Diary of a Wedding Planner in Love (Tales Behind the Veils Book 2) (11 page)

Friday, February 7th

I am so damned confused. I have no idea what to do about this man.

We had that tearful, sappy-ass moment in the parking lot of the restaurant Tuesday night where he asked if we could slow things down, and then he ends up coming over the past two nights.

What the hell?

Am
I
supposed to be policing our speed limit? Should I be telling him to stay at home and reminding him he had a problem with everything moving too fast?

Wednesday he called to say he had free movie tickets for an advanced screening. Then last night he called to say his buddy Dean had brought him a bunch of shrimp from the coast and asked if I wanted to boil shrimp and cook together.

Luckily, I have a rehearsal dinner and dessert party I'm helping Chaz with tonight and then the wedding tomorrow night. Otherwise I may have to say, "Look dude, for someone who wants to slow down, you sure are showing up a lot."

Not that I'm complaining. Not at all. I don't mind him being here everyday. I don't want to go anywhere near the pain I felt last week without him. But that's exactly the reason I'm concerned. If he keeps coming over every night, isn't he just going to wig out again like he did last time?

I'd rather see him less than not see him at all. So should I say something?

It's so nerve-wracking. Like I'm scared I'm going to make a mistake or do something wrong and he's going to bolt. I'm on edge, and I have so many questions I want to ask him, but I don't dare. Not yet.

Saturday, February 8th

Let me just start by saying I don't think Chaz Bryant could plan his way out of a paper bag. Why that man has the title of Senior Event Planner is beyond my understanding. I get that he worked with Lillian back in her hotel days, and they're tight. But I swear he couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight. Even if Lillian has blinders on when it comes to Chaz, I don't see how Laura could possibly not see through him. They're equal partners and owners in the business. Shouldn't both of them need to approve of an employee?

Oh, he's a charmer and a half in the office, though. Sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth he's so sweet. I've never seen anyone so skilled in the finer arts of ass-kissery. He can't trip over himself fast enough to bring Lillian her tea every morning, or to drop the latest Vera Bradley bag on Laura's desk. He volunteers for coffee runs, brings in brownies he supposedly bakes himself, and he is an absolute whiz at creating complex PowerPoint demonstrations for the various plans and ideas he proposes. Of course, I'd like to point out that if he was actually servicing his clients and taking care of the necessary paperwork for their weddings, he wouldn't have time to be doing PowerPoints and running out for coffee. He'd be sitting at his desk working like the rest of us.

I cannot even count the number of times I have covered for that imbecile on wedding days. Like the time he forgot to send the limo company the itinerary and I had to call up a driver on his day off and beg him to come pick up the wedding party. Or the day he forgot to order a cake and I talked the bakery supervisor at Publix into giving me a display cake to use with a real bottom layer for the bride and groom to cut into and a sheet cake in the back to serve to guests. Or the time he failed to realize the menu cards Charlotte printed in the office had the wrong groom's name on them and I had to scramble to run to Staples and pay a fortune to have more printed. (Which, by the way, I just realized I forgot to expense. Dang it!)

But today, today just took the cake and the plate it was sitting on. He had a huge wedding ceremony planned at a nature park in Orlando, a ludicrous location for such a large party since there's no rain back-up. But Chaz doesn't like confrontation, so he didn't want to talk the bride out of it. The forecast this morning said thirty percent chance of rain, so we should have been fine. But sure enough, just as the rental company finished unloading the ceremony chairs, the sky darkened and the wind picked up. We had an hour and half to go, plenty of time to call the wedding to a back-up location if we had one. The hallmark of good planning is to always have a Plan B. Especially when you have an outdoor ceremony location and the B stands for back-up.

Did I mention Chaz had no back-up?

I was pinning on corsages and distributing bouquets in the bride's dressing room at the reception hall when the videographer came in and asked to speak with me. I excused myself and followed him into the hallway.

"You might want to head over to the ceremony site and check on your buddy."

"What do you mean? My buddy?"

"Um, yeah. Chase or Chaz or whatever his name is. He's crying in the men's room and refusing to come out."

"What?" I immediately dialed Chaz's cell phone but it went straight to voice mail. "Did he say what was wrong?"

The videographer shook his head and chuckled. "He mumbled something, but I couldn't make it out. He's sitting on the floor in the men's room. Just thought you should know."

"Okay, thanks." I told the bride I needed to check on a few things and then promptly broke several traffic laws to get to the ceremony site as quickly as possible.

The temperature had dropped noticeably between the time I got in my car and the time I got out ten minutes later. Trees swayed to and fro at the mercy of the wind, and loose limbs and branches torpedoed through the air like projectile missiles as dark clouds swirled and churned above the treetops. The cold air sat damp and heavy on my skin, and I could tell it wouldn't be long before the sky could no longer contain the moisture and it would have to open up.

I tried Chaz's cell phone again with the same result. I got no answer to my knock on the men's room door, so I glanced around to find any available male to send in for reconnaissance. There wasn't a soul in sight, and time being of the essence, I had no choice but to barge in. I did hold my hand up to shield my eyes just in case someone occupied it other than a tearful Chaz.

I found him just as the videographer said I would. Sitting on the bathroom floor with his back against the wall between two urinals, his head bowed in his hands.

"Chaz?" I asked, carefully looking around to make sure we were alone. The two stall doors were closed with no feet visible beneath, so I dropped my hand shield and relaxed.

I tried to kneel beside him, which pretty much put my face at eye level with the basin of the urinal, so I stood back up and bent at the waist. Which also put my face closer to a urinal than I've ever thought it would be. I stifled a cough at the stench of urine and air freshener and called his name again.

He didn't look up at me, but when I spoke he started crying again. Mumbling something about the rain, weddings, and how he should have taken the job offer in Colorado.

I bit the bullet and knelt on the bathroom floor, praying the impending wedding had prompted the custodians to mop and my bare knees wouldn't catch some terrible bathroom fungus.

"Chaz, buddy, what's wrong? Did something happen?"

Now, let me just add here I am not a cold and heartless person. If I truly thought something was wrong with Chaz, or that something terrible had happened to him, I would have been showing the compassion, empathy, and concern it warranted. But from the moment the videographer told me Chaz was crying in the men's room, I knew what was going on. I've seen him sit on the floor and cry before. Any time life, or work, or responsibility became overwhelming. Which happened more often than you might think with Chaz.

He looked up at me, his face red and splotchy, his eyes puffy and swollen with tears. "I can't, Tyler. I can't. It's going to rain. It's going to pour. It's never rained on one of my weddings before."

"Never?" I asked, sure he was exaggerating.

"No! Never! I don't know what to do. I can't tell her. I can't. I never should have taken this job. I had a job offer, for more money even, out in Colorado at a big ski resort. But I hate snow. I hate cold. I couldn't leave Florida. And now it's going to rain." He wailed loudly and buried his face in his hands again.

I rubbed my hand across my face and resisted the urge to tell him to man up and get his ass off the bathroom floor.

"Chaz, honey. We can't do anything about the rain, but we can figure out another way to have the ceremony. It'll be fine."

"No, it won't! She wanted her wedding in the gardens, surrounded by nature and blue skies. Now it's all ruined. Her pictures won't be as pretty, and her guests won't see her walking down the pathway through the trees. I just can't." Sobs overcame him again, wearing my patience thin. I mean, you would have thought
he
was the bride, and it was
his
wedding that was ruined.

"Did you really say it's
never
rained on one of your weddings? How is that even possible?"

"I know. It's crazy. But I've just had this incredible luck, and it's never happened. I always tell my brides they'll have sunny weather because it doesn't rain on my weddings."

He sniffled, and I got up to get him a handful of paper towels. I tried not to gag as he blew a mountain of snot from his nose and wiped his tears.

"Until today, buddy. 'Cause it's gonna rain. No doubt about it. In fact, it may be raining already, so you've got to pull yourself together. That bride is counting on you to have a plan in place. It sucks, but we have no control over the weather. We have to work with what we
can
control. If she sees you falling apart, how the hell is she going to hold it together? You need to be calm and tell her everything will be okay. She needs to
believe
you."

He tossed the nasty tissue in the trashcan but made no move to get up.

"You don't understand, Tyler. I'm not cut out for this. This ain't my thing. I never wanted to be a wedding planner. I didn't want to deal with crazy brides and their emotions and their expectations. I can't do this."

I squatted beside him and sighed. "Chaz, we all feel like that sometimes. This job carries a lot of responsibility. A lot of stress. It's kind of like the pack mule position, ya know? We don't bake the cake, we don't play the music, and we don't make the bouquets. But if any of it goes wrong—even the weather—we get blamed for it. It's just the nature of the business. But you wouldn't be this upset if you didn't care about the bride and her special day. Look, we do whatever we can to make it absolutely perfect. But when something goes wrong, the bride depends on us to be behind the scenes fixing it or working around it. Making it right. You owe it to your bride to get up and figure out the next best thing for her. So she doesn't get the gardens and the blue skies! What else can we do to make it just as memorable and just as fantastic?"

He cocked his head to the side and arched a thin eyebrow. "Tyler, there ain't a thing you or I can do to make this mess fantastic. We have no ceremony back-up. We're screwed."

Oh, how badly I wanted to tell him that
we
weren't screwed.
He
was screwed because he believed his own hype and didn't book a back-up plan. But we're a team. A reluctant team, but a team. My mind had already been churning all the possibilities since last night when I found out today's forecast and learned he had no back-up. I tossed out my best idea to him.

"Okay. The reception hall has a stage on one end. Let's just have the caterer adjust the tables to give us a center aisle, and we'll go ahead and seat all the guests at the tables and have the ceremony on the stage. We have about an hour before ceremony time, so if we call the caterer now, they should be able to have all the tables set with linens. They can always place silverware and water glasses after the guests are seated if need be. Wine glasses can be poured and passed. So we just need to get the florist to move everything from here to there, and we need to have someone stationed here to direct arriving guests over to the reception area. Maybe a park staff member could do that for us. I'll call the minister and let him know. He's probably already in the parking lot, actually. I saw the violinist in her car, so I'll tell her on my way out. I've got to try to find the chair guys to get them to load those chairs before they get soaked. Now, you have to get up off your ass and dry your tears so you can go present a big ole smile to the bride and let her know the new plan."

He sat there with his mouth open just a bit, his eyes wide with amazement.

"Holy shit, Tyler. How do you do that? You see, that's why you should be doing this job, and I shouldn't. I would never have thought of that in the first place, and if I did think of it, I wouldn't have remembered all those other details. Wow."

I smiled as I extended my hand and pulled him up.

"I tell you what, dude. You go do what you do best and schmooze the bride, and I'll do what I do best and solve problems behind the scenes."

"Deal."

Chaz bent to splash his face as I exited the bathroom, nearly scaring the crap out of some poor man who assumed he had entered the ladies room when he saw me.

Senior event planner, my ass. What a joke.