Free Wedding Season by Darcy Cosper

collect the mail, and for some reason I wound up looking through the white leatherette, silver-filigreed photo albums of my parents’ wedding. There theywere in black and white, forever younger than I as they came down the aisle, their faces lit up with bright unquestioning faith. Gabe found me on the floor of the living room, staring out the window with an album in my lap open to the photo of their first dance. We’d just moved in together, Gabe and I, and he didn’t say anything. He sat down on the floor next to me and took my hand. After a while, we stood up and put the albums back on the shelf, locked the door behind us, and went home in silence.
    H ENRY’S VOICE rouses me. She’s standing in front of me with a vampire grin, patting at her hair.
    “What do you think, Joy? The bridesmaid that ate New York!” Her way-the-hell-up-do brings Henry’s total height to nearly seven feet.
    “Fabulous,” I tell her.
    “Where’s that gorgeous bride?” coos Serge.
    “Your turn, sweetie,” Assistant Hair calls to me. Melody looks earnestly at Makeup, who is giving her face a blankly searching appraisal. “Do you have any non-orange lipstick?” Melody asks.
    “We’re working with a concept, sweetie,” Makeup instructs her. “Our concept is orange.”
    When we emerge from the bridal boudoir, bedecked and be-flowered and besmirched, Mrs. Stevenson is directing the rearrangement of furniture with a photographer and his assistant. Henry makes obscene shapes at me with her shiny orange mouth while Erica’s oldest sister hands out the bridesmaids’ bouquets, neat little bundles of peach-colored freesia bound in an elaborate crosshatched pattern with straw twine. Erica gets a bundle of white freesia the circumference of my thigh. The photographer’s assistant pushes us into position for group shots while the photographer flirtswith Makeup. We pose and simper for the camera: bridesmaids only, bridesmaids clustered around bride, bride with sisters, and so on. The photographer positions Erica by the window, winsome in the afternoon light. Assistant Hair runs in to adjust her veil.
    “My underwear is riding up my butt,” the lovely bride says through a clenched smile, and the photographer snaps the shot. Mrs. Stevenson claps her hands and the maid weeps and we’re hustled out the door and downstairs to the waiting limousine.
    T HE PHOTOGRAPHER MAKES it to the church before us and takes pictures like mad, clicking and hunching as we climb out of the limo one after another, clowns at a wedding-themed circus. It’s a mild, sunny day, and the people out walking pause to watch us as we help Erica out of the car and loop her train over her arm.
    “Oh, my god,” Erica says to me and Henry, as we walk toward the church’s front steps with the photographer trotting along beside us. “I’m getting married.” She stops on the bottom step and draws a breath. “Could someone make the photographer stop? I feel like I’m in a fashion shoot.”
    “You’re a model bride, baby.” Henry waves the photographer away and puts her arm around Erica’s white waist.
    “Where’s my mother? Where’s Melody?” Erica sounds plaintive.
    “Right here, gorgeous.” Melody comes to take her hand. “Look at your adorable attendants.” She points to where the Stevenson blondes stand, in the great shadowy curve of the church’s entrance, with Erica’s tiny blonde niece and nephew, who are dressed, respectively, as miniature bridesmaid and groomsman.
    “Look at our escorts,” I tell her, as the full-size grooms-menfill the doorway, waving to us. “It’s just like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Wait until you see our musical number.”
    Erica gets a laugh out, and we pat her encouragingly. Mrs. Stevenson appears, clapping her hands.
    “Everybody ready? Boys, get inside and take your places. Girls, remember your order? Let’s line up, please.”
    “There’s my girl.” Mr. Stevenson comes down the church steps. “Don’t you