Page 56 of Wedding or Not

Like at the restaurant last week, once I get tickled, I can’t seem to stop.

I have to fight not to giggle in response to each of his comments.

For the next shoot, I wear a sky-blue dress and my hair in a loose braid. This one is staged in the wedding gazebo.

This time I tell Wes firmly that he isn’t to make me laugh because I don’t want to get in trouble with all these very serious people from the magazine. Or with Natalie, who arranged the whole thing and is hovering with deep intensity.

So Wes is silent the whole time, but I can see the dry comments he isn’t making in his eyes and his expression. So I keep wanting to giggle anyway.

Finally I do, falling out of our swoony, romantic pose in a burst of helpless laughter.

“This is entirely inappropriate,” Wes says with an impressively disapproving expression.

I give him a playful swat on the chest. “It’s all your fault!”

“Why is it my fault?”

“Because you’re making me laugh with your eyes.” I’m half aware of the photographer snapping photos of our silly altercation, but I’m more aware of the fond warmth on Wes’s face.

“You’re imagining things.”

“I am not. You’re doing it on purpose. Admit it!”

He finally falls into laughter too, bringing me close in a loose, one-armed hug before he seems to remember we have an audience. “I admit nothing,” he says into my hair.

I’m flushed and happy and a little embarrassed as I pull away from him.

“Don’t stop,” the photographer says. I haven’t seen him smile once all day. “This is good stuff.”

We move to the platform by the duck pond next and then to the wildflower fields. I wear the same red-and-orange floral dress with cap sleeves for both.

We wrap up in the English garden with me in pale pink and Wes in gray trousers, a blue Oxford, and a blue-and-gray sweater-vest.

It’s been a strange day, and it feels like I keep shifting from a weirdly stressed flurry to heights of warm amusement.

They have us walk toward each other on the main path of the landscaped garden with its flowers in various shades of pink and its sculpted trees and classic columns and statuary.

It’s not one of the normal places we host weddings, but it’s always been my favorite garden.

And there’s something incredibly poignant about how we move toward each other amid the flowers and foliage. I don’t know why it gets to me, but it does.

If swooning had a feeling in my chest, it’s this.

It’s exactly this.

When we reach each other, we hold the pose for a while.

Then the photographer says, “Go ahead and kiss.”

Wes and I stare at each other. His hand is on my waist, and one of mine is on his shoulder.

“Is it okay?” I ask at last, soft so only he can hear. “We’re not supposed to.”

“Y-yeah. Sure. It’s fine with me if it’s fine with you.”

I gulp. “It is.”

“Okay.”