27. Wedding Plans
WEDDING PLANS
I used to think “engagement glow” was something people made up for Instagram captions.
Now I get it. It’s not the ring—though I keep catching the light on it like it’s a tiny, personal sun.
It’s the way my brain keeps replaying last weekend in flashes.
Reid’s hands shaking when he opened the box.
The way he said my name before he asked.
The way my yes felt less like a fairytale and more like a decision I walked into with my eyes open.
But engagement glow apparently comes bundled with a brand-new kind of chaos.
“Okay, so hear me out,” Destiny says, spreading three wedding magazines across my small kitchen table like she’s presenting evidence. “Outdoor ceremony. String lights. Big dance floor. I’m talking full party.”
Hazel snorts, kicking her feet up on the chair opposite her. “And who is paying for your Pinterest board, ma’am?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Destiny says. “We’ll manifest it.”
Mom mutters something under her breath in Spanish from the stove and stirs the pot she’s working on. The apartment smells like sautéed onions and garlic. Liam is on the floor under the table with a wooden spoon and a plastic bowl, happily drumming like he’s auditioning for a toddler rock band.
I sit at the head of the table, mug of coffee between my hands, trying to keep up as my life gets divided into categories: venue, dress, guest list, colors. I haven’t even fully processed being engaged and somehow we’re already talking about centerpiece heights.
Hazel leans forward, eyes bright. “What are you thinking for the dress? Classic? Modern? Mermaid? Ball gown? Jumpsuit?”
I blink at her. “I’m thinking I still have to answer twenty emails for work before Monday.”
“All work and no wedding makes Amelia a very boring bride,” Destiny says, flipping to a page with a model in a lace dress I could never afford. “Look at this one.”
She pushes the magazine in front of me. The dress is pretty—delicate, detailed, nothing like the sweatpants I’m currently in.
“It’s nice,” I say.
“Nice?” Hazel repeats. “You’re getting married, not going to a dentist appointment.”
Mom turns off the burner and brings the pot to the table, setting it on a trivet. “Give her a minute,” she says, but her tone is softer than it was the night I told her about the engagement. “It’s only been a week.”
Her eyes flick to my hand. She doesn’t say anything about the ring, but I see the mix there: worry and love sharing the same space. She hasn’t repeated her speech from that night—about being young and still figuring myself out—but I can feel it hovering at the edges of everything.
Destiny pulls out her phone. “Have you and Reid talked dates yet?”
“Not really,” I say. “We said ‘sometime after he graduates’ and then got distracted by everyone calling and texting and losing their minds.”
Hazel grins. “His mom sounded so happy on the phone. I could hear her squeal from your speaker.”
I smile despite myself. “Yeah. His parents are… excited.”
Excited is an understatement. Reid’s mom cried.
His dad said he was proud. His brothers made dumb jokes about Reid “joining the grown-up club” while obviously thrilled.
The contrast to my own family’s reaction sits somewhere heavy but familiar in my chest. Mom’s not against him.
She’s just… cautious. Protective in a way that doesn’t always sound like celebration.
“Okay,” Destiny says, tapping her nails on the table. “First things first: where. Are we thinking something local so the whole family can come?”
“Local makes the most sense,” I say. “Liam’s daycare is here. My job is here. Reid’s family can fly in.”
Hazel nods slowly. “Makes sense. But that man’s about to have a degree. He might get offers all over the place.”
The reminder slides in like a thin blade. I know that. I am proud of that. It still makes my stomach dip.
“We’re not moving across the country tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll figure it out.”
Mom sits down, pulling her chair in. “Figure out what?” she asks.
I take a breath. “Where we’ll live after he graduates. He’s looking at internships. Jobs. It might not be here.”
Her mouth presses into a line. “And your work?”
I know the question behind the question: Are you going to throw away everything you’re building for him?
“I’m not quitting Nexus Dynamics tomorrow either,” I say. “I like my job. I’m good at it. Eric’s already dumping more responsibility on me as if I said ‘engaged’ and he heard ‘promote me.’”
Hazel laughs. “To be fair, you love yelling at broken code. It’s your love language.”
“It’s not broken, it’s misunderstood,” I say automatically, then realize I just defended software.
Destiny snorts. “You see why we’re concerned?”
Liam picks that moment to bang his spoon extra hard. We all pause and look down at him. He beams up at us, yogurt still crusted in one eyebrow from earlier.
“This is already a lot,” I admit quietly. “Work. Liam. Engagement. Wedding planning. I feel like someone dropped five new plates into my hands when I was already juggling three.”
Mom reaches for the ladle, serving food onto our plates like we aren’t in the middle of a life evaluation. “You don’t have to plan everything today,” she says. “One step at a time.”
“Tell that to your daughters,” I say, nodding at Hazel and Destiny, who are now debating if we should have a DJ or a live band.
Hazel points a fork at me. “We’re just trying to make sure you don’t end up with a sad courthouse ceremony with bad lighting.”
“Nothing wrong with a courthouse wedding,” Mom says.
“I know,” Hazel says quickly. “I’m just saying if Amelia wants more, she should get more. She’s earned it.”
The words land soft, but they still land. I have earned something more. Not just a ring, or a party, or a white dress. A life that doesn’t feel like I’m constantly choosing between love and stability, work and family, my dreams and his. My phone buzzes on the counter.
I push back from the table to grab it, heart automatically giving that small, traitorous jump it still gives every time his name pops up.
Reid: Survived practice. Barely. Call you in ten?
I smile at the screen.
I’m with the wedding committee. Call me anyway.
Reid: Oh no. Are they picking our first dance song?
You should be more afraid. They’re picking your suit.
Reid: Tell them I’m eloping in sweatpants.
I huff out a laugh and shake my head, typing back as I walk to the sink to rinse my mug.
Say that louder so they can hear you. I dare you.
“Is that him?” Destiny asks, craning her neck.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s calling in a few.”
Hazel claps once. “Group call. Put him on speaker. I have notes.”
“No,” I say instantly. “Absolutely not.”
Mom snorts. “Let them torment him. It’ll prepare him for marriage.”
I lean my hip against the counter and look around my small, messy kitchen.
The magazines. The half-eaten dinner. Liam under the table.
My ring catching the overhead light. I’m excited.
I am. There’s a version of this night that feels like everything I ever wanted: family, love, a future with the man I said yes to.
But underneath the warmth, there’s a thread of something else—an unease I can’t quite name.
I think about the email I got this morning from Eric, flagged high priority. A new client is coming on next quarter. He wants me to lead the integration team. More responsibility. More visibility. More hours. More roots.
My phone buzzes again, this time with a calendar notification I set earlier: “Check daycare schedule for next month.” I snooze it. I can’t look at another schedule right now.
“Earth to Amelia,” Hazel says. “You’re doing that thing where you leave your body and stare at a random tile on the wall.”
“Just thinking,” I say.
Destiny eyes me. “Dangerous.”
“About what?” Mom asks quietly.
I hesitate. “How I’m supposed to be engaged, plan a wedding, be a good mom, and not drop the ball at work when my job is about to get more intense.”
The table goes quiet for a beat.
“You do everything else,” Hazel says. “You’ll do this too.”
“That’s kind of the problem,” I say. “I keep doing everything.”
Mom’s gaze softens. “You don’t have to prove anything by burning yourself out.”
“Tell that to my inbox,” I mutter.
Liam pops out from under the table and smacks my thigh with his spoon. “Mama,” he says, demanding attention.
I scoop him up and settle him on my hip. He curls into me, sticky and warm and heavy in that comforting way only a child can be.
“You okay, baby?” I ask.
He nods, thumb going into his mouth. That’s what this whole season feels like—holding too much and still trying to say I’m okay.
I kiss the top of his head and glance at the ring on my hand again.
Engagement glow, yes. But the glow doesn’t erase the shadows.
If anything, it just makes them easier to see.
The first real fracture shows itself two nights later while we’re on a video call, calendars pulled up on both sides of the screen.
Liam is asleep. My laptop is open to a spreadsheet titled Tentative Wedding Timeline, which already feels like a joke because nothing about our lives is tentative—everything is urgent.
Reid is sitting at his dorm desk with his hoodie half-zipped and his hair sticking up like he’s run his hands through it twelve times today.
“What about May?” he asks. “Spring weddings are supposed to be nice, right?”
“May of next year?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah.”
My chest tightens. “That’s… really soon, Reid. We’d only have seven months.”
“That’s enough time.”
“For who?” I ask. “Normal couples who aren’t juggling work, school, long-distance, and a toddler?”
He leans back in his chair. “Okay, then what about June?”
I shift my laptop slightly, the spreadsheet glowing back at me with too many empty boxes. “June is mid-sprint. We’re presenting Phase Three in early July. I can’t disappear to do wedding stuff in the middle of all that.”
His eyebrows pull together. “I’m not asking you to disappear. I’m just asking for a month.”
“I’m telling you I don’t have bandwidth in June.”