Chapter 7 - Cindy
With her cell phone on speaker, Cindy scrolled through the online calendar, waiting for the bride to settle on a date to reschedule the venue visit—even though she already knew it wasn’t going to happen.
“I think we should just cancel,” the woman said, as expected. “I’m sorry, but I kind of made up my mind.”
“Oh, no, no problem at all, Jenna,” Cindy said brightly, her voice dipped in that professional honey she’d perfected over thirty years in hospitality. “We completely understand. Plans change. I’ll go ahead and cancel the tour for January.”
On the other end of the line, the young woman sounded almost apologetic.
“You’ve been so kind, Cindy. It’s just—well, I saw the Grand Hyatt’s Instagram last night, and they’re doing these crazy aerial shots with drone footage and custom snow machines, and it just looked so…
magical. They’re offering a new package, with champagne ice sculptures and a full media team, even for a wedding as small as mine.
My mom said it’s once in a lifetime, and… well, you know how it is.”
Cindy forced a smile the woman couldn’t see. Now Grand Hyatt was after the “intimate wedding” market? Would that beast never get off her back?
“Of course I do. You need to go where you feel your day will be spectacular.”
There was a soft, guilty laugh. “I really did love the look of your space, but I don’t see much about it online.”
“We’re new.”
“I guess,” she said. “But I do want a place that has clout, as superficial as that sounds.”
Next-level superficial, Cindy thought. “Of course,” she cooed instead.
“My fiancé is a big believer in the TikTok magic.”
Cindy rolled her eyes and smiled through it, promising to email the cancellation confirmation. When she finally ended the call, the cheerful lilt drained from her like air from a balloon.
She sat in her small but tidy office—the new “Snowberry Weddings HQ,” as they’d dubbed the room that wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet off the back of the Starling Room.
On a sigh, she looked at the framed photo on the small floating shelf Jack had installed above her desk. It was a perfect shot of Cindy and Jack perched on the sleigh last year, their cheeks flushed from cold air and fresh happiness.
She had to remember that no matter what happened in her new business, the rest of her life was, as Nicole liked to say, on point.
A knock on the open door pulled her back. MJ poked her head in, a soft smile warming every feature. “Hey, you off your call?”
Cindy sighed and swiveled her chair toward her sister. “Sadly, yes. Jenna, the destination wedding bride from Sioux Falls looking for a date next fall? She just called to cancel the tour—going with the Grand Hyatt.”
MJ stepped in, closing the door behind her. “Why?”
“She said she loved the Starling Room,” Cindy replied, rubbing her temples, “but she saw the Grand Hyatt’s Instagram account. Apparently, they have ‘more clout.’”
MJ frowned. “Clout?”
Cindy gave a weary little laugh. “It’s social media influence. Popularity. Basically, people want to get married at the place everyone’s already posting about.”
“Ah,” MJ said, nodding sagely. “At the risk of sounding like our father, I’d prefer to live in a world with no hashtags.”
Cindy laughed at the spot-on Red Starling imitation. “Seriously. But we don’t.” She leaned back, pressing her palms to her thighs. “It’s not that Jenna didn’t like the Starling Room—it’s that we don’t offer…online name recognition. And if I’m being honest, that worries me.”
MJ pulled up the extra chair beside the desk and sat down, crossing her legs. “Cindy, you knew that was going to happen sometimes. The Starling Room isn’t meant to compete with glitzier places. We’re for the people who want something cozy and warm and intimate. Jenna just wasn’t our bride.”
“I know, but…” Cindy looked down. “This is my new career, MJ. My whole second act. If I can’t get people to fall in love with this place, then what was the point of all that renovation, all that planning? Snowberry Weddings has to work. It has to.”
“It will,” MJ assured her. “You’ve got taste, heart, and experience—and now, you’ve got Dominique and her Aisle Files crew on board. That’s going to bring a whole new audience and name recognition.”
“You’re right.” Cindy exhaled the words. “But the pressure for that to go well is through the roof. I underestimated how powerful that social media thing is. Brides don’t just want pretty—they want viral.”
MJ wrinkled her nose. “Viral sounds like the flu.”
Cindy laughed, tension easing just a fraction. “You do sound more like Red every day. This is a virus we want, though.”
MJ reached across the desk to pat her hand. “Dominique’s coming for your wedding. The Aisle Files coverage alone will have brides from Salt Lake to Seattle calling you for tours.”
Cindy looked at her sister, gratitude flickering in her chest. “You really think so?”
“I know so.” MJ rose, brushing invisible lint from her jeans. “And you know what’ll make you feel better right now?”
“What?”
“The sun and sky and mountains are perfect. Remember, we wanted to do a wedding walk-through to test the timing on the afternoon light.”
“Yes.” She glanced at the clock. “This is perfect, since the wedding guests arrive at four on the big day.”
“And Jack arrived at three-forty-five—today.”
She frowned. “Jack doesn’t need to be here. This isn’t the actual rehearsal. And doesn’t he have a sleigh ride scheduled?”
This year, the rides were already nearly back-to-back, even without Benny’s TikTok campaign. And that meant Jack was busy.
“He’s between rides and he said he has some ideas.”
Cindy made a face and MJ cracked up.
“I know, I know,” MJ said. “Grooms and…ideas. But he so very much wants to be a part of the planning process. As I recall, the first time, he basically showed up in a tux. He wants everything to be different for you two, Cindy.”
“Which is why I love him.” Cindy pushed up, grabbing a notebook and ducking so her shoulder didn’t bump the floating shelf as she avoided the guest chair.
Cozy, she told herself. Her new office was cozy—and tiny. The right size for a small business.
Picking up her phone, she followed MJ out and around the corner into the Starling Room. Inside, the space shimmered with soft, late afternoon light and suddenly that small business looked like nothing but potential.
“Oh, it’s perfect,” she exclaimed, imagining that this would be the time of day that guests began to arrive.
“Thank you.”
She turned to look at Jack, who stood on the platform under the trellis, dressed in jeans and the white shirt he wore under his sleigh ride driver’s costume. He gave her a smile as sweet as the twinkling lights behind him on the…wait.
What did he put on that arch?
“I’m glad you like it,” he said, gesturing toward the thing she knew would cause a battle with Dominique. “I know you wanted to do something with it, so…”
He’d taken down the fabric and wrapped the wood with some artificial green garlands that looked like they were meant to spin around an outside railing and white lights that were…too white.
It was kind of awful, but he’d made an effort to dress up the trellis that he so firmly believed would somehow bring them good luck.
She wasn’t about to squash that.
“I love it,” she said, walking toward him. “And you.”
He angled his head like the words touched him. “Same, Cinnie.”
His sweet little nickname always got to her. And MJ was so right about the changes in Jack. At no point in their first marriage had Jack been this romantic, this attentive, or this much of a real partner.
For the past year, he’d been all those things, making it clear he wanted this second time around to work so much, and she loved that.
She greeted him with a warm hug. “Thanks for joining us,” she whispered into a quick kiss. “I know you value your downtime between rides.”
“I value this wedding more,” he assured her. “So, what’s the plan for today?”
“We’re testing light time,” she told him. “Right now, in light time, the people are arriving.”
He frowned. “Light time?”
“Light is everything, Jack,” MJ explained. “In fact, I’ll turn the chandeliers on and grab some of the candles. Cin, you can explain the natural light timing to Jack.”
“Of course,” she said. “MJ and I have been in this room all throughout the year, all different times of day, so we tracked the changes in the light and refer to them as ‘light time.’ We have a system to maximize the light for every ceremony.”
He laughed a little, admiration in his eyes. “Of course you do.”
She laughed, too. “Can’t apologize for being a perfectionist. But it’s a fun concept because we’ve figured out that we should time weddings so the guests arrive as the sun dips close to the mountains. If we know our light time, we don’t leave anything to chance.”
He turned to look out the French doors and the massive windows that offered up a full mountain view. “Like right now,” he said.
“Yep, and it lasts about a half-hour, though we’re at the tail end of that now—sorry, I was on the phone. After everyone’s seated and the wedding party is in place, if we time it right, I show up—”
“The blushing bride,” he teased.
She smiled at that, loving that he thought of her like that at sixty. “I’ll probably be a little flushed,” she conceded. “But hopefully no one will notice because I’ll arrive at that very moment when the sky and peaks are all awash with pink and lavender.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “I know the moment you mean. It’s always a big hit on the sleigh rides.”
“See? You understand why we are trying to time the weddings around peak sun—which changes every month.” She rolled her eyes. “So, the sky and light is a moving target.”
“It’s brilliant, but I can see it could stress you out.”