Shortly after Wren and Sam disappear, I learn that the judge set to do the ceremony has a last-minute emergency, so I have to scramble for someone among my professional contacts who is ordained to marry us.
And then, minutes before the ceremony begins, it rains unexpectedly, which wouldn't be a problem if the wedding were to take place in the hotel. But I am supposed to walk on the arm of my Pops from the hotel, across the street, and have the ceremony in the butterfly garden at City Park. But as a wedding planner, I always have a backup plan, and I've already made sure my guests are equipped with umbrellas. A little sprinkle is not going to drive this ceremony indoors.
"It's good luck," says my grandpa. "Besides, I made you this pretty umbrella, if you want to use it."
I look at what he's holding and see a standard umbrella but white, bedazzled with feathers, silk flowers, and sequins.
"Pops, did you do that yourself?" I ask.
He looks sheepish and nods. It looks a hundred percent like my Grams' craft room threw up on it, and I love it to bits. I hug my Pops so tight that tears threaten to ruin my makeup.
"But what's not good luck is the groom seeing you in your dress before the ceremony," says Grams, who's still slightly salty about the dress, and about the fact that I've already sneaked off twice today to kiss my gorgeous groom. "So I guess it all evens out."
I smile at her in the mirror while the makeup artist fixes my rouge. "That sounds about right for Smitty and me."
"And why do you have to call him Smitty? He has a perfectly nice name. Robert is a respectable name."
I try to control my facial expressions because I don't want to crack my makeup. "Grams, his bio dad is Robert, and we don't talk about the guy. Robert is anything but a dad to him. If anybody ever served Smitty as a dad, it was Sam Evans. And I'm extremely excited to have him and Wren as family."
Grams sighs and says, "I don't know why in the world you would keep a pregnant lady for a bridesmaid. I told you it would look odd in the photos, and now she's not even here. And neither is Smitty's best man because he's her husband!"
I shrug. "Traditionally, the best man is just there to keep the groom from legging it. I'm not worried, honestly."
Grams finally gives in and laughs. "You're right about that. That boy is smitten with our little girl." She hugs my shoulders and kisses me on the cheek. "We just want you to be happy, is all. If you're happy, then we're happy."
"I am, Grams."
Pops leaves to usher her to her seat before coming back across the street to walk me down the aisle. When I turn to examine my cheek in the mirror, I see a very faint imprint of Grams' lipstick there, and I decide to leave it.
"Are you sure?" asks the makeup artist. I nod.
The sprinkling of rain has stopped when Pops and I arrive at the park. Smitty looks like a movie star in his light summer suit and cowboy hat. Despite the urging of his friends and ranch hands that he should insist on wearing a chambray shirt, jeans, and a bolo tie like every other cowboy wedding on planet earth, Smitty wisely deferred to me on his ensemble. I permitted him to wear his hat and boots, but absolutely no jeans or bolo tie.
"Baby, you could tell me to dress like Dracula and I would do whatever you say," he'd said on the day we decided on his formal wear.
With Wren's exit behind us, the gentle rain having stopped, and the arrival of an available ordained minister from a very sweet motorcycle club in my contacts that had hired me for an event once, we are finally saying our vows.
And then, the moths appear. I get the giggles because I don't know what I was thinking. Instead of being blessed with butterflies flying around as I expected, we are inundated with little white moths and dragonflies and bees. A ladybug flies into my mouth.
"You never did learn to laugh with your mouth shut, did you?" Smitty laughs.
I laugh harder as my shoulders shake. A bridesmaid hands me a tissue but I wave her off. "I think I swallowed it."
"My big city wife, ladies and gentleman. The bugs love her."
I catch my breath. "I ain't your wife yet, country boy."
Everyone is in stitches and now I have to pee. The officiant gets the message and speeds us through the rest of the important stuff. Smitty, however, doesn't get the message and insists on taking his hat off with gusto and dips me over his knee to kiss me long and hard. Still laughing, I let him kiss me through it while everyone claps and shouts, but I finally have to tell him.
He scoops me up just as he did on the day we first met in person and runs me over to the park restroom, which is not nearly as pristine as the bridal suite across the street at the hotel, but there's no way I'll make it that far.
The remaining bridesmaids shoo him away and take over the duties of holding my dress over my head as I shimmy out of my undergarment and finally get some relief. I'm so happy to be married, and everyone is so relieved that I'm not even upset at all the little things that went wrong, we're all laughing our asses off, and none of us are even drunk.
What's better than three drunk strangers bonding in a public restroom? Three sober best friends howling like she-wolves in the bathroom at a very fancy occasion.
It is my favorite wedding to have planned yet.
Epilogue
Five years later
Smitty
I hope Ally likes the surprise I planned for her 40th birthday.
I smile to myself while I pull our three kids along in the hay wagon down to Sam and Wren's place.
The two work horses, Squirtle and Snorlax, always seem to get excited when I hitch them up to the kids' wagon. "You guys be good for Uncle Sam and Auntie Wren, you hear me?"
Betty, June, and Elvis promise to be good, and I gently slap Snorlax and give him the signal to go. He already knows where he's going, I don't even have to accompany them down through the pasture toward the log house by the creek, but I jog along beside them just until they are over the ridge. I watch them go the rest of the way until I'm interrupted by a text notification. It's Ally, who is finishing up some work in the city tonight.
I hate that she had to go to work on her 40th birthday but she promised to be done early. I've booked a table at her favorite restaurant and before that, a concert on the lawn at City Park, followed by a stay at the nicest hotel in the city. I've had it all planned out for almost a year.
We're raising three kids on the ranch and she still has her office downtown to meet with clients and vendors. It's not easy for her to split her time between our home here in the country and her weekends in the city, but more and more people are booking weddings out here on the farm to get that rustic chic vibe that Ally does so well.
I open the text and first all I see is something very pink and very wet.
What the… I shield the screen from the sun and realize what I'm looking at.
Whoa. That's her… and it's… and her finger is… "Boy howdy! That is my sexy wife in all her glory, right there. Holy shit!"
I call her immediately and my mouth is watering like hell.
"Babe, what are you doing to me?"
Her voice rasps, "I'm not doing anything but thinking about you."