parents are thinking of inviting?” she’d asked Tom as nonchalantly as she could.
“Oh, I don’t know. My mom said something like a hundred and fifty, I think.”
Riley’s hand had stopped turning the pages in the binder of samples. “You’re kidding.”
Tom peered up from his binder. “No, why? Is that a problem?”
Riley didn’t know where to begin, whether she should start by saying that her family was so small—as in, infinitesimally small—that she could probably narrow her entire guest list down to thirty people, including her closest friends. That aside from a few cousins whom she saw once every decade, it was only her father, a handful of aunts and uncles, and if Tom’s family had one hundred and fifty guests at the wedding, then the tables would be embarrassingly lopsided. Not to mention that every guest meant another meal to pay for, another party favor to be ordered and a hell of a lot more booze.
“Honey, that could easily turn into a two hundred–person wedding.”
Tom shrugged and went back to scanning the invitation samples. “Guess I hadn’t given it much thought.”
Which was fair. They hadn’t focused on the particulars yet. But had her fiancé forgotten all they’d talked about when they first got engaged? How they’d imagined a simple, intimate wedding? They’d even considered eloping, and now suddenly a wedding for two hundred people was possibly in the cards.
Riley struggled to keep her voice from trembling. “I get it. Neither of us has given this day as much thought as your mother has,” she said jokingly. “But, seriously, we’re going to have to rein her in, trim that number substantially.” She hated the way she sounded. Like a drill sergeant.
“All right?” His eyebrows furrowed in seeming confusion. “Whatever you want, honey. It’s your day.”
“But it’s not just my day!” she’d exclaimed, setting the book down on the table as if it were suddenly too heavy to hold. “That’s my whole point. It’s our day, and I was kind of hoping you’d be a little more heavily invested in it.”
“Okaaay.” He set the binder down. “I’m listening. Talk to me.”
Riley shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get all wedding-hysterical on you, but I feel like I’m stressing out—which is precisely what I promised I wouldn’t do—and we’re a good year away from the wedding. What’s going to happen when we’re only a few months or weeks away?” She stopped, filling her lungs with air. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d love some more input from you, so it’s not me making all the decisions.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m here, aren’t I? That’s what I’m trying to do. We’re looking at invitations today, right? Figuring out what we like and don’t like?”
She nodded, bit her lip.
He leaned in and whispered, “Have you been reading that awful pink book again?” And with Tom’s mention of the dreadful pink book, the balloon of sudden panic growing inside her had burst with a satisfying pop!
“Maybe?” When they first got engaged, Tom’s mom had gifted Riley one of those bride-to-be manuals, complete with a built-in planner leading up to I-Do Day. It was filled with annoying checklists of what to do when. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m freaking out for no reason. I guess this just makes it all seem very real.”
She picked up the binder again, and after a few minutes, paused on a Save the Date card with a pleasingly guileless typeface, a font similar to that of the New Yorker magazine. Not a single, girly curlicue in sight. Below the type was the emblem of the peace sign.
“It’s okay, I guess,” Tom said when she showed it to him. “Seems a little artsy-fartsy, though. I mean, aren’t these things supposed to have a theme?”
“But that is a theme,” she protested. “Peace, love, harmony. All those things.”
“I suppose.” He appeared unconvinced. “How about something nautical? Maybe a sailboat, considering we’re planning to marry near the water.”
“You don’t think that’s, I don’t know, cliché?”
“How should I know?” He laughed. “Listen, this is crazy. We don’t even have a date yet—or a place. Why don’t we just agree on the color and typeface for now?”
“Deal,” Riley had said, relieved to have that much decided.
“No peace sign,” Hannah says now when Riley fills her in. “Definitely not.” She helps Riley step into a dress with reams of tulle, like an inverted flowerpot. For the moment, they’ve eluded the saleswoman and have hidden themselves away in