I Do (But I Don't) (Original)

Divorced wedding consultant Lauren Crandell finds her professional and personal life turned upside down by her demanding boss, pesky cat, psychotic clients, neurotic friends, and a firefighter who arrives to save the day.

Autorentext

Cara Lockwood

Klappentext
In this hip, engaging debut novel, it's not all white roses and satin for a divorced wedding planner whose most important client turns the Big Day into a Big Disaster.

Zusammenfassung
She creates perfect days.
In spite of her incorrigible curly hair, Lauren Crandell is a neat-freak and organizational guru, qualities that make her the perfect wedding planner. But when two weddings in one day go haywire, and hunky firefighter Nick Corona comes to the rescue -- twice -- Lauren realizes there are a few important details in her own life she hasn't been tending to since her divorce. Namely, her sex life.

She lives lonely nights.
Sweet and sexy Nick seems hell-bent on fanning the flames between them, and Lauren definitely feels sparks flying. But she's scrambling to plan nuptials for her most challenging client yet -- a beautiful, cunning, and certifiable Psycho Bride. With the big day rapidly approaching, a series of misunderstandings, mishaps, and mistaken identities threatens to ruin not one, but two happily ever afters. But with her career and her love life on the line, the wedding planner just might learn that you can't plan everything, least of all true love.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

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 flare 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 flare 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 Haagen-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 shoul…