Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? by Melissa Senate Read Free Book Online

choose a traditional dress. How about this lovely Audrey Hepburnesque gown? Oh, yes, you would look so beautiful in it. I would be so proud to see you walking down the aisle to Noah in this gown.”
    “But I’m not the Classic Bride. I’m Today’s Modern Bride.”
    Astrid laughed. “Eloise, don’t be silly. There’s nothing modern about you.”
    I ran to the model wearing the Big Bird dress, but she backed away, her yellow feathers ruffling. The more I ran, the farther back she went, leaving feathers in her trail.
    Suddenly, I was in the dressing room with Mini-Astrid and Jane and Noah and baby Summer holding out her arms and shouting “Da-da. Da-da!”
    Astrid drew aside the curtain. “Your wedding planning diary is not in my in-box, Eloise,” Astrid shouted. “You cannot get married!” She grabbed my hand and tried to twist off my ring.
    Nooooo!
    I darted up in bed, my heart pounding, and grabbed Noah’s pillow and held it to my chest.
    Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath.
    Astrid O’Connor as my mother? What? Why hadn’t I paid attention to Psych 101?
    I turned on my bedside lamp and sat up in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The dream started to fade, and all I could remember was that Astrid O’Connor was my mother and that I wanted to wear the Big Bird gown but couldn’t.
    Astrid O’Connor as my mother was a lot more of a nightmare than wearing that yellow feather dress would ever be.
    I glanced at the photo of my mother on my bedside table. She was sitting on a bench in Central Park on a gorgeous fall day four months before she died. The trees were changing colors, and a squirrel was racing along the bench next to her.
    She’d been happy that day, feeling better than usual, but a good friend’s daughter was getting married that night, and my mother wasn’t well enough to go. She wanted me to go in her place, and I did.
    “Weddings are so stupid,” I’d said when I got home. “What’s the point? All that money, all that time planning, and for what? Men don’t stick around anyway.”
    “Some men do,” my mother had said. “Not every man is like your father, Eloise.”
    My plan was never to get married. I was scared to death of marriage.
    But then my mother died, and what scared me changed.
    Be perky. Use exclamation points.
    Dear Wedding Diary, I typed.
    And typed and typed and typed until I woke up at 6:00 a.m., my face pressed into the warm keyboard.
     
    Wow Weddings Memorandum
From: Astrid O’Connor
    To: Eloise Manfred
    Re: Wedding-Planning Diary Entry #1
    Eloise,
    See my comments on the attached. The bits about your mother need perking up. In Wow Weddings, there is no cancer, only serious illness. There is no death, only loss. Sidenote: I realize you’re in the art dept. and not editorial, so please consult a dictionary and utilize your spell-checker for your entries. For example, “casket” has only one “t.”—AO

chapter 4

    “I got an A on my first diary entry!” Philippa squealed, her pink-and-white face looming over the rim of my cubicle on Tuesday afternoon. “I am so getting promoted to assistant editor at my next performance review!”
    My diary entry had no grade. Apparently, it was so far afield from what Astrid wanted that it didn’t even merit a D+ for effort.
    “What did you get?” Philippa asked.
    I was saved from answering by the ringing of Philippa’s phone.
    “Philippa Wills, editorial assistant, Wow Weddings magazine,” she chirped into the receiver. A moment of silence. A happy shriek. “Hi, Parker! I love you too, sweetsums. No, you’re sweetsums. No, you are! Okay, bye, Parkie.”
    Parker Gersh was not a Parkie.
    Philippa’s face appeared over my cubicle again. “I’m getting married—and to the greatest guy on earth!” shetrilled. “And it’s all thanks to you, Eloise! Four months ago, I didn’t even have a boyfriend! And now I’m getting married. Whoo-hoo!”
    Four months ago, when I thought I’d been having a private telephone