 Wedding
Season
Sarah is a wedding planner hiding a rather inconvenient
truth – she doesn't believe in love. Or not for herself, anyway.
But as the confetti flutters away on the June breeze of yet another
successful wedding she somehow finds herself agreeing to organise
two more, on the same day and only two months away. And whilst her
celebrity bride is all sweetness and light, her own sister soon
starts driving her mad with her high expectations but very limited
budget.
Luckily Sara has two tried and tested friends on
hand to help her. Elsa, an accomplished dress designer who likes
to keep a very low profile, and Bron, a multi-talented hairdresser
who lives with her unreconstructed boyfriend and who'd like to go
solo in more ways than one. They may be very good at their work
but romance doesn't feature very highly in any of their lives.
As the big day draws near all three women find that
patience is definitely a virtue in the marriage game. And as all
their working hours are spent preparing for the wedding of the year
plus one, they certainly haven't got any time to even think about
love; or have they?
Chapter One
Sarah stood by the lych-gate and surveyed the perfection of the
summer morning. It was June and the sun was shining with the promise
of a perfect day. The church was an early English gem, surrounded
by closely mown, dew-spangled grass, ancient, lichen-covered gravestones
and clipped yews. She’d already seen Sukie, the florist, who’d
been there since dawn, and now, some of her anxiety left her. Two
years of work had come to fruition. It was all going to be all right.
Then she screamed as someone appeared from behind a tomb. ‘Agh!
Hugo! You brute! You gave me such a fright!’ As her beating
heart caught up with her brain and she knew she wasn’t being
attacked, by a stranger at least, she went on: ‘You had me
thinking it was Halloween for a moment there.’
Hugo, tall, blond and rumpled, always gave Sarah the impression
that he’d just got out of bed and not his own.
‘Sarah, you’re so sweet, I should give you up for Lent,’
he drawled in reply.
Sarah smiled. He was one of the best photographers she dealt with
and they always exchanged sallies and insults, but she had deliberately
never got to know him as a friend – she felt it was more sensible
to keep the relationship strictly professional. ‘We both seem
to have got our seasons mixed up.’
‘As long as we’ve got the day right. Perfect for it,
huh?’
Sarah nodded. ‘And you’ll love the bride. She’s
really beautiful.’
‘Bridesmaids?’
‘Darling. Two little sweeties – we won’t call
them angels until we know how they behave – and one big one,
to keep them in order. Heavenly dresses.’
‘Second families to worry about? Bride and groom’s parents
still married to each other and pitching up?’
‘Yup. Marriage does work for some people, apparently.’
She smiled again slightly, pretending she was joking.
Hugo rumbled his amusement. ‘Don’t you believe in “happy
ever after” then?’
‘Not very often. Which is why I think it’s important
that the wedding is as wonderful as it can possibly be.’ She
gestured to the scene of perfection before them. ‘It might
be the only happy memory.’
Hugo inspected the dew that had gathered on his perfect shiny shoe.
‘Honestly, Sarah, if the people who pay you to organise all
this knew how you feel …’
‘They don’t need to know about my feelings, only about
my ability to find the perfect venue and a personable photographer
who makes everyone look fabulous.’
He chuckled again, taking the hint that she needed to get on, along
with the compliment. ‘So, anything I need to know?’
Sarah considered. ‘I don’t think you should have any
trouble. The bride’s mother has put an awful lot of energy
into this and is very anxious that nothing happens to spoil that,
but she’s got a great hat. I’m sure she’ll succumb
to your ready charm.’
Sarah could never understand why she was the only one who realised
Hugo’s ready charm was part of his stock-in-trade as a photographer,
but she admitted that, for a wedding planner, she did have more
than the usual amount of cynicism. And for good reason; she hadn’t
been in the business more than a couple of years and already two
of the perfect weddings she had organised had broken up, one barely
eight months after the happy pair drove off in a cloud of dried
delphinium petals. Five of the six girls from her school who had
got married the moment they hit twenty-five had since separated.
There was also her sister’s debacle of a marriage, not to
mention (and Sarah never did) her own heartbreak, recovered from
but not forgotten. No, in Sarah’s eyes, happy-ever-after was
the rare exception that proved the rule.
‘Well, I’ll just prowl around a bit more,’ said
Hugo, unaware of Sarah’s thoughts. ‘Find somewhere really
picturesque to take the less formal shots.’
‘Try to avoid grass stains on the dresses, if you can. Please!
I always get complaints.’
He tipped his head slightly, and closed his already heavy-lidded
eyes, indicating that while he heard her request, he wasn’t
necessarily going to concede to it.
‘It’s all right for you! No one ever moans to you!’
‘Because I’m the best,’ he said simply.
And because he was, and they both knew it, she just said, ‘I’d
better get back to the hotel to make sure everyone’s there
who should be, and not too many people who shouldn’t.’
She frowned. ‘I’m still not convinced it wouldn’t
have been better to have the reception at the bride’s home
– it’s fabulous, but they decided it was less upheaval
to have it a hotel. It is a very good hotel, of course. But the
money!’ She raised her hands in a gesture of amazement. ‘Now,
I must get on.’
She turned away, aware of his sleepy gaze on her back. She hoped
he wouldn’t get the bridesmaids to lean against lichen-covered
gravestones and thus stain their dresses for ever, but accepted
that for him getting the right shot was vital and nothing much else
came into consideration. She was good at managing people and she
usually got what she wanted out of them, but she was never convinced
that Hugo took any notice of her at all.
As she walked back to her car she wondered if Ashlyn was the sort
of bride who would encourage people to open the champagne before
the wedding and turn what should be a morning of solid preparation
into an extension of the hen party. But her mother would probably
put a stop to anything like that. A glass for everyone during the
final hair and make-up session was fine, but only one!
She arrived to a diorama of potential tragedy. Everyone was more
or less static when they should have been calmly getting on with
dressing the bride.
Instead, Ashlyn was sitting at the dressing table in a chemise,
stockings and French knickers, with her mobile phone in her hand,
tears of rage adding the wrong sort of sparkle to her eyes. Elsa,
the dressmaker, waiting to help her into the dress now hanging on
the back of the door, stood awkwardly, inspecting her nails and
picking bits of fluff off her black trousers.
Bron, in charge of hair and make-up, had also stepped back. Ashlyn’s
long and slippery tresses were half up, half down, and her frantic
texting had threatened her French manicure. The perfect make-up
already needed reapplying.
‘What’s happened?’ demanded Sarah, instantly
aware she was witnessing an unfolding calamity.
There was a moment’s tense silence and then the bride answered:
‘My fucking bridesmaid has decided not to come!’
Cover illustration by Sophie Griotto; Cover: www.headdesign.co.uk
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