Immediately after Ariel had announced her engagement, she and I began making wedding plans. Ariel has long had very simple ideas about her wedding. She loved her cousin's simple mountaintop ceremony and pot luck reception a couple of years ago in New Hampshire. It was stunningly beautiful, held at the Rocks Estate, a natural reserve and Christmas Tree farm, with the couple taking their vows against a backdrop of the surrounding White Mountains.
The banquet tables, inside a big barn-like structure, were lush with the bounty of family and friends. A live bluegrass band provided music well into the night, and a serve yourself drink station was set up in a small wood-shingled outbuilding. Mason jars and borrowed vases in all shapes and sizes held flowers from roadsides and the backyards of friends. The bride and her mother baked the wedding cakes themselves, and Ariel and I decorated them with fresh flowers and strawberries. And, uh, the topper: a wooden mannequin, dressed in a Cinderella blue sparkling gown and tiara, and a Transformer. Yeah, you read that right: a Transformer. The mannequin bride towered over her Transformer groom, an amusing paradox, given that the actual bride is such a tiny, fragile thing: she probably wears about a size ZERO.Don't cha just HATE that? A ZERO. Life is so unfair.
Well, neither Ariel nor I are a size zero, and I am definitely on a big-time diet. I have no intention of going through that whole 'Extra Firm Control' girdle debacle again. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
We decided that we needed a meeting, in order to set some parameters and toss around ideas. The six of us, Fred and I, Ariel and Eric, and Prince Charming and Cinderella, met for lunch one day about a month ago. Fred was on guard from the get-go. "Who's gonna pay for this lunch?" he asked me.
See what I'm up against?
We ran over some ideas for the date, the place, the food, and the decorations. Ariel is so organized: she already had a notebook full of ideas and an estimated guest list of about sixty people, and had printed out a catering menu from Calypso Cafe. She outlined the foods she'd like to serve, and the estimate came to $722. I thought that was a great price, but Fred looked at it as 3/4 of his entire budget. Ariel knew she wanted a simple white or ivory gown, probably no more than $200, she said, quickly adding that she intended on paying for that herself. For the cake, she wanted Publix to bake a very non-traditional three layered affair; we were probably looking at another $200 for that and the groom's cake: Eric had given Ariel creative control of the wedding, but he had to have a Ninja Turtle cake.
What is it with men and Transformers and Ninja Turtles?
"Now, I don't intend for you guys to spend any money on the dress or the rings or the liquor, since you don't drink at all," Ariel said. Whew. I knew that would be a relief to Fred. "And, I figure we can get some alstroemeria and daisies and a few other cheap flowers from Kroger and Walmart and make our own bouquets and centerpieces," she added.
Cinderella volunteered that she had plenty of the very chic glass block vases she had bought for her reception; Ariel was free to borrow them. She also had plenty of tulle, her toasting goblets, and maybe some more stuff...she'd check with her mother. "What are you thinking about for your colors?" I asked. "Multi colors! Bright colors!" Ariel said enthusiastically. Bright, multi colors for a wedding? O..kay... maybe it would work. Sure, that wedding on the mountaintop had bright multi colors. But that had been wildflowers. Hmmm... I wasn't quite picturing this yet. 
"And how many attendants will you have?" I wanted to know. She wasn't sure; one, or maybe none, she said. No attendants? No bridesmaids? How about a flower girl or two? Her little second cousins would be divine in ankle length pastel billowing gowns, strewing rose petals ahead of the path for the bride. "No, I don't think we should have children," Ariel pronounced.
Oh no, not again! How was I going to explain another no-children wedding to our families? I urged her to think it over. She had valid reasons: she teaches first grade, and knows the children in her class so much better than her own little second and third cousins; if she were to have children, she'd want her class to be included, which would mean their parents would be included, which, in turn, would mean more people, ergo more money... And she really didn't want them to see their very responsible teacher drinking a bit and dancing and cutting loose. Oh, I GUESS I could see that... And, we really didn't want children around where there was going to be drinking, anyway, did we? Oh, I GUESS not,...but wasn't there SOME way we could include...? I left it like that. After all, it's Ariel's wedding, not mine. I'd just have to build up my nerve to tell our family members that their little darlings would have to stay home with a sitter.
"And, we don't have to hire a professional photographer," Ariel was saying, "We'll just have some disposable cameras on each table and I'm sure we'll get some great pictures that way." I knew that would make Fred happy, but a few professional shots would have been so nice...Eric was hopeful that he would be able to snag a great deal on a ballroom for the ceremony and reception at the upscale hotel where he worked. They had already looked into having the entire affair at a park, but alcohol presented a problem, and you always had to consider rain... "I thought you were gonna have it in our backyard," Fred interjected. Ariel explained about the cost of renting a tent, in case of that rain. I confirmed that a tent would be way over our budget, and there was just no way we could have a sit down dinner for sixty people in our living and dining rooms. Thank goodness, Fred didn't even mention utilizing the basement. (He HAD suggested that as overflow seating for Charming's rehearsal dinner - our concrete block walled, concrete floored, open-to-the-garage-and-water-heater basement. That's my Fred.)
How about the date? Already the wedding had gone from late summer to fall to Memorial Day weekend to early July. Now it had changed to late July. Ariel would be in grad school by then, but would be between teaching semesters. Eric's brother, in Pennsylvania, had already asked what the weather would be like in Tennessee in late July. Eric had told him, in a word: HOT.
We discussed a few other details: favors, drinks, china (china = nice plastic disposables) and linens, (Fred: CHINA and LINENS?!) and invitations. Ariel was certain she could get nice invitations at Walmart and print them herself.
Major details hashed out, Ariel did some quick figuring and came up with a figure just over $1500. I didn't dare look at Fred. He wasn't saying A WORD. "I ain't payin' no thousand dollars" had just grown to over $1500. It was on the way home that he SHOCKED me, SHOCKED ME, I say, by conceding that $1500 didn't sound too bad. Whoa. Was that really Fred? MY Fred?
Little did he know that was only the beginning.
Next: Finding a reception site.
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