Tristan just wasn’t ready for the women in my family. Lauren might not be a blood relation but she was always there at every important family occasion—Sunday lunches, Friday dinners, weddings, funerals, graduations, and Christmas. And she’d organized most of them.
“So,” Lauren continued. “As I was saying, Michele and I have been talking and started to put together a guest list for the engagement party. Depending on the size of your list, Tristan, we were thinking five hundred, maybe the ballroom at the Dorchester or—”
“Lauren, I’m delighted to meet you,” Tristan interrupted. “When you say five hundred, are you talking about number of guests?”
“Yes, my love. About the same at the wedding.”
“No,” I said. “Tristan and I want a small wedding. Very small. Minute in fact.”
“I had to talk her out of eloping,” he said.
My mother and Lauren gasped.
“You’re not eloping, Parker,” my mother said, in the same tone she used when I was sixteen and wanted to go to Ibiza. “We’re going to have an engagement party. And then you’re going to have a proper wedding like I’ve always dreamed for you.”
A big fairy-tale wedding may have always been my mother’s dream for me, but it had never been my dream. I wasn’t wealthy and my wedding should reflect that.
“Mummy, Tristan and I just want something small. Perhaps we could do something out here,” I said, hoping that the idea of throwing the wedding in the back garden would distract her from the idea of five hundred guests in a ballroom on Park Lane.
“Here?” she said. “In our back garden?”
“Let me think,” Lauren said. “Let me think . . . Yes. We can put a marquee over the tennis court. Have the sit-down there. Then we can do drinks closer to the house—Yes! We can get a smattering of bandstands erected across the lawns where people can shelter if it rains. That gives us something to decorate with flowers. I can see it.”
Just before Lauren started telling me which flowers she thought would be best, my father joined us.
“Congratulations to the happy couple,” he said as he approached with a bottle of champagne. “Let’s all have a drink.”
It was only then that I focused more clearly on what had been set up in the garden. There were ten round tables set out on the lawn, all decorated differently with flowers and chairs and from what I could see from here, china. They had wanted to kick off wedding planning already. My heart sank. I was happy my mom and Lauren were happy for me, but I felt bad that this wasn’t a real wedding. This time next year, I’d be divorced.
My father poured us all some drinks and raised his glass. “Here’s to my darling daughter and your fiancé. Parker, you’re one of the sweetest, kindest, most generous people on the planet, and I’m very proud of you. I’m happy and relieved that you’ve found a man who will put you first, even if you won’t do it for yourself. Tristan, you’re focused and clever and I know you to be a man of honor. Welcome to the family.”
I scooped an arm around my father’s waist and leaned into him. I’d never had any doubt my father loved me. I just hoped he forgave me when Tristan and I divorced as quickly as we’d decided to get married.
“Now we all have drinks,” Lauren said as she strode across the lawn toward the prepared tables. She waved for us to follow. “If we’re having the engagement party right here, then it’s a great time to look at table decoration and settings. I’ve set up some options so you can get a feel for what you like.”
I sighed and Tristan squeezed my hand. He was so much better at faking this than I was. “Sounds great,” he said as he followed Lauren, pulling me with him.
“The baby pink roses are always a popular choice but—” She held up her hand. “I know you don’t necessarily follow the most popular route on these things, so I also have other designs with more of an eclectic look.
“Look at this one,” Lauren said, guiding us toward the table under the willow tree where I used to practice my handstands. “This is dried flowers and grasses. It’s a very new look. Not something that would appeal to everyone but I thought you might like it.”
I nodded, trying to be enthusiastic. “I like it.”
“I’m not so keen,” Tristan said. “There’s something wrong about surrounding people with dead flowers at a wedding.”
Lauren gave a nervous I-don’t-agree-but-whatever-you-say laugh and took us over to the next table. “You might feel the same about this one.” She led us to a table set up in front of the summer house. “It’s paper flowers and paper mâché sculptures. Everything’s recyclable.” It looked like the art classroom of a kindergarten.