“No.”
“Ryan.”
“Think about it.”
“You. Me. Your sister. My brother. Our closest friends. Maybe twenty people.”
“My aunt.”
“Obviously.”
“Your dad?”
He hesitated.
“Probably.”
“You really want to do this?”
“I want to marry you.”
He continued.
“I’ve spent months watching Mum turn our wedding into something neither of us wants.”
“I don’t care about chair covers. I don’t care about centerpieces. I don’t care whether Dennis, my mysterious second cousin, gets chicken or steak.”
I looked again at the beach resort.
“So, today was just the nail in the coffin?”
Part of me hated the idea that Mavis’s behavior might end up determining what our wedding became.
Then I pictured twenty-four people standing on a beach instead of ninety-six people sitting in a room she’d spent months trying to control.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Ryan looked at me.
“But not because she ruined anything. This is what we want. This would be perfect.”
“Exactly.”
Two days later, we canceled the venue, caterer, and florist.
Just in time, too.
Then we booked a small destination ceremony.
Twenty-four guests.
Immediate family.
Closest friends.
No extra tables.
No seating-chart politics.
No mysterious second cousins.
