About three months into the planning, my mother called. It was the first time in weeks.
“So, I’ve been thinking about your wedding,” she said. “I want to make sure we coordinate outfits for the family. What colors are you doing?”
“Dusty blue and ivory.”
“Perfect. I’ll make sure Kyle and Marcus and their wives match. We should all look like a unit.”
“That sounds fine.”
“And I think your father should do a reading during the ceremony. Maybe First Corinthians. He’s been wanting to be more involved.”
I paused. My father had never once shown interest in anything to do with my life. “I’ll think about it.”
Then she said the thing that set everything in motion.
“And Daniel, I know you’ll probably want to keep the wedding party small. But Kyle mentioned he’d be happy to step in as a groomsman if you need someone. You know, since you don’t have a lot of close friends.”
Since I don’t have a lot of close friends.
I have a best friend named Owen whom I’ve known since college. I have three guys from my rec basketball league that I see every week. Val’s brother Leo had already agreed to stand up with me. My mother simply assumed I had nobody, because she’d never bothered to learn anything about my life.
But what really got me was this: she wasn’t offering Kyle as a favor to me. She was positioning her golden boy to stand in one more spotlight, even at my wedding.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and hung up.
That night on our porch, I told Val everything.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“I want to have the wedding we planned. With the people who actually want to be there for us.”
She squeezed my hand. “Then that’s what we do.”
The next morning, I picked up my phone and found a group text my mother had sent to Kyle, Marcus, and their wives. She’d accidentally included me.
Talk to Daniel about the wedding. He seemed open to everything. I think we can make this work. Kyle, you and Amber plan to stay the whole weekend. Marcus, let’s coordinate outfits next week. This might be our best chance to finally get a nice family event out of him.
Get a nice family event out of him. As if I were a venue they were booking.
I took a screenshot and showed Val. She read it twice, set the phone down, and asked, “So what’s the plan?”
For the first time in my life, I had one.
I didn’t reply to the group text. I didn’t call my mother and ask what she meant. Val and I talked it over for two days and agreed on something important.
We weren’t going to blow up. We were going to pay attention.
So I paid attention. Over the next few weeks, my mother called more and more often. She wanted to know the venue, the florist, the caterer. She wasn’t excited for us. She was gathering information.
She’d ask about the reception layout, then casually drop something like, “You know, Kyle’s wife Amber used to do event planning. She could help with the seating chart.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll keep that in mind.” And I’d change the subject.
Then Kyle called me, for the first time in about a year.
“Hey, man. Mom says you might need a groomsman. I’m in if you want me. Also, Amber was wondering if there’s room for Lily to be a flower girl. She’s been practicing walking in a straight line.”
Lily was his four-year-old. Under normal circumstances, a niece as flower girl would be a sweet idea. But Val had already asked Maya, the daughter of a close friend from her firm. And Kyle hadn’t visited Charlotte once in six years. He never asked about my life. Now he wanted his child front and center at my wedding.
“I’ll check with Val,” I said.
“Your family barely acknowledged our engagement,” Val said when I told her. “Now they want starring roles.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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