The Day of the Wedding

By Elizabeth Carson

The Perfect Wedding Day

Sandy is totally happy for her mother, honest she is. It is her mother’s wedding day, after all. Howard, Freda’s fiancé, is a great guy.

But there are challenges. Starting with the ruffled pink blouse her mother expects her to wear. Ruffles! Pink! Sandy is a plumber. Everyone knows plumbers wear overalls. But on this point, her placid mother has proved to be intractable.

Then there’s Howard’s uptight nephew, Eugene the florist. Ugh. She'll endure him for the duration of the wedding, but the man’s nothing like the heroes in the Regency romances she keeps hidden in her plumber’s van.

And to top it all off, Sandy has to spend the whole day peacefully coexisting with her stuffy sister Joanne, she of the pearls and the sticky kid.

Sandy has no choice. She’ll do anything to make her mother’s wedding perfect.

Although with a family as chaotic as hers, the day is ripe for catastrophe …

A slapstick farce, approximately 80 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Carson
• Release date: Sep 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9780993979071

Book preview

The Day of the Wedding

LizAnn Carson

Table of Contents

Act 1: Before the Wedding

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Act 2: The Wedding

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 3: The Reception

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Act 1: Before the Wedding

SCENE 1

You will.

I won’t.

Of course you will, Sandy. You have no choice in the matter.

Freda wisely chose not to look up, but suspected a glare from her younger daughter, who was twenty-nine and by now should know better. This was Sandy, though, so maybe not. As the mother in the family, she could choose which glares to receive and which to ignore. Sandy might instigate, but she couldn’t control the outcome. Freda continued nudging the iron through the ruffles on the front of a sweet, pale pink blouse.

Sandy resorted to a whine. "Mo-o-m. You’re torturing me. That thing—it’s girlie."

My wedding, daughter, Freda said, unmoved and implacable. It won’t kill you to wear a respectable blouse for one day. One tiny day out of your whole life. For me. Who’s loved you forever.

Sandy sighed, a noisy, heart-felt lament for an afternoon sacrificed to a skirt and a ruffled blouse.

Freda kept a smile to herself. The guilt card won the hand every time. Sandy might squirm like a bug on a pin, but she didn’t have any tools to fight it, out there in her plumber’s van. Sandy would be stuck with the satiny pink confection of a blouse, despite her efforts to kidnap and dispatch the thing. As if Freda hadn’t seen right through that one. Besides, mothers are omniscient. By now Sandy should know that.

Sandy flounced into a chair, although her battered overalls made it difficult to pull off a flounce successfully.

I still haven’t figured out where you hid the first blouse, Freda said, at once lessening her daughter’s triumph at a successful heist and tossing her a bone by putting paid to parental infallibility. This is a new one. Now, why don’t you go over to Joanne’s? She can help you with your hair.

A rude pfftt emitted from the depths of the chair, followed by, You hate me.

Sandy and her older sister Joanne were chalk and cheese, true, but Freda never let go of hope. Besides, she was sure Sandy would scrub up well, and Joanne was just the one to take her on. A little femininity never went amiss, did it?

Freda was convinced the odds of a day like today, a wedding day but with Sandy in the featured role, would be significantly higher if she’d just get out of those eternal overalls. But Sandy had long resisted every effort to reshape her into something that was, at a minimum, female. Sandy was short and one might say sturdy—closer to fire hydrant than willow. Freda itched to give Sandy’s chopped-off brown hair and matching brown eyes even a smidgen of attention.

Joanne doesn’t want me at her house. She’ll find a million things to do that are way more important. Anyway, her kid’s always sticky.

Freda interrupted her daughter’s sulk. I offered to make you a hair appointment. I even offered to pay for it. A trim, a few nice waves—

You’re a hopeless romantic, Mom. I hope Howard knows what he’s buying into.

Oh, he’s a hopeless romantic, too. You young people are merely the cross we bear.

Gee, thanks. Sandy flopped around in the chair like a stranded fish.

Freda paid no attention. She had discovered long ago that Sandy’s more outrageous behavior could be cut off at the pass if you ignored the lead-up. She continued nonchalantly to poke at her daughter, all the while nuzzling the blouse with her iron. You are meant to be grown up and fledged and flown. We keep hoping.

I’m fledged, Sandy grumbled.

Dowdy feathers, dear. Now, please get out of here. Go find something useful to do. You’re making me antsy. Freda with an iron epitomized tranquil, but she figured she was allowed a touch of hyperbole, given that she was devoting her wedding morning to preparing her daughter’s outfit.

Besides, on general principles, if she was antsy she’d never let Sandy see it.

You don’t have a single nerve in your body.

Long since worn down to nubs. She had endured twenty-nine years of Sandy, after all.

You’re messing with my mind, Sandy grumbled, watching the flowing movement of the iron across the fluffy thing her nerveless mother insisted she wear that very afternoon.

Of course. That’s what parents are for. And by the way, I’ve already taken your suit to the Lodge. You can change there. That way there’s no risk you’ll forget it.

The Lodge was Arbutus Bay Lodge, an upscale hotel and convention facility. The Lodge offered a full-facility wedding venue, so for once in her life Freda had a chance to be primped and pampered, then married and feted, with a minimum of fuss on her part. She fully intended to cling to that chance for all she was worth.

Sandy’s potential forgetfulness where the suit was concerned was pure calculation. Freda had already entrusted one pink confection to her daughter. Full of bridal goodwill, she’d almost been tempted to give Sandy a second chance ... well, no. There was goodwill, and then there was sheer idiocy.

Sandy sighed again, loud and long, and heaved herself out of the chair. Don’t work too hard on that lovely blouse, Mom, she said. This is meant to be your special day, you know.

Thank you for reminding me.

A waste. Sandy was deaf and blind to sarcasm.

Freda regretted that it required metaphorically clenched fists to cling to her mellow mood. Sandy had that effect on her. Although to be strictly fair, Joanne wasn’t much better, with her airs and irritations