I slump down on the floor and cover my face with my hands. Josie abandons her position on the porcelain throne to join me.
“Listen,” she says. “I know it seems like the end of the world, but it’s going to be okay.”
“Is it?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “We just have to look on the bright side and be optimistic.”
“I hate to sound like a wet mop, Jo, but I’m going to need your help figuring out what the bright side is in all this,” I sniff.
“The bright side is you are a smart, strong, successful woman, and you can handle this. You’re a wedding planner!” She smiles with way too much sunshine for my current mood.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask.
“You make a living juggling a million details under unpredictable circumstances for bridezillas. If you can handle that, a baby will be a piece of cake,” she proclaims. I have my doubts, but I look at her and she nods with a smile.
“Babies are expensive,” I tell her. “And it’s the middle of winter. I don’t have another wedding to plan for 2 months. I’m literally living off a little nest egg right now.”
“I have a feeling something will come up soon. I don’t know, Charlotte. I know it seems like the end of the world, but what if it’s actually the beginning?”
“The beginning of my demise, maybe,” I mutter, but she grabs my hand and shakes her head insistently.
“No. The beginning of something great,” she says. While my friend’s positivity usually makes me feel better, right now I’m having trouble seeing how this could be anything but a crap shoot. This is one cloud that may not have a silver lining.
Later that night, after reorganizing my refrigerator, I grab my laptop and sit down on my couch with a glass of wine. Then I remember all those little pink lines and sigh, pushing the glass out of reach.
Pregnant. How am I pregnant? How?
I shake the question out of my mind to avoid another downward spiral, and open my email tab instead.
“Oh,” I say, clicking on an unread message. It’s an inquiry for a wedding.
Looking for a wedding planner.
Highly recommended. Love the reviews.
Perfect for the job.
All-inclusive! We want someone who can handle EVERY detail because we are planning on getting married ASAP!
The wedding will take place over the course of a week at a ski resort.
No budget.
As I skim through the message, I can literally hear Josie’s words in my head. A speech about manifesting positive events in your life. I’m a little surprised we could manifest it from a meltdown on my bathroom floor, but I’ll take it. I mean, heck, with words likeski resortandno budgetit’s hard to be a Negative Nancy, even for me.
I scroll to the bottom of the email to where the contact information is. Holly Wentz. I start to send her a text, but then decide against it. I would rather talk to her over the phone. It’sa better way to get someone’s vibe before you start working with them. Hearing their voice makes it much easier to feel them out than texting or emailing.
Holly answers right before the call goes to voicemail. “Hello?”
“Holly? This is Charlotte. You emailed me about?— “
“Wedding planner! Yes!” She squeals. “Listen, you have no idea how happy I am that you called! My boyfriend, no, I mean fiancé, I haven’t gotten used to saying that yet. We have only been engaged for like two weeks; Dad just told us he is going to pay for the entire wedding. I mean everything, from every place card to every candied almond. Once I started looking into wedding things, well, I got overwhelmed!” She laughs and I smile. Her energy is positively contagious, and I can tell immediately that I am going to love working with her.
“It most certainly can be, but I am here to help. I can handle everything from cakes to caterers to before parties and after parties and everything in between. I even have a photographer that I worked closely with so you won’t have to consider that an outside expense,” I tell her, referring to Josie.
“This is a dream come true!” She says with emotion in her voice. And this is why I love my job. I may be a realist, but I’m also a romantic. It’s one of my few contradicting personality traits.
“So here’s the thing,” she goes on, “even though we’re not on a budget, we are on a timeframe. I want to get married within the next couple of weeks. And the wedding itself is going to be about a week long. Friends and family will all be staying at a ski resort in the Rockies. It’s going to be beautiful and amazing, and I can’t wait! But I’m definitely going to need a lot of help. I’m a little too spontaneous for planning things on this caliber. If you knowwhat I mean,” she laughs, and I laugh at the irony of her choice of words.
