The thing about Scotland was it was always fucking freezing, and even though the wedding was on the grounds of Hume Castle, a stately home in Gleneagles near the Queen's country house that had been in the family for over four hundred years, there was deer shit everywhere, and the women were wearing the ugliest fucking hats Blair had ever seen. She knew it was English and everything to wear hats at weddings, but did the hats have to have dead animals on them?
Forty large round tables were scattered across the deer shit–strewn green lawns, with the castle looming ominously behind them like something out of Scooby-Doo—haunted and ghost-ridden, with a constant black rain cloud over it and bats in its belfries. Thick ten-foot-high hedges bordered the lawns, shielding the well-heeled guests from the paparazzi and riffraff. The reception tables were covered in creamy linens and decorated with simple sprays of lilac and ferns. A stage had been provided to accommodate the entertainment, headlined by Sting himself. Blair had hoped to see Madonna, but she must have stayed home with her horses and all those kids she kept adopting.
Blair sat shivering at her table, wearing the lilac-colored, puffy-sleeved organza gown with a huge bow in the back that her aunt had had made especially for her by the worst tailor in Scotland and a garland of white roses and baby's breath in her retardedly curled hair. At least the hideous dress went down to her ankles so no one could tell she was wearing black cashmere leggings underneath it, rolled up above her knees.
Forever bucking fashion trends.
Tyler sat next to her in a creased dove gray morning suit with a white rose in the lapel, nursing a bottle of Guinness and giggling to himself. Bald, paunchy, red-nosed Uncle Ray was giving a speech and was plastered as usual. "I just want to thank my wife for marrying me—at least, I think we're still married," he began, spilling champagne down the groom's boots.
This was Blair's Aunt Catherine's second wedding to the same man. The groom, Blair's uncle Bruce, was a former keyboard player for Sting. Bruce and Catherine had eloped when they were nineteen and divorced a year later. During their second marriages they'd had children and the usual affairs, but they'd never forgotten their first love. Now well into middle age, they were back together again and ready to give marriage another try.
Amor vincit omnia!
Uncle Bruce had stringy haphazardly bleached blond hair and wore white cowboy boots with his iridescent-lilac-tinted morning suit and shimmering lilac-tinted top hat. Aunt Catherine was dressed like Lady Marian from Robin Hood in a dark green corseted satin gown, feathered felt hunting hat, and purple satin cloak. Blair felt like she'd fallen down the rabbit hole into some sort of fucked-up Wonderland. The whole affair made her want to puke.
"And I'm glad Bruce is marrying Catherine again, because if he doesn't, someone else will," Uncle Ray continued sloppily. Tyler was turning blue he was laughing so hard. This was his third or fourth Guinness, so he was bound to throw up anytime now.
"Shut up," Blair hissed at him. Her weird Scottish cousins—ten-year-old Peter, nine-year-old Willie, and eight-year-old Becky, who went to some creepy Catholic boarding school in the country and looked like trained assassins—stared at her blankly with their queer, lashless gray eyes and blond pageboy haircuts. She'd tried to talk to them earlier, but their Scottish accents were so fucking impossible to understand she'd given up.
Everyone applauded as Uncle Ray gave the mic up to Sting, who looked exactly the same as he did in pictures, with spiky blond hair, squintily earnest blue eyes, and a tanned yoga-wiry body stuffed into the tiniest black peg-legged jeans and white T-shirt Blair had ever seen on a man. He looked like a one-hundred-and-ten-year-old Galápagos tortoise in skinny jeans.
"I'd like to dedicate this song to my dear friends Catherine and Bruce!" Sting shouted into the mic. Then he began to strum the first bars of "Every Breath You Take" on his white guitar. To the left of the stage Blair's mother stood swaying back and forth to the music, blitzed out on champagne and wearing a purple-and-gold hoopskirted bridesmaid gown that looked like it had been fashioned by a coked-out fairy godmother. Aunt Catherine and her new husband, Bruce, slow danced on the shit-smeared grass with their bodies pressed together like teenagers at a prom. It was supposed to be romantic, but it made Blair want to strangle someone.
Blair Cornelia Archibald, she doodled on her napkin with her black Lancôme eyeliner. It sounded even better than Blair Cornelia Waldorf. She especially liked the way each word had an a and an i in it.
Eleanor and Harold Waldorf III, Esq.,
proudly invite you to attend
the marriage of their daughter
Blair Cornelia
to
Nathaniel Archibald
on August the seventeenth
at four o'clock
in the St. Claire Hotel's Grand Ballroom.
The only problem was that first line. If her mom and dad were getting divorced and her dad was living with Giles or Raoul-Pierre or whatever the hell his name was, then surely it couldn't say "Eleanor and Harold Waldorf" on the invitation, could it? Maybe she'd just leave her mother out of it entirely, although that didn't really seem fair.
One thing was certain: she wouldn't be wearing a purple cloak, Nate wouldn't be wearing white cowboy boots, and Sting wouldn't sing.
How about Seal? Bono?
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Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You
Teen Fiction'Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I all live in huge, fabulous apartments and go to exclusive single-sex private schools. We aren't always the nicest people in the world, but we make up for it in looks and taste.' Ent...
