Chapter 42
42
The bride leaned across Cara’s desk and stabbed a long pearly pink fingernail at page 72 of the March 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings. The page was dog-eared, and the rest of the magazine bristled with pink Post-it notes.
“This one. This is the exact bouquet I want. I’ve saved this magazine since I was eighteen years old. I picked out my wedding dress because I knew it would go with this bouquet.”
Cara groaned inwardly. How well she knew this particular wedding bouquet. She was sure it was the most-pinned item on every single bride’s Pinterest page in the universe. She wanted to rip page 72 out of this magazine, ball it up, and burn it.
Instead, she did what she always did. She picked up a pencil and pointed it at each flower in the bouquet.
“Heather, these flowers here? They are Casablanca lilies. They wholesale at thirty dollars a stem. I count five stems in this bouquet—so that’s a hundred and fifty dollars right there. These pretty ruffly flowers? Like overblown roses? These are premium peonies. This size bunch wholesales at about seventy-five dollars.”
“What?” Heather drew back as though she’d been slapped. “Thirty dollars for one lily?”
“Yes. Although one stem will have multiple blossoms. They’re imported.” Cara pointed at the petite bell-shaped flowers edging the infamous Martha Stewart bouquet. “Now these—these are the budget killers.”
“Yes. Lilies of the valley,” Heather said eagerly. “Kate Middleton’s whole bouquet was made of them.”
“Yes,” Cara said. “I’m aware.” Which was the understatement of the year. Ever since the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, she’d been besieged with brides insisting upon having lilies of the valley.
“Here’s the thing, Heather. Lilies of the valley are so tiny, you need a lot of them to make any impact at all. One tiny bunch, which is ten skinny stems, is ninety dollars. I’d say there are at least six bunches in this bouquet. That’s three hundred and sixty dollars.”
Heather’s mother had been sitting beside the bride, frowning. But now the MOB’s eyes bugged out. “That must be a mistake. We didn’t spend three hundred and sixty dollars for her older sister’s whole flower budget.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “Mama, Jessica got married eight years ago! She only had one bridesmaid, and we had the reception at your house.”
“It was still a lovely wedding,” the mother insisted. “And I can tell you right now, your daddy is not going to pay three hundred and sixty dollars for some itty-bitty flowers just because some English princess had them.”
“Also? Besides being expensive, Lilies of the valley are extremely fragile. Your wedding is in August. In summer months, our suppliers won’t even guarantee what kind of condition they’ll be in when they arrive here.” Cara gave the MOB an apologetic shrug.
“No lilies,” the mother shot back.
Cara reached over and gently closed the March 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings. “Heather, the bouquet you’re looking at costs roughly twelve hundred dollars.”
“No way,” Heather breathed.
“Way. And what did you say your flower budget was for this wedding? With, what? Six bridesmaids?”
Heather looked at her mother for guidance. “Two thousand. And not a penny more.”
“Okay,” Cara said. Heather looked like a sweet girl. And her mother, as far as MOBs went, seemed nice, too. But with their budget, they could not afford a full-scale Bloom wedding. And with Cara’s current cash-flow situation, she couldn’t afford to take them on pro bono.
“Let’s do this. Let’s think about a nice, simple bouquet for you, Heather. I can make you up something very pretty, with white hydrangeas, tea roses, and white hypericum berries, for around a hundred and fifty. It won’t be anywhere as big or showy as the bouquet in your magazine, but it will still be lovely with your dress.”
Heather’s nose wrinkled. “Hydrangeas? Like my meemaw grows in her yard?”
“Yes. Hydrangeas.” Cara shoved Heather’s magazine aside and snapped open her iPad. She scrolled through the photos of weddings she’d done until she came to what she privately called “Bargain Basement Bouquet.”
“We can get these in all white, in a pale green, shades of pinks, blues, creams, and purples,” Cara said.
“That’s beautiful.” Heather’s mother nodded emphatically.
“It is kind of pretty,” the bride begrudgingly admitted. “What do we do about the bridesmaids’ bouquets?”
“You go minimalist,” Cara said. “One or two stems of hydrangeas, and you do a ruffle of hydrangea leaves to fill it out.”
“Wait. Are you saying you want me to make the bridesmaids’ bouquets?”
“If you do them, you can get away with spending around fifteen dollars apiece, and that includes a pretty white satin ribbon binding, which you can buy at Michael’s. You can find lots of tutorials online that show you how to make a simple bouquet. If I do them, I have to charge markup and labor, and that’s going to bring the price of each of those bouquets to sixty dollars,” Cara explained.
“I never heard of such a thing,” the MOB said. “Anyway, we still need flowers for the church and the reception. Who’s going to do them?”
Heather’s eyes were pleading. Her mother was glaring at both of them.
“All right,” Cara relented. “I’ll do your bouquet and the church flowers, for two thousand dollars. But the altar flowers will also have to be carried over to your church parlor for the reception. You’ll need to deputize one of your bridesmaids or girlfriends to be in charge of that.”
“I’ll ask Jessica to do it,” Heather said.
“Two thousand is a really tight budget,” Cara warned. “I need you to understand that you won’t have exotic or imported flowers. We can do a lot with hydrangeas and carnations and glads and spray roses and local foliage. Do you have any friends with pretty gardens? We can use hosta leaves and ivy and ferns for greenery and that will save you a lot of money.”
“My sister is in a garden club,” Heather’s mom said. “She’ll let us cut whatever we need.”
“Wonderful,” Cara said. She stood up, as a signal that their meeting was over. “One more thing? The way this works is, you pay me half today, and the other half is due two weeks before the wedding.”
“A thousand dollars? Today?” The MOB clutched her pocketbook to her chest, as though Cara might make a lunge for it at any moment.
“Yes,” Cara said firmly. Some things were not negotiable.
“Mama?” Heather put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “We agreed, right? Two thousand for flowers.”
“But I thought we’d just look at pictures, and discuss,” the mother said.
Cara felt her patience wearing thin. In reality, her patience was flat gone. She gave the two women a bright smile. “You’re welcome to check around with other florists, but this is standard in our business. I really can’t give you any more of a consultation without receiving a deposit check. Today.”
Let them walk,Cara thought. I can’t afford this kind of charity. I might not even still be in business in August.
“Mama?” Heather was opening her own pocketbook, taking out her checkbook. She wrote the check, ripped it from the book, and handed it to Cara.
“Thank you,” Heather said fervently. “Thank you so much.”
***
Bert had been sitting at his side of the worktable, putting together hospital bouquets, listening throughout the consultation. When mother and daughter were gone, he slapped his scissors on the table.
“Looorrrrd,” he drawled. “When I looked out the window and saw those two pull up in that tired old Ford Fiesta I almost told them they’d come to the wrong place. What I don’t get is why you didn’t just tell them you can’t do a Bloom wedding for two thousand dollars. Why didn’t you just tell them to take their sad little selves out to Sam’s Club? They can get a whole lot of wilted chrysanthemums and daisies and carnations for two thousand dollars over there.”
“Cut it out, Bert,” Cara said sharply. “I can’t blame the girl for wanting something nice. Most girls dream about their wedding day their whole life. It’s not Heather’s fault all those magazines and websites love to feature fairytale weddings—but never explain what the price tags are.”
“You’re not doing her any favor indulging in her little fantasy world,” Bert said. “She’ll never find even a half-assed photographer or a caterer with the kind of piddly budget she’s talking about. She should just get her sourpuss mama to give her the money she’d spend on a tacky wedding and then elope. Spend the money on a trip to South of the Border, or a down payment on a double-wide.”
“Fun is fun, but now that’s just mean,” Cara said. “When did you get to be such a bitch?”
“And when did you get so high-minded and holier-than-thou?” he shot back. “Come on, Cara, lighten up, will you? We always used to have such fun around here, but lately, you’re so serious. Everything is so dire. Frankly, it’s depressing.”
Bert’s phone, which he’d placed on the worktable beside him, buzzed to signal an incoming text. He looked down, read it, then scrambled down off his high-backed stool. “I’m going to lunch.”
“You just got back from a coffee run that took thirty minutes,” Cara said. “And you came in thirty minutes late this morning. You’ve been pulling this same disappearing act all week. I warned you earlier, Bert. We’ve got Mary Payne’s ninetieth-birthday party tonight, and the bar association dinner at the Chatham Club tomorrow night, not to mention the phone orders we need to get done and delivered. I can’t get it all done by myself. And I shouldn’t have to.”
“Are you telling me I can’t take a lunch hour? That’s probably against the law, you know.”
“I’m telling you you’ve already taken a lunch hour,” she shot back. “If you’re really hungry, I’ll go upstairs and fix you a sandwich, or we can get a pizza delivered. But we both know that’s not the case. We both know that text you just got is a booty call from your new boyfriend.”
“Screw you!” Bert said angrily. “Just because you’ve got no life and live like a nun, doesn’t mean I have to.” He picked up his phone and walked deliberately toward the door.
“I mean it, Bert,” Cara said, clenching and unclenching her fists. “If you walk out that door now, you’re done. Don’t bother coming back.”
He had his hand on the doorknob. He hesitated, then strode back toward the worktable.
Relief flooded Cara’s body. She didn’t want this. But he’d pushed her right to the edge.
Bert opened the drawer on his side of the worktable. He picked up the backpack he’d slung over his chair and tossed in a paperback book, his favorite scissors, and a coffee mug. Then he reached up to the shelf behind the table, took his iPod station and iPod, and threw them into the bag with the rest of his belongings.
“I’m not giving you a reference for another job,” Cara called, just as he reached the shop door.
“I don’t need one.” He slammed the door. Hard.