Page 47 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

‘Eh?’ shouted an old guy dressed like the Monopoly Man. (Given the blood-diamond-studded guest list, it might have in fact been the Monopoly Man.)

‘She also doesn’t believe in microphones,’ added Lily. ‘It’s a wonder I got her to wear the earpiece.’

‘We are here today to bring together these two entities of solidified stardust into one unbreakable union,’ bellowed Rainbow Soleil, her voice cracking.

‘Bah, unions!’ huffed Monopoly Man.

‘Now, each of you have in your lap a vessel of fine silt sourced from two asteroids that passed each other in space. When the couple speaks their vows, I want you to combine jars, forging the space dust into one single meteor. Because this is a love that burns bright.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Lily. ‘Rainbow,’ she said over the walkie-talkie, ‘we scrubbed the asteroids idea. We’re doing toothpastes instead. One blue and white bright stripe on a single toothpaste brush.’

Mort snorted.

‘Last-minute decision from marketing,’ explained Lily.

Rainbow Soleil communicated this to the crowd, who awkwardly dug about for the bespoke toothpaste tubes under their chairs and squeezed as directed.

‘Minty fresh,’ observed Reba.

Once everyone was awkwardly holding a toothbrush, Lily gave Rainbow Soleil the thumbs up to proceed with the ceremony. ‘Now, the couple have written their own vows. Desmond, would you like to share your love for Venus with your favourite people in the world?’

Desmond, who’d been talking into a pair of smart glasses that he’d pulled out from an inner jacket pocket, looked up, startled.

‘Rich, can you hold? I’m at an all-hands meeting.

’ He pressed a button on the glasses frame, then blinked as his vision adjusted.

‘Thanks, all, for coming out today. I know we’re all busy, so I won’t keep you long. ’

Lily grimaced. Were these wedding vows, or a speech for a quarterly investor meeting?

‘When I met Venus, I knew she represented some epic ROI. Our families have been competitors. Allies. Co-sponsors of some great legislation. And together we’re going to keep up that growth.

Here’s to a dental hygiene empire.’ He clasped his hands over his head like he’d just kicked the winning goal in a soccer match.

Or like he was the owner of the team who’d kicked said goal.

The crowd clapped politely. Gracie circled with her camera, doing her best to find a modicum of love and romance in this decidedly business-like affair.

Lily cast her gaze to the sky and tried to place a wish upon each of the fluffy clouds that resided there.

She’d worked so hard to make this event perfect.

And it was . Everything about it: the rainbow beanbags.

The huge field. The floral arch and cleverly decorated trees.

The folk band composed entirely of nepo babies.

The tie-dyed tents that made for a hippie hobbit experience.

The asteroid she’d had ground down by the Smithsonian that now sat uselessly in baggies under the chairs and which hopefully nobody would take it upon themselves to snort.

Everything except the romance between Desmond and Venus.

‘If you have any questions or comments, my girl Kiki in marketing will sort you out,’ said Desmond, miming shooting a basketball from the three-point line. ‘Shout-out to Kiki.’

A young woman in a chiffon romper sitting primly in a beanbag as she typed away on three different iPads held up a hand. ‘My “out of office” is on,’ she said. ‘But not really.’

‘Wow,’ said Mort, whose eyebrows said it all. ‘Was “for immediate release” written at the top of that speech?’

‘I think he was reading it off his smart glasses,’ whispered Lily. ‘My guess is that Kiki was writing it as he was reading it.’

‘Outsourcing your wedding vows. Very efficient.’

‘Shh, Venus is up.’ Lily glanced around, meeting Reba and Gracie’s eyes, as though by triangulating their gazes they could somehow prevent this whole thing from falling apart into a disaster to be gleefully covered by the tabloids and TikTok reaction videos.

Venus, a vision in her hand-stitched gown, flashed a nervous, slightly tipsy grin at the crowd. The pearls sewn into her hair glowed gently in the light of the golden hour. ‘Hi, everyone. Babe, can you turn off your meeting?’

Desmond tapped his smart glasses again. ‘Sorry. All yours.’

‘There you are.’ Venus laughed, slightly giddily, and Lily wondered if she’d sourced some additional chemical help from the medicine cabinet in the dressing room tent.

‘Wow. How does a girl follow that. I … um, love you. Ever since that first day we met in the lobby, and we got our helicopters mixed up. I knew it was meant to be. And, um …’

Venus stood there, the most stunning bride that Lily had ever seen, and yet the most conflicted.

Beneath all of it – the wealth, the decor, the glamour – was a gap that not even a bottomless bank account could bridge.

Venus took a deep breath, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Her unsmudgeable lipstick smudged away, and she stared down at it, frowning.

Lily’s heart squeezed as she considered all the futures that must be running through Venus’s mind.

All of it with the wrong person. A person who didn’t even care.

A person who wouldn’t wear a silly bolo tie for you or help you paint flower murals on your shop or humour your requests to bang out the solo from Supertramp’s ‘School’ on their personalised pianola.

Lily’s walkie-talkie crackled.

‘What do I say?’ muttered Rainbow Soleil, who was swaying in front of the flower arch like a piece of half-time hippie entertainment.

‘Nothing,’ said Lily. ‘But we’ll have the band on standby. Just in case.’

‘Roger that.’ Rainbow Soleil continued swaying.

‘And um …’ repeated Venus, but with a newly revelatory tone, as though she’d just returned from a quick trip to another planet.

‘No. No. I … can’t do this,’ she said, taking half a dozen steps back in her custom-made wooden flip-flops.

‘I don’t. I can’t. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the blue stripe in a blue and white toothpaste tube.

I want to be the meteor. I want to be me. ’

‘Called it,’ whispered Reba.

Lily barely managed to keep from shouting out, ‘ Go Venus! ’

But she had to remain an impartial professionalism.

Or at least seem that way. All right, so it wasn’t the best look that Lily’s marquee wedding had stalled at the I do part of the ceremony, but she’d rather have a runaway bride on her books than a disastrous divorce.

Her whole goal was to bring happy couples together in celebration, after all – not force them to go through with a major life decision just because the vendor deposits weren’t refundable.

But what now? There were hundreds of guests sitting about, most of them with a vested financial interest in this whole affair. And there were only so many helicopters to go round.

Lily’s heart was pounding. She could salvage this. It was all about the guest experience, after all. She just had to act fast.

‘Babe, no,’ Desmond was saying, not particularly emphatically for someone whose bride had just turned him down at the altar. Probably because he was splitting his attention between this and a Discord chat group.

Drawing herself up to her full height and setting her jaw, Venus hurled her bouquet of California poppies at his head.

Desmond ducked. The bouquet hurtled on, arcing exactingly towards one of the bridesmaids.

The bridesmaid, ordinarily part of a class that was exceptional at catching wedding bouquets, flinched and stepped aside.

‘What? I don’t want the jilted juju to rub off on me,’ whispered the bridesmaid to her brethren. She whipped out a bottle of hand sanitiser and scrubbed her hands clean. Then she followed this up with a bottle of moon-charged water.

‘Venus! Think of the market cap!’ shouted Venus’s mother (whom Lily recognised from the financial pages of the newspaper), fiddling with her phone. ‘Ugh! How am I meant to see the stock ticker when there’s no 5G?’

Lily had moments before chaos erupted. First she had to check on Venus, and then she’d sort out the crowd.

She grabbed Mort’s arm. Of all the people here, she knew he wouldn’t let her down. ‘Mort, can you tell the band to play? I’ll be back in a minute.’

Mort nodded, his dark eyes a gentle port of solidarity amidst the madness that Lily knew was about to ensue.

For the second time in as many weeks, Lily hurried after Venus, who’d fled with the dedication of a horror movie final girl sprinting away from a serial killer sporting a chainsaw.

Lily found her seated on the drooping bough of an elegantly decorated eucalyptus tree draped with string lights and sprigs of tiny tie-dyed flowers.

She looked like a forest fairy who’d emerged from the woods, curious about human traditions.

A forest fairy whose eye makeup wasn’t as waterproof as its manufacturer liked to claim.

‘I’m sorry,’ Venus said, dabbing her eyes with the handkerchief Lily gave her. (She’d taken it from Mort’s breast pocket.) ‘The thought of going through with that was just …’

Lily sat down beside her and let Venus lean her head on her shoulder. ‘I get it.’

‘I know it doesn’t have to be forever. I know divorce is a thing. I know that people in unhappy marriages go overboard on yachts all the time.’

‘Um,’ said Lily.

‘But I don’t want that to be my life. I don’t want to be dragged along by inertia, saying yes to something just because I feel like I should, and then spending who knows how many years trying to find the right time to stop it.’ Venus sighed. ‘Is he still on a conference call?’

Lily crushed a eucalyptus leaf between her fingers, enjoying its aromatic scent. ‘It’s hard to tell with the smart glasses, but I think so.’

She pulled out her walkie-talkie. ‘Come in, Rainbow Soleil. Is the conference call ongoing? Over.’

‘Roger that. Conference call is underway. We’ve added a projector screen for a Zoom.’

‘That was meant to be for the movie under the stars,’ moaned Venus, running her hands through her hair and plucking out the pearl pins one by one.

In a move that had Lily setting a mental reminder to come back for a recon trip tomorrow, she tossed them to the ground, grunting with rage as each one bounced off the wildflowers and greenery.

‘It’s not that he doesn’t care,’ she added. ‘ I don’t care. If only my parents had let me date that Italian toilet paper magnate … but no , I had to keep my dating prospects within the same vertical.’

Lily chuckled. ‘That is one problem we mortals will never share.’

‘True. You and that funeral guy – you’ve got the matrimony to grave pipeline all tied up. Diversification, as my mom would say.’

‘She would, wouldn’t she,’ said Lily, trying not to laugh.

‘Yeah, we are not alike.’ Venus sighed again, staring down at the makeup-smeared handkerchief. ‘I really did have fun planning the wedding, though. It was nice to have something to focus on other than the family business. And I loved what you did with the plates.’

‘That was all Mort,’ admitted Lily.

‘And the food. Spectacular – so unique.’

Lily bit back a grin. ‘Also Mort, although that one’s a long story.’

‘Jefferson should come visit me in Santa Monica. We could collab – he’d be drowning in James Beard Awards.’

‘I’ll let him know.’ Lily ran the toe of her shoe back and forth across the wildflower carpet. ‘How do you want to handle the rest of tonight?’

Venus groaned. ‘I can’t show my face back out there. There’ll be talks of a toothpaste boycott. I can just see it. I’ll be a viral joke. Like that dead-to-me girl. I have to leave before anyone spots me.’

Lily passed Venus her keys. ‘I’m going to stay here overnight, so you can stay at my place, above the wedding shop. It’s not fancy, but it’s private. Except for the grille downstairs – don’t spill any trade secrets if you’re near it.’

‘Noted.’

‘Do you need someone to drive you?’ asked Lily.

Venus shook her head and pointed to one of the fixed-gear bikes stacked in a makeshift bike rack (just in case the guests wanted to explore the grounds). ‘I’ll ride. The fresh air will do me good.’

‘Just make sure you wear a helmet, or Mort will be on my case.’

Venus wrapped Lily in a hug. ‘Deal. Thank you so much for not judging. For not making me go through with it.’

‘Of course,’ said Lily, who absolutely meant it. ‘I just want people to be happy.’

Venus flexed her left hand, watching the diamond mine on her left finger sparkle. With a sigh, she pulled off the ring and handled it to Lily.

‘Here. Can you pawn that for me and send me the proceeds?’

Then, donning a vintage helmet decorated with flower buds, Venus rode wobblingly off into the dusk.