Whitney Wells is getting married to Ron Pond, a bloke she met on a Pacific Cruise just a few months ago. Whitney, called Whit by her friends and family, is agog with teenage excitement. She's barely nineteen and her beach wedding has been all she ca...
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Okay people, are you ready to hear about the Wedding of the Year, maybe even the decade? We're Lacey and Stacey and were invited as Whitney's (she's the bride)BFF's and roving reporters from our local shopping centre. We live in Jewel Park, which is a totally daggy, downmarket sort of place. The next-door suburb is Dark Park, and it is even daggier, if that's possible. They've tried to tart up the shopping centre with some new shops; a boutique called Slaggz, make-up-shop-come-pharmacy called War Paintand a new medical clinic with some really flaky doctors who don't seem to know too much. Management at the Jewel Park shopping centre decided to have their own newsletter called the Dark Times; trying to make things sound better than they are. We got the job of being Roving Reporters, and we write about social events, sales and competitions at the centre.
Anyway, Whitney works atWar Paint with us. She invited practically all the rest of the staff from the shopping centre too, as just about everyone's a friend; with a few exceptions. We sort of helped Whit plan her wedding, but she had a few secrets up her sleeve that she didn't want to tell even us. We were nearly bridesmaids, until her horrible dragon of a future mother-in-law said she had to have Ron's (he's her fiancé) six step-sisters instead; who are all ugly, by the way. We stepped aside cos we're a bit scared of Roz, and told her we'd be busy doing our Roving Reporter job. Whit has got her friend Britnee as maid of honour though and about four younger cousins. This wedding had to be seen to be believed and it blew us away and just about everyone else too and not just because of the change in the weather. We wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Roz Pond, sleazy Ron's mum, is a control freak as well as being super scary; she's not long ago come out of jail on assault and battery charges; and she absolutely took over the whole beach with her over-bearing, bull-at-a-gate style. In the lead up to the big day, she'd succeeded in upsetting everyone and more than once had Whitney and her mum, Wendy, in tears. We don't know why on earth Whit's getting involved with this family. We'd head for the hills.
The weather was as expected for February in Australia, a scorcher. What were you thinking, Whit, having a February wedding? An ice-cream wedding cake too. Great idea—not! Later, when a change blew in, flurries of stinging sand whipped up, but that came much later, when everyone was too drunk to care, and were gossiping about the events that had taken place.
Back to Roz. She was dressed in head-to-toe leopard print, and wore gigantic, dangly gold earrings, and an equally gigantic necklace. You name it, she wore it. Her gold stilettos kept sinking into the sand, causing her to twist her ankles and swear, but she stubbornly refused to take them off. People were laughing at her, but she just charged on. She shouted at everyone, the caterers, the kids, of whom there were far too many, the photographer, and the waiting staff.
One poor waitress managed to drop a whole tray of food; she was so intimidated by Roz. Of course, the overjoyed seagulls swooped in for the kill. Roz waved wildly at the flock of seagulls and sent the poor waitress packing, yelling that this girl wasn't fit to be serving at her son's wedding and that she ought to be fed to the seagulls. Roz also sought out Wendy and screamed at her. Wendy screamed back and they had a real ding-dong row right there on the beach in front of the guests. Many of these took photos on their phones and before long the incident had gone viral on the net, titled 'Life's A Beach for Future Monster-in-Laws'.
An off-duty paramedic, who happened to be walking nearby, actually stopped to administer first aid to Roz and Wendy, that's how bad it was. Roz was all red in the face and Wendy yelled, "Why don't you do us all a favour and have a heart-attack and just die!"
Finally, Ron arrived and somehow managed to take over for the paramedic and calmed things down for a while.
Whit was running late, so Ron, Rory, who's his best-mate and best-man and the other groomsmen, got stuck into the beer. Rather than trying to stop them getting drunk, Roz joined the group and drank too. Stace reckons Roz could drink them all under the table. I reckon she's right.
We can't do a wedding report without dishing the dirt on what people were wearing. Wendy Wells wore some kind of hot pink (Stace said it was more neon pink) sundress number that looked okay, until she went to the loo and returned with the back part of the skirt all hitched up around her knickers, which were frilly black, by the way. Just thought you might like to know that.
Ron's groomsmen saw her and wolf-whistled and called out, "Nice pins, luv," and "how's about a quickie later?"
Some of them took photos until Wendy told them to 'piss off'. Marissa, Whit's boss, wore a tight-fitting red and black snakeskin print dress, ankle length, which she could hardly walk in, as it was so tight. She was falling out the front of it too. It did suit her, though, as she is a bit of a snake in real-life. Whit hates her and didn't want her to come, but her Mum said she had to be invited. Skye Frye, the sizzling, blonde resident manager of Jewel Park; though she doesn't actually live at Jewel Park anymore, had on a one-shoulder dress in blue and purple. It was very sheer and you could see everything underneath, not that it bothered Skye, who was there with a surprise date. Can you guess who that was? We're not telling now; we'll keep it for later.
Kara-Lynn,(she's manager of Slaggzboutique)who, as usual, was self-appointed stylist for the day, ran around huffing and puffing in a fussy pink and orange caftan and matching frilly scarf, over white flared pants, which were much too long and kept tripping her up. Honestly, Kara-Lynn, you'd think you could have shortened them a bit. After all, you're quite handy with a needle and thread. Kara-Lynn told us that she didn't have time to shorten her outfit, because she was so busy helping with last minute adjustments to the Bridal Party dresses. Whatever. We saw Kara-Lynn trying to ingratiate herself with Roz, who promptly grabbed Kara-Lynn by her scarf, gave her a shake and pushed her backwards.
Roz yelled, "Get out of my way you fat, old, try-hard has-been."
Fortunately, Doctor Una and Doctor Ray Beams (from the Jewel Park medical clinic)caught her, so she didn't end up in the sand. Doctor Una wore a flowing, multi-coloured skirt, which looked more like what her hippie sister, Doctor Ina, would choose. She had a lacey cardigan on top and a very 70's, wide-brimmed hat in pink, which kept trying to blow away. Doctor Ray wore chinos and a Hawaiian-style shirt, which for him is quite lairy. He actually was one of the better-dressed guests, would you believe? He's usually very nerdy and daggy.
We forgot to explain before that Whit's wedding was held at a new local resort called Around the World, Around the Corner. It's a concept developed by two blokes who saw a gap in the market for a sort-of resort for people who can't afford anything else and those who are too afraid to travel overseas because of wars and terrorism. It's quite popular, especially with badly-behaved bogans with lots of awful kids.
We know this is sort of mean, but how sad is it that Whit met Ron Pond(Pond Slime) on a cruise, but it turned out he lived in Dark Park, nearby to where Whit lives. So much for having a ship-board romance with an exotic stranger. We'd rather throw ourselves overboard than have to admit to marrying Ron.
Above is the link to the One Million Project Fiction Anthology. 'Beach Wedding of the Year' was my contribution to the book and I've just been given the OK to re-release it onto Wattpad for a whole new lot of readers. I hope you'll enjoy 'Beach Wedding' and also perhaps purchase a copy of the Fiction Anthology; which contains 39 other wonderfully creative stories There's something for everyone. The proceeds go to the very worthwhile Cancer Research and Homelessness, which are world- wide issues. The One Million Project is going from strength to strength, under direction from Jason Greenfield. There's also an Anthology of 40 Horror stories and an Anthology of 40 Fantasy stories. Whatever you choose, happy reading and thank you for supporting two worthy causes.
