“Have a Santa wedding.”
“Winter wonderland wedding.”
“In June?”
“If they’re in the Arctic, it’s winter all the time.”
Etna meets my eye as the entire team starts throwing out ideas while we practice. Even our second goalie offers, “Pretty in lace” as I skate around his net. I grin, tapping my stick against the pole so he knows I heard him.
This goes on for quite some time and only stops when Coach Merrill blows his whistle. We stop what we’re doing and gather around. “Are you really talking wedding details during practice?” he asks, giving Etna and me an amused look.
“Sorry, Coach,” I say. “I asked Julian if hockey was a lame wedding theme and it kind of took off from there. Didn’t mean to distract.”
Coach shakes his head. “Strangely enough, I think you were all in the zone. You unintentionally made a game of it—calling out a theme right before you took a shot. I haven’t seen you all so focused in quite some time.”
“Thanks?” I say, earning myself a few chuckles.
“Let’s change it up and see if that focus remains in a different game. Four teams of keep away—three on one. Go.”
I’m not sure how successful our focus is. Now that the team knows Coach is aware, I think they’re getting more distracted than anything. There’s certainly a lot more laughter than usual. By the end of practice, we were no closer to finding a theme we liked than we were when I asked Julian about a hockey theme.
But it was probably one of the first practices in a long time where we laughed so hard. It was a pretty good practice, too.
However, when we climb into the car, Etna and I look at each other. “I’m getting frustrated with this theme thing.”
“I hate to say we just choose something random and go for it, but… same, bro.”
“I know we were going to head to my house and pack, but how about we float on the lake for a while in the boat with some snacks and see what we can find online? One last ditch effort. A big fucking push. Weneedto decide something today since it’s literally holding everything else up.”
I nod. “Yep, let’s do that. But I’m not in the mood to prepare snacks. Want to stop at the store?”
We end up buying over $100 in snacks. I’m not sure if we’re just super hungry or if this one bag of snacks cost an insane amount of money. The one bag seems to be the answer to the question, though.
We change into our swim trunks, get the cooler filled with ice and drinks, and head down to the dock where our pontoon is tied up. It doesn’t take us long to split tasks and push off. We have it down to a science and I love it.
Once we’re closer to the middle of the lake, we cut the engine and cuddle up together on the soft bench under the canopy with the tablet and I pull up the aesthetic boards site. My first search is ‘unusual wedding themes’ because we’ve already decided the most common ones are boring as fuck.
The first board we see is a black wedding cake with skulls and dark flowers. The next one shifts to an all-white setting. Which might be nice, except it looks like a hodgepodge of things. There are white Christmas ornaments hanging with pearls and it looks… a little tacky.
The next one I’m assuming is supposed to be space. There’s a cardboard cutout of a moon under an arch with Christmas lights hanging from it.
The next is an underwater one that makes us pause.
“Are they actually under the ocean?” I ask.
I tap the image to pull it up. There are dozens of white fish hanging from the ceiling, which is covered in white bubbles. I can’t tell what any of it is made from? Styrofoam? Plastic? Butwhat has us curious is that the room looks round and the walls look like the thick glass panels to an aquarium. I’d be convinced of this except I don’t see anything besides the deep blue color.
“Huh,” Etna answers. “It’s cool, but I’m not sure I want that.”
“Or that we could pull it off at our venue.”
The next board is just two champagne flutes, but the stems are dragons curling together to make a heart, one dragon on each flute.
Moving on…
A wedding cake that’s covered in pearls and brooches. It reminds me of Roma. Like when you searchRomani people, you see the stereotypical gemstones and bright colors.
The next cake is covered in wildflowers.
