The wedding date was set for the first Saturday in October.
After visiting two more reception possibilities, Camille realized that Jordan and James were stuck on the Countryside Inn. A subconscious bid to please Creed, no doubt, but she wasn’t going to get into that with them. At least the price was right and everyone was comfortable with the size of the room.
The guest list was another matter. They had haggled over the guest list and come up with a preliminary count, but Camille figured she had more weight on her end of the seesaw than Bridget did. The list of names might change during the coming weeks, but the limit would hold. She enjoyed the irony of playing the conservative to Bridget’s liberal, but her amusement was lost on Jordan. Bridal stress was already beginning to take its toll on her sense of humor, not to mention her loyalties. Wasn’t she still, after all, a Delonga?
“Burke, Mother,” Jordan reminded her over Saturday-morning coffee. “My name is still Burke, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Camille scanned the list of surnames—Mayfield, Marsh, Delonga, Burke. There was also an Iron Kettle and a couple of Spotted Horses. Bridget had been trying to add a whole host of Fraziers—Lauren’s new high-toned in-laws. Camille had finally given Bridget a number and told her to live with it. Privately, she’d given James his own number, but he’d said she could keep that as a cushion. His closest friends were taken care of in the wedding party.
James was such an agreeable young man.
“Do you want to keep your name?” Camille asked. “My romance with the idea of becoming ‘Mrs. Creed Burke’ was probably imprinted on us from birth in those days, but the name game became an issue with me. Part of it was identity, part business, part—”
“I don’t have time for an identity crisis, Mother,” Jordan interjected. She snapped up the neatly written list she had made on yellow paper and laid it next to Camille’s notes, hastily penned on the back of an envelope. “I’m talking about a list of names, not some big symbol of my person-hood. I don’t know what to do about the Burkes.”
Camille shrugged. Question marks still dotted her list. “Invite them.”
“All of them? I don’t even know half of them. I don’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, but he’s got so many relatives.”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Of course not. But where do you draw the line?”
“When it comes to hospitality, Indian people don’t send out invitations and they don’t draw a line. After we got married, they just spread the word that they were putting on a feed to celebrate, and people came.”
Camille smiled wistfully, remembering the night she and Creed had attended their first social function as Mr. and Mrs. Burke. He’d asked her whether she would mind going with him to “this thing my sisters insist on doing for us.”
“Why would I mind?” she’d asked. He’d shrugged diffidently.
Later she realized that once courtship was over, he didn’t know what to expect from her. He’d understood what she wanted from a suitor and a lover, but as her husband he was about to take her beyond the intimacy of two. He’d asked her to be his wife, and she’d surprised him by asking him to be her husband. Two affirmatives made a positive, which was pure bliss. But how would she take to the everyday truth of being the wife of whoever this man was beyond that handsome face and seductive voice? How would she fit into his family, his life, his very different world?
And how would he fit into the living ripples surrounding the one woman he’d promised to love?
She’d called her mother, who had declared her daughter’s bliss to be born of ignorance and refused to participate in the ritual sealing her ruin.
“Let’s just get a license and get married,” Camille had said.
He couldn’t comply fast enough. If his bride didn’t mind a civil ceremony, who was Creed to argue? They’d hopped into his pickup and headed for the courthouse.
She recalled the quick, sharp, unexpected pang of sadness she’d felt when the courthouse clerk had said, “The judge is ready for you now.” Camille had had her share of romantic fantasies about wandering troubadours and candlelit bowers, but a frou-frou wedding had never been part of her dream. Still, it would’ve been nice to have someone else there to witness their vows and wish them well. Some family member, some friend.
The long oak bench they’d waited on might have been a pew. The old courthouse corridor’s creaky floorboards might have made an aisle, and the judge’s chambers might have served as a sanctuary. But, oddly—perhaps because “might have been” were said to be the saddest of all sad words—Camille might have turned and run had the man beside her not taken her hand to his mouth and kissed it when they reached the door. It was a gallant gesture—a first for him. He’d wooed her with charm and sex, but now came a soft, sweet brush of icing on the cake. Gallantry.
She’d looked up as he raised his head. The confession in his eyes had startled her, then endeared him to her all the more. He was just as scared as she was. And just as eager.
There was no turning back, and no wish to do so.
Why, then, would he think she would mind when he took her to that little run-down community center for his sisters’ “feed”? She remembered feeling heartened and lifted by the good wishes she saw in the eyes of the people who had come to celebrate with them. His family. His boyhood friends. His community had wished them well from the very beginning, and with that simple celebration they had made a good beginning.
“We’re going to have to be flexible,” Camille told her daughter quietly. “I think your dad can help us find out who’ll come.”
“I hope so. But I don’t think they’ll show, and I don’t want to waste—”
“Let me worry about waste,” Camille said. “That’s my department.”
“I’m worried about wasting invitations.”
“They’re not that expensive.”
“Spaces,” Jordan barked. “If they don’t show, that’s a space wasted.”
Camille stared at her daughter. Pre-wedding jitters, she told herself. She was the bride, the queen for a day. A little self-centered attitude was to be expected. She glanced away, mentally reciting the Mother’s Motto: This, too, shall pass.
Again she found herself resorting to a reserve she hadn’t used in years. “We’ll talk to your dad about it.”
“His band’s really good. He’s really good. You guys, when you were dancing, you looked really…” Jordan’s voice dropped like a barometer. “Are you still in love with him?”
It was one of those heavy-air questions you could always feel coming.
“I still care about him.”
“Don’t play word games with me, Mother.”
Camille laughed. She wasn’t getting away with the easy lob. Apparently her days of soft-pedaling the topics of love and marriage were over with Jordan. It must have had something to do with being engaged.
“Caring about him is easy, but being in love with him is something else entirely.”
“What else?” Jordan urged. “Tell me what else, Mom. Woman to woman. It must have been love to begin with. Where did it go?”
Into you, Camille thought, then bit her tongue, thinking, How the hell do I know?
If she had to lie to somebody, it might as well be herself.
“Oh, sweetie, I can’t go there now. You don’t have time for an identity crisis. I don’t have time for a Creed Burke crisis.” Abruptly she reached for her new bible, flipping it open to the first chapter. “Now, according to Martha Stewart, we start planning for our flower order and our baubles and bows by determining our color palette and getting a theme going.”
“Color palette, Mom?” Jordan tossed aside her list. “Are you kidding? Theme?”
“I guess I know as much about color and theme as anyone, including Martha. Might as well get with the program. Do you have anything in mind?”
“A purple haze.”
Disgust? Derision from the girl who had started all this? Camille was doing her best to take this production seriously, and her daughter was being a smarty-pants.
“Purple is nice,” she said artlessly, squelching a laugh. “I don’t know about the haze part, unless you want a sixties feel. Maybe we should think seasonal.”
“Halloween?”
“He’ll wear black.” Camille touched a finger to her chin, making a pretense of pondering the possibilities. “You’ll wear ghostly white and carry orange mums. Bridesmaids on broomsticks would be cute. Bridget suggested chair covers, which made me laugh, but now I can see turning them into tombstones.”
“People actually do stuff like that, you know. You’ve got your Renaissance weddings, your rodeo weddings, your sky-or scuba-diving weddings, your—”
“Church weddings,” Camille put in. “Which seems pretty novel to me, as often as I’ve been to church lately. Notice I said ‘I.’”
“I do like purple,” Jordan said. “I don’t think we have to—”
“Girls!” Rosemary shouted on her way into the kitchen. “Look what I found! This”—ceremoniously, she placed a silver cake server, then a matching knife, on the table—“and this. They were in with my quilt fabrics, along with the scraps from my mother’s…well, that’ll be a surprise if I get to it, but I knew I’d put them all in a place where I would find them at the right time.
“And look what else I found.” Now on a roll, she spread the newspaper on the table between them and pointed to an advertisement. “A full-service wedding boutique has just taken over that big corner space in the Clear Lake Shopping Center. That’s practically right next door. They do almost everything, according to this. Flowers, tux rental, dresses, invitations—all that stuff. Of course, your dress is taken care of. Well?” Breathless now, Rosemary touched both women’s shoulders. “What do you think? Should we check it out?”
“I think we should shop around,” Camille said, sparing the paper no more than a glance. She was busy trying to remember whether she’d seen the cake-serving utensils before and wondering when her mother had started squirreling away her old treasures.
Rosemary stabbed the center of the ad with a blunt finger. “It says here they give discounts on multiple services. The more of their services you use, the better the discount.”
Camille took a second look at the newspaper, scanning with new interest. “We should definitely check that out.”
The shop was called Your Dream Wedding. Owner Valerie Florin promised to simplify everyone’s life by providing under one roof all the services a bride could wish for. A florist by trade, she was particularly proud of her picture albums showing bouquets and flower arrangements from past weddings. She admitted that it was generally the bridal gown samples that drew customers in, but when she was told that Jordan’s dress was already under construction, Valerie claimed that it was really her floral creations that sold her services.
Camille agreed that the flowers, which would determine the color palette, were a good place to start. She’d resigned herself to thinking about a one-day affair in such high-end decorator terms as “color palette.” She was an artist, after all. Putting her own talents to work would make Jordan’s day more personal. Not to mention less pricey.
From photographs and catalogs Jordan chose bouquet styles and varieties of flowers—sterling roses, purple iris, white stock and stephanotis, blue delphinium and periwinkle, hydrangea and freesia. Valerie made notes and headed for her flower coolers in the back of the shop to gather samples of real blooms. Camille was left in the showroom with her suddenly starry-eyed daughter. They were really doing it. They were ordering the first of many accoutrements deemed by the experts to be requirements for a beautiful wedding.
They had been seated at a small table, surrounded by more sample elements, soft lights and colors—lots of white, splashes of pink and lavender, touches of green and gold. Camille watched as Jordan took a turn around the small space, examining tall candelabras, lattice panels draped with white tulle and strings of tiny lights, a garden trellis covered with fake ivy, an arch. In the blink of a mother’s eye her child had leaped from dreams of sugarplum fairies to one of wedding sweets and bridal bouquets.
“I like the little white lights,” Jordan said. “They remind me of your Christmas branches on the fireplace.”
“We could do willow branches,” Camille said absently. But with the words a vision started taking shape in her mind. They had the bones—the room, the windows, the tables and chairs. “There’s such tradition in willow. Women’s baskets, men’s sweat lodges. We could use that wonderful curly willow, which would be related to tradition but more decorative.”
Inspired by her own resourcefulness, Camille rose from her chair to the impending occasion. “We could do the lattice panels with lights, too. And we could do swags with lights.”
“We?” Jordan turned to her, strangely alarmed. “You mean we’d have it done?”
“We’ll see. Maybe some of it, but I can do some of it myself. You decide what you want, and we’ll look at their prices.”
“As far as the room goes, I’m thinking just some—”
“Not balloons,” Camille said firmly, then remembered her role. “We’re not doing balloons, are we?”
“I don’t have any problem with balloons.”
“I’m sure Bridget does.”
“Aren’t you the one who keeps saying it’s not Bridget’s wedding?”
“I happen to agree on that point. Balloons are for birthday parties.”
Jordan turned on her with folded arms. “And you’re agreeing with…”
“You. It’s your wedding. Whatever you want.” Camille smiled. “You know, within reason.”
“I want beautiful flowers.”
“That’s my personal specialty,” said Valerie, returning on cue with a handful of fresh flowers. “And just look what you’ve chosen. These varieties complement each other beautifully, and with your garden theme you’ll want to feature your flowers throughout your decor.”
“Do we have a garden theme?” Jordan asked Camille.
“I thought someone said garden theme,” Valerie said. She named each flower, handing them to Jordan one by one.
Enchanted, Jordan smelled and touched and oohed and aahed.
“Would you like to make an appointment to plan your order?” Valerie asked her.
“I thought that was what this appointment was for,” Camille said.
Valerie drew herself up, assuming the expert’s stance. “Usually I sit down with the bride and we go over all the details.”
Not this time, Camille decided then and there. They’d already spent an hour and a half at this, and it wasn’t as though she didn’t know flowers. She wanted to know what they needed and what the cost would be.
“We’d like to do that now, if you have time. You’ll be working with both of us. I’m paying the bill.”
Valerie glanced at Jordan, who was sniffing her flowers with all the sweetness of a Disney character.
“Shall we begin with the bridal bouquet and work our way down from there?” Valerie said with a smile. She had them, even if it wasn’t quite where and when she might want them.
They went through all the members of the wedding party, choosing the shapes and sizes of bouquets, the number of stems. Valerie was amenable to Camille’s adding herbs from her kitchen garden. “Sage is very spiritual,” Camille explained. “And it’s symbolic of wisdom. That would be nice for the boutonnieres. Rosemary in the corsages for remembrance.”
“All right, now we have the wedding party, parents, and grandparents,” Valerie said. “Let’s move to godparents, favorite aunts and uncles, clergy—”
“Wait,” said Camille, coming down from the satisfaction of adding her herbs. “We’re putting flowers on all these people?”
“Organist, soloist, host and hostess at the church, host and hostess at the reception, guestbook attendant, gift attendant, personal assistant…”
“Whose personal assistant?”
“The bride’s.” Valerie leaned back and claimed the upper hand. “Are you sure you’re ready to do this? Perhaps I should give you a list of what you’ll need.”
“I have a better idea,” Camille said, leaning across the table and into the space Valerie had unwittingly vacated. She laid her hand on the notes Valerie had made. “You go down the list, and I’ll tell you whether we need flowers.”
“You see, that’s why I like to meet later with the bride. We need to determine not only who should get a corsage but also what size. And if you have stepmothers, you’ll want to use a different variety of flower. There’s a hierarchy of corsages, starting with the largest for the mothers, a bit smaller for grandmothers, and then down to—”
“People are supposed to be able to tell us apart by the size of the corsage?”
“That’s not the point, Mrs. Burke. The bride wants large, lush corsages for both mothers.”
“Jordan,” Camille began, turning to her daughter with a mischievous smile, “I have told you, haven’t I, that size doesn’t matter?”
“Mom…” The word was injected with a serious warning tone.
“What? It’s just us girls. What counts is quality.” Camille turned back to the florist. “We don’t have stepmothers. Not at the moment anyway. We can’t get into aunts because there could be a lot of them. Or not. We don’t know. And I think the guest book can tend itself.”
“It won’t get signed unless it’s tended.” Valerie tried to be subtle in her attempt to ease the list out from under Camille’s hand. “Mrs. Burke, if money is a big issue, then maybe you should tell us what you’d like to spend, and we can help you decide how to put that amount to the best—”
Camille wasn’t budging.
“I’d like to hear all your suggestions, Valerie. But we’ll decide. Jordan likes what you’ve come up with here, so we’re making progress. Let’s go down this list and put flowers to names. I’ve been studying up, and I know there are lots of other places we’ll want flowers besides wilting on shoulders.”
“Martha Stewart,” Jordan quietly explained to the shop owner.
Valerie smiled when she heard the name. Martha loved flowers.
“We do have a special running on our cake-and punch-table packages. That includes flowers and greenery.”
Camille’s ears fairly tickled. “A special?”
“And if you rent the candelabras from us, we do flowers on those, and you can get twice the mileage out of them if you use them in the church and have them moved to the reception.”
“Twice the mileage?” That sounded good. “Tell me about the special.”
They spent another thirty minutes making their list, checking it at least twice.
“Now, your dress is taken care of,” Valerie observed again once the flower list was finally complete to everyone’s current satisfaction. “How about your attendants?”
“We’ve looked at some styles, but we haven’t found what we want,” Jordan reported. “It should be something they can get some use out of. Something wearable.”
Camille smiled. Given a few more years, she trusted that Jordan would turn out to be a lovely little chip off the sensible old block.
“But my gown will be vintage forties style,” Jordan continued. “I’m thinking two-piece suits for my attendants. Long, slim skirts, maybe a little shoulder padding in the jackets. Do you have anything like that?”
“We can have it made. We can provide any style you want.” Valerie turned to Camille. “And we offer a multiservice discount. The more services you use, the bigger the discount. What other services might interest you? We do rent tuxedos in a variety of styles.”
“And tux rental is pretty standard, isn’t it?”
“At Your Dream Wedding, the groom’s tux is complimentary if you order the rest of them through us.”
“Good deal,” Camille agreed. “And you do invitations. What else is there?”
“Decorations and centerpieces generally fall in with flowers, but you’re already talking about four services. You’ll get a very nice discount.”
“Really? Well, that does sound good. It’s not that I’m unwilling to spend the money, but I always like to get a substantial bang for my buck.”
With her list safely bracketed by her elbows, Valerie smiled over steepled fingers. “We can certainly provide you with a first-rate bang, Mrs. Burke.”
By the time she stopped laughing, Camille had forgotten to correct the woman on her name.