ONE
There were many reasons why Mara Jane Barretto loved owning Wildflower, a creative studio and flower shop in the middle of Quezon City. This part of the city was still chill, made up mostly of small businesses set up by upper-middle-class families. It was indie, but unpretentious. Accessible, but still quiet. Mara liked that small things still felt like they could grow on this side of Metro Manila, and she never wanted to leave. Here she could whip up fantasies of spectacular weddings and over-the-top events, and, for the ones willing to pay for it, make them real.
She didn’t like that she had to explain to strangers what she did for a living—what is a creative studio? Youstyleflowers? What do they need styling for? You used to work inmarketing?You leftthatforthis?Are you making money? Ah, you’re still single? Oh, single since birth? That explains a lot. Makes sense, makes sense.
Makes sense how, exactly? Mara did not want to know.
Anyway. A list of her favorite things about running Wildflower:
One, Wildflower was on a street lined with little boutique restaurants, other specialty shops like hers. She had a neighborhood café, a neighborhood Japanese restaurant with excellent sashimi, and a bakery that sold the most sinfulpain suisse. Since she graduated university ten, twelve years ago now, her world shrank quickly from the tall, congested spires of Makati to this quaint little street that she loved being a part of. Every morning, she got up, got dressed and hitched a ride with one of her sisters to the shop on their much, much longer way to work. In a country with an absolutely broken public transport system, this alone was a privilege, and a dream.
Two, Maralovedbeing in charge. She’d been called names for it, of course. Bossy, high standards, mataray. But she liked things to be a particular way, and people who understood that were the ones who stuck around. Her business thrived on being able to understand specific prompts, and one needed a firm hand in order to execute such specific visions. Things like, “I absolutely hate my boss but I have to get his retirement party decorated,” and, “Fake flowers for a Dungeons and Dragons session that’s also a wedding,” or in the case of today’s event, “All red, like bleeding love, but with, like, a bit of orange so it’s also fall.”
But Mara’s favorite thing about running Wildflower was when a client looked into her eyes—a little lost, a little helpless in the face of a major decision—and asked her favorite question in the world. One that made her feel competent and trusted, and most of all, needed.
The question being, “What wouldyoudo?”
It was usually a wedding client, too.What would you do, if it was your special day?
Ah, yes. What would Mara do. Whatwouldn’tMara do, really. Some days, she wanted a splashy, classic ceremony at Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. The resort had ancestral homes uprooted and shipped from all over the country (wild) and settled into a complex that looked like a world showcase at Epcot. She could picture renting out the place, guests strictly in barongs and Filipiñana. Mara would stay away from any kind of traditional flower and opt instead to deck the warm-toned exteriors in shades of green. She would choose long palm fronds as banderitas across the venue, huge anahaw leaves as a base for the arrangements, ferns to make them fuller. There would still be flowers, of course—maybe a few delicate sampaguita for true Dalagang Filipina elegance. She could picture herself hiring a drum and lyre band for when she and her new husband left the church. For a wedding like that, nothing would be subtle. It would be a boisterous and loud declaration of love, and some days, Mara could see herself with that.
But there were other days she wanted to eschew all that tradition and just go for the big, in-your-face punch of color. Forget the church wedding altogether—they could just get a priest to bless them at the venue, how modern! And because asking anyone to leave Manila was such a hassle (especially during the holidays), she would have to choose a venue that was intimate and elegant at the same time.
There was always the Nielsen Tower in Makati—an old airport since turned into a restaurant, so at least the food was settled. The walls were all white, and it had marble floors and a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. But Mara loved the windows. Big, huge windows with black wrought iron frames, curved around the wings of the building. It was the perfect backdrop to fill with the most colorful flowers in her arsenal.
She could see huge peonies in bright pink. Orchids in magenta, framing the sides of the arrangements. Birds of paradise with their bright pops of orange, yellow green mums and variegated anthuriums. The flowers would breathe life into the venue while matching the wedding party’s tropical jewel tones. She could arrange them to descend from the ceiling, adding clouds of baby’s breath to make it feel like a floral sky inside an old airport.
Did it matter who the groom was? What he thought about her fanciful notions? For a girl who had never had a boyfriend, that was a minor detail that didn’t really matter. That mental role was easily filled by any of her array of Korean crushes via delusion. Currently, for example, it was Jo Yihwan from East Genesis Project. He was appropriately aged, had nice hands, and he could play guitar. What more could a girl possibly want from an imaginary husband-to-be?
“Ate Mara?”
Not that she would know what else one could possibly want. Having only experienced the Eros kind of love from books, movies and music, the idea of romantic love was alien to one who had never experienced it before. It didn’t make her less qualified to do weddings of course—did a fantasy writer need to meet a dragon before they presumed volumes of lore about them?
But it did always make her wonder. Would it be nice, to have someone who loved you? Who wanted to gather everyone you loved, everyone important, and tell them that this person was the one for you? That there was no one else, till death do you part.
“Ate? Are you awake?”
It would be nice to have a wedding, to have people around you celebrate the fact that, hey, you found someone you think is wonderful! And your life is going to change, so here we are all, cheering you on!
“Si Ate? She’s not asleep.”
It could easily devolve into spectacle, sure. A very expensive, high-expectation spectacle that could slip away from you if you weren’t careful enough. But Mara had always been a careful person. And she probably wouldn’t choose anyone that wasn’t worth it.
“How do you know she’s not asleep?”
But how would she even know, if she had never dated anyone? Mara was fully convinced of the good parts of a relationship, the kilig, curl-your-toes, happy montage parts. It was the other parts she was unsure of.
“Because she isn’t snoring.”
Could she stand another person being that close? Could she evenletthem? How was she supposed to know, if she never had any experience in that area? Could she picture herself making compromises, learning to live with some nebulous somebody’s flaws and expectations? What if they changed? What if they woke up one day and decided they didn’t love her?
“Wow, as if siya hindi din snorer.”
Jo Yihwan could love her, of course. He’d said it on various live events and shows, at the end of every concert, and that hadn’t changed. Saranghae! But that was delusion, and delusion was easy. Delusion was fun, and hurt nobody, certainly not her. In delusion she happily stayed. Amen.
“Her eyes are open!”
“Mabel, she’s slept with her eyes open before.”
