Page 1 of Square Deal

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HANNAH JANE

Every wedding planner has their rules. I have five. Some are obvious precautions, while others came from the lived experience of several nuptial clusterfucks.

Never again.

My five rules for weddings are simple but effective. They ensure every event goes off according to plan. Most of all, they’re one-hundred percent non-negotiable.

I didn’t need any more lived experiences, thank you very much

Rule #1 -Do not let the bride or groom get drunk.

I’m not the fun police. It’s their big day, after all. They can drink if they want. But I’ve been around the block. There’s a reason I vet every vendor before my clients hire them. One of those reasons is to chat with the bartenders to ensure that they make the drinks at the reception only half as strong. Everyone gets buzzed enough to loosen up on the dance floor, and Grandma doesn’t end up headfirst and ass-up in the courtyard fountain. Everybody wins.

Rule #2 -Stay out of family drama.

Not my zoo, not my monkeys. If the mother of the bride and mother of the groom want to go at each other, be my guest. I’llshow them to a quiet corner of the inn where they can have their brawl out of sight. My clients shouldn’t have to pay a surcharge because the rental company can’t get bloodstains out of the linens.

Rule #3 -Stay sober until the event ends.

There will be no alcoholic drinks for me until the happy couple runs through a line of sparklers and drives off in the getaway car. I keep a bottle of sparkling apple cider behind the bar so I can blend in with the festivities. I don’t want my clients thinking I’m a killjoy or that I will judge them for tossing back glass after glass of champagne, but I have to keep my head on straight. Their party is my high-priority mission, and I execute each one with military precision.

Rule #4 -Have a head-to-toe back-up outfit dry-cleaned and ready to go in my office.

Try flipping an outdoor ceremony space into a reception space during cocktail hour in the blistering July heat and tell me you don’t sweat.And I do it in heels.

Rule #5 -Do not—I repeat—DO NOT have sex with anyone in the wedding party.

This one speaks for itself.

Weddings have a way of turning even the most relationship-averse, cynical person into a total sap. And the biggest problem with that?

I’m not a cynic.

I’m a hopeless romantic. I believe in love at first sight. I believe that Allie and Noah were soulmates. I believe in grand gestures and happily ever afters. I believe in Matthew McConaughey chasing down Kate Hudson with their dead, shriveled up love fern before she could leave New York City.

Every morning when I open my eyes, I remind myself that today could be the day I meet the Jim Halpert to my Pam Beesly. The Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi to my Lord Nicholas Devereaux. The Ryan Reynolds to my Blake Lively.

But today was not that day.

Because I was stuck dealing with the best man from hell.

Isaac Lawson—playboy real estate mogul, best friend of my best friend’s brand-new husband, and perpetual pain in my ass.

I tossed back the rest of my sparkling cider and slid the empty glass to the bartender.I wish that had been vodka.

If it were any other wedding, I would grab that insufferable prick by his four-figure necktie, drag him across the room, and politely tell him to get his act together or else I would murder him and have the body disposed of before it was time to cut the wedding cake.

But it was Maddie and Luca’s wedding, and I didn’t want to cause a rift between them and their best man.

At this point in the wedding reception, my single motivation was the bottle of champagne in my office I was going to treat myself to when the night ended.

“Look who I found,” Isaac smirked as he strutted over to the bar in that stupidly good-looking suit. “Hell Yes Ma’am, you look like you could use a drink.”

I wanted to claw his eyes out for using that damn nickname again.

This morning I had popped into the men’s suite at the inn to ensure that Luca and his boys had finished getting dressed. When I asked if they were ready to go outside for photos, Isaac responded with a bourbon-fueled, “Hell yeah, baby!”

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