Queen of Babble Gets Hitched Read Online Free PDF Page A

ancient times, at least—the entire tribe benefited from the goodwill generated from a happy union. In other words: weddings were a joyous occasion that brought about less fighting and unpleasantness all around.
    I would just like to point out that none of these sociologists came to my sisters’ weddings. Obviously.
    Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster
    Is your future mother-or sister-in-law driving you insane as you plan your special day? There’s a simple way to get her off your back. Give her something to do! Allowing his family—especially the female members—to take part in the preparations for the big day will not only make them feel special but will also lift some of the burden off your shoulders.
    Just make sure you don’t ask them to do anything too important. That way when they mess it up (as they in evitably will), it won’t matter.
    LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS ™

• Chapter 3 •
Happy and thrice happy are those who enjoy an uninterrupted union, and whose love, unbroken by any sour complaints, shall not dissolve until the last day of their existence.
    Horace (65 B.C.–8 B.C.), Roman lyric poet
    “Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
    “Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
    “Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
    “Hello, Chez Henri, how may I help you?”
    “Yeah, is this Henri Bridal?” The woman on the other end of the phone has pronounced it Henry instead of the correct French pronunciation of my boss’s name, which is En-ree.
    That I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is that she’s chewing gum. I can feel my toes curling. Of all the annoying personal habits a bride-to-be—or anyone, really—can have, gum-chewing is the one that aggravates me the most.
    “Yes, it is,” I say, glaring at all the blinking lights on my phone. It’s a good thing I had all those months of reception work at the law offices of Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn. I can handle an overloaded switchboard like nobody’s business.
    And the Monday morning after Jill Higgins’s New Year’s Eve wedding to wealthy socialite John MacDowell—at which Anna Wintour (yes, the Anna Wintour, longtime editor of Vogue) called my restoration of the ancestral MacDowell bridal gown “cunning”—the phones at Chez Henri are ringing off the hook.
    Of all the mornings for Monsieur and Madame Henri to come in late from their home in suburban New Jersey, this would not have been the one I’d chosen. I’m just saying.
    “I wanna make an appointment to see that chick,” the gum-chewer says.
    “I beg your pardon?” I am taken aback. First gum-chewing, then a reference to me—and she can only be referring to me. I am the only employee at Chez Henri who can reasonably be referred to as a “chick,” Madame Henri being in her fifties—as a derogatory slang word for “young woman”?
    “You know,” Gum-Chewer says. “The chick that designed that dress for Blubber.”
    Blubber. The nickname the press dubbed poor Jill Higgins, because she happens to work in the seal enclosure at the Central Park Zoo. And because she’d deigned to fall in love with one of New York’s wealthiest bachelors, and she doesn’t happen to be a size two.
    “I’m sorry,” I say to Gum-Chewer. “The chick to whom you are referring happens to dislike people who look down on others due to their weight.”
    Gum-Chewer appears to have swallowed her gum. “But—”
    “And furthermore, that chick happens to dislike being called a chick.”
    “Um, excuse me.” Gum-Chewer snaps her gum. “But do you have any idea who I am? I’m—”
    “No, and I don’t care to know. Good-bye,” I say, pressing the END CALL button. “Chez Henri, how may I help you?”
    “Elizabeth? Is that you?” The woman on the other end of the line has a heavy French accent and sounds as if she’s speaking to me from inside a tunnel. No, it isn’t my future mother-in-law, who is from Texas. It’s Madame Henri.
    “Madame, where are you?” I ask in French, the language I now