The Wedding Machine Read Online Free
your daddy is at the airport before ten.â
Yes . Ray snaps her telephone shut. Priscillaâs last two boyfriends have been so awful that Ray and Willy have named them Poop 1 and Poop 2. The current one, J.K. (Poop 2) is by far the worst. Priscilla was the valedictorian of William Bull High, but she took a wrong turn in college and wound up majoring in film and television production, of all the inane things. She met Poop 2 on the set of this reality TV show, Knucklehead , where the idiot pins raw T-bones to his clothes and roasts himself over a grill and calls it entertainment. Oh, Rayâs got to get her away from him.
â No Poop 2 for the wedding weekend!â she calls to the heavy salt air. This good news is almost enough to cancel out the fact that my private parts are withering on the vine.
Ray claps her hands, presses the gas, and moves out into the two-lane highway to pass the tractor. A convertible sports car comes flying down the road opposite her, and she swerves back behind the tractor and barely misses the giant tires, their wide, mud-encrusted grooves spinning slowly forward.
TWO
Ray
Ray has set out a place setting of each of Little Hildaâs crystal and china. She can hear her husband and nephew loading up their deer hunting gear at the top of the stairs, and sheâs not going to let them cross through the dining room and the gift display without her supervision.
Tomorrow Big Hilda, Little Hilda, and the other gals and their daughters will gather around her dining room for tea and a look at all of the beautiful wedding gifts: the three china patterns; the Chantilly silver; the crystal water, wine, and champagne glasses and the assortment of silver trays, vases, bowls, ice buckets, and fanciful knickknacks. Itâs the tradition for the mother of the bride to host the tea, but Big Hilda just wasnât up to having it in her home and Ray has all but taken over the wedding.
Yes, Little Hilda Prescott is getting married this very Saturday. Of course, Ray worries about her unconventional choice of mates, a first-generation Italian from New Jersey, a Democrat, no less. And Little Hilda has even decided to hyphenate her last name. Now how in the world should they monogram her silver and linens?
Ray and the pack are starting to resign themselves to the fact that their children will neither marry who they hope for nor behave in the way they think is most appropriate. The pack can hardly relate to their offspring, if you want to know the truth, and they were shocked that every last one of them hightailed it out of Jasper after college with no plans to return.
This could be the end of an era for the community that took Ray in more than forty years ago. As she watches the coral-colored condominiums go up along the edge of the Cumbahee River, she envisions the affluent retirees and transplants trickling out of the Kiawah and Hilton Head resorts in search of some little slice of small-town southern living. When she reads in the paper about the plans for the new Sally Swine shopping center with a Starbucks on the far side of town, she suspects that the come-yuhs are migrating her way, and she wonders what their kind will do to Jasper and the quiet way of life she has come to cherish.
Nonetheless, she and the gals must gear up for the good work the upstanding ladies of their community have been performing for many generations nowâthat is, to ensure that the daughters of Jasper are married in the proper manner.
~ APRIL 15, 1995 ~
âWeddings are of the utmost importance,â Roberta said that day in the Jasper Nursing Home.
She had made it clear that Ray should take the helm of the Wedding Guild because it would not be long before the next generation would be tying the knot. The elderly woman had pulled out all of her files of wedding instructionsâfrom determining the guest list and the way the invitation should read, to the gift arranging for the Tea and See and the acceptable
Yes . Ray snaps her telephone shut. Priscillaâs last two boyfriends have been so awful that Ray and Willy have named them Poop 1 and Poop 2. The current one, J.K. (Poop 2) is by far the worst. Priscilla was the valedictorian of William Bull High, but she took a wrong turn in college and wound up majoring in film and television production, of all the inane things. She met Poop 2 on the set of this reality TV show, Knucklehead , where the idiot pins raw T-bones to his clothes and roasts himself over a grill and calls it entertainment. Oh, Rayâs got to get her away from him.
â No Poop 2 for the wedding weekend!â she calls to the heavy salt air. This good news is almost enough to cancel out the fact that my private parts are withering on the vine.
Ray claps her hands, presses the gas, and moves out into the two-lane highway to pass the tractor. A convertible sports car comes flying down the road opposite her, and she swerves back behind the tractor and barely misses the giant tires, their wide, mud-encrusted grooves spinning slowly forward.
TWO
Ray
Ray has set out a place setting of each of Little Hildaâs crystal and china. She can hear her husband and nephew loading up their deer hunting gear at the top of the stairs, and sheâs not going to let them cross through the dining room and the gift display without her supervision.
Tomorrow Big Hilda, Little Hilda, and the other gals and their daughters will gather around her dining room for tea and a look at all of the beautiful wedding gifts: the three china patterns; the Chantilly silver; the crystal water, wine, and champagne glasses and the assortment of silver trays, vases, bowls, ice buckets, and fanciful knickknacks. Itâs the tradition for the mother of the bride to host the tea, but Big Hilda just wasnât up to having it in her home and Ray has all but taken over the wedding.
Yes, Little Hilda Prescott is getting married this very Saturday. Of course, Ray worries about her unconventional choice of mates, a first-generation Italian from New Jersey, a Democrat, no less. And Little Hilda has even decided to hyphenate her last name. Now how in the world should they monogram her silver and linens?
Ray and the pack are starting to resign themselves to the fact that their children will neither marry who they hope for nor behave in the way they think is most appropriate. The pack can hardly relate to their offspring, if you want to know the truth, and they were shocked that every last one of them hightailed it out of Jasper after college with no plans to return.
This could be the end of an era for the community that took Ray in more than forty years ago. As she watches the coral-colored condominiums go up along the edge of the Cumbahee River, she envisions the affluent retirees and transplants trickling out of the Kiawah and Hilton Head resorts in search of some little slice of small-town southern living. When she reads in the paper about the plans for the new Sally Swine shopping center with a Starbucks on the far side of town, she suspects that the come-yuhs are migrating her way, and she wonders what their kind will do to Jasper and the quiet way of life she has come to cherish.
Nonetheless, she and the gals must gear up for the good work the upstanding ladies of their community have been performing for many generations nowâthat is, to ensure that the daughters of Jasper are married in the proper manner.
~ APRIL 15, 1995 ~
âWeddings are of the utmost importance,â Roberta said that day in the Jasper Nursing Home.
She had made it clear that Ray should take the helm of the Wedding Guild because it would not be long before the next generation would be tying the knot. The elderly woman had pulled out all of her files of wedding instructionsâfrom determining the guest list and the way the invitation should read, to the gift arranging for the Tea and See and the acceptable
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