The Hustler Wedding [Alex Gaskarth]

Chapter Six: The Invitations

   Gone were the days of rich, thick cardstock wedding declarations and invitations. In the year 2017, virtually everyone used electronics for both, and Alex and I were no different. What was a little different, was because Alex was in England with the rest of the boys for a side-tour for the month of October, I actually ended up designing the invitation with my mother.

   Surprisingly, we'd been spending a lot more time together ever since that night at Gazal's. We met up once a week while I was in New York, to have dinner, and just generally catch up. It was nice. It felt normal, like something that other people would do. Which was great, because I hadn't known a normal day since Alex drunkenly stumbled into my life.

   My mother still didn't exactly know that Alex and I were getting married. She thought we were designing invitations for Tay's wedding to a fiancé I made up named Hadley.

   I still didn't feel close enough to her to let her know. Every time she asked about Alex, I skirted around the topic, doing anything I could to protect my private life. Not that it was exactly private. If my mom had thought to check any of the celebrity gossip sites, which All Time Low and the members had shown up on more and more as their popularity increased over the years, she would have known that Alex and I had been wearing rings since Rian and Cassadee's wedding.

   But I supposed she didn't, because she never said a word about it. Instead, she played right into my falsified reality, asking about Tay's style, then Hadley's, and attempting to incorporate them into the Winter Wonderland theme. It was during this process that I was strongly reminded of how different my mother's style was from my own. She wanted timeless elegance, I wanted contemporary flair. She wanted to go the road less travelled and use classic cardstock invitations, I wanted to embrace modern tradition and go digital.

   After dragging me to several paperies, she finally gave up on the cardstock dream, and allowed me to direct the driver to a small shop that specialized in digital invitations. It was there that we spent more than two hours, flipping through previously designed invitations, arguing over which were better, while the poor assisstant tried to mediate.

   And of course, poor Tay got dragged into the conversation when my mother argued that since she was getting married, she should make the final decision. I FaceTimed her at least five times, and each time, she agreed with whatever I had to say, and told my mother that she trusted my instincts completely.

   It took ages before we finally came up with a solution we both agreed on: Customized invitations. They could have pictures of Alex and I, there were patterns that were a midpoint between classic and contemporary, and when I called after to change the names and information from Taylor Jardine and Hadley Burton to Airlia Thorne and Alexander Gaskarth, they were completely understanding.

   Alex, who was finishing off the last week of the tour, emailed me as soon as he got the advanced copy I'd sent him, raving about how much he loved it, and urged me (for the hundred thousandth time) to tell my mother and invite her. I ignored that part. Two months of decency didn't and couldn't make up for everything that she and my father had done wrong.

   Jack RSVP'd no, but said he would be bringing a plus one and wanted a box of condoms, chocolate strawberries, and whipped cream as his meal for "dietary issues". I would have found it funny, but I was stretched to my limits, and Brüno was the one who got the responses, not me.

   In addition to planning and hiding my upcoming nuptials from my mother, the company I worked for had taken on a massive ad campaign for Coca-Cola, whose execs had somehow heard of me, and decided I would be great to personally be in charge of a massive image overhaul on their part. During the week, I worked from eight in the morning till ten or eleven at night, tweaking and fine-tuning logos, posters, hair colors and more. Anything that wasn't exactly perfect had to be changed.

   Alex was home for a week at the start of November, just in time to help Brüno, his mother, and myself pick out cake, flowers, and music. We also took several dance lessons, because his two-step needed more than a little work. Of course, he took it as a chance to demonstrate his horrible faux 70's era dance moves. Literally right in the middle of a dip, he dropped me on the floor and started singing.

   "Stop!" He yelled, motioning like a crosswalk attendant. "In the naaaaaame of love!"

   "You douchebag!" I laughed, playfully punching Alex's open palms. He closed them over my fists to pull me in for a kiss. We were pulled out of our trance by the sound of Trey laughing.

   "Oh, it's okay!" Trey smiled. "You make a good couple. You'll have some cute kids in your future."

   Kids. That subject, again. It seemed that everyone assumed that because Alex and I were getting married, we were automatically going to have children. Even Alex. He made small jokes here and there, poking my stomach, asking if that's why I was crazy enough to say yes to his proposal. Isobel and Peter were the same, flipping through photo albums for baby pictures for sildeshows, and musing over who their grandchildren would resemble more. 

   Add in the fact that Lucy, Cass, and pretty much alll of the rest of my bridal party thought me potentially being a parent was hilarious, and you might understand why I was starting to break down. Which was fine, I somewhat expected the pregnancy jokes.

   The one thing I didn't really expect was the wedding shower.

 ❘❙❚ The Hustler Wedding❚❙❘

Yup, short & terrible, but don't worry, shit's about to hit the fan.