The Ceremony
There was a sign at the very back of the rows and rows of white plastic seating that said, in a font so flowery Janine had to stare at it for a few seconds, Choose a seat! Not a side! We’re all family! Once the knot is tied! Which was good because besides the bride, her aunt and uncle, and her parents, she didn’t actually recognize a single person.
Next to her, Lonnie snorted.
“Too many exclamation points,” he muttered before taking another sip of beer.
Janine glared at him. “Really? To the ceremony?”
Lonnie shrugged and gestured around. He wasn’t the only one bringing a drink from the bar over to the seats. Even a woman in the second row was holding a tumbler of something clear.
“Oh, shit. Do you think I have time to get a glass of wine, then?”
She did not. A woman with mussed hair and an insane look in her eye started physically pushing people toward empty seats. Janine and Lonnie took a seat in the middle on the left before they get could bruised.
The music started. The maid of honor and the best man came down the aisle. A bridesmaid and a groomsman came down the aisle. A bridesmaid and a groomsman came down the aisle. A bridesmaid and a groomsman came down the aisle. A bridesmaid came down the aisle. A bridesmaid came down the aisle. A bridesmaid came down the aisle.
“I don’t even know this many people,” Lonnie said for the third time that day. Janine shushed him as another bridesmaid came down the aisle.
Finally, the grooms parents. A couple of grandparents. The groom himself. And the bride, with her mother and father on each side.
Standing between the lovely couple up front was a young man their age holding a leather notebook and wearing mopsweat and a shit eating grin.
“Ugh, another friend officiant,” Lonnie said behind his beer.
“Will you stop?”
“Friends, family, honored guests, thank you so much for coming today to witness the union between two of my very best friends. Or should I say, Frest Bends?”
Those standing up front and a small group of people in the third and fourth rows tittered like it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said in their lives. The rest of the crowd, including Janine and Lonnie, were quiet.
“I had the utmost pleasure to meet Lacey and Greg – or should I say Rizzo and Gizzo – in college. We were all freshman, sitting in the Wonder Boil’s classroom at – pardon my Russian – ass crack o’clock, and-”
Lonnie hid a deep sigh by putting his empty beer car down on the grass in front of him.
“I knew it. This always fucking happens.”
“What?” Janine asked, trying to pay attention to the nonsense coming from the officiant.
“It’s all in-jokes! There’s two hundred people and only, what? Like, twenty of them are laughing. Because no one gets it. You can’t do in-jokes when most of the people in front of you aren’t going to get them!”
Janine shot him a look. “It’s not about us.”
“It’s a little about us,” Lonnie said. “They invited us here. We took off work and flew halfway across the country to celebrate their love and junk so I’d at least like to be able to understand the monologue. Why invite us if you’re just going to make a bunch of jokes no one gets?”
“It would have been a lot cheaper to just invite those people,” Janine said under her breath as the same group of people wiped tears from their eyes. As she shifted to the left to get a better look she caught the groom’s grandmother yawning.
“It’s insanity. I tell you what, when this guy tells a joke we all can understand, I’m going to laugh really hard.”
“Don’t.”
“I am, that way he’ll understand that he’s leaving a hundred and sixty people out in the cold.”
Fifteen minutes later, after more rambling in-jokes and weepy vows done by the bride and groom and the exchange of rings, Lonnie was still poised, waiting to make his point.
“And now,” the officiant said. “By the power invested in me by the state and marryyourfriends.com-”
Lonnie guffawed so hard it looked like he hurt himself. Some people turned around to look. The officiant looked please.
Janine snorted. “Do you see what you’ve done? Now he thinks he came up with that stale joke.”
“Worth it.”
The Cousins Table
“Man, I thought we’d at least be sitting with your parents,” Lonnie said, staring at the seating chart. “‘The Cousins Table?’ I thought Lacey was your only cousin.”
“Yeah. I think she has some on the other side?”
Lacey did have another cousin on her dad’s side, a single dude named Doug who was already sitting at the table with a couple of empties in front of him.
“Sick, I didn’t know Lacey had another cousin.”
“We live on the other side of the country,” Janine said. “I think we saw each other once every couple of years.”
Doug nodded again. “Oh, bro, same, we came down from Alaska, we never see any of the family.”
“So, who’s the rest of the table for?” Lonnie asked.
Doug made a face. “Oh. Right. They put us with Greg’s cousins.”
It was like he summoned them. Suddenly the rest of the table was filled with five other people all trying to talk over the others. A second table, mercifully on the other side, also became overrun.
“Hi, I’m Danica!” One of the cousins practically screamed. “I’m Greg’s cousin. On his mother’s side. The Irish side! You’ll be able to tell which ones are us because we’re the wild side of the family!”
“I’m Heidi,” said another one of the cousins, this one thrusting her hand forward for a hard, stern shake. “And they like to think they’re the wild side of the family, but that’s because they’ve never been to a Richter family reunion! I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough!”
“Actually, I’m not that close with Lacey, so I doubt-”
“Oh, sure, a Richter family reunion, yeah, those are wild, sure, tell me, how many times have the police been called?”
“I-”
“Because I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to talk to cops after a Murphy family party!”
“Well, the Richter house is in the middle of the woods. Very big. And secluded. There’s no one around to hear us howl at the moon!”
“Oh, right, well, you know, the Murphy family has never exactly been flush with cash or anything, we had to work hard for everything we had!”
All the cousins were glaring at one another now. Even at the other table. It was clear that whatever…this…was had been going on for years. Decades. Probably ever since Greg’s parents married each other.
Poor Lacey.
The glares turned into more yelling, and the cousins on Lacey’s side were once again ignored. Lonnie stared at the two women on the other side of the table, rictus grins pasted to their face as they almost came to blows over which family had the better Christmas traditions, and then slowly leaned over Janine toward Doug.
“Hey, man, I’m just going to come out and ask. Do you have weed?”
Doug pulled out a small tin of gummies and held them out to Janine and Lonnie under the table.
“I am always ready to share.”
“Oh, thank God,” Janine muttered, taking a yellow one.
The Maid of Honor’s Toast
“Wow, I can’t believe we are all here today. It feels like just yesterday Lacey and I were playing wedding in her parents backyard. We would trade off who was the groom, and today Lacey you look just as pretty as when you were the bride. Maybe taller.”
Mild laughter
“For those of you who don’t know, Lacey and I have been best friends since we were literally in diapers. Our moms met in a play group when we were both barely a year old, and the rest is history. We started kindergarten together. We were on the same soccer team. We were both in theater in high school. Do you remember when we did Grease? See, it was the absolute best production we did, because Lacey was Sandy and I cut my hair short so I could be Danny. I had to fight with Mrs. Granger for almost two weeks to get the part, but eventually she said those magical words: ‘If it’ll get you to leave me alone, fine.’”
More mild laughter
And then we ended up going to college together and things got even wilder! So many parties, so many boyfriends, so many breakups – and I think there were some classes, too.”
Pause for laughter
“Anyway, all through those years, Lacey was my rock. She is the kindest, sweetest person on the planet. She would gladly give you the shirt off her back if it was all she had left. There were so many night she spent comforting me. Do you remember after Al broke up with me?”
Lacey takes a sip of her champagne
“I really thought Allen and I were going to go all the way. We just had that spark, you know? And we’d been dating for three years and I was just waiting for him to propose on graduation day. But it turned out he had that ‘spark’ with three other women. And I found out that morning and I go to Lacey’s dorm, my makeup all smudged, and she opens the door and sees me there. And she’s already in her gown, right, she’s about to go walk her own graduation. But what does she do? She stays with me. She misses her own graduation to comfort me in my worst hour. We spent the rest of the day in bed, watching romance movies and eating ice cream. Her parents were furious. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, but your daughter is just too kind!”
Mr. and Mrs. Murphy give her a thin smile
“Anyway, Lacey, do you remember that was the day we made our pact. We said if we weren’t married by forty, we would marry each other! Just like we used to when we were kids! And we were getting so close! Another six years…ha ha ha…”
General quiet as the maid of honor stares at Lacey while Lacey takes Greg’s hand. Uncomfortable sounds from the crowd. Eventually the maid of honor realizes she is still giving a toast.
“Um, right…anyway, Lacey is really the best human being on the planet. I love her more than Jesus, and America, and horses, and God, and a bunch of other stuff. I would die for Lacey.
“Greg, love her right. Because if you hurt her, I’ll find you!”
The maid of honor says this brightly, as though it is a joke. It is very much not a joke, and everyone knows it. The maid of honor tosses back her entire glass of champagne without asking the rest of the crowd to do so and sits down, dropping the microphone on the table with a thud.
Wedding Cake
“Wow, babe, you hardly ate,” Lonnie said, looking at Janine’s plate. “Did you not like it?”
“No, it was very good,” Janine said. “I’m just saving room for the cake.”
“Cake?” Heidi asked from across the table. The Murphys and the Richters had split themselves up after several talks from the wedding coordinator. The volume in the large wedding hall had gone down considerably.
“Yeah, wedding cake, I live for that shit.”
Heidi smiled and shook her head. “Oh, there’s no cake.”
“…what.”
“Yeah, they thought it was so wasteful, you know, the cake never gets fully eaten! It’s really very thoughtful of them.”
Janine took a long, deep breath. “But it’s a wedding. There should be a wedding cake.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Heidi said, waving a hand. “They have…um, I saw the table…they have cake pops, and cupcakes, and, ooh, donuts! Isn’t that fun! Just little munchies so everyone can take a few and not have to worry about-”
“About what? Hmmm? About the cake? About the best part of any wedding, ever? So we don’t have to worry about the only freaking reason I agreed to fly halfway across the country in a lingering pandemic?”
A hand fell on Janine’s shoulder, and she knew it was her grandmother before she even looked up.
“What are you getting worked up over?” Nana hissed in her ear. “This is a happy day and you are drawing attention and making people stare! God knows we don’t need any more of that today.”
“Nana,” Janine said, trying to keep her voice even. “Did you know that there is no wedding cake today?”
Her grandmother blinked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Heidi here has just informed me that the bride and groom chose to forgo a wedding cake to avoid ‘waste’ and has instead gone with cupcakes, cake pops, and donuts.”
“But none of those are wedding cake.”
“I know.”
“You’re saying that there are those things on top of a wedding cake?” her grandmother asked, hopeful.
“No. Instead of. There is no wedding cake.”
“But…what are they going to cut? Are they going to keep a cupcake in the freezer for a year? That won’t work, that’s too small. How…how do you have a wedding without the wedding cake?”
Nana no longer cared about Janine raising her voice. She wandered back to her table, and Janine and Lonnie could watch the news travel around the table.
“Damn it, Janine, do you see what you did? You riled up the boomers.”
“I’m with the boomers on this one, Lon. This is fucking stupid. If you invite me to your wedding, you better fucking serve me cake!”
Lonnie looked around to see people were once again staring at them. Everything but the drunken dancing to “Come On Eileen” and “Mr. Brightside” was over. It was time to pull the ripcord and parachute out of here.
“Come on. Let’s slip out the back and get Taco Bell on the way back to the hotel.”
“Do you think we can find cake?”
“I’m sure there’s a grocery store open.”
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 