The minister pronounced Steven and Eileen husband and wife, and we began exiting to the triumphant strains of a royal fanfare. When Barry tried to take my arm, I handed him Duck instead. Duck didn't appear to like it any more than he did.
We marched into the side yard and formed a receiving line. Although they could just as easily have circumnavigated the house, most of the guests played by the rules and ran the gauntlet before going to the backyard for champagne and hors d'oeuvres. Unfortunately, this kept us standing around for rather a long time under the inadequate shade of a flower-trimmed bower. I found myself silently cheering whenever someone sneaked out of the line.
The Renaissance banquet, once we finally got to sit down for it, was much admired, especially the spit-roasted pigs. Eileen did manage to set her veil on fire with one of the votive candles decorating the head table, but Steven put it out immediately with a tankard of mead. Only a few of the die-hards joined in the period dancing, but the tumblers, jugglers, and acrobats were a great hit.
I was increasingly glad that I had talked Eileen and Steven out of some of their more bizarre ideas of Renaissance authenticity. The dancing bear, for instance, would have been a bit too much. Although I wasn't entirely sure that the substitute was much of an improvement--Cousin Horace, risking heat stroke in his moth-eaten gorilla suit, which he'd ineptly altered in the vague hope of making it look bearlike. Ah, well. Horace had fun, anyway. After dinner, the rest of the program was largely the usual agenda, in costume. There was much to be said for the usual agenda. The guests knew it, and could carry on without a lot of instructions. Already guests were beginning to coagulate for the bouquet and garter throwing. Then we would have changing into going away clothes and pelting the departing van with organic birdseed. Followed by the utter collapse of the maid of honor. My responsibilities for the day would be over and I could swill down a couple more glasses of champagne. Maybe a couple of bottles.
Eileen had chosen to throw her bouquet from the Donleavys front stoop, which was gussied up to look like yet another bower. All the unmarried women were being chivvied into a semicircle at the base of the stoop. I took a safe place at the outskirts, hoping the lucky recipient of the bouquet would be a perfect stranger with no reason even to invite me to her wedding, much less recruit me as a participant.
Eileen teased the crowd with a few fake throws. "Come on, Meg," someone behind me said, "you'll never catch it like that."
I was turning to explain that catching it was the last thing on my mind, when something struck me violently on the side of the head. I was actually somewhat stunned for a few seconds, and then people began hugging me and clapping me on the back, and I realized that without even trying I had caught the bouquet. In my hair.
In fact, the thing had become inextricably tangled with my hair and the intricate floral headpiece that Mrs. Tranh and the ladies had anchored in place with about a million hairpins. Everyone seemed to find this hilarious except me; I had to hold onto the damned thing tightly to keep my hair from being torn out by the roots. Steven headed up to the stoop to remove the garter from Eileen's leg and fling it to the crowd. I was not about to sit still for having the garter put on my leg with a basketball-sized shrub stuck to my head. I fled inside to untangle myself. They would just have to wait till I was finished; if they got impatient, someone could come and help me, dammit. I found a hand mirror in the hall powder room and went out to the kitchen, where by resting my head on the kitchen table and propping the hand mirror against a vinegar cruet I could free up both hands and still see what I was doing.
What I was doing was going nowhere fast. In fact, I was making it worse, and the last few shreds of my patience evaporated. I heard gales of laughter outside. Steven must be really hamming up the garter bit. I rummaged through the kitchen cabinet drawers--one-handed--until I found a pair of scissors, and was reaching up to hack off the bouquet, hair and all, when I felt someone grab my wrist. I shrieked.
"Now, now," Michael said. "Let's not be hasty. You have two more weddings coming up; you'd regret doing that in the morning."
"Right now I just want to get the damned thing out of my hair," I said, close to tears.
"Sit down and I'll do it," he said, pulling up a chair and easing me into it with one deft motion as he began the tedious business of untangling the bouquet. "However did you manage this?"
"I didn't, Eileen did. I always thought you were supposed to give the bouquet a gentle toss and let fate decide who caught it. Eileen must have hurled the thing at my head with the speed and accuracy of a Cy Young award winner." Just then I saw Eileen and a couple of the bridesmaids flit by on their way upstairs. "Damn, I'm supposed to be helping her change!"