Page 56 of There’s a Way (Mythic Beast #2)
Micca
I stared at Matty and wished I could order him to bend the fuck over so I could cane the fuck out of the backs of his legs. I had no interest in seeing his bare ass, but I see the backs of his legs all the time in the summer.
But we were doing this in the conference room at his office.
I’d taken the day off to get all the wedding stuff started, but he could only take a couple of hours this morning because he had a huge meeting at noon that promised to take hours and hours, and a shorter one at four, so it worked for us to meet here.
It would be wildly inappropriate for me to cane him at his work.
Not that I’d do it if we were somewhere else, but it worked for me in the moment to tell myself that’s why I wasn’t going to.
“I want a simple wedding on a mountaintop with a gorgeous sunset,” I told him as evenly as I could manage. “I know everyone has to eat, and I’m good with feeding them beforehand and then after at the reception, but it doesn’t have to be fancy French food!”
He sighed. “We had those fantastic gougères to celebrate after the proposal, so they should be at the reception. What’s the use in marrying someone spectacularly rich and then being too cheap to have something so symbolic flown in to remember the proposal?”
I shook my head at him, and the wedding planner said, “While flying them in is certainly an option, I feel certain someone stateside can replicate them.”
“Okay. Fine. Do that. Can we stop talking about fucking gougères now, please?”
Matty gave me a hurt look. “I never thought you’d turn into bridezilla.”
“Me? Oh no. I’m the one trying to keep it mostly simple, if a destination wedding can ever be anything but complicated, but I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible. You’re the one throwing all these curves in!”
“Let’s go back to the location,” the wedding planner said. “You want it close enough people can drive it in a few hours, and that limits our options, certainly, but I believe these three destinations can give you everything you’re looking for.”
Her tablet was on a little stand, and she turned it so I could see it before swiping through the possibilities.
Of the three, one immediately jumped out. Stone buildings on a mountaintop, and a gorgeous picture of an outdoor wedding at sunset with stunning vistas all around, and the sky literally flaming.
I knew there was no promise of a stunning sunset, but there was the possibility. It was also possible it would rain, so I needed to see the indoor location we’d move to, and it was also gorgeous.
“Can they offer full services?” I asked the wedding planner.
“They can, and Highlands is a lovely little town to explore for your guests who choose to stay the weekend.”
The rooms were beyond gorgeous, and the main master suite had windows galore, and a bathroom with huge picture windows circling a luxurious bathtub.
“This one only allows one event at a time on the grounds, so you won’t run into another wedding party, or a family reunion, or a business conference. It means we may need to push your wedding date back a few more months, but I can check to see if they have any open weekends during your time frame.”
We’d made it to November, and I’d wanted a June wedding, but I was beginning to understand it might have to be July or August.
However, it turned out they had the last weekend in May open, and I told her to put a deposit down to hold it.
I texted Will to let him know our wedding date, assuming this place worked out.
Excellent! I can’t wait to be your husband. ? ? ?
I sent him a line of hearts back, and then got to work on the options this place offered, and what we needed them to do versus what the wedding planner would arrange to happen.
Most of the conversation was me reining Matty’s ideas back.
He knew what I wanted, and he got all of that in plus the extras he thought we needed.
And honestly, most of his ideas were good, and I used them a little — just scaled back.
I appreciated his input, but he just went so over-the-top with everything.
The guest list was bigger than I’d originally thought.
Will’s band and their dates, his manager and producer and their plus-ones, Matty and Razor, my parents, Matty’s parents, Aaron and Sophia, Nathan and his poly group.
Eight bikers who wanted to be there for Davy, along with their ol’ladies, and a few of my coworkers and their significant others.
But that was okay because the lodge had a minimum of fifty people and two nights to rent the facility. Even if we’d only had twenty people, we’d have still had to pay for fifty.
The wedding planner got someone from the lodge on a video call, and we all hashed out the weekend and the basics of what I wanted in about an hour. It was a rough outline at this point, but it was a start.
The wedding planner looked up to me and said, “You’re happy with this location? Ready to go beyond the deposit?”
I nodded, because it meant it was time for the NDA.
The wedding planner wouldn’t explain there will be two ceremonies at once — a wedding ceremony between two people, and a commitment ceremony for their third, until the NDA was signed.
The lodge wouldn’t know that Lord Byron was part of it until it was clear their management was fine with a poly group wedding/commitment ceremony.
“A courier will arrive this afternoon with an NDA,” the wedding planner told the woman. “Someone with authority in your organization will need to sign it. The courier is a notary.”
The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise a brief second but quickly nodded. “Of course. Not the first time we’ve had to do so. Please have your courier ask for me. If you can get me a time frame, I can arrange to have an owner on the premises.”
When we disconnected from the lodge, I told the wedding planner, “I need something to show Will and Davy. Can you send me some links or something?”
“I’ve been putting together a packet to email Will as we’ve moved through our day. Would you like for me to email it to you and Davy as well? I don’t have an email for Davy.”
“Send it to me as well as Will, please. We’ll make sure Davy sees what he needs to.” Which would probably be all of it unless Will wanted to surprise him with something.
The wedding planner gave me a breakdown of estimated costs for the things we’d discussed.
A room at the lodge for two nights for fifty guests, plus multiple meals over the weekend, setup by the lodge — chairs and tables — for the wedding and reception, a wine and cheese night around a bonfire Friday night, and we were already up to nearly ninety thousand dollars.
She had a list of things we hadn’t added to that yet — extra people, the food for the reception, decorations, invitations, flowers, the band, photographer and videographer.
I stopped reading the list because it was too overwhelming to think about all at once. One thing at a time until it was done.
I had mixed feelings about the cost. On the one hand, it was cool to just plan without having to think of where every penny would come from, but on the other hand, it felt decadent.
But Will was letting me plan my dream wedding, and he only asked for three things, one of which was to not try to go budget.
At least he wasn’t trying to buy me a car. I completely agreed with him that Davy needed something safer, but I’d have gone for something with less flash.
When we finished, I hugged Matty, thanked him for helping, and then followed the wedding planner to a bakery, where I tasted a whole bunch of samples and talked to their cake person about what I wanted.
I looked through probably three hundred pictures with a stack of sticky notes so I could use them as bookmarks in the album.
She looked at the ones I liked, asked me some questions, and then sketched out exactly what I wanted.
There were also lots of ways we could incorporate Davy onto the top, and for that, I took pictures and told her I’d let her know once Will and I talked about it.
I was advised to buy a cake for three times the number of guests, since this was a destination wedding, so people could have leftover cake at breakfast the following morning. I figured these people knew more than me, so I just nodded and agreed.
The wedding planner also talked to me about the kind of dress I was thinking I might want, and we made an appointment to go to Atlanta the following weekend to look at dresses together.
I texted the times to Matty, because he’d kill me if he didn’t get to help pick out my dress.
I also texted him the two dresses I liked best of the ones she’d shown me after I told her the basic look I was going for.
He was busy so he didn’t respond, but I knew I’d hear from him eventually.
You’re the only one who gets to see my dress , I reminded him. Top secret. I think I’ll have a talk with Razor so he’ll provide consequences if you don’t keep the secret.
I hoped sending him the dress pictures would make him feel better.
He wasn’t happy about not being able to go to the bakery, but he had an appointment with someone who had him helping pick out fixtures for a brand-new house, and he was really busy working with the husband, wife, their teenage daughters, the husband’s mother, and the builder.
It’s possible he was daydreaming about caning them , from what I gathered.