“Now. Here’s what I’m thinking for my bouquet and the bridesmaids. White tea roses, white Stargazer lilies, pale, pale yellow stephanotis. Hand-dyed ribbons in the colors of the girl’s dresses.”
She slid over to the next board. “These are the girl’s dresses. I’m having ten attendants. I would have kept it at eight, buthismother”—she cut her eyes sideways at her fiancé, a budget analyst named Hank—“is having a cat fit and insisting I have his sisters—and I’m sorry, honey, but Geneva is clinically obese, and LeAnne has that unfortunate red hair, so I can’t have anything pink.…”
She sighed heavily, then clasped her fiancé’s hand and wrinkled her pert button nose. “You agree, don’t you, Hank?”
Hank’s hair was also what Cara thought of as an unfortunate shade of red, but he nodded agreement. “Geneva’s thinking about gastric bypass. If she goes in this summer, I think we can count on her being a size sixteen by October. Anyway, pink does nothing for Michelle’s coloring. So that’s why we’re thinking mostly blues, purples, some silver and gray for everything at the church.”
“Right,” Michelle agreed. “Then, at the reception, which will be in the Westin’s ballroom, we’ll segue into deeper, more dramatic colors.”
“Show her the tablecloths,” Hank urged. “Ombré! Michelle got an unbelievable deal on the fabric at this online store.”
Michelle slid her fingertip and a new Pinterest board popped up. This one was labeled “Ideas for wedding receptions.”
Cara Kryzik nodded and jotted down notes. “Got it. Blues, silvers, purples. No pink. Loose arrangements. Mostly white for the bridesmaids. Are we doing anything else at the church? Pew bows, anything like that? You did say it’s at St. John’s, right?”
“No pew bows,” Hank said emphatically. “That’s just so… nineties.”
Michelle snapped the cover of the iPad. “So I guess that’s it for now. You’ll put together a mood board for me? And a proposal? By, say… Wednesday?”
“Wednesday will be fine,” Cara said. She glanced at Bert, who’d also been taking notes throughout the two-hour meeting. “I’ll email it, and then we can talk.”
Bride and groom stood and left, holding hands.
The bells on the shop door jingled merrily as the couple left.
Cara rolled her eyes. “Cute couple. Controlling bride. Passive-aggressive groom. I give them three years, tops.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Bert said, still jotting down notes. “Less than that if she wises up and figures out she’s married a raging homosexual.”
Cara Kryzik raised one eyebrow. “You think?”
“Takes one to know one,” Bert said.
***
May and June were always a blur for Bloom, but this year, Cara thought, might be the year that topped all years. If those talking-head economists wanted a real signal that the recession was over, they had only to look at her upcoming wedding calendar.
May was already manic, and it was just the first Saturday of the month. June would be even busier. Her calendar was full with showers, rehearsal dinners, and weddings.
But busy didn’t necessarily mean profitable. If she could just avoid any more equipment-related disasters, she might, just might, be able to put together enough money to send the Colonel a big fat check by the end of the month.
This morning she’d delivered the centerpieces for a bridesmaids’ brunch at nine, met with Michelle and Hank, and by one she was already behind schedule finishing up the flowers for the most demanding bride she’d ever worked with.
Cara wrapped a single white rose with green floral tape and inserted it into the already over-the-top centerpiece of white ranunculus, orange parrot tulips, and green and blue hydrangeas that were spilling out of an heirloom Georgian silver soup tureen destined for the buffet table.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning to her assistant.
Bert put down his scissors and gazed over the top of his wire-rimmed granny glasses at the towering arrangement.
“Baudy, gawdy, and fabulous,” he decreed. “But you know our little bride Torie. More is always more with that girl.”
“I know,” Cara said with a sigh, selecting another flower from the dwindling bucket on the floor. “Half these flowers would be a showstopper, but I can’t make Torie see that. She is determined to have the most ostentatious wedding in the history of Savannah. It’s too bad we have to waste all this effort and beauty on a girl who doesn’t know a pansy from a petunia.”
“As though Torie Fanning would ever deign to sniff anything as incredibly middle-class as either a pansy or a petunia,” Bert said.
The shop phone rang and Cara glanced over at the caller-ID screen. “Speaking of which, there’s the smother of the bride now.” Her hand hovered over the receiver. “I swear, if Lillian calls me with one more demand, I am going to go stark, raving bonkers.”
“Think of the invoice we’re going to present when this whole circus is over,” Bert advised.
