Page 11 of Our Big White Lie
As we went on, the decision-making wasn’t terrible. Though I felt guilty about it, the fact that this wasn’t a real wedding seemed to make it a lot of it easier. If Tori and I had been doing this for real, I wondered if I’d have been more pressed about things like favors or the font on the invites. Without the Real Wedding of Damocles hanging over me, none of it seemed quite as consequential as it probably should have.
Something to keep in mind when I got married for real, now that I thought about it:werethese little detailsreallyworth that much stress? Because I’d been to a lot of weddings, and I couldn’t have recalled the favors, napkin rings, wineglasses, or invite fonts from any of them to save my life. Maybe they just weren’t that big of a deal.
We decided on a fairly simple color scheme of hunter green and burgundy with crème accents. There were a couple ofcaterers that were reasonably priced and sounded amazing; we’d reach out to them this week and arrange tastings.
Several bakeries offered incredible tiered cakes, and we both immediately fell in love with one that had icing roses wrapped around it from top to bottom. That place wasn’t cheap, but we all agreed that we could splurge a little on the cake. Especially since we’d all eaten some wedding cakes that were definitely… not good.
There was a whole pile of photographers, and three were both excellent at what they didandexplicitly stated that they were queer-friendly. A fourth was added to the list after Tori perused her portfolio and found multiple same-sex weddings… plus additional photos of the photographer marrying her own wife.
The whole time, Tori kept listing vendors in her notebook, and everything seemed a bit less daunting when I saw how few names she’d actually written down. The magazines and binders made it seem like we needed to comb through dozens upon dozens, but really, it didn’t take much to whittle each list down to a handful of names. Some were out of our price range. Some just weren’t what we were looking for. In short order, we’d curated lists that were much less intimidating than I’d expected.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“What about bridesmaids?” Mom looked over her glasses at each of us. “How many are you each thinking?”
“Uh…” My heart pounded. “I, um…” I cleared my throat. “I don’t… I don’t think I want bridesmaids.”
She turned to me, surprise etched all over her face. “Not even a maid of honor?”
I pretended to consider it, then shook my head instead of blurting out“Absolutelynota maid of honor.”I braced, expecting her to try to persuade me, but she just turned to Tori.
“What about you?”
Tori shrugged. “My sister will be a million months pregnant by then, so she’ll probably be glad I’m not making her wear a bridesmaids dress.”
“That’s fair,” Mom said. “I was about four months pregnant with Eric when Lacey got married.” She made a face. “The maid of honor dress fit fine, but I spent the whole ceremony trying not to throw up all over the flowers.”
That made all of us laugh, and we moved on to other subjects. Mom was apparently not attached to the idea of bridesmaids, and that was a huge relief. Not that I expected her to push anything—she was excited about all this, but she really didn’t want to take over or make it into her vision.
I wasn’t even sure why I was so relieved she hadn’t pushed this particular issue. I hadn’t thought she would, but… I don’t know, maybe I was just afraid someone would make me spell out why I didn’t want bridesmaids for this. Or more to the point, why I absolutelydid notwant a maid of honor.
The truth was whenever I’d envisioned my wedding, I’d never been able to conjure up what my bride would look like or even how I would be dressed. But my maid of honor had always been clear as day.
OfcourseI’d have Tori standing beside me. Whoelsewould I have there?
As we continued through vendor catalogs, it occurred to me that this could get weird down the line if I remarried after Tori and I “divorced.” Would my future wife think it was weird to have my ex-wife as my maid of honor? I mean, half of my friends had ex-girlfriends at their weddings, and several had had exes as bridesmaids, so it probably wouldn’t bethatweird. My straight friends and family would think it was weird, since they all got the vapors at the mere suggestion of an ex being invited to a wedding, never mind a member of the bridal party. My gay andlesbian friends? Nothing unusual. Hell, Marco had officiated the wedding between his ex-fiancé and his new husband.
So yeah, it wasn’t that unusual, and my straight friends and family would live with it. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I could stomach a little future awkwardness with them more than I could having someone else fill Tori’s shoes at this “wedding.”
Why do you care more about your maid of honor than your bride?
Probably because I haven’tmetmy bride yet.
And Tori’s been here since I was seven—who else couldpossiblybe my maid of honor?
Neither of us said much as Tori drove us home. I didn’t pass out in the passenger seat like I had after Christmas, but we just… didn’t talk. There wasn’t any hostile tension in the air—not like one of those rare times when we’d fought—but it felt like there was something unspoken. Like something we were both thinking but weren’t saying out loud.
Was this what people meant about the elephant in the room? Where everyone was painfully aware of it and just waiting for someone else to acknowledge it?
At home, we opened a bottle of Chardonnay, overfilled a couple of glasses, and settled on the couch. Neither of us had even said anything, but I was reaching for the bottle as she was taking the opener out of the drawer. By the time I had the bottle open, she had two of our biggest wineglasses on the counter. Those glasses were meant for red wine, but whatever—I just wanted a lot of something alcoholic, and apparently Tori was on the same page. Somehow, she always was.
Tori put the bottle on the coffee table, and we drank in silence for a moment. Tucker hopped up on the couch, paused for pets from Tori, and then crawled into my lap as he often did. He seemed to be the only one unaware that he was her cat.
I stroked over his long, fluffy back, and his claws clicked in and out of my jeans as he kneaded and purred. I laughed. “You’re a big baby. You know that?” More purring.
Tori laughed too, sounding a little tired. Our eyes met, and our humor faded.
With a sigh, I stared down at the cat. “Did today feel weird to you?”
