Her main point throughout the hometown wedding battle was that her house was a beautiful, free venue that would be incredibly easy on my whole family. When I asked how she felt about having Porta Potties for two hundred people in her backyard, she blithely shrugged and said, “They can come inside and use our guest bathroom!”
    Thinking back to other weddings I’d been to and the state of the bathrooms after the bridesmaids had guzzled one too many lemon drops and unleashed a stream of citrusy vomit on the tiled floor, I gulped. I tried explaining to her how difficult it was going to be to find parking, to calm the neighbors when things got noisy, to keep her crystal stemware from being shattered on the concrete patio, but she wouldn’t be swayed. I tried trumpeting the benefits of our chosen venue, Court in the Square: close to home, accessible for all our guests, ample parking, beautiful atmosphere, airy space…but to no avail.
    Then she sent this email to Dave and me:
    ----
    From: Susan
    To: Elizabeth, Dave
    Subject: Wedding thoughts (long)
    ----
    [Side note: I should have been tipped off by the long appended to the email subject line, a grim indicator of the drama I was about to plunge into headfirst.]
----
    Dear Elizabeth & Dave,
    Your dad and I want you to consider holding the festivities here on the island where you grew up. It’s a place with emotional ties, something that resonates more than a rented venue in Seattle. Friends and family will come to your wedding regardless of distance and convenience, even if it means camping out in the state park.
    I know you’re determined for this to be a comprehensive celebration with the people in your life, including your beloved but always a bit difficult grandfather. Regardless of what a wedding planner may tell you about handling guests, your grandfather will need to leave early (I won’t go into the reasons for fear of scaring off the groom). Your dad will accompany him back to the island and that will be the end of Grandaddy and your dad for the day. Sorry, but that’s how it will play out.
    Court in the Square is trendy, but there are many other island venues to explore, including the country club, the golf course, the local park, the community theater house, the gazebo at the state park, the winery, the rose gardens and more. And I still think about how taken you both were with the new church on the island. There was something in your faces as you looked around…
    The ultimate goal is to be happily