that, all your techie friends will show up in Converse and shorts,” Ruby complained.
“What’s wrong with that?” Zack asked, surprised, and Alex and Eleanor exchanged a look of amusement, and knew that Ruby was right. Zack always looked like he’d dressed in clothes he’d picked up from the floor.
“I want everyone to look nice at the wedding,” Ruby insisted. Especially if she wore her grandmother’s exquisite dress, she wanted Zack in a real suit. “It won’t kill them to look like grown-ups for a change.” Zack grumbled about it but finally conceded. Ruby told her grandmother that she didn’t want to wear her fabulous wedding dress surrounded by a sea of guys looking like they were on their way to the beach or to play basketball. And Eleanor agreed. They put “coat and tie and cocktail attire” on the invitation, to dress them up a little.
Ruby took Zack to buy a suit in San Francisco, since he said he didn’t own one. He was one of the richest men in America and he didn’t own proper clothes.
When they got back from Lake Tahoe at the end of August, Eleanor got busy with all the details for the wedding. The flowers, the food, the cake, she checked the tablecloths at the Hamilton School and asked them to order new ones. She met with the florist several times at the school, and tried to re-create the same atmosphere and look of her own wedding, without going to the extremes her parents had fifty years before. There had been garlands over every doorway, then. Eleanor managed with just two. The dinner tables were set up in the ballroom, and there was still enough room for the band, and the guests to dance.
Eleanor found the time to pick out a dress for herself. It was navy blue lace with a matching coat. The wedding dress was hanging and ready in the guest room, with the shoes Ruby had chosen to go with it. She and her grandmother were the same height, but the shoes Eleanor had worn were tiny. She still had small, narrow, elegant feet. Modern women had bigger feet.
Since Zack’s parents weren’t on good terms after the divorce, they decided not to give a rehearsal dinner, which upset Zack at first and Ruby convinced him was okay, but he hated the fact that they couldn’t make the effort for him to be civil for one evening. His mother was bringing her jerk of a husband to the wedding, according to Zack, and his father was bringing his current girlfriend who was a year older than Ruby. They had met through a dating service and Zack was annoyed. Zack and Ruby were going to go out for dinner with her grandparents the night before the wedding.
Zack was already working on new concepts for networking that were more intricate than the concept he’d sold for a billion dollars. He had only just begun his meteoric climb in the high-tech world. He loved what he was doing, and he couldn’t wait to be married to Ruby. When he left her the night before the wedding, he kissed her and they lingered at the front door for a few minutes.
“I can’t wait till tomorrow,” he whispered.
“Me too.” She smiled. They were perfectly suited to each other.
She lay awake in her bed for hours that night, thinking about him, and the dress she was going to wear the next day. She couldn’t wait for Zack to see it.
Chapter 16
It was a golden October morning when Ruby woke up on the day of her wedding. Her grandmother came to give her a hug, and was busy all morning after that, checking on the last details.
The ceremony was going to be at six o’clock at Grace Cathedral, on Nob Hill, which was newly built with its spectacular bronze doors since Eleanor and Alex’s wedding. The guests would then wander across the street to the Hamilton School, the old Deveraux mansion, where the reception was being held.
Alex kept busy and stayed out of the women’s path all day. The hairdresser came at two and did Ruby’s hair in a simple chignon, similar to the style Eleanor had worn but without the finger waves to frame her face. She attached the tiara to Ruby’s head securely, and at five o’clock Eleanor helped her put on the dress that Ruby had been dreaming about since she’d seen it in July. Then they settled the veil over her tiara. It was