Christmas Wedding Read Free Page B

those kind of weddings run counter to everything Colin stands for. You were so thrilled to get him to design the wedding. Colin is known for his understated elegance, for weddings and parties where people are the focal point, not some rhinestone embossed table cloth.”
    “ So what happened?” Kiki asked.
    “ Well, she wasn’t convinced. So I said to her, ‘Melanie, are you aware that fifty percent of the world’s population lives on two dollars a day? Given that, doesn’t a half-million dollar wedding sound like the height of insensitivity?
    “ She saw the light then. Still, this is all really more than Jon and I ever wanted. This is Melanie’s dream. Did you see the Sunday Times yesterday? Melanie and Cam made the Wedding page. Melanie is beside herself with excitement.”
    “ Well, hey, don’t knock it. Most brides would kill to get their picture in the Sunday Times,” Kiki said.
    “ OK, you and Melanie have convinced me. I am not Lifestyle material. Now come on, I’ll show you the rest of the downstairs.”
    “ Ashley, I appreciate it that you permitted us bridesmaids to select our own dresses. The dress I chose suits me fine,” she said as we moved back into the reception hall. “None of that frou frou little girl stuff for me.”
    We had given each bridesmaid a swatch of the color they were to wear – a bright Christmassy red – but let them choose the style that suited their figure type. Subject to Melanie’s approval, of course. She had to have the last word.
    “ Remember those big tulle dresses your mother made you wear to her mock wedding to my grandfather?” Kiki reminisced.
    “ How could I forget? Melanie’s was green and she said she looked like Kermit the frog. But then the wedding was cancelled because of that poor lady’s sudden death.”
    “ And they never rescheduled. Granddad was heartbroken.”
    “ Oh, poor man. But you mean Rhett, don’t you?” I asked, referring to the name Mama had given to Kiki’s grandfather when she met him at the Magnolia Manor Nursing Home. Mama had been besotted with Gone With the Wind.
    “ He loved it that she called him Rhett. Made him feel young and dashing, he said, like Clark Gable. He adored your mother,” Kiki said with a wistful smile. “He died about six months after she did.”
    I gave her a hug but my arm didn’t quite make it around her formidable girth. “I know you miss him, Kiki.”
     

 
     
     
     
    4
     
    Kiki brushed away a tear. “What’s back here?” she asked with false bravado.
    “ This is the garden room. We modeled it after the one at Biltmore, but on a smaller scale. It’s octagonal, like theirs, but the waterway side is all glass.”
    And the domed roof was made of glass too, supported by I-beam steel trusses that were then covered with oak, just as the garden room roof at the Biltmore House had been constructed.
    The garden room extended out from the rear of the lodge, and through the windows there were breathtaking views of the Intracoastal Waterway, and beyond that, of Wrightsville Beach. A sleek white yacht went sailing past, bound for the Wrightsville Marina.
     
    The waterway doesn’t change much in appearance from season to season. The live oak trees are always green, as are the magnolia trees. The sky and the water look summer-time blue even in January. And with the golden sea grasses and the colorful cottages, it could be June, not December.
    “ This room is lovely, Ashley. I love the palm trees, and all those orchids. And look at this beautiful antique rattan furniture. Oh, and the three-tiered water fountain. And that darling cupid on top. Does it work?”
    “ Oh, it works. We’ll have it flowing during the reception.”
    “ You know, Ashley, I just might borrow this concept for the house I’m decorating for the mayor of Charlotte on Queen’s Road. Would you mind?”
    Kiki’s trip to North Carolina was half-work, half-play. She’d be driving back and forth to her decorating job in Charlotte.