I have seen two brides trip and fall down the aisle; one topple into a reflection pool; one whose violent sneeze catapulted her tiara into the front row during vows, gashing the eye of the father-in-law to be. I have witnessed one groom run from the altar, one bride run from the altar, one father of the bride fall asleep, and one flower girl whose nose bled the entire length of the ceremony. That's not including several fistfights, a half-dozen drunken and slightly insulting toasts from best men, and one collapsing tent in the middle of a seven-course dinner reception.

I am a wedding consultant, which means that despite all of my firsthand knowledge, I'm expected to reassure you that everything about your wedding will be absolutely perfect. And although you might not believe me, I'll tell you that usually, despite little snags (ahem), everything typically does work out all right at the end of the day. Most of the time.

And, let's face it, that's why I do it. You can't help but get a heady little rush when you see two people, obviously in love and happy, stand up before all their friends and family and pledge to make a go of it in a world where most people are divorced twice before they see grandkids. And just because I've heard the wedding march somewhere in the neighborhood of 324 times (four times on bagpipes) doesn't mean that I still don't get goose bumps when I hear it, just a little bit, because, well, I think in some sense it symbolizes hope and happiness, and, of course, love, if you'll pardon the string of sappy clichés. (I mean, we are talking about weddings, for goodness' sakes. Sappy clichés come with the territory.) In my experience, during every wedding, even the ones involving catastrophic blunders of the fainting kind, there's a moment, or even two, when everything bad in the world is suspended and you see pure, unadulterated goodwill. That's what keeps me coming back like a junkie, really, knowing that I had a hand in creating that second or two of perfect harmony.

Although, to be fair, I probably should say that for a rather small minority, a second or two of harmony simply isn't enough. It's odd, really, that so many people who don't strive for perfection in any other arena of their lives (professional or personal) have no qualms about demanding a flawless, magical ceremony celebrating (more often than not) a rather imperfect union, witnessed by two less than functional families. (It's a universal truth that relatives will not be on their best behavior just because you've spent ten thousand dollars on food. If that were the case, then psychologists would prescribe surf and turf instead of Prozac.) At a wedding, the smallest thing (a misplaced step, a bit too much wine, the appearance of a long-lost, estranged relative) can turn everything into a drunken, humiliating mess.

Weddings, by their nature, are fraught with peril.

This is why you need me.

Because I worry and fret for you. I troubleshoot, problem-solve, and (on occasion) work miracles (I intercept the drunken maid of honor before she blurts out her undying love for the groom or separate bickering divorced parents). I straighten that errant bridal train, shore up the leaning third tier of the cake, and fix that broken heel.

Being a wedding planner requires far more than just a flair for planning a shindig with champagne. I don't mean to sound snooty or anything, but I believe it takes a certain kind of person to be a wedding planner. Organized, yes. Patient, certainly. But a planner must also possess an unnamed quality: the ability to laugh in the face of a looming crisis.

I won't go so far as to say I possess all that, but I do strive for those qualities.

But then again, my ex-husband always said I had a flair for melodrama. Oh yes, I'm divorced. Did I mention that? Separated a year ago this month, and divorced officially six months ago (not that I'm counting or even paying attention, mind you, I just happen to know that it's been exactly 182 days and six hours since I signed the divorce papers).

Speaking of once-in-a-lifetime occasions, no one ever thinks about divorce in that way (you definitely don't have to worry about whether or not your slip is showing when you sign those papers). I certainly didn't pay a photographer $350 an hour to come and take my picture at the courthouse. If I had, I would've been immortalized forever as a red-nosed, blubbering, pathetic loser, because I was a bit unhinged at that particular moment. I suspect I even had a bit of Häagen-Dazs fudge on my chin, since I ate nothing but pints and pints of the stuff the weeks leading into the finalization of the divorce.

Not that I was sorry that I divorced Brad. (I'm not in the least bit sorry!)

I was sad more for the fact that marriage had not turned out the way it was supposed to (or the way I hoped it would). It didn't help that my parents had been married thirty-three years, and my mother took every opportunity to remind me that no one in our family except her cousin Louise in Houston (a notorious flirt) and I ever got divorced. Of course, my parents are absolutely miserable, so it's not like I had a great relationship model there. Somehow, I resisted the very pessimistic idea that in order for a marriage to succeed one had to be completely wretched. Can you blame me for holding out hope for a fairy-tale ending? I mean, for goodness' sakes, I'm a wedding planner, so you know I've got a bit of the romantic in me (that or I very much like a high level of stress and abuse, but I prefer to think of myself as a romantic optimist).

I should say that perhaps I was a bit hasty to marry Brad (and that's as far as I'll go to admitting fault on my part). But, you have to understand, I was attending a wedding a week, and the brides seemed to get younger and younger, and, well, I just kept thinking more and more: Why not me? I was twenty-six (in my head, I was closing in on thirty), and my mother had begun hinting that she'd like some grandkids soon, and Brad seemed to be willing (at least with a lot of forceful persuasion on my part; that, too, I admit perhaps was wrong of me, but for the very first time in my life I really, really wanted to be married).

And, had I not been required to actually live, talk, or interact with Brad, marriage would've worked out just fine.

I suppose I should have been suspicious of his spending habits from the first. But when we were dating I thought it refreshing that he had expensive taste and took care in the way he dressed. Now, I realize that as a general rule you should always question a man who has more shoes in his closet than you do. But I was "in love," or thought I was, and he was incredibly handsome, or at the very least very stylish, and what he lacked in brainpower he certainly made up for in smoothness. Without a doubt, he was a charmer.

It just so happened that he didn't like to work so much, or pay bills, or do anything except borrow my MasterCard and go to the mall. He had a particular affinity for all things Kenneth Cole, especially when they were frightfully expensive and magnificently impractical. He owned no fewer than three leather jackets, although it's common knowledge that here, in Austin, Texas, winter temperatures rarely get below 40 degrees, and you're never more than two weeks away from a 75-degree day even in the middle of January.

It didn't help our relationship, according to him, that I was such a detail-oriented and organized person. (So sue me if my idea of bill paying includes actually sending the payment in on time.) Then there's the little issue of the house payment, as in, I paid it. All of it. Every single month. Brad would do charming things like forget to pay the phone bill (the one responsibility I hadn't taken away from him), and then act outraged when the phone company shut down our line. He also held the infuriating belief that credit-card statements were simply suggested payments and not actual bills. "Minimum Payment" to him was nothing more than a polite, unbinding request for money, like a solicitation from the March of Dimes. So, you can understand that I was glad when he finally moved out. Relieved, really. At least he stopped eating all the food I bought, turning up the air-conditioning I paid for, and sleeping in the house I owned.

So I wasn't sad to see him go, but I was very disappointed in how the marriage thing had turned out (even if, admittedly, I hadn't been the best judge of character). Any wrong I did, I've more than paid for it, believe me. Shattered dreams and the fifteen thousand dollars I spent on the ceremony and reception aside, there's the daily occurrence of a client or an acquaintance learning that I'm divorced, and then the inevitable exclamation: "But, you're so young!" As if bad judgment and horrible marriages are reserved for people aged thirty-five and over. It's not like I worked all my life to be part of the exclusive "Divorced Under Thirty" club. (Trust me, the dues are way overpriced and the perks are lousy.)

You might assume I'm a bit bitter, but I like to think I'm a bigger person than all that. Just because Brad monopolized the three years of my life that I could actually squeeze into a size 6 doesn't mean I can't let bygones be bygones. I won't say it has been easy to hold back telling young, nervous brides and terrified grooms to run for the door while they still have their dignity, but I have managed, so far. My boss, Gennifer Douglas, who owns the consulting company I work for (Forever Wedding), has her own doubts (has actually had nothing but doubts since she hired me three years ago, given that she thinks that anybody under the age of forty must by default be an idiot).

So. I'm sure you're curious. About my job, that is. My "office," if you want to be so generous as to call it that, is situated in the small breakfast room of an old antique house. As I mentioned, our business is located in Austin, perhaps not nearly so glamorous or sophisticated a place as, say, New York, but a city where women take their weddings very seriously. ("We don't do just any weddings," G likes to say, "we do Southern weddings.") Our office sits on an old residential street that's slowly been converted to law offices and shops. We're located about a half a mile from the University of Texas campus and two miles from the heart of downtown. On clear days, you can see an unobstructed view of the campus tower, which is often lit up in burnt orange (the university's unfortunate color). I once did a wedding for a couple who were very loyal alumni, so much so that the bride insisted her bridesmaids wear burnt orange (this is a color, mind you, that was never fashionable, except perhaps in the seventies). The pictures, as you can imagine, didn't turn out very well, as the bridesmaids all looked particularly disgruntled. Not that I blame them.

G's office sits upstairs in what used to be the master bedroom, which is almost but not quite out of earshot of my little corner. G prefers bellowing down the stairs when she needs me. We have phones, you know, but she doesn't use them. My personal theory is that the Transfer and Hold buttons intimidate her.

Anyhow, back to my cubbyhole. I sit behind a little writing desk, wedged into the corner, and wispy curtains filter the sunlight, which is actually quite bright in the mornings. I have a computer (albeit an ancient one... predating the invention of Windows of any kind), which isn't good for much except making me crazy. I keep a huge appointment book (one must if one is to keep up with a number of clients) and a color-coded file system under which I systematically divide our clients by color choice, season, and, of course, name.

I did tell you I'm a bit of an organizational nazi, didn't I? You have to be in my line of work, but I know what you're thinking, of course. I'm one of those neat freaks, the iron-my-pajamas, match-my-underwear-with-my-shoes types. The kind of person who spends Saturday nights on her knees in the bathroom, scrubbing tile with a toothbrush. (For the record, I only did that once and you wouldn't believe the grout buildup. I had to do it.) You're thinking that I am probably impossible to live with, that it's no wonder I'm divorced at twenty-nine. I mean, what did I expect? A husband who leaves the toilet seat down? Who doesn't drape his dirty black tube socks across the couch and coffee table? (It so happens that Brad did leave his dirty pairs of briefs in various corners of our apartment, but that's not really why things didn't work out. Really.)

And for the record, it was a mutual parting. He didn't want to go on living with me and I didn't want to go on supporting his Tommy Hilfiger habit, and that was that. Just because the man happened to be the last one to ever see me in a bikini on a public beach doesn't mean I'm bitter. Or at least, not that bitter.

Copyright © 2003 by Cara Lockwood