Week 6: The Bride

I provided the prompt for Week 6!

Name: Amy
Age: 28 years old
Scenario: She is sitting by herself in a small dressing room 30 minutes before her wedding
First Line: Amy could not help but wonder if she was making a mistake.

Even though the prompt was mine the result suprised me. I was initially thinking about a run-away bride when I came up with the prompt but my Amy had other ideas.



Here is the story I came up with:


Amy could not help but wonder if she was making a mistake.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly taking a long, hard look in the mirror.

“No … up. You’re right, it has to be up. Thank you James, it is perfect.”

James stood behind her and placed his hand on her shoulders. The two stopped for a moment and stared at their reflection in the large gilded mirror.

“You look fabulous Amy,” he said with a smile. “You go walk down that aisle and knock ‘em dead. Chris isn’t gonna know what hit him.”

James kissed her cheek and started packing up his equipment to leave. It was unusual for a stylist of his caliber to make house calls but he agreed to make an exception after Amy pleaded with him at her last visit. Very few brides came in for four pre-wedding consultations and James could see that she was a woman who rarely took “no” for an answer.

Amy stood up from her stool in front of the vanity and walked around the room to check on the last-minute wedding details. In half an hour she would walk down the aisle and all of her preparations and plans would finally come to fruition.

At 28, Amy had been a guest or an attendant at more than her fair share of weddings. In fact, in her circle of college girlfriends she was one of the last to finally tie the knot. From the moment Chris proposed last September she had been furiously planning the wedding of her dreams. Hell, who was she kidding, she started making arrangements weeks before when she first came across the ring hidden in Chris’s sock drawer.

It had been a long year. There had been site visits, marathon sessions with the wedding planner, menu consultations and dress fittings to see to. Chris was understanding at first but over the last few weeks he started to question Amy’s ‘obsession’ with the wedding.

Those were his exact words: your obsession with the wedding.

Amy had been sitting in the kitchen trying to finalize a song list for the DJ when he said it. She stopped cold and stared at him. How could he not understand? This was the most important day of her life and she wanted every aspect to be perfect. Instead of helping her, he was talking to her in a sing-song voice usually reserved for negotiators talking someone off a ledge.

A week later Chris’s calm, reasonable voice was a distant memory as he opened their Visa bill and started to review the most recent wedding expenditures. As he calculated how far they had moved past their budget Amy agreed to make some compromises.

The next day she applied for a new credit card in her name alone. It had taken only a week to reach the $5,000 limit but Amy was sure she had made the right decision. When Chris saw all of little details coming together surely he would have to agree that the extra spending was necessary.

Amy smiled as her bridesmaids slipped the white silk, crystal-encrusted princess gown over her head and zipped up the back. It fit like a second skin. Her bridesmaid handed her a small bouquet of pink calla lilies that had arrived that morning on a special order and she took one last look at her reflection.

Today every eye would be on her. She was born to be a bride.

****

Again I urge you to check out: http://wegotcharacter.wordpress.com to see what my fellow writers came up with!