Congratulations and Celebrations

 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach is a story about how two people fall in love and get married and how strangers meet in the most unlikely places and find some connection.

Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels. She has no luggage with her. The hotel has been booked for a wedding party for the entire week but Phoebe is not there for the wedding. She is depressed and suicidal. When Lila the bride meets Phoebe, she is worried that her elaborate destination will be ruined by this stranger. She has spent months accounting for every detail and every possible disaster except for someone like Phoebe.

Phoebe remembers the Victorian Hotel from some magazine that she read while waiting in the fertility clinic. She imagines the Cornwall Inn, a place she has never been to be a happy place.

Two years ago after their final visit to the fertility clinic ‘ when they found out that the embryos had been bad, it had all been a waste‘, she was pregnant and then ten weeks later she was no longer pregnant.

She found the Cornwall Inn online. She said to her husband, Matt,

“At the Cornwall, we can go sailing on an America’s Cup winner.”

She wanted to sit in the hot tub while staring the ocean and he had said that they could slurp oysters and somehow laughed at the same exact time. She had all these ideas about what they could do. ‘They could paddleboard with seals. Go on a “water journey ” at a nearby spa. Visit Edith Wharton’s house one the Cliff Walk . Do yoga by the ocean, not that she had ever done yoga.But she liked the thought of becoming a woman who casually did yoga by the sea.’

‘She made a detailed spreadsheet of excursions, because she was a researcher by profession.’

‘She loved the way Matt indulged her. They were very similar -he was a researcher , too, thought he would never call him that. He was a philosopher. ‘

Phoebe teaches literature while Matt teaches philosophy. They work at the same university. They only aspire to be normal. But Matt is not with her on this trip.They are now divorced.

At the hotel lobby, Phoebe sees a long check-in line. All these guests have come to attend Lila and Gary’s wedding that is to last a week. Lila enters the lobby wearing a glittering sash that says BRIDE, and she has ‘gift bags hanging from her wrists like bracelets made of woven seagrass‘.She hugs every guest and hands out the seagrass bags. She also gives Phoebe one of those gift bags and a really strong hug. Lila finds out that Phoebe is not there for the wedding party when they are both taking the elevator.

‘Phoebe walks into the elevator and feels relief when the doors start to close. Finally to be getting away from the wedding people. To be doing something for a change. To have a key to a place that is not her house.

” Hold the elevator!” a woman calls out.

Phoebe knows it’s the bride before she sees her. She yells like she deserves this elevator. But nobody deserves anything. Not even the bride. Phoebe presses the button to close the doors, but the bride slides a hand between them. They don’t bounce open like they’re supposed to, may be because the Cornwall was built in 1864. An old hotel has no mercy, not even for the bride. ‘

Inside the lift, Lila discovers that Phoebe is not her wedding guest. As the week progresses, both women will soon find their best-laid plans derailed and Phoebe and Lila become unlikely confidantes to one another.

Lila’s mother is a curator and she is working at her mother’s art gallery as her assistant. That is where she meets Gary when he comes in to purchase a painting. She tells Phoebe that she never understands why her mother is obsessed with art. Then when Phoebe says years ago,she used to have ‘clear and beautiful ideas about art, how art is what elevates us, art is the magnificence wrung from the ugly dish towel of existence. Art helps us fell alive‘ but now she can’t stand the sight of her books nor ‘bear the thought of reading hundred of pages just to watch Jane Eye get married again‘. Lila thinks that she has found kinship in Phoebe like they’re old cousins when Phoebe actually cannot explain the kind of darkness that she is feeling and how ‘literature cannot save her in the end‘. As the week progresses, things start to look up for Phoebe. Not only she gets invited by Lila to attend the wedding party, she even becomes Lila’s maid of honour. This is how unpredictable life can be as things can change in an instant.

Alison Espach is a prolific writer and she is brilliant at describing the characters, their behaviour and inner lives. The narratives are keenly observant of social construct and wickedly funny.

I have always been a fan of serendipitous meet and I believe that if there are people whom we are meant to meet we will somehow meet and share some connection and sometimes in a way that you least expect. Life itself is a celebration if you are open to new experiences. Things may not turn out the way you plan, but when you keep heart open, you evolve and grow to become the person you want to be. There is no such place as a happy place if you are not happy. If you are happy, you are happy anywhere.

The Wedding People is darkly funny and romantic. It is a delightful story about life-altering chance meetings.