The Less Than Perfect Wedding (23 page)

Finally, he was at least a little bit more presentable, and I stepped back. Father Hemsley had shuffled forward from his seat at the back of the altar, and was now giving Danny a stern look of his own.

"Cutting things a little close, aren't we?" the priest asked. "I hope you weren't committing anything that might be considered... sinful." Clearly, Father Hemsley hadn't forgotten about Danny's actions during my wedding. To be honest, I didn't blame him, and I still wasn't sure why my sister had chosen to hold her wedding in the same church as mine. Didn't she understand how bad luck worked?

For once, however, Alex's younger brother didn't fire back a hot retort, but instead merely lowered his eyes and shook his head. Before any of us could say a word more, we heard the music start up again.

When Danny had burst into the chapel, the organist had paused in his rendition of "Here Comes the Bride." Silence had fallen over the room, broken only by the muttering of various family members in the crowd. But now, stuck halfway down the aisle, Susan turned around and made a very ferocious (and somewhat inappropriate) gesture back at the man, and he hastily resumed playing.

With the music going once again, Susan continued her stately advance. My father walked next to her, their arms clasped together, but he paled beside her gigantic white dress. The frills and ruffles that covered every inch of Susan's dress did an excellent job of concealing the tiny baby bump, I had to note.

As well as smiling, nodding, and waving to everyone in the aisles as she passed, my sister must have been internally timing the song in her head. She managed to reach the altar just as the organist's song drew to a close. She exchanged a quick cheek peck with our father, and then ascended the steps to the altar as he found his seat next to Blossom in the front row.

After Susan had taken her place on the altar, front and center, people finally began settling back down into their seats. "Nice recovery," I whispered to Susan under my breath.

I half expected her to be furious over the fact that Danny had only just barely shown up, had nearly derailed everything, but she still had a smile on her face. And, although I wasn't completely positive, I was pretty sure that it was genuine, not forced. Somehow, her trademark temper had remained under control. "Oh, it's fine," she whispered back to me in a voice that was far too sweet. "I don't mind at all!"

On her far side, I heard Alex muffle a snort. He managed to turn it into a brief coughing fit when Susan looked up at her suspiciously, but Father Hemsley began speaking before she could open her mouth.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the priest began, "we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Susan Marie Jansen and Daniel Derek Wilson, so that they might be joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony."

*

What?

Oh, you didn't think that Susan was marrying Alex, did you? My goodness, no! What in the world would give you that idea?

As it turned out, Susan and Danny getting to reconnect was the biggest happening of Alex's and my failed wedding attempt. After being confronted by my angry and bitter mother, the pair of them finally decided to announce that they were in an official relationship together. Three months later, there was another announcement, this time one that they wanted to keep quiet - my sister was pregnant.

The wedding had, once again, been a bit of a rush job. Fortunately, Sally had been available, and despite her initial reluctance to work with our nightmare of a family once again, she did feel guilty that Alex's and my wedding hadn't gone off smoothly, and wanted the chance to redeem herself.

Fortunately, she did excellent planning despite her nervousness, and the second time around, she wasn't afraid to yell back at my mother when she tried to make changes to the wedding plans. It also helped that, where I might have been tempted to roll over and not fight, my sister acted like a cat backed into a corner and would not let anyone dare try and make a change that she didn't personally approve. It seemed that the only person more iron-willed than my mother was her younger daughter!

To help Susan with her wedding plans, I had been reluctantly recruited in to serve as the maid of honor/responsible chaperone, and Alex had been conscripted by Danny to act as the best man. After each planning session, we would lay awake in bed and make light-hearted wagers on whether the wedding would end up succeeding, tanking like ours, or somehow being even worse.

Fortunately, amazingly, almost unbelievably, things were somehow working out. Alex had tackled Danny fairly early on in the bachelor party and sat on him to prevent him from chasing after the strippers that had inevitably showed up, and I had kept the men away from Susan on her bachelorette outing by telling them in graphic detail about how she was afflicted by various different diseases. Everyone had shown up to the rehearsal, and my sister's heavy-handed threats had kept my mother and father apart from each other. And now, they were both in the right place at the right time to be married, even though Danny had cut it a little close.

And this time around, things weren't quite as difficult in regards to the family situation. My mother had just recently been asked out by a rather quiet widower named Edward at the grocery store, and she preferred to brag about her "new beau" to strangers instead of bad-mouthing her ex-husband. My father was happy to let this situation continue and not stir the pot.

"...I now pronounce you husband and wife." I jerked my head up. I had nearly missed the most important part of the ceremony!

"You may kiss the bride," Father Hemsley concluded, and Alex and I both started clapping as Danny swept his arms around Susan. After a few seconds, of course, Alex had to reach in and surreptitiously separate his younger brother from his new bride, but the bride and groom both emerged from the kiss with beaming grins.

We followed them down the aisle as they headed out of the church, doing our best to smile through the camera flashes and to not trip over the long train of Susan's dress. We made it outside, ducked to avoid the shower of raw rice that somebody still insisted on throwing into the air, and then Alex grabbed my hand and pulled me off to one side.

"I can't believe they made it through," he said, his voice raised so that I could hear him over the commotion of people streaming out of the church.

"I guess that I owe you twenty dollars now, don't I?" I replied. "I'm just glad that our job is done! We can finally relax!"

Alex nodded, his eyes shining brightly in the sunlight. "We most certainly can," he echoed. "And that's why I thought that perhaps we will be a little late to the reception?"

It took me a moment to catch on, but my husband's wiggling eyebrows clued me in. "They did do it at our wedding..." I mused.

My husband didn't need to hear anything more, and with a sudden sweeping motion, he hoisted me up over one shoulder and began carrying me off to our car. Pounding helplessly on his back, my peals of laughter carried us both to our car, away from the church through the fresh sunlight.

Sam Westland has an unfortunate habit of staying up far too late, reading the latest novel when he really should be sleeping and preparing for work. Sam currently lives just outside Sacramento, CA. During the day, he works as a mild-mannered graduate student, but he usually ends up spending most of his time outside of work sitting in coffee shops, people watching and typing away.

Want to read more of Sam's work? Be sure to check out his blog at
http://www.missingbrains.com/
.