Toss the Bride by Jennifer Manske Fenske Page A

is a huge white store built to live beside other huge white stores in a shopping center near the mall. Large posters featuring beautiful brides tossing bouquets, laughing at secrets, and kissing flower girls decorate the store. One entire side of the place is taken up by wedding dresses hanging from oversized racks. Some gowns are in plastic. Still others have fallen from their hangers and slump, defeated, on the mauve-colored floor.
    Our goal is to walk out of here with a dress that looks like it took four European seamstresses four months to create, using really tiny stitches and pricey trimmings. I start pulling at fabric, fingering necklines, and flouncing skirts. Maurice takes over in a way only Maurice can.
    â€œDonna, yes, that’s the one. This chair will do.” Maurice waves to a woman with a name tag that identifies her as the manager. She lugs a satin chaise lounge over to a raised platform near the back of the store. “Put it down there, please.”
    Next, another employee trots up with satin shoes and a strapless bra in Carolina’s size. She disappears and yet another woman arrives on the scene with coffee and scones. “All I could get was raspberry from the coffee shop next door. I hope that’s okay,” she says to Maurice and almost drops a curtsy. I roll my eyes and get to organizing the dressing room.
    By the time Carolina slinks into the store with her mother—both wearing dark glasses, I kid you not—I have lined up several not-too-awful dresses. I will admit that spending the last year dealing with high-end silk doupioni and satin charmeuse has changed my ideas of what is nice and what is supernice. The dresses at O’Dell’s are nice. I’d wear one. But they are not what people like Carolina wear.
    As I slip the first dress over Carolina’s perfect hips, I notice my bride looks bored or sorry that she lied—or both. It occurs to me that she was protecting her aunt but sabotaging her own wedding. Does that mean she does not want to get married Saturday?
    â€œHow are we doing, Macie?” Maurice claps his hands from outside the dressing-room door. Carolina’s mother waits nearby on the chaise lounge.
    I nod to Carolina and open the dressing-room door. She moves languidly, like the models at the bridal show we attended last winter. This dress is a pretty A-line with a seventy-two-inch train. But Carolina seems completely unimpressed. She drags herself and the dress over toward her mother, reaches for a scone, and nibbles delicately.
    â€œIf you’ll notice the caviar beading here and here,” Maurice says. “Very fashionable over on the Continent.”
    â€œNext,” Carolina’s mother calls.
    Dresses two, three, and four rouse Carolina’s interest just a tad.
    â€œMakes my rear end look huge,” she says about dress number two.
    â€œIt minimizes my waist,” she complains of dress three.
    â€œI look poofy,” is her verdict on number four.
    Donna helps us pull on the next dress. I think she smells a big sale because she has ignored every other customer in the store to attend to us. As she arranges the silk taffeta over Carolina’s hips and closes up the back with the zipper hidden under a row of dainty, satin-covered buttons, I have a feeling this is the one. The narrow, strapless bodice is adorned with little clusters of tiny gold and glass beads. The ball gown skirt extends to a chapel-length train that can be bustled up neatly. It is really lovely. I could get married in this dress. I call to Maurice over the dressing-room door. He knows what this means.
    Maurice hands a veil over the door. He follows that with a tiara he’s been carting around for months. It was from a wedding that didn’t happen last year—the bride bailed days before the big day—and Maurice was stuck with the delicate rhinestone-and-crystal piece. It’s really elegant, but I know he would like to unload it on