Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Before I get carried away though, something on my feed distracts me. A wedding photo, and not just any wedding photo.
It’s Matthew and Emma!
I bring my phone closer to my face and almost bruise my finger with how fast I click on the post to enlarge the image. Oh wow. Matthew certainly took my advice. From the looks of it, he and Emma ran off and got hitched in Vegas. In the picture, an Elvis impersonator with thick sideburns stands off to the side affecting the King’s signature smirk and finger-point pose. Matthew’s wearing a bright blue tuxedo with ruffles and Emma’s in a wedding dress so short I think I see butt cheek. They’re wrapped around each other tightly, face to face, and they look blissfully happy.
I’m stunned. It’s hard to believe there was no fancy wedding, no cocktail hour followed by dancing in the Shanghai ballroom, no all-white bouquet courtesy of Fiona and her team.
His parents must be livid.
I laugh and call out to Sawyer, “You won’t believe what I just saw on Facebook!” then I consider commenting or liking the post, but I hear little Anvil crying through the baby monitor.
Just kidding.
There is no Anvil. Much to Marge and Queenie’s dismay, we named our son Tucker, and he’s an adorable three-month-old with curly brown hair, dimples like his dad, and ideally the IQ of Einstein, but we’ll accept any lesser-known physicist as well. As of yesterday, he started rolling over on his own. I’m shocked he’s progressing with gross motor skills at all, let alone on schedule, because the boy never touches the ground. When I bring him into the Wildflower Weddings office—which I do a few times a week—Marge and Queenie come to blows over holding him.
“You’re hoggin’ him again, Marge!”
“I just got him. Back off!”
Of course the only reason I’m able to bring Tucker into the office at all is because finally—shockingly—Wildflower Weddings is no longer housed in a chaotic dumpster fire. The office is clean, dare I even say organized, and it’s all thanks to my man Tucker. When I told Queenie I didn’t feel safe bringing a newborn into the office with the current state of things, it finally lit a fire in her.
“Oh ho, no ma’am. You’re not keepin’ my grandbaby from me! Someone throw away that stack of boxes! And why the hell do we still have toy airplanes hanging from the ceiling? One fell on my head yesterday!”
While I was still recovering at home, reveling in Tucker’s newborn days, Queenie enlisted David, Lindsey, Marge, Cassie, and Sawyer, and the six of them spent an entire weekend clearing the place out, ripping out old decor, replacing the stained carpet, and making it absolutely, one hundred percent babyproof.
Now when future brides walk into our office, they’re greeted by four neatly arranged desks, a fully stocked coffee station near the front couch, and a black and white portrait gallery of past clients. There’s a special designated spot just for Tucker and Cassie’s youngest replete with a playpen and more toys than any two kids could ever need, and most importantly of all, the front door now reads Wildflower Weddings.
While we still occasionally hit bumps in the road—Queenie will forget to send a batch of invoices or Marge will rudely hang up on someone just trying to book a consultation—I’m happy to be here working with our ragtag team. I get to do what I love, and I have all the flexibility and built-in childcare I could ask for. Eventually, I have plans to expand the business, especially concerning our online presence. (Marge volunteered to be our social media manager recently. Her first Instagram post was a picture of her foot she didn’t realize she’d uploaded. It got three likes and a comment from a user named @Dman809932 requesting her OnlyFans username.)
But for now, I like things exactly as they are. We have all the time in the world to expand. In the meantime, we have more brides on the schedule than ever, and this one lady in particular is a real piece of work: me.