Four Weddings & A Cake
A ROMANTIC SHORT STORY BY EIRIN THOMPSON
No one could change Riley’s mind about wedding days… could they?
You could say I was allergic to weddings.
I didn’t like the cake, I didn’t like dancing and most of all I didn’t like brides who spent more than a year planning and making lists and shopping and fretting over a single day.
And I should know – I’m the youngest of five sisters.
When Ruthanne, the eldest, got engaged, Mum cried.
“That’s the start of it, girls – one by one you’re all going to leave me.”
Dad was more pragmatic, saying it would take the pressure off the immersion heater to the tune of one-fifth.
Ruthanne said she’d been planning her wedding in her head since she’d been a little girl.
No sooner did she have the diamond ring on her finger than she started traipsing round all the bridal salons looking for the Dress.
Mum went with her the first time, but Ruthanne wasn’t satisfied with that. The next week we all had to tag along.
Rebecca, Ruby and Rachel seemed to enjoy the experience. I cannot imagine why – it was so tedious.
I sat in the corner with a Biro drawing beards and moustaches on the brides in the glossy brochure.
“Riley! Don’t be so childish!” Ruthanne snapped.
“Don’t look at me,” I retorted. “You’re the one playing dress-up.”
We looked at approximately 500 wedding dresses, some full and frothy, some slim and sleek, some with puffed sleeves, some with none, before Ruthanne announced that she’d like to go back and see the one she’d tried on the very first day.
And that was the one she bought.
Once the Dress had been chosen, Ruthanne wasted no time in seeking bridesmaids’ gowns that would complement it.
“Anything but pink,” Ruby pleaded. “I can’t do pink, with my red hair.”
“I was wondering about oyster,” Ruthanne said. “What do you think?”
“Have you ever seen an oyster?” I queried. “It’s the colour of phlegm.”
“Oh, Riley!” Ruthanne cried.
“Tell her to shut up, Mum. She has to spoil everything.”
“Listen, I’ll happily leave you to it,” I said.
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Ruthanne insisted. “I need to know that whatever frock I choose suits all four of you.”
Trying to get four girls to agree on the one dress that looked good on everybody was a tall order.
Ruby didn’t like people to see her freckly shoulders. Rebecca begged for a style that gave her a flat tummy and Rachel was very proud of her collarbones and wanted them displayed to best advantage.
“It seems to me that the emerald green with the Fifties-style bodice has more or less chosen itself, and it sits well with my bride’s dress,” Ruthanne declared at last. “That OK with you, Riley?”
“Whatever.”
After all that, I thought maybe the wedding plans would go on the back burner for a bit.
But no – it was shopping for shoes, seeing round possible venues, selecting all three courses of the menu, choosing the hymns, designing the order of service, making choices about flowers and favours and – a tough one – whom to invite and whom to offend.
Ruthanne couldn’t do any of this alone – we all had to be involved.
“Where’s Ralph in all this?” I ventured to ask, as we were gathered round the kitchen table poring over the seating plan. “Shouldn’t the groom be a bit more involved?”
“Ralph’s very busy with work,” Ruthanne answered. “Don’t be so miserable, Riley. I’d have loved to have had a big sister getting married. There’s nothing as exciting as a wedding.”
The big day came and I dutifully had my hair curled and my make-up applied, I wore the green dress and the shoes and did my best to smile.
But I was stuck on the very end of the top table for the meal, beside an usher who talked to Rachel on his other side, so that wasn’t fun.
I worked my way through the meal in silence, yawned during the speeches and, when the dancing started, I sneaked upstairs to the room Ruthanne had set aside for wardrobe, hair and make-up adjustments, lay down and fell asleep.
Nobody missed me.
When it was all over, I felt great.
Back to normality, at last. Except, within a year, Rebecca announced that Johnny had proposed and she was thinking about it.
And the whole palaver started again.
I didn’t kid myself. Ruby would be next. Correct.
And then Rachel came home flashing a diamond. Hers would be my fourth wedding as a sister and bridesmaid in five years.
It sounds ungrateful, I know. But, like I said, I’m allergic to weddings.
By the time Rachel’s nuptials came along, I had been promoted to chief bridesmaid.
The other sisters were married – Ruthanne with two little children, Rebecca with one and Ruby just weeks off going into labour.
“It’s very important,” Rachel kept reminding me. “The chief bridesmaid is the bride’s right-hand woman – there’s a lot of responsibility.”
This time the bride was wearing an Edwardian-style lacy affair and the bridesmaids were in taupe.
“Do you love your dress?” Rachel asked excitedly.
“No,” I said.
I think even Mum was getting a bit wedding-weary, this time around.
“Couldn’t you borrow Ruby’s shoes?” she asked Rachel. “She’s only worn them once. They could be your something borrowed.”
“I knew this would happen!” Rachel wailed. “Just because I’m the fourth sister, nobody even cares. I want my own special shoes for my own special day.
“And don’t you look so uninterested, Riley – by the time it’s your turn you’ll probably have to get married in a flour sack and have your reception in McDonald’s.”
“Trust me, it’ll never be my turn,” I assured her. “I have no intention of ever getting married.”
It was the Thursday before Rachel’s big day and time for the wedding rehearsal. We all congregated at the church, which was the first time our family had met some of the groom’s guests.
We knew Carlton’s mum and dad, of course, and I’d been introduced to his sister, Annette, who was also a bridesmaid, when we’d been dress-shopping.
“Guy can’t make the rehearsal,” Carlton explained. “But Edward is going to stand in as best man, just for now.”
Edward was Carlton’s kid brother, all of four feet tall. He looked about as delighted about rehearsing a wedding as I felt.
We stood around, being lined up and turned this way and that, then the men went inside, and we girls followed Rachel up the aisle.
There was a bit more palaver with the rector saying things, and Carlton and Rachel responding. I wasn’t paying very much attention.
“Riley? Riley! Will you take those ear-buds out, please?”
Busted. I hadn’t thought anyone would notice.
“This is where you help me turn my dress and train and we all process back down the aisle,” Rachel commanded.
What, was I actually supposed to mime turning round an Edwardian gown when Rachel was wearing jeggings and a T-shirt?
“Well come on, don’t just stand there!”
Apparently I was.
“Now the wedding party in pairs, behind us!” Rachel called. “And each pair holding hands, please.”
I looked at Edward. He looked at me. Reluctantly, we took each other’s hands. He was so much shorter than me it actually made me walk with a limp.
Rachel looked radiant, if you liked that sort of thing.
She glided up the aisle on Dad’s arm, Ruthanne up ahead, coaching her little girl to toss rose petals on the floor, Annette and me bringing up the rear.
Glancing up, I saw Carlton standing with his hands behind his back, facing the altar. To his right was a tall figure with a head of dark shaggy hair. This must be Guy, the best man.
I thought he’d done well to get away with those long locks – Rachel would have been trying to have them cut, no doubt.
Rachel arrived at the front of the church, the organ music stopped and the ceremony began.
I stifled a yawn and thought about how I’d escape the dancing later. I could say I had a headache – sometimes simple plans were the best.
I admit, I drifted away somewhat during the ceremony, but I woke right up when Rachel glared at me and I realised it was time to perform the big turn of the Edwardian dress and train to enable the retreat.
“I’ve got this, I’ve got this,” I assured her.
We turned, we fell into pairs, and I felt someone grasp my hand.
“Hello. You must be Riley. I’m Guy.”
Guy was, no kidding, tall, dark and handsome. We stood for a second, as Rachel and Carlton prepared to move.
I was just about to say it was nice to meet him, when my stomach gave an enormous grumble and my niece with the basket of petals piped up.
“What was that noise, Mummy?”
“Hungry?” Guy enquired, a twinkle in his eye.
I felt myself blush furiously.
“Breakfast was a long time ago.”
“I understand there are to be canapés on arrival at the hotel – think you can hang on?”
“Of course.”
I was standing in the corner with my plate piled high – five or six little potato cakes with smoked salmon and cream cheese and half a dozen mini avocado toasts. Yum.
“Riley?”
It was Guy. Trust him to show up when my cheeks were stuffed like a greedy hamster.
“Mhmm?”
“Sorry to interrupt your lunch.” His eyes were twinkling again, I noticed. “But Rachel wants us for the photographs.”
I gulped down what was in my mouth and must have looked at my stacked plate in dismay.
“We can bring them with us,” Guy said, grabbing my plate in one hand and my hand in his other. “But we do have to go out to the courtyard.”
He hurried me along and soon we were lining up for the camera.
Rachel insisted on photographs of every possible combination of the bridal party, but each time the best man and chief bridesmaid weren’t needed, Guy appeared beside me with my plate.
“You’re welcome to share,” I told him.
“So, which sister are you?” Guy asked, while all the parents were being photographed with the happy couple. “The one with two children, or the one with the baby, or the expectant one? Not that you’re showing.”
“I’m the one on the shelf.”
“On the shelf? Really?”
“Yes. And I happen to like it there. Or I will do once all these blooming weddings are over and everybody leaves me alone.”
“You’re not keen on being a bridesmaid, then?”
“I wasn’t keen when Ruthanne got married, and now this is my fourth. So no.”
“But I thought young women loved all this – getting dressed up, the pomp and ceremony and romance.”
“It’s a lot of fuss over a dress and a big dinner.”
“That’s really how you see it?”
“It is.”
“Well, that’s just terrible.”
Someone from the hotel function room appeared then, and said they really couldn’t delay the meal any longer and would the bride and groom please leave any further photographs until later.
“At last,” I said.
At the top table, Guy was surprisingly good company.
Over our starter of butternut and lemongrass soup, he managed to coax me into telling him about my job selling advertising on a newspaper and my ambition to break into journalism.
“It’ll mean going to evening classes after work, to learn shorthand and typing,” I explained.
“If you’re determined, you’ll find the extra energy,” Guy said.
He told me that he was a graphic designer, working for a solid company, but tempted to branch out on his own.
“That’ll take a lot of extra energy, too,” I surmised.
“And now for the inevitable breast of chicken wrapped in parma ham.” I sighed, eyeing the plate that had been set before me.
“But not just any breast of chicken wrapped in Parma ham,” Guy pointed out. “Didn’t you read the menu? This one’s stuffed with chorizo and tarragon and finished with Madeira jus, not to mention the side of Dauphinoise potatoes, which are my absolute favourite.”
I had to smile.
As we polished off our desserts, Guy was telling me of his plans to get a rescue dog and I was warning him about the heartache of losing it one day, as we’d recently lost Wuzzins, our family cat.
“But it doesn’t make you wish you’d never had him,” Guy suggested.
“Oh, no. He brought us a great deal of joy down the years. We wouldn’t have missed that for the world. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’.”
Guy put his head on one side.
“It’s nice to hear you say that,” he remarked.
And before I could bite back my words and assure him that my statement only applied to pets, and that I didn’t have a romantic bone in my body, he was up on his feet, tapping an empty glass with a knife, signalling the start of the speeches.
These began as the usual yawnfest. If I wasn’t very much mistaken, Dad had copied and pasted his script from various earlier weddings, although luckily Rachel didn’t seem to notice.
The groom’s words were as dull as ditchwater.
But then it was Guy’s turn, and I found myself listening intently.
He related one or two tales of youthful frolics with Carlton, his deep affection for the groom’s family and of how he and Carlton had stayed in touch all through uni, though they were hundreds of miles apart.
Then he explained how he’d had to adjust to Carlton meeting Rachel, who had quickly become the centre of his universe, but how Guy had been happy, because Carlton was so evidently happy.
He wove in quotes and kept the room spellbound. When he proposed his toast to the bride and groom, everyone stood up and cheered.
But Guy hadn’t quite finished.
“It’s traditional, I understand, for the best man to thank the bridesmaids for their contribution to a wonderful day. As well as asking you to raise your glasses to the bridesmaids, I have the happy task of singling out one bridesmaid in particular.
“Riley Robinson is chief bridesmaid today, but not everyone will know that she has performed the role of bridesmaid for all four of her sisters and they have asked me to present her with this gift, in recognition of her outstanding service.”
I gripped my napkin in surprise. I’d been the worst bridesmaid ever!
“Stand up, Riley!” Rachel growled.
I stood.
Guy handed me a velvet box. He’d known which sister I was all along.
“Open it,” Ruthanne called from a nearby table.
Inside was a beautiful silver pendant and matching earrings – kind of traditional, but in a design that I really liked.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Feeling my eyes brimming, I plonked myself back down on my chair.
The staff were moving the tables back to the sides of the room to free up the floor for dancing.
“This is where I generally take off,” I told Guy.
“What, you mean go home?” he asked.
“I’m not quite that brave,” I admitted. “I generally try to find somewhere to sleep. There’s usually a room set aside for people adjusting their gowns, or else I slip into the back seat of one of the hire cars – they’re both roomy and comfortable.”
“But you’ll miss the dancing.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“You don’t like to dance?”
“I’m no good at it. I’m wooden.”
“But you like music.”
“Of course I do. I just can’t move to it with any degree of grace.”
“I bet you could dance with me.”
I looked at Guy. Handsome, friendly, charming. Of course he’d be great on the dance-floor.
“I’d only embarrass you,” I told him.
“I was right about the chicken – it was great. I’d like the chance to persuade you that all the things you claim to dislike about weddings might be a lot nicer than you think.
“Anyway, you can’t leave before the couple have their first dance.”
Maybe it was because this was the last of the weddings, maybe it was because I’d had so much fun talking that I’d avoided my usual sleepy head, maybe it was because Guy was so handsome and so nice, but before I knew it we were joining Rachel and Carlton on the floor.
I heard Ruthanne shriek.
“Look, Ralph! Is that really Riley up dancing?”
And, in truth, it wasn’t so bad. Guy held me firmly, but not too tightly, and guided my every step. Then the DJ played a faster number and Guy swung me and spun me and I found myself smiling and laughing.
“Want to sit down?” he enquired, as that song came to an end.
“No! I want to stay up!” I cried.
We danced a couple more times, then Guy said he must have a turn with the bride, so I danced with the groom, which wasn’t as good as dancing with Guy, but it wasn’t awful.
I must have been on my feet for an hour, and loving every minute, until the DJ announced that the next dance was the “Hokey Cokey” and my wedding allergy kicked off again.
“I am not dancing the ‘Hokey Cokey’,” I told Guy.
“Agreed. I draw the line there, too,” he replied. “Shall we slip outside for a bit? It’s very warm in here.”
On the hotel balcony, Guy said, “So, was today horrendous?”
“Not entirely,” I conceded.
“I enjoy a wedding,” Guy continued. “Music, pageantry, getting dressed up, a decent meal, dancing, meeting new people…”
“I’m glad I met you,” I murmured, not daring to look at him.
“I’m very glad we met, too. Would it be all right if I kissed you?”
I had to think.
“Not if this is just a heat of the moment thing. Not if I’m never going to see you again.”
“Of course I want to see you again.” Guy sounded genuinely surprised. “You don’t think I’ve put in all this effort getting to know you for nothing?
“I like you, Riley. You’ve got some funny ideas, but you intrigue me. And you’re extremely pretty.”
When we emerged from our embrace, Rebecca came thundering out.
“Everyone back inside! They’ve just remembered to cut the cake!”
“Fruitcake – yuk! That’s one aspect of weddings you’ll never change my mind about,” I declared.
“I hate the stuff, too,” Guy replied. “That’s why my one proviso regarding being best man was that there had to be a tier of chocolate.”
“And Rachel agreed?”
“I assured them it was a deal-breaker.”
As we sat side by side eating chocolate cake, I thought I might have to update my allergy status.
Weddings weren’t so bad, once you learned how to enjoy them.
Enjoy exclusive short stories every week inside the pages of “The People’s Friend”. On sale every Wednesday.
